November 5, 2025 • 19 mins
George Noory and author John Kachuba discuss the phenomenon of shapeshifters or people that can transform into animals or other beings, how they acquire the ability to change their shape, and if werewolves, vampires or even Jesus could have been shapeshifters.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back, George Norry with you John Katruba with
US Award winning author creative writing instructor at Ohio University.
He has investigated more than one hundred hounded locations around
the world. A frequent speaker about the paranormal at conferences, libraries,
and universities as well. His books include The Bottle Conjurer
books one and two, Shape Shifters A History, and Ghost Hunters. John,
(00:29):
Welcome back. How have you been, hey, Jeorce. Good to
hear from you.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yeah, I'm doing good. How about you?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Oh God, good looking forward to this. How did you
get involved in investigating shape shifters?
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Well, I kind of grew out of all my work
with ghost hunting. My first couple of books are about
ghosts primarily, and I give a lot of public talks
at libraries and universities and on shows like yours. Fact,
they've been on your shows many times talking about ghosts.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
And what I noticed was that a lot of people
in the audience which start asking me about other events
that they were having or incidents, and they never sounded
like ghost experiences. They sounded more like shape shifters. So
I started just looking into the research on that and
(01:17):
basically discovered that the shape shifter character or shape shifter
types are ubiquitous. I mean, they appear in cultures all
around the world and have from ancient times to today.
And so you know, people talk about having experiences. There's
been newspaper reports about experiences with shape shifters, and also
(01:40):
it just kind of all started, like I said, out
of the ghost hunting experience, but it was an interesting
side avenue and was interesting thing to write about.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
For sure, what exactly John is a shape shifter.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
So when I talk about a shape shifter, what I'm
saying is that it is a person who has the
ability to transform him or herself into something other than human.
Usually it's an animal, but it could sometimes in certain cultures,
shape shifters can shift into inanimate objects. Other cultures, you
(02:23):
can shift into another person, so it's you know, and
then you have the ability to transform back, So it's
something basically under your will. While I also talk about
shape shifters, especially in mythology, who were cursed to be
shape shifters, it wasn't something they wanted or something they
(02:43):
could control. But so it's a I kind of used
the term in a broad spectrum way.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
What creates the shape shifter? How does it happen?
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Well, that's a good question. I mean again, I think
if we're talking about some of the ancient stories, like
from Greek and Roman mythology, it's that the gods have
the ability to curse somebody and change them into whatever
they want, and that poor person does not have the
ability to transform themselves. But then when you look at
(03:17):
later times, like getting up into the medieval era and
even to today, the focus shifts on responsibility, and it
seems like certain people whatever have the ability, you know,
whether it's whether it's a magical ability, or whether it's
some natural biological ability, if perhaps they're aliens or whatever,
(03:40):
that allows them to actually make that transformation on their own.
How it happens you know, specifically, I don't know. We
have a lot of good indications in movies. I'm the
American Werewolf in London. Watching that transformation was pretty horrendous,
and I don't think anybody would want to go through
that voluntarily.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Would you say? Dracula was a shape shifter too?
Speaker 3 (04:06):
So that's interesting, George, because the original Dracula. In ram
Stoker's novel, it wasn't clear that he was shape shifting,
although at one point Jonathan Harker, one of the main characters,
looks out the window of Dracula's castle and sees Dracula
sort of crawling, actually crawling down the castle wall outside.
(04:31):
You know, how do you have that ability unless there's
something almost like a lizard? Right, And at another point
in Dracula the novel, a bat appears to Lucy and
it's the indication is that it is probably Dracula. So yeah,
the classic Dracula was a shape shifter, although it wasn't
(04:52):
brought out as much as it is today in popular
movies and novels about vampires that seemed to shape shift
pretty routinely. So I think Stoker, ram Stoker, started that
and it took you know, it took life of its
own with modern interpretations of vampires.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Is there a lot of interest john in shape shifting?
