September 14, 2020 — I meet a lot of cool weirdos when I’m
writing my nonfiction books. For A Season With the Witch, I listened to
tunes with a witch, shut down the Hawthorn Inn bar with a paranormal tour guide,
hung out with a graveyard guard, talked to the face of the original Michael
Myers outside a haunt while he sold Halloween panties. Dozens of others. I
broke my cool weirdo record with that book, I think. But maybe my favorite
interview was with a blue vampire.
Steve the Vampire has been haunting the Essex Street
Pedestrian Mall as its most famous fanged busker since 2010. My personal history
with him goes back to that same year when I shot a surreptitious pic from afar
as he sank his fangs into a tourist. Since that time, I’ve almost documented my
changing family with him, like he’s some kind of October Santa Claus. Unfortunately,
I don’t get a photo with him every year (and apparently the last one I got was
in 2016). Sometimes he’s too mobbed by people and sometimes our paths just don’t cross, but I
always have my eye out for him.
I lost touch with Steve not too long after the book came out.
I do that a lot. Lose touch with people I shouldn’t. But I check tourist photos
on the socials every season to make sure his blue and black presence still
haunts the town. If he ever retires, they need to commemorate him with a plaque
on the Essex Street pedestrian mall.
But in case they don’t, here’s my personal monument to Steve
the Vampire, a short series of photos covering the past decade of Halloweens.
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| 2010 |
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| 2013 |
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| 2014 |
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| 2015 |
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Somehow topped off our 31-day October stay in Salem for the book
by getting on the front page of the local paper on Halloween. |
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| 2016 |
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| 2016 |
