Vampires, Ghosts, and Witches...

Last week I went to the Hallwyl Museum to see their exhibition about Skräck och Skrock (Fear and Superstition) during the turn of the 19th/20th century. The corridors leading me into the house were dark and filled with frightening sounds that turned this beautiful, palace-like, apartment into a house of horror! I've always been interested in old beliefs and the occult, so going through all the rooms, looking at all the cool stuff on display was very exiting! I took some pics of a few of the items, but since it was dark, and many items were placed behind reflecting glass, please excuse the quality of my photos.

The first thing that caught my eye was a Spirit phone/Necrophone, something it was rumored Thomas Alva Edison was trying to create to be able to communicate with the dead. No one knows if he actually created one, but this is a private collector's idea of what one of those might have looked like.

Ouija Board!

This is a reproduction of the first issue of Bram Stoker's Dracula...

A framed taxidermy bat had it's natural place beneath a painting of the original Dracula - Vlad Tepes.

Although I don't believe in killing friendly vampires, I still want one of these - a vampire hunter kit! This one is believed to be from the 1800s, and kits like these were often created by weapon smiths at the request of vampire fans.

They also served blood! I have no idea why it was behind glass though. By the time I had gotten this far through the exhibition I was really thirsty.

Electric shock devise from the early 1900s.

A witch's familiar. Yep, that's the remains of a cat...

Sculptures of Baphomet and Cthulhu.

A few stairs down in this Downton Abbey-like apartment, there was another exhibition with collections of different kinds. Behind a door was a tiny chamber, and inside I found vintage pornography! I guess that shows that you never know what you'll find behind closed doors. Not even in old, very fine homes... Haha!

Beauty Tips With Miss Meadows!

To help my lovely readers with things here in life that may be a bit difficult, I will sometimes offer you some tips here on my little bloggywogg, to make everything so much easier. Today we will start with some beauty tips! Cause we all wanna look our best. Right?!

Well, in the jungle of face creams, makeup and-I-don't-know-what, there are a few basic things we all need to stay pretty:

1. Drink lots of red wine! Red wine is full of antioxidants, which protect your cells against free radicals, help prevent cancer and heart disease, and prevents aging. Some of these antioxidants purify your skin and helps maintain the natural glow it has.

2. Eat lots of chocolates! Preferably dark chocolates. In addition to substances like iron, zinc, potassium, magnesium, and B- and E-vitamines, cocoa also contains:

• Fluorine and phosphates: These substances prevents plaque from building up on your teeth and strengthens the enamel. The cocoa fat also protects the teeth from caries, by covering them with a thin film. The cocoa fat also belongs to the good fats.
• Antioxidants: Cocoa contains a rare antioxidant called "polyphenol", which has the power of slowing down the aging process! Just like red wine, cocoa is also good for your heart!
• Phenylethylamine: This is a substance that resembles amphetamine, and which the body produces by itself when we're in love!
• Theobromine: Gives a similar effect to caffeine.
• Serotonin and dopamine: Makes us feel good!

3. Get lots of sleep! Getting your "beauty sleep" isn't just an expression - it's science! Researches has been made that proves people who suffers from sleep depravation actually look less healthy and attractive...

4. Vampires might not really exist, but still they are right about one thing: Stay out of the sun!!! Because, yes, it might actually kill you! We're all aware of skin cancer I suppose...Of course a reasonable amount of sunlight is pretty healthy - if you use sun block. Skin-wise the rays of the sun makes you red, gives you wrinkles and dark spots, and eventually makes it's softness turn more leather-like. A spray tan might be more healthy, but might make you end up looking like a carrot - as shown by some celebrities. No names mentioned, but one of them is named after the capital of France...

So, here we have it:

1. Drink lots of red wine.

2. Eat lots of dark chocolates.

3. Get your beauty sleep.

4. Stay away from the sun.

Let's all try this for a few months and see how beautiful and healthy we get! You can thank me later...

Garlic and Vampires...

Last Friday me and some other people met up at a place called "Garlic and Shots" for dinner. They put garlic in every dish, and have a huge amount of different garlic shots, if you feel like you need one of those...Didn't get any pictures of the food, but they had bouquets of parsley on the tables. Chewing on parsley is supposed to take away the garlic stench, after indulging in food containing this delicacy.

I think that parsley thing actually worked, for after dinner we all headed to the Vampire Lounge, and no one of the other guests left when the garlic-group arrived!

Scary decoration!

Drink list. This place serves the best drinks in town!

Dj Michael was there. This is how happy he feels when he get to play some tunes!

When he needed to get something to drink, my...I mean his...wife Fanny took over the dj stand. She wore a gorgeous blue vintage dress!

Fanny with the lovely Vanessa! I love to party with these people!

We all got shot by Vampire Lounge's own photographer - Albin. No bloodshed though...

But the main reason we went to this place on this certain day, was to see Elegy Ellem perform one of her burlesque numbers!