Speaker 3 (05:18):
I think so. And I think it's I think it's
because the shape shifter character kind of speaks to something
universal in all of us, which is the desire for
transformation on a very simple scale, very simple scale. Some people,
maybe a child is unhappy because he doesn't feel like
(05:40):
he's smart enough or strong enough than the other kids,
or something like that. So he has maybe a desire wishing.
You know, boy, what if I had super strength, you
know which like Superman? Or what if I could you know,
change into something that would be more powerful, something out
of me. So I think there's I think we all
have a desire or at times, to want for transformation,
(06:04):
to want for change, something better usually. So I think
that's part of why the shape shifter character is so popular,
because it speaks to something I think within our own psyches,
whether we act on that or not, I think it's there.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
How many different kinds of shape shifters are there? Many?
How many?
Speaker 3 (06:26):
How many stars are there in the multiverse. Yeah, that
was the biggest surprise to me, George. When I was
doing research for the book, I was in like seven
different countries and just doing a lot of research here
in the US and doing a lot of academic research,
And what I found was that there were innumerable types
(06:50):
of shape shifters. Some cultures had one hundreds of Japan
for instance, I don't know how many shape shifters they have,
but yeah, so I couldn't give you a number. There's
literally hundreds. And if he went through my book shape
Shifters a History, if you actually looked, you know, page
by page, wrote down each different shape shifter that you
(07:12):
found in that book, you'd probably come across a couple
of hundred just you know, just in that one.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Book shape Shifting Characters or you know, Clutchers. Do you
remember the TV show Tom Terrific. I do. I love
that he had a funnel on his head, an upside
down funnel, but he was a shape shifter.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, And I'm not sure I always wanted
about that funnel. Was that funnel it somehow gave him
that power? I mean, why would you wear a funnel
on your head?
Speaker 1 (07:44):
You know?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
I think it just was some kind of design on him.
But he was able to shift into He could have
been a table, a chair, he was anything, and they
always had his little face on whatever object he shifted into.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Right right, So he was Actually when I mentioned Japan earlier,
he was more typical of a Japanese shape shifter because
in a lot of Japanese folklore and mythology, a lot
of the shape shifting is into inanimate objects rather than
a person or animals. I mean, those are there too,
(08:20):
but they are one of the more unusual cultures that
have shape shifters transforming into a table or a broom
or a chair or something along those lines.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
What is the difference, John, between an external and internal
shape shifter.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Yeah, that's a distinction George, that I made in my book.
And what I was trying to point out was that
there are shape shifters like, for instance, the werewolf. You know,
a shape shifting transformation that is evident. I mean you
can see that, right. You see a person literally change
into something shaggy with claws and fangs and whatever. It
(09:04):
turns into a wolf. So that's an external shape shifter
where you actually see a physical change. But I wrote
about other types of shape shifters, and again the book
has broad spectrum when I talk about shapeshifter, So the
other ones that I talked about were shapeshifting transformations that
(09:26):
were not evident to the eye. So in other words,
these were people who internally transformed or believed they transformed.
A good example I talked about werewolves again during the
I guess home the seventeenth century, there were it seemed
(09:46):
like a plague of werewolf's activity in France and Germany
and a couple other countries and what was going on,
and no one is really sure sort of how this happened.
