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Three articles appear below: 1 Werewolf and Vampire! W Scherz 2 Vampires...and Tetrapyrrolic Macrocycles L Eddie 3 Vampires Vindication And Vendetta L De Winter WEREWOLF and VAMPIRE! Wolfgang Scherz (Investigator
29, 1993
March) FRIGHTENING! If you haven't been clawed, drained, ripped, bitten or sucked yet, don't go off guard. I interviewed vampire buffs, visited graveyards, consulted skeptics, and searched the literature. The truth that
I dug up
is as frightening
as the fiction. Savage attacks by putrid vampires and howling
werewolves
still occur. DEFINITIONS From Pine (1984) and Wilson & Grant (1981) I learned what they are. Vampires of folklore and legend are the living dead who lie in their coffins by day and search for victims, to suck their blood, at night. If deprived of blood the vampire starves. Five other things will destroy him – direct sunlight, a silver bullet, a wooden stake through the heart, incineration, and beheading. Garlic keeps him at bay. So does a crucifix and holy water blessed by a Catholic priest. Hollywood embellishments include vampires of superhuman strength who vanish in puffs of smoke or turn into bats. Werewolves are humans who become part wolf on nights of the full moon. Tremendously strong and vicious they tear wretched victims asunder and eat the body parts they find tasty. Legend often
originates
in fact. WEREWOLF! Erol Feww (pronounced 'few'), Alf Nowm and Rosa Tunef of the Port Adelaide WEREWOLF RESEARCH CENTRE invited me over. Erol
summarized his
research: "A reign of terror began near Cologne in Germany in 1564. All the victims were gruesomely mutilated. Limbs were scattered about, guts torn out, and skulls split open. The remains were partly eaten. Terror of the werewolf gripped the countryside. Except for 2,000 books in his garage Erol seemed normal. One of his references for the Stubbe saga was The Giant Book Of Fantastic Facts. Erol went on: "There are literally thousands of similar stories. In France alone 30,000 werewolf sightings were reported between 1500 and 1700 A.D. Some such 'werewolves' were nut cases suffering from lycanthropy a psychiatric condition where the person fancies himself a wolf. But no doubt most reports were by superstitious peasants externalising their own fears – perhaps after seeing a literal wolf.Alf Nowm now took over: "Human freaks gave impetus to werewolf legends. A few people are born with horns on their forehead. Others are completely covered in long hair. Yu Chenhuan, born in China in 1977, was known as the 'Wolf Boy'. Two hairy freaks of the 19th century were Jo Jo the dog-faced boy and Lionel the lion-faced man." Alf showed me a reference in Parker (1983). Then, illustrating his points with newspaper clippings, Alf went on: "Occasionally children are raised by wolves or other animals. In 1920 two 'wolf girls', aged about seven, were captured in Midnapore, India, by Reverend Singh. They scampered on four limbs and ate only raw meat and milk. In 1982 staff at a hospital in Kenya began taming a hairy human 'animal' aged about 20, who grunted and ran on all fours. Similar stories in the past must have added fuel to the werewolf legend."Rosa Tunef added this shocking information: "One medieval theory was that werewolves could turn their skin inside out. That was how they supposedly hid their wolf-like fur during the day when they lived as humans. Inquisitors therefore investigated werewolf suspects by cutting into the skin. Hundreds died horribly in this way." VAMPIRE REPORTS! Adelaide cousins Cal Raud and Vera Pym are vampire buffs. Over a bottle of tawny port they showed me books by Volta & Riva (1963), Masters (1974) and others. This is what I found out: Vicious, blood hungry, vampires were known to the ancient Babylonians, Assyrians and Greeks and have terrorized Europe for centuries. The Eyrbyggia Saga of Iceland, for example, tells of vampires in the year 1000 who killed 18 servants in one household. In 1732 public officials and 24 soldiers from Belgrade (Yugoslavia) opened a grave in a mountain village. Inside was a healthy man who had been "dead" for three years. During those three years five relatives died from vampire bite. The soldiers pierced his heart with an iron bar. On June 7, 1732, at the village of Medmegna, also near Belgrade, a woman named Miliza was exhumed after being buried 90 days. The woman looked fatter than before her burial. In 1743 Arnold Paul of Hungary "died" when a cartload of hay fell on him. Four persons