A DAY OF HUNTING A CEMETERY OFFERS
LITTLE TO SUPPORT THE TALE OF OLD

It was the last day of February and doing its best to blow March in like a lion. The sun, obscured by blowing chat, made for a gray day and a damp chill made my bones ache for a roaring fire.

What a good day to try to lay a myth to rest. What a perfect day to go vampire hunting.

A story I heard many years renewed my childish interest in horror stories. So throwing caution to the wind and evoking the good spirits to protect me, I packed my purse with talismans and set out to track down St. Francois County's vampire.

As the story has been handed down, mainly from teen-ager to teen-ager, in the early 1900s a vampire plied his bloody trade in Elvins. He was, according to the myth, a Hungarian miner -- a man who had no mercy and was cruel beyond belief. During his latter years, a time it was said he never left his house during the day, a large number of children died mysteriously.

It was theorized by his neighbors that he was the cause of the children's deaths and when he finally died, the townspeople wanted to make sure he never returned to plague their town.

He was buried in a local cemetery, where curiously, a large number of small children's graves still stand testimony to some catastrophic illness. The neighbors, according to the story which still circulates, took great care to separate his grave from the others. They enclosed it with wrought-iron and according to the legendary way to end a vampire's career, hung crosses from the fencing so that even in death, he would not be able to cross the chasm he had been condemned to.

One story about the Hungarian miner may explain why his neighbors believed him to be a vampire. He was, one story goes, an albino. An albino has no pigmentation in his skin. His eyes would most probably be pink and and he would have white hair. With such a physical condition, an albino would probably avoid being outside since he would be very susceptible to sunburn. The sunlight would be unbearable to his eyes. And, of course, those pink eyes. What more could someone want when pointing a finger at a vampire?

Do I believe in vampires? No, probably not. But, never the less, walking through a cemetery, long neglected, and seeing a gravesite still enclosed with wrought iron, brought a February chill inching up my spine.

Yes, in the cemetery were stones marking the short lives of many children from the earliest part of this century. Of course, no cause of death was listed. I could theorize a number of maladies -- smallpox, measles, whooping cough, typhoid -- that were killers of children before modern medicine made them safe.

I could also recount the voluminous number of vampire movies and books I had read and seen as a child and still recall my uncanny fascination with the 'undead'.

So why should I have been surprised when two days later I dreamed a dream only Stephen King could have orchestrated. In my dream, the Hungarian miner/vampire came invited into my living room. His eyes mesmerized the dream me and I longed for his kiss of death.

Will I search again for the Elvins vampire? Probably not. But I did pass on the legend to my children with my own embellishments.

After all, that's what legends are all about.