Is people were acting out as though they had transformed
into wolves. So there was there were cases of people
(10:07):
that were brought to you know, brought the trial and
executed for what they called where wolf were and there
was no physical evidence. I mean, you couldn't see them change,
and yet these people would growl, they would crawl around
on all fours, run around on all fours. Some of
them attacked people and little literally murdered people, tearing them
(10:31):
apart with their hands and sometimes eating them, devouring them, uh,
you know, as human beings. I mean you would see
a guy on his all fours, you know, tearing somebody apart,
but there was nothing physical that you saw. Yet that
person believes if he had transformed into a where into
a were wolf or into a wolf and was acting
(10:53):
out that way. So to my mind, that's like an
internal transformation. There's definitely a transformation. Person changed mentally believed
that he had changed. So I was trying to make
that distinction, you know, because I think that to me,
that's a type of shape shifter as well.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
John Katuba with us. His website is linked up at
coasticoastdam dot com. Couple of his books include The Bottle
Conjurer Books one and two and shape Shifters, a history
that he wrote back several years ago as well, John,
when you did your research for shape shifting? How did
you start? Where'd you go? Well?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
First thing I did was I looked at some of
the some of the older texts that were written. There
was one written by a priest back in the Wow
I guess like sixteen hundreds, and he was actually on
a mission to catalog all the types of sort of
(11:52):
what I call him paranormal entities. I guess that existed
throughout Europe because you know, it was pretty much that
was all the work of the devil versus is the
work of God, you know, so as a preet he
was cataloging all these things. And his text has a
lot of shape shifting in there as well as other
kinds of creatures. But that was my original source was,
(12:14):
you know, ancient texts and some modern books that just
kind of talked about the variety of shape shifters where
they were found, well, culture, that kind of stuff. So
that was the basis for my initial research. But from there,
like I said, I traveled a lot. I was in
seven countries in Europe, and I went to locations that
(12:38):
had a history of some type of shape shift for activity.
So for instance, I was in France where they had
something called the Beast of Jevadong, which was a huge
canine like creature that terrorized the south of France for
about two years and killed at least one hundred people,
(13:02):
and many many people in that time in that era
believed it to be a werewolf. So you know, I
went to places like that. I went to Romania and
did a lot of research on Dracula, you know, and
Vlade Tepish, who was sort of a model for Dracula
in the novel. They went to locations there where supposed,
(13:24):
you know, vampire activity was taking place and stuff like that.
So yeah, and then of course you know, talk to
many many people that either you know, had experiences or
were other authorities in the field. So it was it
was a great book to write. It was a lot
of fun and the research was pretty heavy.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Now I'm glad the Impaler was quite a dude, was
he not.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Yeah, Yeah, that's one way of putting it. Yeah, he had.
He had this reputation of being a pretty bloodthirsty medieval
rule prince of Wallachia, which is today part of Romania.
And you know, his favorite means of torturing and executing
people was impalement. And at one point, when the Turkish
(14:13):
army was invading his dominions, he had captured something like
a thousand Turkish soldiers or something, and he had them
impaled on stakes all along the road leading to his capital.
And the story goes that when the Turkish army started
coming up that road to invade his capital and they saw,
(14:35):
you know, a thousand or so of their fellow soldiers impaled,
they turned around and they left. He had this reputation
of being bloodthirsty. But you know, I'm not sure he
was any less blood thirsty than any sort of medieval
prince of his time.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
But the legends about him being a vampire they started
many years, many many years after his death, and I
don't know sort of which came first. I don't know
if Bram Stoker's novel about Dracula, which is sort of
based on Vlawed, if that inspired talk about Vlawed as
(15:14):
a vampire, or whether those legends were already around. There
were legends earlier on some about him being perhaps you know,
a vampire sometime ingesting blood or something, which would maybe
technically make him a shape shifter. So Stoker may not
be that far off. But in any case, yeah, Vlod
(15:35):
was a bad dude, no how you look at it.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
In your opinion, are shape shifters the real deal or
are they just mythological?
Speaker 3 (15:45):
So in my opinion, I haven't found I personally haven't
found any evidence for them being real. I certainly have
found a lot of them in mythology and folk law
and even in religion, you know, and mythology.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
So yeah, they're there.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
But having said that, I mean, there are certainly newspaper accounts,
modern day newspaper accounts of people having experienced a shape shifter,
seen one. So, you know, because I haven't experienced it,
I don't know what to say about other people who have.
When newspapers like the New York Times even reports, you know,
(16:30):
stories about shape shifters. So yeah, it's kind of I
guess it's kind of a con question. I just haven't
found that evidence that they're that they're real, But there
are certainly people I swear to that.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Weren't there biblical shape shifters too?
