December 13, 2024 • 30 mins
Part two of Season 08 Episode 12: The Dark Banquet
Continuing on from last week's episode, we take a look at what inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula. And just what a real-life vampire might actually look like...
Written by Diane Hope and produced by Richard MacLean Smith
Find us at youtube.com/@unexplainedpod, tiktok.com/@unexplainedpodcast, twitter @unexplainedpod, facebook.com/unexplainedpodcast or www.unexplainedpodcast.com for more info. Thank you for listening.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, it's Richard McLain Smith here, not the impostor you've
been listening to on the podcasts the real one. Join
me for Unexplained TV at YouTube dot com Forward Slash
Unexplained pod. You're listening to Unexplained Season eight, episode twelve,
(00:31):
The Dark Banquet, Part two. When Bram Stoker's Dracula, the
story of an undead Eastern European count who rises zombie
like from a coffin, feasting on the blood of the
living to survive, was first published in eighteen ninety seven,
(00:54):
it became an overnight sensation. Today it is considered the
quintus viential vampire novel, spawning a reverence and fascination for
this most alluring of creatures that has persisted for over
one hundred and twenty five years. Though many of the
characteristics we associate with vampires, such as having no reflection
(01:17):
or not being able to enter a building unless they
are invited in, were invented by Stoker, he also borrowed
a great deal from the ancient folklore and even real
life history of Eastern Europe. There the vampire phenomenon can
be traced back to at least the ninth century Historians
(01:38):
have surmised that many of the folk tales likely evolved
from peculiar or inexplicable deaths that people may have witnessed,
combined with a lack of understanding of the symptoms of
certain diseases and the decomposition process in general. In the
Middle Ages, people who became infected by the plague often
(01:59):
developed ulcers and lesions around their mouths, which would bleed,
making them appear as though they had been drinking blood.
There was also the medical condition known as porphyria, a
disease of the blood resulting from the faulty production of hemoglobin.
Symptoms include abdominal and chest pain, vomiting, and fever. One
(02:22):
form of the disease, known as porphyria cutanee tardia, concentrates
the porphyrins, organic building blocks that help create hemoglobin in
the skin. Exposing the affected skin to sunlight causes the
abnormal pigments to damage surrounding tissues, resulting in severe skin
(02:43):
rashes and blistering. It may also lead to severe anemia,
giving sufferers a pale spectral appearance, along with receding gums,
which leads to the teeth becoming more exposed and causing
canines to take on a fang like appearance, all symptoms
that likely contributed to the stories of why vampires avoid sunlight,
(03:07):
burning up and being destroyed if they are exposed to it.
When people are buried, if the soil is especially acidic
or temperatures are low, the decomposition process can be very slow.
If grave robbers were to dig up a corpse under
such conditions, they might find the body still looking eerily lifelike.
(03:30):
In other cases, uneven rigor mortis sometimes caused corpses to
sit up in the grave, churning blood up the esophagus
which issued from the mouth. People could be forgiven for
thinking that such bodies had come back to life and
were feeding on blood. On occasion, it has been known
(03:52):
for wooden stakes or metal rods to be driven through
the chest of these seemingly errant corpses just to make
absolutely sure that they were dead. In recent decades, a
slew of medieval vampire burials have been unearthed across Eastern Europe.
