The Mercer Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania is a treasure trove of Americana from the turn of the last century. Henry Chapman Mercer, in addition to being wealthy, had the foresight to realize that society was rapidly changing, even back then. He undertook the collection of everyday artifacts from many human industries, poured himself another castle-like concrete building, and housed the baubles there. It is a fascinating walk through nineteenth-century America. And if you visit on a cold day it feels as well as looks like Currier and Ives have just passed through. My main draw, however, was a vampire hunting kit.

If only I had a polaroid lens...

Prominently displayed, the kit includes a Victorian Protestant’s tool chest for any blood-sucking eventuality. A cross (sans corpus), a pistol with “silver” bullets, glass vials with various apotropaic ingredients, even a little stake, all in custom-cut green velvet. Unfortunately, the kit is believed to be a forgery, although the items in it are from the Victorian era. The silver bullets are, for example, pewter. As the placard notes, vampires do not exist, but that doesn’t mean people didn’t believe they might have existed. The museum, naturally enough, hoped that the Victorian era kit might be authentic. Scientific analysis has revealed otherwise despite the fact that many people continue to believe in something that has no basis in reality.

Belief constitutes reality. Otherwise, how could it be that thousands, if not millions, of people don’t accept the fact of global warming? Brash barons of unhindered industrial progress insist that humans can’t harm the planet – it’s just too big. We can suck out all the resources that billions of years have deposited in intricate recesses and that nature has sprouted right on the surface. For, they say, God has given them to us. They believe that. If we held a mirror up to them, what would we see? Maybe we would be forced to change our minds and go after that vampire-hunting kit after all.