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah, there were. I mean, that's that was That was
one of the more interesting little notes that I found
in the Book of Daniel. In the Old Testament, there's
a story about a king Nebka Danizer, who apparently affront's
God in some way and is punished for that. And
(17:06):
I'm just going to sort of, you know, summarize what
the Bible says, but basically it says something that he
was turned into a beast that had clause and had
fur and ate the more, ate the dew from the
grass as if he's on all fours, right. So I
don't know what kind of animal that was, but it's
(17:26):
very clear in that book that, you know, God punishes
Nevik and Danser by doing that. But the more interesting
things I found were in the New Testament, where there
is a theologian in the University of Antwerp in the
Netherlands who I quote him in the book. I have
a quote in front of me, but he interpreted an
(17:47):
ancient Coptic text that's in the Morgan Library in New
York and it's part of the New Testament, and it
talks about the area where this jew the Jewish Council
wants to arrest Jesus. So they're talking to Judas, and
Judas says, well, Jesus is going to be in the
(18:07):
garden because semine, you can get him there. And they say, well,
you know, how will we recognize him? And they say,
because sometimes he appears They go to a color scheme.
They say, sometimes he appears ruddy, sometimes he appears like wheat,
which would be like a white color. Sometimes he appears white.
(18:29):
And then they said, sometimes he appears young, sometimes appears old.
That's when Judas says, well, you know, the man that
I kiss on the cheek is the guy you want.
So but it's interesting in this interpretation by this theologian
that there's all these different types of Jesus, like he's this,
he's that. So is he shape shifting or is that
(18:51):
just a metaphor meaning that people sort of see him
in different light, you know, depending on the circumstance whatever.
But then you've got other things going on there too.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
You have.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
You know, the transfiguration where he goes up to the
mountaintop and he's like transfigured. His body they say, is glorified.
That's some kind of a transformation to something you know, ethereal, whatever, divine,
however you want to refer to it. So there's other
incidents like that, and I was surprised to see that
(19:27):
in the New Testament.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back, George Norry with you John Katruba with
US Award winning author creative writing instructor at Ohio University.
He has investigated more than one hundred hounded locations around
the world. A frequent speaker about the paranormal at conferences, libraries,
and universities as well. His books include The Bottle Conjurer
books one and two, Shape Shifters A History, and Ghost Hunters. John,
(00:29):
Welcome back. How have you been, hey, Jeorce. Good to
hear from you.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yeah, I'm doing good. How about you?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Oh God, good looking forward to this. How did you
get involved in investigating shape shifters?
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Well, I kind of grew out of all my work
with ghost hunting. My first couple of books are about
ghosts primarily, and I give a lot of public talks
at libraries and universities and on shows like yours. Fact,
they've been on your shows many times talking about ghosts.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
And what I noticed was that a lot of people
in the audience which start asking me about other events
that they were having or incidents, and they never sounded
like ghost experiences. They sounded more like shape shifters. So
I started just looking into the research on that and
(01:17):
basically discovered that the shape shifter character or shape shifter
types are ubiquitous. I mean, they appear in cultures all
around the world and have from ancient times to today.
And so you know, people talk about having experiences. There's
been newspaper reports about experiences with shape shifters, and also
(01:40):
it just kind of all started, like I said, out
of the ghost hunting experience, but it was an interesting
side avenue and was interesting thing to write about.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
For sure, what exactly John is a shape shifter.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
So when I talk about a shape shifter, what I'm
saying is that it is a person who has the
ability to transform him or herself into something other than human.
Usually it's an animal, but it could sometimes in certain cultures,
shape shifters can shift into inanimate objects. Other cultures, you
(02:23):
can shift into another person, so it's you know, and
then you have the ability to transform back, So it's
something basically under your will. While I also talk about
shape shifters, especially in mythology, who were cursed to be
shape shifters, it wasn't something they wanted or something they
(02:43):
could control. But so it's a I kind of used
the term in a broad spectrum way.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
What creates the shape shifter? How does it happen?
