Vampires in Alaska?

I was pleased to hear the shout-out Marita Crandle gave me in the September 8, 2014 edition of her vlog, VBITE. She wanted to draw my—and the audience’s—attention to a website called “Vampires in Alaska” (starting at the 1:05 mark).

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dasVBC6tfw”]

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a site of that name—but I did find a blog called What Do I Know?, written by “Steve”. That blog features an entry titled, “Vampire History of Alaska – Why You Should Vote Yes on Prop 1” (August 17, 2014)—the same title Marita mentioned in her vlog post.

She quotes from it—”this post is made possible by recent advances in vampirology and in technology”—so, I know it’s the same source. So what are these advances? Marita mentions, “they were now able to find, you know vampires don’t have a reflection, but there’s this extra film that actually shows vampires in past films; it pronounces what was missing.” Now this, I had to see.

Suffice it to say, my alarm bells were already ringing at this point—and weren’t allayed by what I read in Steve’s post:

It’s been discovered that vampires actually have a negative soul. (Sorry, the link keeps crashing, and as you read on, you’ll understand why.) That vampire knowledge along with new technology that can find the vampire traces left in old photos, allows historians to reprocess historical pictures (and even drawings) to reveal the vampires who were actually there all along. This process is not yet available to the public, but through a friend of a friend, I was able to give them five photos and one picture. That’s all I can tell you.

Now, before we dismiss Steve’s declaration out-of-hand, let’s take a look at a demonstration of this advancement in “vampirology and in technology”, courtesy of one of the pictures featured in his post:

Oh.

Before you shake your head—yes, Marita was in on the joke. She said the site was “pretty fun”, after all—the author even notes, “The most successful of the ones I submitted has to be this Timber Vampire picture. I used an historical photo I got from AlaskaNativeStudies. Other images came back looking like shoddy photoshopped work.”

So what is Prop 1? According to Ballotpedia, “an interactive almanac of U.S. politics”, it was “The Alaska Oil Tax Cuts Veto Referendum, Ballot Measure 1”, adding,

Those who supported the referendum and sought to repeal SB 21 believed the tax breaks would only benefit oil companies and not the citizens of Alaska. Those who were against the referendum believed the tax cuts outlined in SB 21 were necessary to incentivize these companies to continue drilling for oil in Alaska. At the time of the election, a majority of Alaska’s budget was balanced using revenue from oil taxation.

Steve’s post elaborates on the vampire angle behind it:

Currently Alaska is under a massive vampire attack as they use every trick in their arsenal to get Alaska voters to vote no on Prop 1. This proposition would overturn SB 21 that gives oil companies a huge tax break and cuts the benefits Alaskans would get from their ownership of state oil.

If you click on the link embedded in “Alaska is under a massive vampire attack”, you’re taken to Kirk Johnson’s New York Times article, “Sarah Palin’s Attack on Gov. Sean Parnell’s Plan Aligns Her With State Democrats” (August 17, 2014). Political satire at its finest.

So, thank you for sharing this site with me, Marita! However, it looks like the vampires won: according to Ballotpedia, the proposition was “narrowly defeated” after the vote on August 19.

If you thought that was crazy, what till you hear what der Führer has to say about Hammer’s Brides of Dracula Blu-Ray release!

On a serious note, make sure you subscribe to Marita’s YouTube channel for more tasty VBITE instalments. If you’re in New Orleans, stop by her store, too: Boutique du Vampyre.