Going Gothic Spokane Vampire Community Sinks Imaginary Teeth While Searching For An Identity
“Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make!” Bela Lugosi as Dracula, 1931
It’s lunch time. The vampire enters the restaurant, sizing up the crowd with a pair of red-rimmed eyes that loll beneath the brim of his top hat. Heads turn as if Madonna had just strolled into the place, but even though he’s wearing a pair of black panty hose, it’s clear no one finds him particularly attractive. Maybe it’s because he’s wearing them over his head, with the crotch ripped out, his arms stuffed down the legs with five holes cut from each foot to accommodate his fingers.
“I love to see the looks on people’s faces,” he says calmly, sitting down at a table. “They’ll either cringe or stare or get pushed back into their seats. They’re very afraid of what they don’t know.”
What they don’t know is Scaun Boughter, 17, shock-rock fan and self-described vampire. He and others like him are part of Spokane’s vampire community, which, while not exactly thriving, can be accurately described as “undead.” Admittedly detached from the main vein of this community, which includes mostly role-playing gamers, Gothic-dressers and “nerds looking for something to do on a Friday night,” Boughter differs in that he actually believes himself to be a vampire - with all the incisive implications.
“The taste of blood - it’s kind of like a sweet candy, a fine wine that’s aged just right. But it’s not a necessity for me,” he says.
In point of fact, Boughter admits to sampling human blood only once, during an argument with a girlfriend in which he superficially cut his own wrist and licked up the runny red stuff.
“I did it as kind of like a statement,” he explains, adding that with AIDS out there, a self-respecting ‘90s vampire really can’t be too careful.
Boughter’s embrace of vampirism, or its embrace of him, began in 1995. Keenly interested in fashion but never in conformity, Boughter’s biggest enemy at the time was boredom.
“I ran out of things to do when I was like 10 here,” he says of Spokane. He found what he was looking for when he picked up a copy of “Interview with the Vampire” by Anne Rice.
“She makes you believe,” he says. “I read it in like six days. Couldn’t put it down.” After that, he began reading everything he could on the topic, including The Book of Nod, which Boughter calls the Vampire’s Bible.
It was love before first bite. That came several months later, he says, when he met a pair of mysterious young men at a now-defunct Spokane coffee spot called Java Junkies. After a rambling conversation about vampires, one of them pulled up his sleeve to reveal a normal arm, which he placed against a colorfully papered wall.
“His body started shaking, and within two minutes his arm was the same color, pattern and texture as the wallpaper,” Boughter says. “It’s kinda cool to be able to do that.” Then, faster than he could react, one of the men leaped at him and “kissed” him on the neck.
“I still have the scar,” Boughter says, running his hand down the left side of his neck. He finds nothing. He tries the right side, but can’t seem to find anything peculiar there, either. “Well, it’s here somewhere,” he says, almost apologetically.
Among a majority of Spokane fang fanciers, Boughter’s brand of “Lost Boys” vampirism is anything but accepted. Their nocturnal notions bridge fantasy and reality through role playing - without blurring the distinction.
People like Boughter make Michael Young, 30, nervous. But the bearded leader of a coven of Spokane role-playing vampires already has plenty to fear as he walks into the Manito Park rose garden on a recent evening, facing what he believes will be his own certain death.
“The foundation of my power is gone,” he laments. “We are a lot of people divided.”
A younger, more powerful vampire has challenged him for control of the coven in a live-action vampire role-playing game called “Shades of Nightfall.” The game boasts nearly 200 players in the Spokane area, according to Young. By comparison, Seattle has registered just over 100. About 15 have gathered for tonight’s action.
“Initial Action,” says Young. “Serpent Speech.” In the eyes of the assembled, his tongue turns into a 5-foot-long asp. “Action interrupt: Thorn Kiss, 50 points,” says Jacy Todd, 18, the challenger. His tongue grows to 4 feet and sprouts spikes. Then a darkly dressed vampire named Gomorrah wades into the action, hurling a plague of insects at another player. The players react one at a time, responding with spells or actions of their own. The intercession of “Fallen Angels,” another type of character, complicates the Byzantine plot lines of the evening’s drama.
“It’s like making a movie with Robin Williams - you set up the scene, and everybody ad-libs it,” says Young. The goal is basically to stay alive while accumulating as many points as possible. One way to suck up points is by “draining” other players, but it’s hardly a blood sport. Complex rules governing play are administered by a “story guide,” who directs the drama with frequent reference to a thick rule book.
By night’s end, Young has unexpectedly survived and heads to Perkins along with the other vampires to satisfy The Hunger and to dispel what they feel are myths associated with their chosen lifestyle.
“It’s a frame of mind,” says Young.
“It’s a game,” says Gomorrah, 17, who chooses not to reveal her real name. “Some people have sports, others have parties. I have role playing. If I didn’t do this I’d probably be pretty isolated.”
Jaymz Ehresman, a Spokane teen who plays a vampire named Adrian, agrees. “It’s just the thrill of being able to play something that people fear so much.”
The fear is real. When residents of the small eastern Washington community where Gomorrah lives discovered her passion for vampire gaming, she faced widespread censure that included the threat of her removal as school valedictorian. “I think they would have preferred to find out that I was going out and getting drunk on the weekends,” she says.
But delinquency is far from what role playing is all about, says Bruce Ford, co-owner of Koffee.Com, a downtown coffee shop where gamers gather. He says the role players are always welcome at his non-smoking establishment.