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Well, that's a good question. I mean again, I think
if we're talking about some of the ancient stories, like
from Greek and Roman mythology, it's that the gods have
the ability to curse somebody and change them into whatever
they want, and that poor person does not have the
ability to transform themselves. But then when you look at
(03:17):
later times, like getting up into the medieval era and
even to today, the focus shifts on responsibility, and it
seems like certain people whatever have the ability, you know,
whether it's whether it's a magical ability, or whether it's
some natural biological ability, if perhaps they're aliens or whatever,
(03:40):
that allows them to actually make that transformation on their own.
How it happens you know, specifically, I don't know. We
have a lot of good indications in movies. I'm the
American Werewolf in London. Watching that transformation was pretty horrendous,
and I don't think anybody would want to go through
that voluntarily.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Would you say? Dracula was a shape shifter too?
Speaker 3 (04:06):
So that's interesting, George, because the original Dracula. In ram
Stoker's novel, it wasn't clear that he was shape shifting,
although at one point Jonathan Harker, one of the main characters,
looks out the window of Dracula's castle and sees Dracula
sort of crawling, actually crawling down the castle wall outside.
(04:31):
You know, how do you have that ability unless there's
something almost like a lizard? Right, And at another point
in Dracula the novel, a bat appears to Lucy and
it's the indication is that it is probably Dracula. So yeah,
the classic Dracula was a shape shifter, although it wasn't
(04:52):
brought out as much as it is today in popular
movies and novels about vampires that seemed to shape shift
pretty routinely. So I think Stoker, ram Stoker, started that
and it took you know, it took life of its
own with modern interpretations of vampires.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Is there a lot of interest john in shape shifting?
Speaker 3 (05:18):
I think so. And I think it's I think it's
because the shape shifter character kind of speaks to something
universal in all of us, which is the desire for
transformation on a very simple scale, very simple scale. Some people,
maybe a child is unhappy because he doesn't feel like
(05:40):
he's smart enough or strong enough than the other kids,
or something like that. So he has maybe a desire wishing.
You know, boy, what if I had super strength, you
know which like Superman? Or what if I could you know,
change into something that would be more powerful, something out
of me. So I think there's I think we all
have a desire or at times, to want for transformation,
(06:04):
to want for change, something better usually. So I think
that's part of why the shape shifter character is so popular,
because it speaks to something I think within our own psyches,
whether we act on that or not, I think it's there.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
How many different kinds of shape shifters are there? Many?
How many?
Speaker 3 (06:26):
How many stars are there in the multiverse. Yeah, that
was the biggest surprise to me, George. When I was
doing research for the book, I was in like seven
different countries and just doing a lot of research here
in the US and doing a lot of academic research,
And what I found was that there were innumerable types
(06:50):
of shape shifters. Some cultures had one hundreds of Japan
for instance, I don't know how many shape shifters they have,
but yeah, so I couldn't give you a number. There's
literally hundreds. And if he went through my book shape
Shifters a History, if you actually looked, you know, page
by page, wrote down each different shape shifter that you
(07:12):
found in that book, you'd probably come across a couple
of hundred just you know, just in that one.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Book shape Shifting Characters or you know, Clutchers. Do you
remember the TV show Tom Terrific. I do. I love
that he had a funnel on his head, an upside
down funnel, but he was a shape shifter.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, And I'm not sure I always wanted
about that funnel. Was that funnel it somehow gave him
that power? I mean, why would you wear a funnel
on your head?
Speaker 1 (07:44):
You know?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
I think it just was some kind of design on him.
