The House of Eternal Night

Students in Professor Erica McCyrstal's ENG 3050: Vampires in the Modern World hosted “The House of Eternal Night: Vampire Fair” on Tuesday, Oct. 28 in the Taylor Memorial Library from 10:30 - 11:30 a.m. A total of 11 students tabled at this event, each with a different topic about vampires they extensively researched to present.

Take a bite out of these topics

The list of students and their presentations were as follows: 

“Vampire Fashion” by Madison Bock

“Love Beyond Life” by Jyaziel Quiles 

“Vampire Music” by Poppy Skjonnemand

“No Scare Zone: Vampires for K-12” by Kaylee Wildrick

“Vampire Makeup” by Wil Staats

“Crimson and Queer” by James Kaminski 

“Vampire Folklore” by Grace McCan

“Horror Movie Vampires” by Brittany Wrigley 

“Good Vampires” by Kaitlyn Castellano 

“Vampires in the Real World” by Dj Hannon 

“Vampirism through Art” by Liv Colón

Work hard, play hard

Every table had a poster board with information, as well as a game made by the presenter. A few examples were word searches, crossword puzzles, a custom made 2048 game, and a Blookit quiz. 

Blookit is a website where you can create trivia questions and battle against other people to see who scores the highest. It’s synonymous to Kahoot. Colón made a Blookit where the player had to guess whether or not the photo on the screen was created by an artist or AI. It’s safe to say that a majority of people failed the trivia by getting more than half of the questions incorrect. 

“It has brought me a lot of joy to hear visitors say that my Blookit quiz is hard,” Colón said. 

Immerse yourself in the vampire world

While learning about vampire culture is intriguing in itself, it's the interaction between the students and the public that made this event memorable.

At the Vampire Makeup table, Staats had physical demonstrations on how to create a “vampire bite” on the skin using makeup! Skjonnemand set the tone for this event with her Vampire Music table which had a speaker playing Gothic orchestral arrangements.

Aside from games, many of the students had goodies for the taking. Between giant bat-shaped lollipops and homemade Shirley Temples to glitter fangs and candy, no one went home empty handed. 

The eternal night 

The fair was a success and had great traction. "The fair was fun and creative! I think everyone had a good time,” said Kaminski. 

If you couldn’t make it to the fair, the library is displaying all of the poster boards for everyone to see. Want to partake and do the research yourself? Take ENG 3050: Vampires in the Modern World in the fall semester with Professor Erica McCrystal, who can be reached via email at: (erica.mccrystal@centenaryuniversity.edu).