subsequently died from vampire bite. Forty days after his burial Paul was exhumed. The sheet covering him was blood-splattered. The District Governor ordered that a stake be driven through the body. The "corpse" struggled, emitting fearful shrieks. Hundreds of similar incidences occurred in Europe involving "corpses" buried as long as 30 years. They were dragged from graves and tombs and made to shout, bleed or scream before being beheaded, impaled or burned. Until about 1800 vampires were a vivid reality to most people. As recently as 1969 The Times reported: "Villagers near the West Pakistan town of Okara are reported to be sleeping indoors, in spite of fierce heat, because they believe vampires are about. They attribute recent deaths among sheep to vampires." BURIED ALIVE! Vera Pym let me browse through her collection of news reports on live burials as she spoke: "In times past impoverished beggars and fugitives broke into tombs or mausoleums to live there. Under cover of night they came out to scavenge for food. Sometimes, especially when the moon was bright, they would be seen. This is a source of some vampire rumors. By this time I was choking on my tawny port. I realised that some of the "vampires" dug up from graves were really premature burials! Vera clinched her argument: "Tribes and races that cremate their dead are relatively free of vampire stories."Here are the opening sentences of some of Vera Pym's news-reports collection: The Advertiser, 5 April, 1969:
Vera showed me a list of almost 250 movies on the vampire theme. Cal Raud explained: "The movie vampire, Dracula, is named after a 15th century Rumanian prince called Vlad Dracul (1431-1546). Prince Dracul fought numerous wars and depopulated whole towns. His favorite method of executing his enemies was to have them thrown onto upward pointing spears. He once impaled the entire population of a town in this way. Another time, in January 1531, he had 3,000 Turks impaled before breakfast.Vera explained that a number of theatre plays on the vampire theme, but not yet using Dracul's name, drew European crowds in 1820. Other stage plays on vampires were released through the century especially in the 1850s. Some 19th century writers treated vampires seriously and matter of fact. In 1851 came On The Truths In Popular Superstitions by Herbert Mayo senior surgeon of Middlesex hospital and professor of physiology at King's College. Dr. Mayo claimed: "This is no romancer's dream... Do I believe it? To be sure I do. The facts are matters of history; the people died like rotted sheep." Around 1900, A O Eaves wrote Modern Vampirism: Its Dangers And How To Avoid Them. Eaves opened with: "Want of space will prevent elaborate and detailed proofs being given…" Then followed many blood-curdling accounts and speculations. Finally, Eaves recommended self-protection using garlic and saucers of nitric acid. Vera explained further: "Three 19th century novelists played major parts in arousing public attention. Hollywood
"came"
that evening to us also.
Switching from Port to a 1977 Cabernet Shiraz we watched vampire video
movies. By using "fast forward" for the boring bits we got through four
of them. An instructive and entertaining evening! THEY REALLY EXIST! At the University of Adelaide I encountered Con Rogay a biology student studying blood. He told me about bloodsucking mosquitoes, bloodsucking vampire bats, bloodsucking leeches, single-celled blood parasites, and the Malayan vampire moth Calyptra eustrigata. He explained that some people have a psychiatric condition that gives them a sexual thrill from drinking or licking warm blood. Then as we munched a kilo of cherries in the cafeteria he got to the point: "In 1963 Dr Lee Illis of Britain presented a paper titled On Porphyria And The Aetiology Of Werewolves.My cherries suddenly lost their taste. The key words "nasty" "sunlight" "teeth" "hair" "blood" and "garlic" made everything fit together – so I thought. Porphyria is easily misdiagnosed even today. In Medieval Europe the severer symptoms, especially if they included drinking blood at night, would have had one interpretation. Suppose only several porphyria sufferers per century fought the severer symptoms by staying in tombs by day and coming out at night to find blood! Such wretched freaks, when caught, would be killed as "vampires" or "werewolves". Such examples
would give
the vampire superstition
a basis in reality that only vampires of the movie type (which
thankfully