But he was able to shift into He could have
been a table, a chair, he was anything, and they
always had his little face on whatever object he shifted into.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Right right, So he was Actually when I mentioned Japan earlier,
he was more typical of a Japanese shape shifter because
in a lot of Japanese folklore and mythology, a lot
of the shape shifting is into inanimate objects rather than
a person or animals. I mean, those are there too,
(08:20):
but they are one of the more unusual cultures that
have shape shifters transforming into a table or a broom
or a chair or something along those lines.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
What is the difference, John, between an external and internal
shape shifter.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Yeah, that's a distinction George, that I made in my book.
And what I was trying to point out was that
there are shape shifters like, for instance, the werewolf. You know,
a shape shifting transformation that is evident. I mean you
can see that, right. You see a person literally change
into something shaggy with claws and fangs and whatever. It
(09:04):
turns into a wolf. So that's an external shape shifter
where you actually see a physical change. But I wrote
about other types of shape shifters, and again the book
has broad spectrum when I talk about shapeshifter, So the
other ones that I talked about were shapeshifting transformations that
(09:26):
were not evident to the eye. So in other words,
these were people who internally transformed or believed they transformed.
A good example I talked about werewolves again during the
I guess home the seventeenth century, there were it seemed
(09:46):
like a plague of werewolf's activity in France and Germany
and a couple other countries and what was going on,
and no one is really sure sort of how this happened.
Is people were acting out as though they had transformed
into wolves. So there was there were cases of people
(10:07):
that were brought to you know, brought the trial and
executed for what they called where wolf were and there
was no physical evidence. I mean, you couldn't see them change,
and yet these people would growl, they would crawl around
on all fours, run around on all fours. Some of
them attacked people and little literally murdered people, tearing them
(10:31):
apart with their hands and sometimes eating them, devouring them, uh,
you know, as human beings. I mean you would see
a guy on his all fours, you know, tearing somebody apart,
but there was nothing physical that you saw. Yet that
person believes if he had transformed into a where into
a were wolf or into a wolf and was acting
(10:53):
out that way. So to my mind, that's like an
internal transformation. There's definitely a transformation. Person changed mentally believed
that he had changed. So I was trying to make
that distinction, you know, because I think that to me,
that's a type of shape shifter as well.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
John Katuba with us. His website is linked up at
coasticoastdam dot com. Couple of his books include The Bottle
Conjurer Books one and two and shape Shifters, a history
that he wrote back several years ago as well, John,
when you did your research for shape shifting? How did
you start? Where'd you go? Well?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
First thing I did was I looked at some of
the some of the older texts that were written. There
was one written by a priest back in the Wow
I guess like sixteen hundreds, and he was actually on
a mission to catalog all the types of sort of
(11:52):
what I call him paranormal entities. I guess that existed
throughout Europe because you know, it was pretty much that
was all the work of the devil versus is the
work of God, you know, so as a preet he
was cataloging all these things. And his text has a
lot of shape shifting in there as well as other
kinds of creatures. But that was my original source was,
(12:14):
you know, ancient texts and some modern books that just
kind of talked about the variety of shape shifters where
they were found, well, culture, that kind of stuff. So
that was the basis for my initial research. But from there,
like I said, I traveled a lot. I was in
seven countries in Europe, and I went to locations that
(12:38):
had a history of some type of shape shift for activity.
So for instance, I was in France where they had
something called the Beast of Jevadong, which was a huge
canine like creature that terrorized the south of France for
about two years and killed at least one hundred people,
(13:02):
and many many people in that time in that era
believed it to be a werewolf. So you know, I
went to places like that. I went to Romania and
did a lot of research on Dracula, you know, and
Vlade Tepish, who was sort of a model for Dracula
in the novel. They went to locations there where supposed,
(13:24):
you know, vampire activity was taking place and stuff like that.
So yeah, and then of course you know, talk to
many many people that either you know, had experiences or
were other authorities in the field. So it was it
was a great book to write. It was a lot
of fun and the research was pretty heavy.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Now I'm glad the Impaler was quite a dude, was
he not.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Yeah, Yeah, that's one way of putting it. Yeah, he had.
He had this reputation of being a pretty bloodthirsty medieval
rule prince of Wallachia, which is today part of Romania.
