Do Vampires Really Exist Today? (Part 2)

Now in this second part to "Do Vampires Really Exist Today?" I will be elaborating on the subject of the different types of vampires and the history of vampires. There is much that could be said historically about vampires, but here in this blog on the topic, I will just give a brief summary and will look at what the Scripture says about the issue.

According to Hebrew legend, Lilith was the first woman created. Among ancient Babylonian gods and goddesses, Lilith was the demon Lilitu who preyed upon men. Sometimes referred to as the first original vampire. Now whether this is true or not is up for debate.

1. Vlad Tepes: Or Vlad the Impaler (1431-1476), or sometimes Vlad Dracul, (where the original term came for the name Dracula) as he was called by his comtemporaries of his time. He was the emperor of Romania who was both a villian and hero. Here is a brief biography on Vlad:

"The history of Vlad Dracula is surrounded by myth and legend I had a really tough time sorting out the facts from the legends, the truth is that nobody is too sure what is what. We do know that he was the character that was the inspiration for Bram Stokers Novel "Dracula" being the very famous Count Dracula. The book then brought about the very vampires that are well known to this day and made Vlad the Impaler a famous character from history.

Vlad the Impaler -Tepes (pronounced tzse-pesh) was born in the town of Sighisoara in Transylvania (now known as northern Romania) in 1431 and later ruled the area of Southern Romania known as Wallachia. His father was Vlad Dracul who was a knight in the Order of the Dragon which was a union of central and Eastern European rulers who were a tad worried about the rising Ottoman empire.

The Order of the Dragon's coat of arms was a dragon (the Ottomans) and a cross (Christianity). Vlad Dracul bore this coat of arms on everything, flags, coins, and his seal. It attracted the nickname of "Dracul" I believe coming from the story of the evil dragon in St. George and the Dragon, Dracul meaning Devil in Romanian.

The second son was soon born to Vlad Dracul - that being Vlad II - therefore the name developed an "a" representing the son of Dracul - "DRACULA", the son of the Devil.

The word "tepes" in Romanian means "impaler" and Vlad was so named because of his cruel and gruesome habit of impaling humans and leaving them to rot in the sun as a means of punishing his enemies.

In fact, Vlad was called Tepes (the Impaler) only after his death in 1476. Impalement was considered a particularly gruesome form of execution, the victim was stuck on a sharp stake usually the width of a big burly man's arm (ohhh that's gotta hurt!). Vlad was said to especially enjoyed mass executions, where several victims were impaled at once, and their stakes hoisted upright. As they hung suspended above the ground, the weight of their bodies would slowly drag them downwards, causing the sharpened end of the stake to pierce their internal organs causing a slow painful death. In order to better enjoy these mass spectacles, Vlad routinely ordered a banquet table set up in front of his victims, and would enjoy a leisurely supper amid the pitiful sights and sounds of the dying. I'm glad that I wasn't around in those days to be invited to one of Vlad's dinner parties.

It is estimated that Vlad killed some 20,000 men, women and children - the amount of people he killed varies from anywhere between 20,000 to 500,000. He showed no mercy and often tortured his enemies before killing them.

At the same time that Vlad became notorious for his sadism, he was also respected by his subjects because of his fierce campaigns against the Turks. He was a respected as a warrior and a stern ruler who tolerated no crime against his people, and during his reign erected several monasteries. He was a hero that was both worshiped and feared by his people.

But maybe there was a bit more to Vlad's murderous bloodthirsty habits than we first thought. In 1985 an Idaho physician Dr. Thomas McDevitt suggested that he may have suffered from a bizarre allergic reaction to blood. He claimed that in some allergic reactions to a given substance, sufferers also developed an addiction to that same substance, and if deprived of it they could react in a highly bizarre and deranged manner. Could Vlad of just been throwing a tantrum every time he craved blood? Portraits of the price depict him with dark circles beneath his eyes, puffy cheeks and a sallow pallid complexion - classic characteristics of some types of allergy victim.

There are various descriptions of the death of Dracula. The most popular being that he was killed in battle against Turks near Bucharest in December 1476. It was also said that he was murdered by disloyal Wallachian boyars just as he was about to overcome the Turks and send them packing. Other stories describe the Impaler falling in defeat, surrounded by rotting bodies of his loyal Moldavian troops. There is another account of Vlad accidently being struck down at the moment of victory by one of his own men (now that's a nasty accident).