“They’re good for business. They don’t bring any drugs or alcohol, and they’re damn entertaining,” he says.
Richard Grant, also known as Dorf, shares that sentiment. At 62, he holds a doctorate and is a former anthropology professor who once taught at WSU. His long robe suggests a shaman, but in the game he plays a fallen angel.
“I have kind of a young head,” he says.
Unlike the toothy teens who arrive on foot or in car pools, he drives a late-model Infinity to the games.
“This is one of the few venues in Spokane where people from a huge cross-section can get together and participate in an organized activity with no drugs or alcohol. It really is good clean fun,” he says.
If sales at Merlyn’s Science Fiction-Fantasy Store in Spokane are any indication, vampiric role playing is more than an animated corpse to the business community.
“The vampire thing has become a big deal,” says manager David Smith, citing a growing demand for vampiric games, books and other merchandise.
He attributes at least some of the increase to television programs like “Forever Knight,” a serialized vampire tale, and to the popularity of books and movies with similar themes. “It’s been over the past couple of years I would say that it’s really grown.” Although he hesitates to put a dollar figure on sales, Smith currently sells “probably half again as much as I used to in the past.”
The vampire subculture itself is an outgrowth of the Gothic scene, a lifestyle dating to the early 1980s that includes music, clothing and an iconoclastic world view. Black is the preferred color.
“It’s a very porcelain look,” says Boughter. “I couldn’t find my foundation, otherwise my face would be pale right now.”
Even dentally challenged vampires can make the cut with a pair of custom-fitted fangs purchased from Moonshadow, a downtown Spokane shop, where they sell for $35 a pair. “It seems to be pretty popular,” says Ben Cater, a salesperson. A traveling fang maker sells about 30 of the dental-acrylic incisors each time he visits Spokane, about once every two months.
If Spokane’s vampire set has anything in common with those of more modest dentition, it’s probably an interest in reading.
Literature has long been kind to vampires, with the first English reference to the word appearing in the Oxford English Dictionary of 1734. The word itself has much earlier, Slavic origins. Appropriately, Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” (1897) was based on the life of Vlad the Impaler (1431-1476), a Romanian prince known for his inhuman cruelty. Stoker’s classic, along with the Victorian prose of Edgar Allan Poe, Sheridan LaFanu and Lord Byron, continues to maintain a stake in the hearts of readers everywhere.
Fang-friendly bands include Bahaus, Pain Emission and Type O Negative, which played recently at the Spokane Arena. The Trouser Press Record Guide once described Dead Can Dance, another such band, as “of possible interest only to undiscriminating fans of moody psychedelia … shapeless guitar music with chanting, singing and howling.”
Spokane vampires are aware that members of the mainstream community may question their taste, perhaps even their judgment. But they say there’s no reason to fear them.
“Our game’s not as violent as a good game of laser tag,” says Young. He says his mother, a devout Catholic, worries about his soul. “She’s concerned that I’m hanging out with the wrong crowd,” he says.
But Young, himself a Catholic, isn’t worried. Sleep loss is the worst side effect he’s seen.
“I met a guy in another game who was having nightmares because of the game. If you’re all uptight and worried about losing your grip on reality, you shouldn’t be playing the game,” he says.
The January quadruple murder of a Bellevue family is a case in point. Alex Baranyi and David Anderson, the two men charged with the crime, previously had been thrown out of a similar role-playing group in Seattle. Court documents reveal Baranyi told police he planned the slayings because he was “in a rut” and had become “decadent.”
It is rare, gamers say, to find a player who has trouble separating the real world from the imagined one. These, say Grant, are quickly culled from clans of The Kindred.
“If you’re in character 24 hours a day, you’re in deep (trouble),” says Grant. “That’s truly over the edge. We don’t have anything like that in Spokane.”
Eastern Washington University’s Sue Wright, a sociologist specializing in the group behavior of children, says Spokane’s vampires may look scary, but in fact are far from freaks. Behind the makeup and teeth she sees a search for identity that lies well within the range of normal behavior.
“They’re developing a unique identity and asserting their independence,” she says.
“Independence is one of the most important values in our culture.” As children grow, “they have to break away from their parents and their parents’ values. Shock value is part of that.”
In pursuit of this goal, she says, teens can sometimes go too far. But the line is not clear. “If there is a line, it’s at the point where the role playing becomes violent,” she says. Vampiric teens are no more predisposed to violence than those who join other, more widely accepted groups such as athletic teams, she says.
Wright, who has a 19-year-old son, admits she would have a lot of questions for him if oversized incisors ever played a part of his own bid for independence. But, she says, sitting down and talking is the best way for parents to learn whether a child’s behavior is going too far. “I think the important thing is communication between parents and kids. That seems to work much better than coming down on them,” she says.
Eventually, Wright says, society tends to wear down the red of tooth and thick of claw. “Most of them realize that this is the only time in their life that they’re going to be able to try something like this. As soon as they join the establishment, these things are no longer possible - unless you’re an anthropologist,” she says
Even Boughter, who plans to attend college next year, comes close to admitting as much. “You should have talked to us about a year ago,” he says. “We were more into it then. We’ve sort of moved on since then.”
A web site for a role-playing game called Vampire: The Masquerade, (“Everything you always wanted to know about vampires, but would have been killed if you asked”) offers a final word.
“To be clear, vampires are not real. The extent to which they may be said to exist is revealed only in what they can teach us of the human condition and of the fragility and splendor which we call life.”
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