AUTHENTIC VAMPIRE HUNTER'S KILLING DAGGER

If you are planning to go out vampire hunting this weekend you should probably considering taking with you something like what was just sold at auction ... an authentic vampire hunter's combination crucifix and dagger (no stakes needed).

The authentic 19th Century curio is 5 1/2" long and 3" wide -- not very large, but big enough to stick in a bloodsucker's heart, I'd say. It is described as having a "rich brandy-colored patina" and stops short by saying that the color may be the result of ancient bloodstains.

Originally said to be from The Royal Castle of Nuremburg, it was housed as an exhibit in Arne Coward's Museum Macabre in Honolulu, Hawaii, and retired into storage when the museum was sold to Ripley's Believe It or Not in 1979. Coward, a Norwegian, was a Nazi Concentration Camp survivor and began collecting oddities in 1946.

The piece was sold for $2,250 and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity by the son of Jacqueline Hutchins, Coward's co-creator of the museum which was open from 1972 to 1979. No provenance is claimed that the item was once in the possession of one, Dr. Van Helsing.

BONUS: Arne Coward's search for oddities for his "Museum Macabre" was the subject of this article from the Monday, January 6, 1975 edition of Florida's Lakeland Ledger. The article implies that his collection of artifacts were in an antique shop before the museum exhibition was opened.