We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $82,154,015.95 | Books Available: 670,670 | Members Online: 139

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - Piercing the Darkness

Piercing the Darkness
Author: Katherine Ramsland

"If you begin to hunt for vampires, the vampires will begin to hunt for you." — "Christian" In the summer of 1996, a young female reporter named Susan Walsh disappeared while writing a story on downtown Manhattan's mysterious "vampire" underground. Suspicion immediately fell on the bizarre cultists who wore black, painted their faces white, and... more » drank (or claimed to drink) human blood. One of the experts consulted in the search for Susan Walsh was clinical psychologist Katherine Ramsland, who was steeped in the subject as a journalist and bestselling biographer. Susan Walsh was never seen again. But the search for her opened new doors of inquiry for Ramsland, who found herself drawn almost against her will into a world she had previously explored only through the investigations and research of others. Now Ramsland was face-top-face with her subjects and the questions were alarmingly intimate and direct: Were these vampires for real? Did they act from compulsion or choice? Did they really drink blood? What else did they do? Often against her better judgment, Ramsland began to follow up personal ads and Internet inquiries with actual forays into the vampire scene, penetrating deeper and deeper into a world few Americans even dream exists. What she found was all too real. Hidden beneath the media images and the talk-show circuses, lies a dark realm with its own rituals, rules, boundariesand penalties. Written in the bold tradition of participatory journalism, Ramsland's extraordinary investigative memoir takes you directly into the world of the urban vampire: a transgressive arena of dark energy and heat that overlaps with S&M, Bondage, and Gothic cults. Here you will learn the distinctions between Bloodists, Classicals, Nighttimers, and Inheritors. You will visit the members-only clubs where "liquid electricity" (blood) is the favored currency of intimate exchange, and explore the "feeding circles" that avoid the risk of AIDS. You will hang out with lovers whose sex toy is a razor and meet others who shun normality as we would shun the secret practices they hold sacred. Ramsland returned with her eyes opened to new kinds of darkness. You may think you have seen or heard everything. You may even think you are unshockable. You are wrong. A daring writer's intimate odyssey into a world of darkness "Whether someone wanted to drink blood or merely read about someone else drinking blood; whether someone wanted to exert a hypnotic influence over others, or be the one to fall into the swoon; whether someone just wanted to be a vampire once a week and then put it aside, or live the feeling of it with every breathit mattered not to me. "I was prepared to listen to the stories of vampires, donors, victims, experts, chronicles, hunters, readers, writers, musicians, strippers, squatters, dominatrixes, role-players, criminals, divas, entrepreneurs, fetishists, and any other person who manifested some aspect of what I call vampire culture. It's as diverse a group as any subculture gets, and anyone who thinks that it's noting but what the television news flashes on the screen at Halloween, or what the talk shows portray, is missing the richness and complexity of the responses that the vampire has generated in recent years. "That's how I got my start. And When I decided to immerse and find out more, I discovered a lot more about this culture that I ever expected."

from Piercing the Darkness

ISBN-13: 9780694520312
ISBN-10: 0694520314
Publication Date: 9/23/1998
Edition: Abridged
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: HarperAudio
Book Type: Audio Cassette
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

Religion & Spirituality >> Occult & Paranormal >> Occultism
Biographies & Memoirs >> True Crime >> True Crime

Back to the Top ↑

Search - Piercing the Darkness

Loading...