(04:16):
Bulgaria alone is home to at least one hundred. In
two thousand and four, archaeologist Peta Balabanov discovered six nailed
down skeletons at a site near the eastern Bulgarian town
of de Belt. According to Balabanov, the pagan rite was
practiced in neighboring Serbia and other Balkan countries too, and
(04:40):
that wasn't all. An alternative to staking a corpse lest
it returned from the dead was to behead the body,
then place the head between the knees. Sometimes huge stones
were placed on the corpse too to weigh it down,
or the corpse was buried surrounded or pierced by sharp
agricultural implements. Incredibly, these methods haven't been completely consigned to
(05:06):
the history books, with some regions continuing to harbour these
long held beliefs and practices. In Romania, in two thousand
and four, reports emerged of a woman who'd become strangely
ill after a farmer relative of hers named Toma Petrie
had died. Believing her illness had something to do with Tom,
(05:28):
it fell to six of her family's menfolk to remedy
the situation, and so it was that, in the dead
of night, together they went to the village cemetery and
proceeded to dig up Thoma's corpse. Once unearthed, they removed
its heart and burned it. The ashes were then mixed
(05:48):
with water and given to the sickly relative to drink
it said that after downing it all, she reportedly made
a swift recovery. However, when the news gone out, the
six men involved in tomas exhumation were promptly arrested, prosecuted,
and jailed for six months. Though Toma Petrie was most
(06:11):
likely not a real vampire, the animal kingdom are there's
many vampiric creatures, most being very small by comparison to humans,
though potentially no less intimidating, such as bed bugs, leeches, fleas, ticks,
female mosquitoes, and the especially unsettling lamprey. Only one bird
(06:35):
species is known to drink blood. It lives on the
Galapagous Islands, and far from being a scary predator, it
is an actuality. A diminutive song bird, The vampire finch
is closely related to the sharp beaked ground finch and
normally eats seeds and insects, though it will occasionally peck
(06:55):
at the skin of other birds for nourishment. There's only
one group of mammals that have evolved to live a
life completely on a diet of blood. The creature moves
(07:16):
slowly with a stealthily tread across the bare ground in
the warm, humid blackness. It stops, raises its head and
sniffs the air. It listens intently to an almost imperceptible
sound up ahead, the steady breathing of a person lying
on a bed sleeping deeply. The creature recognizes the exact
(07:41):
pattern of those breathing sounds it has fed on this
victim before. It raises its nose into the air, once more,
sensing the faintest hint of warm air drifting through the
darkened room. Then steadily it moves in closer towards the
sleeping victim, using the minute changes in air temperature to
(08:04):
navigate through the darkness the sleeper's body heat. With surprising agility,
The creature hops up lightly onto the person's chest and
begins moving inexorably towards their neck. Once there, it licks
at a small patch of exposed skin, its saliva, dispensing
(08:26):
a painkiller, a skin softening agent, and an anti coadulant
at the same time. Then, finally, the creature sinks its
strikingly white raisor sharp teeth into the flesh of the
victim's neck. The puncture wound is so small and the
bite so gentle that the victim senses nothing. As the
(08:48):
creature begins to extract its blood. It does not suck. Rather,
the blood flows by capillary action along a pair of
grooves in its tongue, which moves rhythmically unceasingly in a
piston like motion. When it has finally drunk its fill,
the creature simply withdraws as quietly as it came and
(09:10):
vanishes silently back into the moonless night. It's certainly easy
to see how the humble vampire bat provided such rich
inspiration for bram Stoker. Despite its obvious influence on the writer.
The common vampire bat is in fact not found in
Europe at all, but South America, in parts of northern
(09:34):
Mexico and south into Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. The bats
roost in caves, hollow trees, old mine shafts, and abandoned buildings,
emerging after dark to hunt for blood. In common with
other bat species and their fictional human vampire counterparts, vampire
(09:56):
bats are most decidedly lunophobic, which is say, only active
when there's no moon or on a cloudy night. Contrary
to popular belief, vampire bats feed mainly on domestic livestock,
typically cows and goats, and to a lesser extent, on
wild mammals and birds. They are thought to have become
(10:19):
common in the early fifteen hundreds, when there was an
influx of Europeans to the continent, bringing with them a
wealth of domestic animals for the bats to feast on.
Biologically speaking, life as a vampire is tough, and that's
why all known living vampire bats are small. The larger species,
(10:40):
Desmodu rotundus, weighs just under one and a half ounces,
the same mass as a large grape or a small
sachet of sugar. However, a giant vampire bat, appropriately named
in Latin Desmodus straculi, has been found in the fossil record,
with some believing it might yet still be alive, living
(11:03):
undiscovered deep within the Amazon. As it happens, blood is
not a very nutritious food, comprised mostly of water and
proteins with no fat, vampire bats can't store energy like
(11:25):
other mammals, which means they have to consume around fifty
percent of their body weight in blunt each night. Failure
to feed for three days in a row could mean
starvation and death. So how would this all play out
in a real life human vampire transmuted into human form?
