A Vampire Story

On Thanksgiving Day 1996, Roderick Ferrell, 16, from Murray, Kentucky, led a pack of kids to Eustis, Florida, where he killed the elderly parents of a former girlfriend. Ferrell had lived in Eustis for a year and had then returned to Kentucky, where he'd gotten involved with a fantasy role-playing game called Vampire: The Masquerade.

As the vampire flick Twilight tops the U.S. charts and opens in Britain, female viewers are swooning over the impossible romance between mortal and immortal. But many of their male companions will be pondering the age-old question: "Just what kind of hardware do I need to take down that sucker?" 

There are many interpretations of the vampire myth both in folklore and legend. The nature of the vampire varies greatly from culture to culture and often from region to region with a general cultural area. In the pages of fiction, each author has his or her own unique interpretation of the vampire.

In America today, we are surrounded by borrowed images. People from all over the world flock here, and bring with them a background of cultures and beliefs, filled with imagery reflecting those ideas. Often times, these elements take on a life of there own in the cauldron known as the American "melting pot," and through interaction with their new surroundings, evolve into something quite different from their original form, becoming an integral part of our culture.

Ron Chaney's hillside home near Palm Springs doesn't look much like a haunted house, but he always looks forward to getting it ready for Halloween. Chaney is, after all, a descendent of monsters.