Aloysius Szandor

Gangrel, Ordo Dracul

Aloysius was a budding stage magician during the Golden Age of Escapists (1880s-1900s). His stage shows were grand spectacles for the time and it's rumored that a young Houdini found inspiration on watching one of Szandor's travelling shows in Wisconsin.

Though he had been active for quite some time, it wasn't until the end of the Victorian Age that the American public became infatuated with all things occult and acts like Szandor's went from being a simple travelling sideshow to selling out legitimate venues and performing for sophisticated audiences. Even today, his famous show at the Lyric Opera wherein an escape went horribly wrong and his mistress and assistant, Emma Dominic was drowned is still a stop on tours and an entry in guidebooks - rumor has it that Szandor was so upset that he began seeing her ghost everywhere. He was so worried that she was following him and plotting his doom that he refused to enter the Lyric Opera to claim either his check (still on display) or his equipment (which has since been moved to the Aloysius Szandor Museum in his hometown of Cicero). The then-owner of the Opera House, David Markham (Daeva, Invictus) was so infuriated with the bad publicity (and possible haunting) in his building that he lead the press to the equipment and exposed Szandor's tricks, effectively ruining his career.

Still haunted by Emma's death and receiving hate mail from illusionsists and escapists from around the country for ruining their careers, Szandor struggled to rebuild his own life. While stumbling down the street drunk, and hit by a streetcar, he claimed to have had a vision of the afterlife and took it upon himself to share his visions with others.

Remarkably, he managed to resurrect his career to a limited degree although this time audiences were watching merely to discover his tricks. He began incorporating elements of the occult into his work and though audiences played along at first, his sanity quickly crumbled and his shows became more and more disturbing with many audience members having claimed to have seen into the Netherworld.

Szandor was arrested shortly thereafter on charges of "violating public decency, witchraft and inducing audiences to blasphemy." His trial made greater headlines than any of his acts ever had and his ramblings drove him further into madness.

...

Embraced into Dracul. Slumbers in Lake Michigan just off of the Montrose Harbor where the sight of his body underwater has been a footnote in guidebooks for decades. Fans of his occasionally come and leave black roses by his Haven.