LITTLE SHOP OF HORROR; VALLEY'S WITCHES, VAMPIRES PATRONIZE THE DARK SIDE OF RETAIL.

Byline: Rob Lowman Daily News Entertainment Editor

As darkness descends in North Hollywood, a young mother pushing a stroller walks with her two young children. As they approach a store, she suddenly commands them, ``Don't look. You kids don't have to look at that stuff,'' trying to divert their eyes from the gold metal coffin that sits in front of Panoptikum.

A Halloween come-on? Hardly. Panoptikum, named after an obscure German museum of the bizarre in the 1930s, is open all year long selling ``home decor for your dungeon,'' including such items as skull-and-candle chandeliers, replicas of torture devices, stuff from funeral homes, horror-related props from Hollywood studios - and it's not cheap. Chandeliers go for between $250 and $3,500. A Borneo headhunter's chair costs $1,500.

``This place is for people who enjoy Halloween year round,'' says store co-owner Patrick McGuire.

It's a statement that can be applied to two other like-minded stores in the area that draw a steady stream of customers interested in the dark side throughout the year. Next to Panoptikum is Raven's Flight, which can be described as a witches' shop, and a mile or so away in Burbank is Dark Delicacies (``The House of Horror'').

Dottie Harrison and her companion, Jim Marler, had made visiting Dark Delicacies their first order of business because there was ``nothing like it back in Dallas,'' where the couple was from. It was 5 p.m. ``We didn't get up till 1,'' Marler admits, sheepishly. ``I couldn't sleep,'' adds Harrison. ``I must have vampire in me.''

Degrees of spooky

There seems to be more and more people who think they have a bit of vampire in them, and there are even a few who think of themselves as vampires, some of whom drink blood.

But the emphasis at Dark Delicacies is clearly on fun - with almost a ghoulish delight. Fenced off in the corner are two small black dogs named Gomez and Morticia. There is a coffin for storing wine, and displayed on the wall behind the counter are silver ``life masks'' of celebrities such as Boris Karloff and Vincent Price made by studio makeup men. Store owner Del Howison, wearing a T-shirt that says ``Zombies A Go-Go,'' fires off quips faster than a speeding silver bullet (`You know, being an astronomer would be a good job for a vampire'').

During the four years that Howison and his wife, Sue, have run Dark Delicacies, their business has grown steadily. The stores sells books, jewelry, posters, CDs and other items related to the horror genre and receives mail orders from as far away as Europe. While there is an upturn in sales between September and December, the Howisons say it's not because of Halloween as much as the fact that it's the gift-giving season. Their biggest advertiser is word of mouth, bringing in customers year round.

Harrison attributes her ongoing interest in horror to author Anne Rice's vampire novels but says she doesn't take it too seriously. She buys more than $300 in items, including a coffin jewelry box, and refers to her purchases as ``conversation pieces.''

The Howisons say the store's clientele runs the gamut.

Some of them are baby boomers who have fond memories of bygone Halloweens; some are collectors of such memorabilia as old horror-film posters.

More serious are the Goths - those who like to dress in black and listen to dark music.

Some of them take it a bit further and go to vampire bars, which Del Howison equates with country-western bars where people put on cowboy hats and pretend they're cowboys. In vampire bars, says Del, a guy who is a computer programmer all week can put on a cape, snap in fangs, change to color contacts lenses and be Vlad for the weekend.

And there are others who are benign but think of themselves as vampires. A few, says Del, take it past the point of fun.

It's horror time

Though it's hard to tell how many people are taking it seriously and how many are just dabbling, it's clear we are in a horror phase, says J. Gordon Melton, director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion, which studies alternative religions and is housed at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

And there is no sign of it abating, Melton says, pointing to the success of horror films, TV series such as ``Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' and the enduring popularity of such Universal Studios figures as the Frankenstein monster and the Mummy.

There is a wide range of types attracted to the dark side, says Melton. He cites groups such as the Count Dracula Fan Club, which has been around since 1965, as being quite serious. On the fringe, there is a smaller group, ``the fetish crowd and people who are into various forms of S&M.'' But Melton believes it is a fairly small segment.

Melton himself has an abiding interest in horror and has written a number of books on the subject, including ``The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead,'' which has sold more than 100,000 copies, according to its publisher, Visible Ink.

``Halloween is just a time when the rest of the culture acknowledges those of us who are interested in vampires and the rest,'' says Melton, who calls his interest in Halloween a hobby and traces his fascination in horror to the old Hammer Studios films starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.

But there's no easy way to know who's interested in the dark side.

``You wouldn't expect those people who buy the large items to be interested in the merchandise,'' Panoptikum co-owner McGuire says. ``They're ... looking for something unique and strange.''

According to McGuire, customers at Panoptikum (``Emporium for the Macabre'') include police officers, firefighters, paramedics, lawyers, directors, musicians and actors. Some are famous, he says, declining to mention specific names.

