ISU Professor Studies Self-Identified Vampires

ISU Press Release Idaho State Journal


POCATELLO – Idaho State University Assistant Professor of social work D.J. Williams is devoted to researching “self-identified vampires” and the vampire sub-culture and educating mainstream culture about them.

            “My interests involve how self-identified vampires understand themselves and their practices, and how they are interpreted by others, based on existing social processes and available social discourses,” Williams said. “I am one of the few scholars who has worked directly with the vampire community.”

            Williams has published on this topic in peer-reviewed academic journals Leisure Sciences and Leisure/Loisir, and has acted as a consultant for the FBI regarding understanding vampire identities, issues and practices. He has also been approached as an expert for a proposed television documentary on these topics.

Occult Profiles: Don Rimer: Occult Expert or Merchant of Fear?

By John W. Morehead

As I keep in touch with various aspects of my research interests at times I find a few surprises. In this case it came not from my direct research, but in something related to it.

I was researching the vampire subculture and checking in with a few websites related to this, as well as on Pagan websites I frequent, and found mention of a gentleman claiming to be an expert in "the occult", and using this "expertise" to lead seminars and provide consulting on "occult ritual crimes" for law enforcement, as well as the media and various civic groups. The individual is Don Rimer, and I found him mentioned on both vampire and Pagan websites as someone who keeps quite busy presenting his views on the dangers of everything from Afro-Caribbean religions to the vampire culture to various fantasy-role playing games. Given these claims I thought it was worth exploring.

Tattooed shrunken head relic returns to New Zealand

ROUEN, France (AFP) – The tattooed, shrunken head of a Maori warrior starts a long voyage home to New Zealand on Monday when France hands the mystic relic back more than a century after explorers took it away.
At the town hall in Rouen, northwest of Paris, Maori elders will perform chants, prayers and other rituals to honour the dead man, a relic of the ancient practice of mummification of Maoris killed in battle.
The head, which tribal custom forbids from being photographed or filmed, will be handed over to the Maoris in a box by officials from the town and the Museum of Rouen, which has housed it since 1875, organisers said.
Maoris will chant "invocations and solemn tributes to the dead warrior, who will be returned the very next day to his native land in order to find his final resting place," the museum said in a statement.
The restitution follows a four-year political struggle which ended last year when the French Senate voted a law allowing the return to New Zealand of all Maori human heads held in France, estimated to number between 12 and 15.