don't exist!) could beat! GARLIC! I found no club centred on garlic – no garlic equivalent of the WEREWOLF RESEARCH CENTRE. Therefore I checked up encyclopedia references and also a newspaper article by Liz Byrski. Then, over a beef and tomato sandwich sprinkled with garlic salt, I read them. Garlic is a hardy perennial plant that grows wild in Europe. Its bulbous roots are used in cookery. Its white flowers can be dried and used as spice. In 1973 Demetrius Myiciura of Stoke-On-Trent in England choked to death on garlic flowers which he used to stuff into his mouth at bedtime. Myiciura, a Polish expatriate, was terrified of vampires. If garlic works then Cleopatra (69-30 BC) was safe for she ate it constantly. But her breath and skin stank terribly as a result. This would have repelled not only vampires but also all but the randiest of men – which her boyfriend, Mark Antony (83-30 BC), surely was. Garlic supposedly promotes good blood circulation, protects against disease and environmental pollution, and has anti fungal properties. Some "Health Food Shops" sell Garlic Oil Capsules. I failed to find out at this time how garlic became associated with vampires. But a quote by Liz Byrski from Dr Toru Fuwa, Head of research of Wakunaga Pharmaceuticals in Japan, seemed significant: "Raw garlic oxidises in the system and becomes toxic in large amounts. It destroys red blood cells and results in anaemia and it can irritate and burn the mucous lining of the mouth, the oesophagus and the stomach." GRAVEYARDS The West Terrace Cemetery is one of Adelaide's oldest and largest. I visited it, and the Cheltenham Cemetery, to assist my mood for this report. It was near evening and the roar of traffic 200 metres away contrasted starkly with the eerie silence of the tombstones. In neither
cemetery did
I see any "walking
dead". The odds were against it anyway, I learned from Con. BLOOD CRAVING MONSTERS! Dutchman Skorno Loontz, who now lives near Port Adelaide, collects case reports of unusual crimes. He told me about Countess Elizabeth Bathory (1560-1614) who tortured, bled, and murdered 600 peasant girls to drink their blood or bathe in it. She felt that washing in the blood of young girls was the secret of long lasting youth. Next Skorno spoke about a book by Augustin Calmet published in 1749. Calmet described "vampires" who were tracked to particular tombs and who then fought like madmen to avoid being transfixed with a wooden stake or burned. Skorno
continued: "Gilles de Rais (1405-1440) was a rich and famous French baron who fought alongside Joan of Arc against the English. During his last 10 years de Rais, now a recluse, kidnapped, sodomised, tortured and disembowelled up to 150 children. He drank their blood for the sexual excitement this gave him. Skorno
paused to
show me an extract from
the London Daily Express 1925, April 17: VAMPIRE BRAIN. PLAN TO PRESERVE IT FOR SCIENCE. A generous warm-hearted person, despite his morbid hobby, Skorno offered biscuits and red grape juice before going on: "Albert Fish was an American sadomasochistic maniac who, from 1910-1935, murdered and partly ate up to 400 children. Skorno wanted to go on and give examples country by country. But I felt the information already given was enough. Anyone could see that such ghoulish crimes could be a major origin of ancient vampire legends. We switched to
raspberry
lemonade and made
pleasant conversation about other mutual interests – such as Holland
which
I have visited twice. When I got up to leave, Skorno gave me two news
clippings: The Advertiser, 1985 April 9: SKEPTICS! I presented my findings on vampires to the SA Skeptics Association. These intellectuals, always eager to refute crazy claims, gave me copies of articles in New Scientist 1984 April 26 and September 13. A spokesman for the skeptics stated: "The alleged connection between porphyria and vampires has been refuted." The first New Scientist article (by Lionel Milgrom) gave a lot of biochemistry before getting onto "iron deficiency prophyria". It listed much the same symptoms as Con Rogay had described. The second article, by R S Day, said in part: "Iron-deficiency porphyria…does not constitute a 'porphyria'…I found Con Rogay dissecting a bat in the university zoology lab and confronted him with the New Scientist articles. There was a rule against eating while dissecting and so this time Con kept his cherries in his book bag. He indicated one of the books, The Encyclopedia Of Horror, which I opened to page 111 and read: "This rare type of congenital porphyria occurs in modern times in certain places and districts in countries like Sweden and Switzerland, but Dr Illis emphasises that only about 80 such cases have been reported in recent times in world medical literature. He adds they should not be confused with a common and widespread type which has nothing what ever to do with the subject of lycanthropy. One type of porphyria is relatively common and occurs in all countries." "Only 80