He admits that there are people who can't handle the store but says he hasn't received any flak from the neighborhood. ``Many people have walked in, not expecting what's in here, and literally run out ... but nothing's going on in here that doesn't happen in any other store.''

Strictly taboo?

Next door at Raven Flight, ``an ethical shop serving the pagan/Wicca community,'' items for sale include herbs, oils, incense and other tools used in Wicca, or as it is more well-known, witchcraft. But unlike the evil witches of fairy tales, these witches practice a nature-based religion whose beliefs are derived from pre-Christian Europe.

``The Wicca movement ... is here to stay,'' says Melton. ``It's more than just a psychological salve; it's become a fairly sophisticated worldview.'' He estimates that there are between 40,000 and 70,000 serious witches in this country.

As for Halloween, it doesn't generate any more sales for Raven's Flight than the other seven major Wiccan festivals, says Raven Monauni, the store's owner and a self-proclaimed witch whose husband, Thomas, is co-owner of Panoptikum.

As for her customers, they come in all ranges of seriousness, Monauni says.

Some are teens who saw a movie like ``The Craft'' and want a book of spells, but that's more a fad. Her real customers, she says, are not the ones who ``buy the cute little spell books but buy the serious mythologies.'' Monauni calls her store, which she started 1-1/2 years ago, a place where people who have a common interest can connect.

Sue Howison expresses a similar sentiment. ``It's more like a family,'' she says of Dark Delicacies, ``because you have a place where you can talk about the latest scary book you just read and not feel you're going to be condemned because you happen to like the darker side.''

Last Sunday, a book signing for Katherine Ramsland, author of ``Piercing the Darkness: Undercover With Vampires in America Today,'' brought out a slightly different family - the ``vampires'' she had written about in her book.

Birth of a vampire

Jack Dean, 31, of Tarzana, calls himself a vampire and attributes his lifestyle to a near-death experience he had after a motorcycle crash in 1993, after which he began to submerge himself in the culture by reading books and listening to music. He says he had no interest in the dark side before the accident.

Now Dean, who works at Disney Animation in Burbank doing computer support technology, says people like him are going back to a more romantic time. ``Everyone is speeding toward the millennium at 100,000 miles an hour. We kind of just stepped off the ride and said, `Let's go back to when things were elegant, chivalrous and beautiful.' ''

But Dean stresses that he is more than just a weekend vampire. ``You alter everything in your lifestyle to fit this. ... Fortunately, I'm allowed to do this at my job as well, but if I was financially able, I wouldn't be working a day job.''

Last year, Dean opened a vampire club in Beverly Hills called the Fang Club, which he says is not open at the moment because it's merging with another club (the Web site is www.fangclub.com). It's where he met his girlfriend, Bridget Farrington, a costume and clothing designer. Dean says it was their commitment to the vampire life that brought them together.

``Halloween, for us, is there all the time,'' he says. ``It's still our favorite time of the year because all the rest of the country aligns themselves more with us. We like it better that way. You start looking at the houses, and they look like the way my house looks anyway.''

Back in black

Ramsland, who is known for her books about Anne Rice, says there are vampire clubs running most nights of the week in Los Angeles (the Fang Club Web site has links to some of these) but doesn't see the vast majority of these people as dangerous. ``I wouldn't hesitate to hang out with (Dean) or go to his club,'' she says.

She says she also wouldn't hesitate in going to the home of Catrina Coffin, another self-professed vampire, though Coffin sleeps in a casket, has a number of snakes as pets and drinks blood.

Coffin is president and founder of the Los Angeles Hearse Society, a sort of car club for hearse owners.

As for drinking blood, Coffin claims her obsession began as a child because she liked the taste. Now, she says, she has donors who she knows so she can screen them for diseases, including AIDS.

``I use a medical scalpel and I make a small, not very deep cut, usually on the wrist or arm, and then I put my mouth on the wound and drink blood from it until the blood stops flowing.''

She stresses that this is ``a consenting adult thing,'' and no one is seriously hurt.

Coffin, who drives a limo, among other things, to support herself, says she's open about her lifestyle, having been on talk shows and in documentaries.

As for being hassled about her vampire life, Coffin says, ``I've never had any problems. There aren't people running around chasing me with a wooden stake and a mallet.''

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos

Photo: (1) Bridget Farrington, left, her vampire boyfriend Jack Dean and Catrina Coffin come out in the daylight at Dark Delicacies in Burbank.

(2) The skulls aren't real, but this working pipe from India still looks pretty spooky at North Hollywood's Panoptikum, which features ``home decor for your dungeon.''

(3) Thomas Monauni, pictured, co-owns Panoptikum. His wife, Raven, a self-proclaimed witch, owns Raven's Flight next door.

John McCoy/Daily News