Four ways to kill a vampire (which would never have come to mind)

Words: OrangeEyebrows
Pictures and other crap: Typical_Michael


We all know how to kill a vampire. Pop culture has endlessly hammered into our chests that, if you’re being menaced by an undead monster, you need silver bullets, garlic, sunlight, and/or holy water. Alternatively, you can chop its head off or put a stake through its heart, which also works if you aren't sure whether it’s a vampire or just a goth kid.

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But, what if it’s an overcast day? What if you haven’t stocked up on seasonings, and you don’t have silver bullets or a stake conveniently at hand? Then all of a sudden – unexpected vampire attack! Man, that would just suck. But fear not – with a few things easily gathered from around the home, you can MacGyver yourself a vampire-killing solution.



4. Silver bullets vs. poppy seeds

Silver bullets would not only be expensive and hard to get hold of, but silver is also kinda squishy so you’d have to faff around reloading your gun if faced with a non-vampiric attacker. Instead, when faced with a howling undead murderer, use your life skills and briskly rub a poppy seed baguette.

They might seem like an unlikely projectile, on the whole, but chucking a handful of poppy seeds at a vampire might buy you some time. In Eastern European folklore, it was said that scattering poppy seeds or millet would keep a vampire trapped there all night, counting them. Vampires apparently have OCD.



If the twilight munchies left you baguette-less, you could also use rice. The vampire will not be able to continue about his business until he’s counted every grain. Unless, of course, you get one who also has ADHD.

Vampire Traits

3. A stake through the heart vs. a nail through the bellybutton

A stake through the heart seems like a fairly logical way to kill more or less anything, but not many people have stakes lying around...unless they’re specifically expecting a vampire visit. Or gardening, possibly. But since that involves stepping away from the computer and going outside under the glare of the pitiless day-star, you’re probably not in that demographic.



But in Macedonia, the approved method was to drive a nail into the vampire’s navel. Admittedly, that means you might be confronted with the horrors of an outy. On balance, being savaged by an immortal hell-beast might be preferable. But at least now that choice is in your hands.


2. Cutting its head off vs. cutting its toes off

Cutting somebody’s head off has got to be pretty difficult, even with your masturbating arm, and you need an axe. Plus, of course, there are all the questions from the police and replacing the wallpaper in your murder room because it got covered with blood and the colour doesn't match the upholstery. No.

In Serbia, a nation notoriously obsessed with coordinating interior design, they found that a much easier solution was to cut off the vampire’s toes. Even weakened as I am by countless hours spent on TCS IRC, with no exposure to fresh air or any food that takes longer than a “brb” to microwave, I could probably manage to lop off a couple of toes with a pair of kitchen scissors and a bit of good old-fashioned elbow grease.

1. Sunlight vs. human faeces

The Pièce de résistance. Sunlight is a surefire way to kill a vampire, but I’m English, which means I’m pretty much stuffed indoors 361 days of the year.

Besides, creatures of the night probably aren't going to be trying to eat my face at two o’ clock in the afternoon on a gloriously sunny day, and unfortunately my research has failed to turn up any evidence that you can kill vampires with, say, a light drizzle. So what to do if a vampire has the bad manners to attack when there’s a complete absence of sunlight?

Well, you know what everyone always has plenty of? Crap. Especially, for some reason, when a shrieking undead thing is hurling itself at them with a mouthful of spiky fangs.

In most of Eastern Europe, one of the things you could traditionally use to put a vampire back in its box was poop. As with garlic, the theory behind this seems to go back to the belief that things that make you sick (dead bodies, spoiled meat) smell bad, and that a way of countering their ill-effects is to fling something even more foul-smelling in their general direction. Or perhaps it ties in with that OCD thing I mentioned earlier and vampires are just very fastidious. Whatever the reason, it means you can kill a vampire armed with nothing more than your own bowel-spasming terror.



I always knew I was going to find a redeeming feature to my nervous incontinence some day.
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