The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula By Eric Nuzum

  The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula

By Eric Nuzum 

Eric Nuzum is an American writer, podcaster, producer, and critic. He was born in Canton Ohio in 1966. He attended Kent State University from 1985 to 1988 and graduated with a Bachelor’s in the Arts. From 1998 to 2004 he went to work for WKSU, a non-commercial, educational radio station licensed in Kent that can be heard in Northeastern Ohio. From WKSU he moved to NPR and in 10 years rose to Vice President of programming before moving over to Audible in 2015 and leaving in 2018 to found his own podcast company, Magnificent Noise. During all of this, he earned the Edward R Murrow award for News writing (awarded to him in 2002). He also married a lady named Katherine and moved to D.C. Most importantly for us though he wrote 4 books, it's his second book that we're reviewing today. 

The Dead Travel Fast is a pop culture look at vampires. From various movies, books, playing one in a haunted house, or trying to track down and talk to people who claim to be vampires (Both fetishists and a certain Nicholas Cage film?  Or are we talking Fully Deluded here? {Yes}). Mr. Nuzum attempts a broad overview of the space that vampires occupy in American culture, what we get out of vampires, and why. Mr. Nuzum attempts in this book to try and dig out just why Vampires have taken such a deep root in our culture and look at the different cultural expressions of it. To do that he goes on trips across the country, taking vampire tours of San Francisco, attending a Dark Shadows convention (Dear God. I remember watching that as a child.  There are conventions for that? {Not many but yeah}), and interviewing people in New York. He also heads out to the United Kingdom and Romania taking various Dracula-related tours to try and dig out some information there because let's face it, you can't talk Vampires without talking Dracula. He also meets various people claiming to be vampires in chain restaurants and bars (Pre-arranged?  Or did he just run into them? {pre-arranged}). Plays a vampire in two haunted houses, drinks his own blood (Well alright then!), and attempts a ritual to become a vampire because... You know, I'm going to be honest, I have no idea why he did that other than to fill space in his book (I’m gonna give him points for taking his subject seriously.  Now I’m curious about the ritual itself to be honest?  What magical tradition are we talking here?  Unsystematized folk-magick, or are we talking something derived from Crowleyan Hermeticism? {AHAHAHAAHA, You think he went into that much effort?  It was a random list of ingredients and instructions from the internet}). Don't drink blood, not even your own readers, other people's blood is of questionable safety at best (That’s how you get the HIV!  Seriously, I don’t normally kink-shame, but the “Vampires” have like, the least-safe fetish ever.  Like, if you’re gonna do that shit, at least get on PrEP first.  This has been a PSA from a former University Dorm Sex Ed Sherpa!), and drinking your own blood is just silly and kind of gross (Eh, we’ve all done it. {I don’t recall guzzling down a shot glass’ worth of my own blood at any point in my life.  Granted I’m missing a few days here and there but pretty sure I would remember that}). 

The book is written in the first person and frankly, it's as much about Mr. Nuzum's quest to experience vampiredom directly or indirectly as it is any real study of what vampires are or what they meant to other people (It would kinda have to be.  No way something like this is dry and academic.). Very informal and breezy, the book is easy to read and is rather engaging. Mr. Nuzum knows how to entertain readers and keeps his narrative moving at a relaxed but brisk pace that I think other writers could learn from. You quickly come to empathize with him and respect his suffering for his quest (Tell us about the suffering…). Whether it be his exhaustion in playing a vampire in a haunted house (something I'm still questioning why on earth was even necessary[Because it’s fun.  Seriously, there was no actual point to this.  This is a passion project done for its own sake.]) or the battling of the infection of his thumb on the Romanian Vampire tour from hell (Oh Dear). Since he still has the thumb, be sure to ask him if he's sure a mosquito bit it, he still loves it when people make that joke. While I question why some of this was necessary, I will say I respect his willingness to do it and his willingness to admit how silly he made himself look in public for the sake of this book. Say what you will, that's a man devoted to giving you a good story and something to chuckle over, and we should treasure that. 

His collection of anecdotes from his quest are peppered with various vampire facts and historical data, although I openly question if he actually read the Vampyre by Dr. John Polodori. I can't fault him for backing away from Varney the Vampire, because I have the complete series on Kindle and it's almost 800 pages (I can.  We’ve all read 800 pages of madness before). I do believe that he did watch over 300 vampire films, although again I find myself questioning... Why? (Obsession Frigid.  Seriously.  He got a bug up his ass and became obsessed.  I got obsessed and am writing Psi Corps War and Peace, and am re-writing Harry Potter as communist propaganda.{Yes but you’re insane and prone to obsession, you’d have to be just to get your Ph.D.}) Something I wrestled with repeatedly over the course of this book, is why and what does this action have to do with learning any of the answers to the questions he asks. Maybe it's the anthropology training in me but I found his methods rather sloppy and haphazard (Oh, they were.  He basically took a year or whatever to completely dork out on something with no real rhyme or reason.  Clearly.). I also found the book in dire need of reorganization. Because much like Mr. Nuzum, it seems to meander all over the place, at times wandering into places that are barely connected to vampirism. Mr. Nuzum seems content to have the book be a collection of stories he did while researching vampires without tying it together into any real narrative or engaging any real themes or vampiric archetypes. So this comes across as less of a study of vampires per se and more of a broad survey of how the idea of vampires are treated and used. 