Great performance! The photos I took with my iPhone are less great though...You should check out Ellem's homepage = better pictures of this sexy lady!

Me in red. Sitting on a red fire-chair. Drinking red wine...Somehow it feels like most of my friends work at the Vampire, or is married to/dating someone who does. I'm really starting to feel part of this lovely Vampire family! 

Happy Halloween!

Even though most people probably spent this last weekend celebrating Halloween, today is the actual day it should be celebrated! So I thought the best way to acknowledge this day - after the horror posts of last week - would be with the scariest post of them all! Naturally here then follows a couple of photos of your's truly - accompanied by a little poem I wrote for a friend a few years ago.

Will you be my midnight snack

Let me bite you in the back

See blood trickle down your spine

Oh, to lick up that red line

If you want my heart to win

Let me sink my teeth into your skin

Angels crying from above

In my coffin make sweet love

Until dawn there'll be no light

Stay my dear, we have all night

After this there no more is

So let's enjoy this moment of bliss

But Death will come this night too

Farewell to Life, at least for you

So now it's time to say goodbye

As I slowly suck you dry

PS. The blood in the pictures is not real blood - what ever you might think of me...It's blueberry jam. Ecologic blueberry jam!

Photos: Christine Engström

The Living Dead

So, during this Halloween week, you might now wonder what post would naturally follow the last two ones on scary ballerinas and scary witches. Well, scary vampires of course! Duh!!!

A lot of people thinks vampires are just the fictitious creatures created by authors and Hollywood - with Bram Stokers "Dracula" from 1897 as the starting point. This is not true. The legend of bloodsucking creatures of the night has existed for thousand of years, with roots in almost every country of the world. The ancient Babylonian goddess Lilith was reputed to drink the blood of babies, and some sixth-century Chinese texts talks about "revenants" - the living dead. Legends like this can be found in many, many different cultures, and they all resemble our European vampires remarkably well.

There is actually one school of thought that suggests that the very first vampire could have been Cain, slaying his brother Able. The Bible doesn't state how this murder happened, but in the Zohar, the group of books that are the base of the Jewish Kabbalah, it states explicitly that Cain bit his brother on the throat. So if you believe in the Bible, then maybe you should believe in vampires too. If you rather go for the Big Bang theory...Well...

Another part of the Bible most people know about, but doesn't really think twice about, is the last supper. The famous stand up comedian Eddie Izzard did a show where he incorporated a discussion between Christ and God about the thing I'm talking about:

Jesus: "I said, drink this wine, it is my blood."

God: "You said what?! But that's vampirism! Couldn't you have said: Drink this wine, it is a Merlot?!"

So every time, during the Holy Communion, the church goers literary drinks the blood of Christ...Normal...

In the eleventh century blood, and especially the blood of virgins, was prescribed by both witches and doctors as a cure for ailments. During the Renaissance the belief in vampires just grew and grew, and when the plague - The Black Death - swept over Europe it was easy to blame it on the vampires. One theory about this is that the people who died from the plague were being disposed of so quickly into mass graves, that sometimes sick people who weren't completely dead yet ended up in these piles. When they then tried to free themselves from the dirt thrown over them, it literally looked like the dead were rising from their graves...

Then we have the "real" vampires. Vlad Tepes Dracula being the most famous. Dracula means "son of Dracul". Dracul means "devil" or "dragon". The name Tepes - meaning "impaler" he received for impaling his enemies on stakes, where they sometimes hanged for hours before dying. Vlad was reputed to have his meals served to him seated amongst his newly impaled victims...

In the fifteenth century a respected French military officer named Gilles de Rais, was brought to trial for having killed between two hundred and three hundred children, whose blood he used in various experiments.

And then we have the so called "Blood Countess" - Countess Erzsébeth Báthory. Nowadays most people know her name because she was reputed to bathe in the blood of young girls - preferably of the nobility - to keep herself looking young. There's actually no proof of her ever doing this, but she was a sadist who enjoyed torturing and killing girls. She had four servants who helped her with this, they were all executed after trial. Countess Báthory herself was locked up in a tower room at her home, in 1610, where she later died.

Graves have been opened where the head of the skeleton has been cut off and placed between its legs. Holes in the bones has been found just above the hearts position. All to keep vampires from rising from their graves. And then we have the "chewing dead" - dug up corpses found with blood sipping out from their mouths (a common thing in decomposing bodies), certain proof that the dead person had been walking around feeding on others. To prevent this from happen a brick was placed between the teeth of a suspected vampire before burial. 

People have always been afraid of the unknown. And belief in different, both good and evil, creatures has existed for ages. It's always easier to put a name on something you can't understand, so there's someone to blame when things go awry. But nowadays, when science has an explanation for everything we all know things like vampires don't exist. Right?...

Well, this was very interesting to write about. But unfortunately I don't have time to educate you, my dear readers, about this anymore right now. The sun will soon be setting here in Sweden, and I have to go to work...