In 1996, Susan Walsh, an investigative reporter, disappeared while researching the Manhattan vampire underground. Her body was never found. In Piercing the Darkness, psychologist and writer Katherine Ramsland investigates her frightening disappearance and, in the process, discovers the bizarre vampire culture hidden to most eyes. In her search for the answer to Susan's fate, Ramsland unearths characters that range from simple roleplayers to people who form covens for blood-drinking rituals to genuine psychotics who use the vampire identity to give their violence a magical context. Piercing the Darkness is a fascinating, true-crime look at one woman's pursuit of truth and her descent into the vampire underworld.