Not surprisingly, given that we live in a capitalist culture (we will now pause to give the editor a moment to wail in anguish [I’ll just be over here, wailing in anguish and trying to forge all the leftist organizations in CITY REDACTED into Marxist-Leninist Voltron.]) one position that Mr. Nuzum seems to examine a lot is vampires as a cash cow. Our modern culture is awash with vampire merchandise, from vampire-themed tours, hotels, and events, to vampire fashion and knick-knacks and Mr. Nuzum dives right in. He's even willing to try out Dracula novelty candy. I feel this is a missed opportunity in the book because there's something incredibly symbolic about the vampire of all monsters being milked for a profit but he really never discusses that, preferring to discuss various experiences he's having instead. 

My favorite example has to be his tour of Highgate Cemetery in London (Where Marx is buried. Has a big bust there.). You see, the cemetery Lucy was buried at in Dracula, Kingstead, doesn't exist. However, a lot of writers think that Bram may have based it off of Highgate Cemetery. I should note this is contested because what isn't contested in Dracula lore? Mr. Nuzum does a great job giving the history of the cemetery explaining not just its links to Dracula lore but to general vampirism, such as there being a brief vampire scare there in the late 1960s and early 1970s (So many drugs…). It basically started with people claiming to see ghosts in the cemetery at night, then claims of mutilated bodies and witchcraft. Next thing you know newspapers (What you have to remember is that a lot of British newspapers are worth less than the paper they are printed on.) are talking about claims of a vampire operating out of the cemetery. This led to a pair of occultists raiding the cemetery with one claiming to have been arrested for slamming stakes into corpses. This was 50 years ago! In England! A western, developed country where the population is supposed to have a basic education in science and biology. Today Highgate is a combination of the national landmark and nature preserve, as much of it has been overgrown and is slowly rewilding itself. The London government encourages this by keeping people out of the cemetery except for carefully guided tours. Because despite the small size, you can get lost in there. 

If Highgate is my favorite part of the book, my least favorite is anytime Mr. Nuzum deals with people who claim to be vampires or attempt to become one. This honestly comes across less as an investigation or research effort and more as an attempt to interject something sensational into the book (Alternative suggestion: when you deep-dive into vampires for long enough, you run into these people.  And it’s like watching a train derail, you can’t pull your eyes away.). To be honest, if it is an attempt at interjecting sensationalism into the book, it's an utter failure of one. I suppose the revelation that most of the people reaching out to claim the mantle of vampires are just as mundane and boring as the rest of us is comforting on a certain level. Also, I don't see what these subcultures really have to do with the subject of the book. If the book is about the cultural effect of the vampire then you should certainly touch on their existence but given how little cultural impact these groups have and how little they affect the cultural image of the vampire itself, I feel that Mr. Nuzum wasted time in Applebees and bars, he could have spent actually studying (I don’t know.  I feel like such people are so strange that there’s a certain draw to them.  The pull of the absurd, if you will.  And I say that as someone whose early Disney exposure turned him into a degenerate furry.)

That said, while a subculture is always interesting to look at, you can't really get anything done with a group like people who believe they're vampires unless you're willing to spend years building relationships. Studying groups of people, especially those who know they'll be mocked or worse if they reveal too much is a work of trust and care. It takes years.  So this part made my anthropologist self firmly stick his nose up in the air and declare, no, no you're doing this all wrong and if you're not willing to do this right why are you even bothering? Of course, we should keep in mind that Mr. Nuzum is not an anthropologist, but a man who is chasing a passion basically. Just keep that in mind if you're looking to approach a group as an outsider who wants to study said group, this isn't how you do it. 

  If I had to boil it down, I would say this book is fun and pleasant to read but not especially informative or revealing. Part of my antipathy I admit, is that maybe I'm generally not a fan of books that announce themselves to be a study of a subject and keep focusing on their authors instead. I had too many books like that in college. That said, Mr. Nuzum is a fun guy to read about and he takes pains to show us interesting and amusing things. Plus given that the book is under 250 pages, it's a fairly quick read. I blazed through it in a single sitting and at least I had some fun reading it. If you're looking for some serious vampire information, however, you're not gonna find a lot. This is broad but shallow, and honestly as much about a single man's desire to know what being a vampire feels like as it is about vampires; the monster or cultural icon. The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula by Eric Nuzum gets a C from me. If you're into vampires there are simply better places to go but if you read this book you'll at least be entertained. 

    Next week, I'm gonna look at something a bit to the side, next week we look at Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Until then, stay safe and Keep Reading.