(11:45):
That character would be a far cry from the fictional
portrayal of human vampires as terrifying and sadistically sexy, like
Edward Cullen in the Twilight series or the Start From
Interview with a Vampire, for example, due to physiological constraints,
your vampire lover would far more likely be short, barely
(12:08):
five feet tall, and very slight. He wouldn't want to
go out until after dark and only on moonless or
cloudy nights. He need to drink around half his weight
in blood every day or two, and while feeding, the
stomach would swell to such vast proportions he'd be forced
to urinate while drinking. If in line with modern vampire
(12:31):
fictional tradition, you'd chosen to be bitten and had become
a blood drinker yourself. If you weren't able to feed
for two or three days, your vampire compatriot might share
some of the most recent meal with you via the
perhaps unromantic or romantic method depending on your kink of
mouth to mouth regurgitation Vampire bats in the wild commonly
(12:56):
share food this way, both with their young but also
with unrelated adults, in an example of naturally socialist behavior.
It's done on a reciprocal basis. Bats who don't share
eventually become nosferatu non grata in the colony and are
more likely to die from starvation in lean times. Some
(13:20):
more attractive aspects of fictional vampires are biologically accurate, though,
like being amazingly athletic and fast. Some species of vampire
bats can make spectacular acrobatic jumps in any direction, using
powerful pectoral muscles along with elongated thumbs which they use
(13:41):
to push off from the ground, and they can run
up to two meters per second scaled up to small
human size, that is impressively fast. Vampire bats can also
effectively see in the dark, too, using leaflike structures in
their nose to sense differences in temperature, an adaptation that
(14:04):
helps them approach warm blooded prey in complete darkness. This
ability is so sensitive that once a bat gets within
around six inches of its prey, its thermo receptors can
detect the minutest temperature variations on the surface of the skin,
which allow it to locate where the blood vessels lie
(14:26):
just below the skin's surface. Your vampire lover, should you
choose to take one, would also have the most extraordinary
sensitivity to specific sounds. In a two thousand and six
paper published by Udo Gurger and Lutz fe Greep on
(14:49):
the common vampire bat, they explain how they solve the
puzzling problem of how vampire bats have been observed to
relocate and feed on the same human host night after night. Incredibly,
the bats can hear and recognize your breathing. The researchers
(15:09):
found that the bats were able to discriminate between the
breathing patterns of three different human subjects, even when mixed
with additional random breathing sounds, a distinction which human subjects
hearing the same sounds couldn't make. When vampire bats find
a source of blood that tastes good, it appears that
(15:32):
they remember the unique ultrasonic components of that individual's breathing pattern,
using it to repeatedly relocate their favorite supplier. Human vampires
would also have an impressive immune system. Bats have hyperactive
immunity needed to repair the frequent micro injuries to cells
(15:53):
and DNA from having to ramp up their metabolism every
night for flying. In the wild, vampire bats typically live
for around nine years, although in captivity they've been recorded
as surviving to the grand old age of thirty, a
very long life equivalent to roughly one hundred and twenty
human years for such a small mammal. Vampire bats don't
(16:18):
age the way they should by controlling inflammation and slowing
down the aging process, so although your vampire bow would
not be immortal, they would be long lived. Watching a
vampire bat feed can be a compulsively gruesome sight. The
species Deemus young guy typically approaches a bird from below
(16:42):
its roosting perch, moving like a stalking cat, one limb
at a time, taking care to keep the branch between
itself and its prey. Once beneath the bird, it picks
the potential bite sight, usually on the bird's big toe.
After licking the site, it bites gently and begins to feed.
(17:05):
The vampire bat is even more crafty when it feeds
on a chicken. It's been seen hopping onto a hen's back,
imitating the behavior of a mating male chicken, assuming she
is being mounted for another purpose. Altogether, the hen instinctively
adopts a crouching posture while the vampire bat contentedly feeds,
(17:30):
but not all vampires, it seems, are bats or bed bugs,
or works of fiction. It was early evening in the
French quarter of New Orleans, and John Edgar Browning was
(17:53):
feeling apprehensive. Things began as if it were a medical procedure.
Asked Browning to take off his top, then took out
an alcohol swap and wiped a small patch of skin
on Browning's upper back. Next, he made a small puncture
wound with a disposable hobby scalpel and squeezed the flesh
(18:16):
around it until the blood started to flow. Browning's companion
lowered his lips to the wound and began to drink.