And you know, his favorite means of torturing and executing
people was impalement. And at one point, when the Turkish
(14:13):
army was invading his dominions, he had captured something like
a thousand Turkish soldiers or something, and he had them
impaled on stakes all along the road leading to his capital.
And the story goes that when the Turkish army started
coming up that road to invade his capital and they saw,
(14:35):
you know, a thousand or so of their fellow soldiers impaled,
they turned around and they left. He had this reputation
of being bloodthirsty. But you know, I'm not sure he
was any less blood thirsty than any sort of medieval
prince of his time.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
But the legends about him being a vampire they started
many years, many many years after his death, and I
don't know sort of which came first. I don't know
if Bram Stoker's novel about Dracula, which is sort of
based on Vlawed, if that inspired talk about Vlawed as
(15:14):
a vampire, or whether those legends were already around. There
were legends earlier on some about him being perhaps you know,
a vampire sometime ingesting blood or something, which would maybe
technically make him a shape shifter. So Stoker may not
be that far off. But in any case, yeah, Vlod
(15:35):
was a bad dude, no how you look at it.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
In your opinion, are shape shifters the real deal or
are they just mythological?
Speaker 3 (15:45):
So in my opinion, I haven't found I personally haven't
found any evidence for them being real. I certainly have
found a lot of them in mythology and folk law
and even in religion, you know, and mythology.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
So yeah, they're there.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
But having said that, I mean, there are certainly newspaper accounts,
modern day newspaper accounts of people having experienced a shape shifter,
seen one. So, you know, because I haven't experienced it,
I don't know what to say about other people who have.
When newspapers like the New York Times even reports, you know,
(16:30):
stories about shape shifters. So yeah, it's kind of I
guess it's kind of a con question. I just haven't
found that evidence that they're that they're real, But there
are certainly people I swear to that.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Weren't there biblical shape shifters too?
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah, there were. I mean, that's that was That was
one of the more interesting little notes that I found
in the Book of Daniel. In the Old Testament, there's
a story about a king Nebka Danizer, who apparently affront's
God in some way and is punished for that. And
(17:06):
I'm just going to sort of, you know, summarize what
the Bible says, but basically it says something that he
was turned into a beast that had clause and had
fur and ate the more, ate the dew from the
grass as if he's on all fours, right. So I
don't know what kind of animal that was, but it's
(17:26):
very clear in that book that, you know, God punishes
Nevik and Danser by doing that. But the more interesting
things I found were in the New Testament, where there
is a theologian in the University of Antwerp in the
Netherlands who I quote him in the book. I have
a quote in front of me, but he interpreted an
(17:47):
ancient Coptic text that's in the Morgan Library in New
York and it's part of the New Testament, and it
talks about the area where this jew the Jewish Council
wants to arrest Jesus. So they're talking to Judas, and
Judas says, well, Jesus is going to be in the
(18:07):
garden because semine, you can get him there. And they say, well,
you know, how will we recognize him? And they say,
because sometimes he appears They go to a color scheme.
They say, sometimes he appears ruddy, sometimes he appears like wheat,
which would be like a white color. Sometimes he appears white.
(18:29):
And then they said, sometimes he appears young, sometimes appears old.
That's when Judas says, well, you know, the man that
I kiss on the cheek is the guy you want.
So but it's interesting in this interpretation by this theologian
that there's all these different types of Jesus, like he's this,
he's that. So is he shape shifting or is that
(18:51):
just a metaphor meaning that people sort of see him
in different light, you know, depending on the circumstance whatever.
But then you've got other things going on there too.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
You have.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
You know, the transfiguration where he goes up to the
mountaintop and he's like transfigured. His body they say, is glorified.
That's some kind of a transformation to something you know, ethereal, whatever, divine,
however you want to refer to it. So there's other
incidents like that, and I was surprised to see that
(19:27):
in the New Testament.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
The Best of Coast to Coast AM News
Host
George Noory
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!