Purpose

The House of the Eclipse is an organization based out of Washington, DC. Our purpose and mission is to act as tutors, teachers and aides to Awakening vampires of all types. Though we are predominantly vampyric, as our membership expands, we hope to offer similar services to different types of Otherkin. Our goal is the sharing of information and Havens freely with other vampiric and Otherkin Houses and Orders for the good of our community. We avoid any feuds if possible but will refuse association with known criminals, drug dealers and those who cannot handle the pressures of our lifestyle (such as self-proclaimed 600 year old vampires with no grasp of spelling or grammar).

Reason for House Creation

I believe strongly in the responsibility of members of our community to each other. I have spent my last ten years as a vampire thanking all the various gods and powers that I was found, mentored and sheltered by an honorable and knowledgeable elder when I Awakened. I cannot imagine what I would have gone through without this cushion. I feel intensely that it is both my privilege and my duty to do what I can to aid in mentoring others or referring them to those that can help if the problem is outside the scope of my knowledge, which happens often. There was an incident that brought all this into focus a few years ago.

I was at a local renaissance festival with an apprentice and observed a young man I had never seen before. He was dressed in Period garb and fangs, and was walking around loudly calling himself a vampire. He also asked several random people if he could feed from them (with his fangs I assume which puts a donor at risk of contracting tetanus and other infections). I was somewhere between alarmed and really angry, as this person put all of us local vampires at risk of disease, ridicule or even hate crimes his foolish actions. So, as an elder of my community, I insisted on being introduced to the boy. I took him off to talk in private. I told him that what he was doing was destructive to others of his kind and dangerous. He promptly broke down in tears on top of me and told me he had no idea how vampires were “supposed” to behave. He acted very erratically throughout our talk, interspersing White Wolf and Anne Rice terminology with quotes from movies. I tried to give him some pointers about discretion and safety, wrote down my e-mail and a few websites for him to check out and referred him to a few of the more openly vampiric people in the area (who I later found out had refused to help him because they found his actions “funny”). I myself refused to mentor him formally because at the time I simply had too much on my plate to accept another student. Besides that, he was obviously emotionally unstable, and I do not have a degree in psychiatry.

About a year later, I saw his name in the newspaper. He had been convinced by a girl who wanted her inheritance that her father, a Stafford, VA scientist was abusing her sexually. He had killed the man by cutting him up with a sword because she told him that it was the only way to keep her father from hurting her. During the trial there was a media circus as the boy openly admitted to being a vampire, drinking blood and committing the murder. He was sent to an insane asylum, where I believe he still resides.

This story hit myself and our local community very hard. Nowhere in the newspapers was it mentioned that the boy had been in psychiatric treatment for MPD and Schitzophrenia for years, that he had been previously institutionalized or was generally considered insane. No, everything was about his “Vampirism”. I spent a long time blaming myself for not trying to go to someone and telling them he seemed disturbed or even trying to mentor him and aid him.

The whole incident taught me a lot. First, it was beyond foolish to think that I alone could have “saved” him. Perhaps I could have tried to send him to a psychiatrist, but he was already in treatment. Second, I am not qualified to make such a diagnosis. Third, I probably could have gone to someone and said he seemed emotionally confused, but who? Where was my proof? I am not a member of his family and have no right to pass judgements such as this. Still, some part of me thinks I did not do enough.

The point of this long rant is that anyone who considers themselves an “elder” has a responsibility to their community. They have to teach newly Awakened how to behave themselves. Any elder or any group, in my opinion, is also responsible for weeding out those who truly seem to be bent on harming themselves or others or show obvious signs of psychiatric problems. This is very difficult in online communities, but not impossible. Those who make death threats or threats of harm need to be dealt with by mundane authorities. Those who act in a threatening or socially unacceptable manner should be told to behave or barred from social functions. Each of us has a responsibility to all of us. I have definitely learned this painful lesson the hard way.