Whatever happened to Vlad's body? Well that's surrounded by plenty of legends as well, none can be confirmed:

The general thought amongst Vlad historians and experts is that the body of Vlad the Impaler was entombed near the alter in a Snagov Monastery located on an Island in the middle of a lake accessible only by boat. It is well documented that his head was taken and put on display in Constantinople for all to see that the reign of this terrible man was truly over."

(http://www.castleofspirits.com/vlad.html)

2. Historical vampires: Elizabeth Bathory, the infamous Blood Countess of Hungary (August 7, 1560 – August 21, 1614), Anastasie Dieudonne of Haiti (November 27, 1927), and Fritz Haarman, in Hanover, Germany (around 1945-46) were all true vampires from history. Let us look at a brief biography on each one of them.

Elizabeth Bathory: (Aug. 7, 1560 - Aug. 21, 1614) The most completely authenticated case in history, since it is a part of actual old court record, is that of the beautiful Countess Bathori, who lived in Hungary about three hundred years ago. The complete minutes of the trial, her final confession, the testimony of her servants, the record of the conviction and the amazing punishment inflicted on her by the law-all still exist. She was rich and owned a castle on the edge of the Carpathian Mountains, which had a mysterious and evil reputation in the neighborhood. For many years the peasants believed that she practiced magic, and was, in league, like Faust, with the devil. They did not dream, however, of the even more dreadful secret that the castle actually hid, for what occurred there, over and over again, was more terrifying than anything in the Bluebeard stories or the horror tales of Poe. Over a period of several years a number of young and pretty peasant girls and boys had disappeared from the neighborhood and had never been heard from again. For a long time it was supposed that they had been carried off by bandits from the mountains. But finally suspicion was directed toward the already mysterious castle of the Countess Bathori, and after an investigation a company of the King's Guard appeared suddenly one night with search warrants from the Emperor, placed the Countess under arrest and thoroughly searched the castle. In an underground dungeon they found six of the missing children, emaciated, but still alive, chained so that they could not kill themselves, which they would all too willingly have done to escape the slower death they were suffering. The bones of several others who had finally died were found in an oubliette. The Countess herself, under subsequent threats of legal torture, confessed that each night she went to the dungeon, opened a vein in the arm of one of the prisoners, drank quantities of blood, and also bathed her face and shoulders in it. She believed, in her mad, magical superstition, that this would keep her always young and beautiful. As a matter of fact, the records say, she had a marvelously smooth and lovely skin, a complexion like "snow and roses." It was a cruel period, and Hungary in those days was a cruel country. Instead of executing the Countess Bathori, the judges sentenced her, making the punishment fit the crime, to have the skin flayed from her face and neck. So her face became an object frightful to look upon instead of beautiful, as it had once been.

Fritz Haarman: (1879 - 1925) The most famous case of a modern human vampire attested by the courts and legal record is that of Fritz Haarman, in Hanover, Germany, who was executed after the World War. He was a true vampire, scientifically speaking. He lured no less than twenty-seven youths into his home and drank their blood.

Anastasie Dieudonne: (Nov. 27, 1927?) From the quite modernized town Of Aux Cayes in that tropical West Indian island, where American Marine officers in motor cars pass every day, came the authenticated confession of a coppery-haired, handsome mulatto woman, by name Anastasie Dieudonne, that she had for several months been draining the blood from her nine-year old niece. The child, once healthy and robust, had begun to fade away. Neighbors and relatives thought she had some wasting disease. Physicians, including those of the American clinic at Trouin, could find nothing wrong with her. Then an old black native doctor was called into conference. "She is the victim," he said, "of a vampire, or a loup garon. The life-blood is being secretly sucked from her body. If the monster is not discovered, she will die." "Bosh!" said many of the natives, who are not very superstitious in a modernized town like Aux Cayes. It looked like, bosh, indeed, when the old man carefully went over the girl's entire body and found not even a pinch-prick. But he was not satisfied and made a second examination. This time he discovered, a small, clean, unhealed incision hidden on the middle of her great toe. Anastasie Dieudonne subsequently confessed that she had been giving the girl a stupefying vegetable drug and then sucking her blood. She was, of course, an unbalanced creature, driven to this dreadful practice by an uncontrollable urge. She was literally, in actual fact, a human vampire.

Now let us look at two specific modern day human vampire types that have become a part of a popular sub-culture.

3. Psychic vampires: These vampires drain energy rather then blood and are homo sapiens biologically speaking.

4. Sanguinarians: Humans who simply drink blood.