Dark Holme Inner Circle

Back at the turn of millennium, I used to run a White Wolf Vampire:TM LARP and one of my favorite locations for holding it was the Van Wickle House in Somerset NJ.  It’s a house built and preserved from 1722 that is believed to be a “haunted location”.  The first time I arrived there to get set up for the game, I saw a young girl in a blue dress watching me from inside the house.  I saw her through the window from the outside and when I went inside, the place was empty.  I later learned that there have been many sightings reported in the house, and the girl in that room was one of them.  We used that house for our LARP many times over the five years I ran it, and although I certainly heard odd things there, I didn’t see the girl again.

I was 10 when I first read Vampire’s Bride by Bulgarian author Nikolay Raynov, and it marked me.

My fam hid his books from us with the argument we were not mature enough to read them, but, you know, the curiosity killed the cat. It's just that...the cat has 9 lives, they say. So, we dug out the books and we read them in hiding.

"Vampire's bride" was the first story of his that I read, and it became my favorite. Dark and deep as much as it was horrifying in a fascinating, puzzling for a pre-teen girl way. I didn’t realize I was being led into the dark until I was already there, doomed and spellbound. Literally.

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In a nutshell, the plot tells the following story:

A king’s youngest daughter is given in marriage to a mysterious prince, whose face is half-black and half-white, and who arrives in a silent black carriage pulled by eerie horses. Taken to his distant kingdom, she discovers he is a vampire, living in a land of the dead, where she is drugged each night to keep her from seeing his true form. When she finally tricks her way into witnessing his transformation, she unknowingly dooms herself, and that leads to a harrowing journey through cursed lands, magic, and dark fates before she ultimately finds a way to break the spell.

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I consumed all folk tales I could find of Raynov, and I got hungry for more. This kindled my love for the eerie folklore horror. I think that’s the moment I fell in love with the darkness, and I’ve never looked back since.

I know many publishers don't want to see the familiar monsters (Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies) but I have to confess I still enjoy a good monster story. One trope that is feeling stale is the "Found Footage" horror, launched by "The Blair Witch Project" (1999) and then popularized through the "Paranormal Activity" series of movies. On the whole, they started to get old, but there are still a few gems in there, like "Europa Report" (2013).