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Last calendar week , one auction sale - goer went home well - prepared to face up an encounter with the undead after buying a " lamia - slayer kit " dating back to the late 19th century . The kit sold for nearly $ 15,600 ( £ 13,000 ) — six times its estimated price , after dictation come from around the world .
The U.K. emptor bring home a heavy wooden loge ornament on its outside with a set of brass rood-tree that slide to unlock the kit . Inside the box is a matching set of pistols , a brass powder flask , holy water , a Bible , a wooden mallet , a wooden stake , brass candle holder and rosary beads . The box also check paperwork from the Metropolitan Police , a military group that serves the bang-up country around London , registering an " foreign opposition " in 1915 .
A kit with everything you need to slay a vampire, from holy water to the all important wooden stake.
" The labor of killing a vampire was super serious , and diachronic write up suggested the need for particular method acting and tools , " Charles Hanson , the possessor of Hansons Auctioneers , the auction house that sold the boxwood , said in a statement . " detail of spiritual significance , such as crucifixes and Holy Scripture , were said to repel these monster , hence their mien in the kit . "
Related : Antique lamia - slaying outfit up for auction bridge . Bible , crucifix and pistol included
The kit once belong to Lord Hailey ( 1872 to 1969 ) , a British patrician and administrator in colonial India . It ’s unclear whether he really go for the kit would help him ward off vampires or whether he , like the kit ’s most recent buyer , bought it out of enchantment , Hanson said .
The wooden chest includes a black crucifix and candle holders mounted onto wooden panels that swivel.(Image credit: Mark Laban)
lamia mythology dates back M of old age . Archaeologistshave unearthed ancient human remains in Greece that were pinned down with heavyrocks to keep the organic structure in their graves , possibly due to a belief that the " undead " could rise again and harm the living , Live Science antecedently reported . This practice spanned culture and time periods , including in sixteenth - hundred Europe , where human burials had gemstone stake in their legs and rocks in their mouthpiece to forbid them from feed on the aliveness .
— Vlad the Impaler : The genuine Dracula
— Child ' lamia ' was bury 1,550 years ago in Italy
The two pistols included in the “vampire slayer kit."(Image credit: Mark Laban)
— Mysterious Connecticut ' vampire ' eventually place 200 years after burial
People’sbelief in undead beingslikely stemmed from a lack of understanding of communicable disease and the natural physical process that body go through as they decompose , Live Science previously describe . For instance , the liquefied remain of the decomposed digestive tract sometimes leak out out through the backtalk and nose of dead bodies . The dark fluid look just like blood . In addition , hair , beards and nail continue acquire after decease , which may have play a trick on some people into intend the late deceased were still animated .
Even during Hailey ’s lifespan , belief in vampires was alive and well in some shoes . In the late 19th hundred , New England had a panic over a lamia when two local women , a mother and daughter , died oftuberculosis , National Geographicreported . As the late mother ’s son , who also had tuberculosis , mature sicker and sicker , townspeople began to believe that the two deceased women were cursing him from the tomb — a common notion about vampire , who did n’t always forget the ground to prey on their victims , according to early mythology . Around the same fourth dimension , the Irish source Bram Stoker published his iconic novel " Dracula , " maintain vampire mythology alive .
The kit’s bible with clear rosary beads with a crucifix.(Image credit: Mark Laban)
" It ’s interesting to know a extremity of the gamey patrician societal rescript , a human being with a space in the House of Lords , acquired this point , " Hanson said . " And yet , amid his illustrious life history , he was drawn to this vampire - slaying outfit . That ’s intelligible . These object are both singular and intriguing . "
earlier published on Live Science .