in recent
times out of tens
of thousands," emphasised Con. "Perhaps R S Day just hasn't studied the
right examples." CONCLUSION Vampires of superhuman strength, who are virtually indestructible, who live for centuries, who emit bolts of lightning and change into bats, obviously don't exist. At least I found no direct evidence of them. Genuine supernatural werewolves are equally elusive. My search therefore centred on the question of how such widespread belief in such creatures originated. Indeed until two centuries ago belief in vampires and/or werewolves was almost as common as belief in God. And lots of people still live in fear of vampires today! A widespread intercontinental, trans-cultural belief that survives 3,000 years would need recurring evidences, other than rumor alone, to sustain it. Historical and medical evidence that could account for vampire/werewolf legends therefore constituted the main part of my research. The sorts of crimes, settings and behaviors I've described are sufficient to account for the vampire rumors – especially when uneducated and superstitious peasants exaggerate them in the retelling. The debate
about the
relevance to vampirism
of a "rare type of porphyria" is unresolved. The next step might be to
try to find some of those alleged 80 humans who resemble werewolves or
vampires. PROTECTION "The Werewolf Research Centre has closed down," said Vera Pym by phone. "Its members might be joining my group." "Oh, I'm glad to hear that," I replied "Anyway, how's your article progressing?" she asked? "Its almost finished. One thing's missing however. The readers will want to know how to protect themselves. Just in case!" "Use garlic daily. Don't sleep alone. Get bite marks checked by your doctor. Shop during daylight." "What about saucers of nitric acid? You mentioned them the night I watched your movies." "No good. The vampire would just step over or around them." Ask a silly
question!
[The author – W Scherz – has used a pseudonym. "Scherz" means "joke" or "hoax" in German. The reader may like to unscramble the other names and relate them to Vampyre, Dracula, Werewolf, Nosferatu, Yorga, Wolfman, Kronos and Zolton. Zolton is Dracula's dog. Kronos is a fictious vampire hunter. The facts reported under the different names are, however, as accurate as the sources consulted.]
REFERENCES Byrski, L 1988 A Smelly Rose With Many Uses. In: The Australian, June 8, p. 11Cropper, C et al The Giant Book of Fantastic Facts, Haddock, Britain Grant, J 1988 Great Mysteries, Quintet, Britain Hartmann, F 1896 Premature Burial London Maltin, L 1984 TV Movies 1985-86, Signet, USA Masters, A 1974 The Natural History of the Vampire, Mayflower Books, Britain New Scientist 1982 October 28, pp 244-245 1982 November 18 p 459 1984 April 26 pp 9-13 1984 September 13 pp 53-54 O'Keefe, D 1983 The History of Ideas, Macquarie Aust. Parade 1956 May pp 22-23 1961 August pp 36-37 1966 October pp 64-65 Parker, M 1983 The World's Most Fantastic Freaks, Octopus, Britain Penrose, V. 1972 The Bloody Countess, Nel, Britain Pine, D 1984 The Vampire Cinema, Galley Press, Britain Sim, M 1974 Guide To Psychiatry 3rd edition, Churchill Livingstone, Britain, pp 228-230 The Advertiser 1985, June 1 p 5 1987, March 14 p 23 Volta, O & Riva, V 1963 The Vampire An Anthology, Pan, Britain Wilson. C & Grant, J 1981 The Directory of Possibilities, Webb & Bower, Britain VAMPIRES,
CRAZY KINGS L Eddie (Investigator 30, 1993 May) In 1984, New Scientist published an article by Lionel Milgrom, entitled "Vampires, plants and crazy kings" (26th April) discussing some aspects of tetrapyrrolic macrocycles. These substances, as you are no doubt totally unaware, are what make blood red and grass green. The most important members of the pyrrolic family are the Porphyrins and the Chlorins. The Porphyrins, (so called because of their red/purple colouring, Greek – porphyrias = purple), are the primary components of haem in blood. The Chlorins, (Greek, chloros = green), are the basis of chlorophyll in green plants, and are essential components in the cycle of life. Haem, an iron porphyrin, is the pyrrolic component