Frens, as you well know, it is currently Spooky Season. October has been considered the time of unnatural and undead activity since the first rites of Samhain (pronounced saa·wn) were performed by the ancient Celts. These days, Halloween does not seem too scary. After all, little kids running around in customs begging for candy is sweet, not scary. However, just because most people nowadays see Halloween as an excuse to dress like idiots and get drunk, does not mean that there is no reason to be afraid. After all, you never know if that dark figure slinking in the shadows is a monster or not. You may even encounter a vampire this Halloween season!

Never fear, though. Your good fren HellsingAnglo is here to give you tips on how to avoid becoming a bloodsucker.

Vampires, or undead creatures that either feed off of the blood of the living, or otherwise oppress them by making them sick, stealing their breath, etc., have existed alongside human societies since antiquity. The Ancient Greeks had a monster known as the Vrykolakas, an undead horror that feasted on the flesh and livers of the living. Other vampire-like creatures existed in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, but our modern world’s concept of the vampire primarily comes from the Slavic cultures of Eastern and Southern Europe. In the folktales of the Slavs, vampires are the reanimated corpses of the living who come back to haunt their loved ones and villages. These creatures bring plague with them, thus killing off livestock and harvests. In order to get rid of these vampires, the locals had to go from grave to grave in order to find the monster. From there, the vampire was dispatched via either burning or decapitation.

In the early 18th century, fear of vampires was so widespread in the Holy Roman Empire that government officials regularly intervened in order to stop entire regions from exhuming their dead en masse. A French Benedictine monk named Antoine Augustin Calmet wrote a whole book about this period in Hungary, where hundreds of cases of vampirism were documented. Today, amateur students of folklore know the names of suspected vampires like Arnold Paole, a Serbian brigand accused of killing sixteen people as a vampire in the 1710s, and Petar Blagojević, a Serbian vampire whose post-death execution was overseen by an Austrian official. Even in the United States, suspected vampires appeared in Vermont and Rhode Island, with the latter state producing the famous case of Mercy Brown, a young girl who the citizens of Exeter accused of getting her entire family sick with the plague after her natural death. For this, Brown was dug up, burnt, and had her ashes mixed with water and fed to her still ill brother.

Suffice it to say, belief in vampires is ancient and cuts across all cultures. Given this, there is the possibility that these monsters are real. And if they are real, then they want your blood. Protect yourself by doing the following:

1. Carry a cross with you at all times — vampires are disgusted by the sacred because they are unholy entities. Remind them of their wickedness by showing them a cross. They will flee from you and your cross.
2. Make sure you eat lots of garlic bread — Vampires hate garlic, so if you want to survie a vampire attack, make sure your body reeks of garlic. I suggest eating lots of garlic bread to keep the undead far away. Flatulence may also help to keep other unwanted entities away, as well.
3. If legal, carry a wooden stake with you — wooden stakes are central to any anti-vampire defense plan. In some cultures, stakes are used to merely keep the vampire pinned to the ground. In others, a swift stake to the heart kills a vampire outright. Either way, if you can do so without a loicense, carry a wooden stake with your every time you go out at night.
4. Study the blade — there is no better weapon to have in a vampire attack than a sharp blade. A sword or dagger, preferably one made of silver, can be used to help a vampire lose weight. Specifically, a vampire can shed a few head-pounds if the blade’s user knows how and where to cut. Hint: decapitation always defeats a vampire.
5. Stick to the sunlight — It is true that Nosferatu, the great German horror film from 1922, presented the first instance of sunlight killing a vampire. Prior to that, in folklore and in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, vampires could wander around in daylight, but their powers were noticeably weaker. Therefore, if you really want to stay safe from a vampire attack, go for your cozy strolls during the day and avoid night jaunts.

I hope this little article will help you and your frens to have a safe and vampire-free Halloween. Remember: there things that go bump in the night, but you can bump right back by bonking them on the noggin or staking them through the heart.

Tune in next time for an article on how to survive a werewolf attack!