The day is April 16th, year 1865. Today is the day Abraham Lincoln must die. I have made a promise to him and many others that I shall carry out with this plan although, it is risky, and I fear I will not make it far once all is done. I am documenting what I believe to be my last moments, in hope that someone may learn the truth behind what I am fixing to do. So here I give you the truth, but first I must tell why Abraham is going to die.

Years ago, when I was seventeen; death plagued Washington. Inexplicable happenings of people disappearing, and the ones believed to be dead, walked the earth, and bite wounds appeared on the necks of the deceased. For a while no one understood what was going on, but my father soon found out. It was a late night, me and him where making small talk in his study about the deaths, when he told me what was on his mind. “Vampires.” He said. Never would I have thought vampires to be real. There was much folklore on vampires, but the stories from passersby where all we had to go on. Each one who told us a story had something different to say, but most stories had a few things in common. They all talked about how the vampires fed on the necks of their victims, drinking their blood which made them stronger, and how the sunlight burnt their skin like fire. My father soon learned many things about these creatures, and joined a group of strange men. He told me he was a hunter, and that he went out into the night to protect the town of these awful monsters. I wish I could say he saved us all but honestly it only made things worse. Two years later on the night of my nineteenth birthday, he died. Once the news of his death got around the vampires came back, but this time in packs. Apparently he was well known in what he did, and once he was gone, the vampires thought it safe to return. By the time I was twenty I knew what I had to do for the town, and decided to follow in my father’s footsteps.

I then started travel with a group of men too. Some were new recruits, and others used to work with my father.
Hunting went well for us. We lessened the number of deaths, and decreased the number of vampires that liked to roam around. I even had time to do theater. It wasn't easy balancing both but somehow I did it. Later, I became well known, not just for hunting, but for acting as well. For a while we thought everything was going to get better but we were foolish to think we could stop it all, and save the town. Everything started to go wrong when our new president came. He called himself Abraham Lincoln. I do admit, I hated the man; he was for the abolition of slavery, and I was against it. I didn't agree with anything he said, which made it hard for me to want to protect the town I loved.

A few years passed by when something incredible happened. During the year 1865, on April 13th, I was in the Fords Theater, practicing for an upcoming performance, when Abraham Lincoln walked in. He asked to speak to me, and although I was rather reluctant to do so, I did. The conversation was very odd for me. He told me he knew of the vampires and of what I did to stop them. He told me he had heard disturbing news a few days ago as well. It was about how he had overheard two men talking; plotting to change him into a vampire. I believed this to be the words of Timothy Martin, and Joseph Porter. Two very well-known vampires, near impossible to catch. My group had been trying for them for almost five years. They come and go out of town as they please, each time with a new victim of choice, and this time it was Lincoln. But the words I was hearing from Abraham caught me off guard, and made rethink the choices I had made in life. There was no mistaking what he had asked from me. “I want you to kill me.” He said clearly. I understood his reason behind what he wanted. Becoming a vampire is a curse. You live for all eternity unable to go into the sun, fighting the urge to drink blood, killing innocent people, and the guilt that followed. No one wanted that, so I promised, and gave him my word.

He explained to me that there was a chance that I may not live through it, but to me it did not matter; I would die doing what my father did. Together we made plans. I told my group of it all as well and two days later on April 14th, in the Fords Theater I shot Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head. I fled on horseback, to southern Maryland, eventually over the course of twelve days, helping myself to a farm in rural Virginia.

The news spread like wildfire that the president had been shot, and I found out that I was successful. Abraham Lincoln died the next day, in the Peterson House just across from the Fords Theater; April 15th, 1865.

This is where I must end my tale for I am afraid I have been found. I can hear groups of people off in the distance, I expect looking for me. I know that everyone hates me, but I have saved the president from a more tragic ending then what has happened now, and that is more than anyone else could say, or do.










- John Wilkes Booth