of blood, and is the component which absorbs oxygen and carries it throughout the body. Without haem the cycle would decrease and the individual would die. According to Milgrom, biological disorders, known as porphyrias caused by faulty tetrapyrrole metabolism, cause such things as severe light sensitivity, and even perhaps insanity. In an article (New Scientist, 28/10/82) Professor David Dolphin of the British Columbia University, in a lecture discussed the links between porphyria and vampires. Capitalizing on these claims, Milgrom incorrectly defines one rare form of porphyria as "iron-deficiency porphyria". In fact there is no such terminology. Milgrom obviously coined the term himself. He also makes other claims which are doubtful in the extreme. For instance he claimed that, "vampires, should they exist, could be suffering from an extremely rare form of this condition." (p. 9) Professor Dolphin considered that a rare form of porphyria, could explain the origins and persistence of the vampire and Dracula myths. According to
Milgrom,
Dolphin's thesis was
that:- Furthermore, it would not be possible to obtain the iron enriched porphyrias by eating or drinking the blood or flesh of another animal, including a human. Another claim
by
Milgrom, obviously attempting
to prove that this disorder explains the vampire's fear of daylight,
that Q. "Why is a baby like a vampire? A "Because it sleeps all day and sucks all night." VAMPIRES VINDICATION AND VENDETTA Lana De Winter (Investigator
30, 1993,
May) Scherz stated (Investigator 29) that Countess Bathory bathed in the blood of her victims presumably to keep herself young. Not only is this the stuff of myths, it is in itself a myth. McNally (1983) traced the beginning of this legend to 1720 when it first appeared in a history (in Latin) of Hungary written over a century after the death of the Blood Countess. From there it found its way into a German collection of articles on "philosophical anthropology" published in the late eighteenth century and thence into Western folklore. The theory falls flat, however, because the complete records of both the investigation of Elizabeth Bathory and her accomplices are extant. Although her cruelty is adequately documented therein, there is no mention whatsoever of bathing in blood or, as the later version of the legend would have it, the blood of virgins. Bathing in blood (especially that of virgins) has a certain romance to it and, no doubt it has been done somewhere or other over the years. But in the case of Elizabeth Bathory it is but a legendary addition to a story that requires no embellishment to accentuate its innate horror. McNally also clearly illustrated that, although the name "Dracula" is derived from the sobriquet given to Vlad Tepes (who is incidentally a Romanian national hero) the Dracula of recent fame is based to a large degree on Elizabeth Bathory. Reading of Stoker's book Dracula (1897) gives a wealth of historical and genealogical detail that shows the Count is modelled on Countess Bathory and not on Vlad the Impaler. This has led, in 1993, to a libel suit with a difference. English law renders it virtually impossible to libel one who is dead but the French Civil Code has provision for protecting family honour – a concept unknown to the Anglo-American Common law tradition. Not having taken this into account Francis Ford Coppola has recently produced a film entitled "Bram Stoker's Dracula" which is supposedly the most accurate rendition of Stoker's book yet made. This it certainly is not for the prologue to the film makes it emphatically clear that Count Dracula is none other than Vlad Tepes. This film has been a commercial success but has fallen foul of Princess Alexandria Caradja who is the closest surviving relative of Vlad Tepes. A member of the Romanian nobility who lives in exile in Paris the Princess has enjoyed many Dracula films – but not the only one that has defamed her illustrious ancestor. And so she has launched a major legal action in the French jurisdiction against Coppola. A
wealthy woman in her
own right anything
she obtains as a settlement will be donated to an orphanage in
Bucharest
that she is involved in building – a worthy aim in itself. For a
concept
that is alien to Anglo-American law it is impossible to foresee the
outcome
of the case but the family that once impaled Turkish prisoners on
wooden
stakes is quite prepared to impale American film producers on the law.
REFERENCES: The Advertiser
(Adelaide) March 1993 "Dracula
Bites Back" |