WWW.SHROUDEATER.COM

Latest Update:

Dear Friends,

Not much to report. I know that it has been a while since my last update. What can I say ? There are times that life is wonderful, and there are times when it is not so wonderful. I have been in a pretty bad state for a couple of months. I will spare you the details. But it looks as if I have the worst behind me now and I am slowly trying to get back on my feet again. So if all goes well you can expect the SHROUDEATER site to come alive again in the near future.

Looking back, (and let us not delete this bit as it could still be of interest to some, and saves me the trouble of repeating this over and over again to members of the "press") it must have been somewhere around 1966 that I first got interested in vampires and started collecting material about them. In those days, in my own country, I seemed to be the only person with a serious interest in such things. Then, some time around 1976 or so, I first discovered that there actually were other people out there (not in the Netherlands but in other countries) who appeared to share my interest. Ah well, at least I thought they did. Taking part in one of those "Dracula Society Tours" to Romania was more than sufficient to make me see that our interests were worlds apart.

I must admit that I was rather disappointed, and slowly started to understand that there was a great difference between people who are into vampire fiction and people who are into factual vampirism. Ten more years of isolation followed, until I got in touch with the "Anne Rice Fan Club". Ok, maybe not really my scene, but I am happy to report that they were very nice and friendly people, and it was through them that I first got in touch with other vampire clubs and fanzines again.

Then, from 1990 until 1996, I edited and self-published the "International Vampire" fanzine, which was great fun. It finally brought me in touch with others who actually did share the interest in "my kind of vampire". Then, in 1996, I had somehow risen to a much more demanding position within the bank that I worked for, and I found that "International Vampire" was beginning to take up much too much of my time, so, sadly, I had to put an end to it. Around the same time, I decided to put my first miserable vampire website online, still under the old "InterVamp" label. And it has been almost seven years now since I decided to delete all my previous vampire rubbish from the servers to replace it by something a little more serious: the one and only SHROUDEATER site.

When I first started SHROUDEATER I did not know what to expect. It is not aimed at the great masses of vampire fans. It is meant for the happy (or unhappy) few who are or would like to be into vampire research. And, sadly, there are not too many of those around. So my expectations were low. Nevertheless, and as far as I am concerned, this has turned out to be a most rewarding experience. I have made many new friends and, apart from the usual nonsense, I have received an amazing number of positive reactions and useful contributions. I sincerely want to thank you for that.

By now, I am happy to report that my working days are over. In theory this should mean that I now would have plenty of time on my hands. Sadly this is not the case. There are all kind of mundane problems that have to be taken care of. There are health problems, family problems, and God only knows what else, that prevent me from doing some serious work on this website most of the time. So we have to make do, and do what we can, whenever we can.

PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL OF OUR PREVIOUS EMAIL ADDRESSES ARE NO LONGER VALID. Our present address is:

EUROSHROUD@EUROPE.COM

I guess that is about all that I want to say really. As always, feel free to write to me but please do not expect a quick reply. And even if you don't get any reply at all, you can rest assured that I would definitely have written back to you, if only there were 48 hours in a day. Things being the way they are, there is a limit to the amount of messages that I can answer. I hope you'll understand... Also, if you do send me a message, please make sure that you put some intelligent kind of description in the "subject" field of your message. If there is no subject there, I will assume that I am dealing with spam or worse and will delete the message without further ado. So be sure to put some relevant info there, so that I know that you want to discuss vampires.

Ok, I suppose that is all for now then. Take care, and everything that is good !

Rob Brautigam - Amsterdam - 31 January 2008

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