He lapped at the blood with his tongue briefly before
cleaning and bandaging the cut. When Browning asked why he
drank so little, the man explained that the blood was
(18:37):
not quite to his taste. It was not as metallic
as he usually liked, the vampire said. He explained that
many factors, including diet, hydration, and blood group or make
subtle differences to the flavor. Browning later reported that he'd
been relieved to get the experience over, especially since he
(18:59):
was a bit of a needle fobe who preferred to
avoid sharp objects. But why had he subjected himself to
such a situation in the first place. John Edgar Browning
has made a career studying and writing about horror, in
particular works of vampire fiction. Currently a professor of Liberal
Arts at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, Georgia,
(19:24):
Browning often works as a consultant on TV documentaries and
films depicting vampires. While a graduate student at Louisiana State University,
as part of his doctoral dissertation research, Browning embarked on
a two year ethnographic study of a community of self
(19:44):
described vampires in New Orleans. He decided that the only
way to conduct genuine research was to immerse himself in
vampire culture. His field notes document how on the eve
of the second Tuesday of every month, he would become
a diligently observant bystander. Strolling around the Bourbon Street neighborhood
(20:08):
in the French Quarter, Browning would often see bats darting
about in the twilight sky above. As he walked the streets.
He began to home in on places where vampires seemed
to hang out typically goth clubs. In terms of personal safety,
it helped that Browning was six foot four and two
(20:30):
hundred and twenty pounds, but he was more concerned for
his study subjects than himself. Outing a vampire could potentially
put their personal and professional lives in jeopardy. After several
nights of observations, the owner of a goth clothing shop
he was visiting subtly pointed to a woman standing with
(20:51):
her two children in one of the aisles. Sidling up
to her, Browning began to tell the woman about his
study of vampires. She told him that she might know
a few, then smiled, revealing two fanglike teeth, which to
Browning looked atrociously sharp. John Edgar Browning managed to make
(21:19):
friendships with a large group of vampires, whom he interviewed
repeatedly before he began his study. He assumed they'd simply
be delusional types who were enamored with vampire fiction and
merely fetishized the lifestyle rather than lived it. Certainly, there
were a few who wore fangs and slept in coffins,
(21:41):
for they weren't the majority. Instead, most of the vampires
he met had little or no belief in the paranormal
at all, and often had only a passing knowledge of
vampire fiction and TV shows like True Blunt. He certainly
didn't expect to find individuals who actually drank human blunt.
(22:03):
Over time, Browning began to feel a great degree of
empathy with people he described as often highly intelligent, who
more often than not, were pursuing the lifestyle because of
a medical condition. Many claimed to suffer from frequent fatigue, headaches,
and excruciating stomach paint, which they believed could only be
(22:24):
treated by drinking another human's blood. They called themselves medical
sanguinarians or medsancs for short. As it happens, there are
many cases in history where human blood was once considered
a bona fide curative. It is claimed that at the
end of the fifteenth century, Pope Innocent the eighths physician
(22:49):
allegedly bled three ten year old boys to death and
fed their still warm blood to the dying pope in
the hope that it might pass on their youthful vitality,
but the treatment failed. Although the story is most likely apocryphal,
there is little doubt that in medieval times, blood was
(23:10):
viewed as enhancing connections between the physical and spirit world,
with the ability to confer strength. People suffering from ailments
would sometimes gather around gallows and collect the warm blood
dripping from recently executed criminals, believing that by drinking the
blood of healthy young men, they would imbibe their youthful
(23:33):
spirit and cure whatever afflicted them. Such practices only fell
out of favour following the Enlightenment, when more prudish sensibilities
took hold. In modern times, real life vampirism has conjured
horrible images, and the practice is seen as taboo in
much of mainstream society, partly through association with gruesome acts,
(23:59):
like the case of Richard Trenton Chase from Sacramento, California,
who in the late nineteen seventies reputedly began his vampire
habit by killing rabbits and drinking their blood. He was
sectioned and spent time in a psychiatric facility, where he
allegedly bit the heads off live birds. He went on
(24:20):
to commit murder, after which he was said to have
drunk his victim's blunt. He later apparently told a fellow
prison inmate that he believed it would improve his health.
In nineteen ninety eight, Rod Ferrell became the youngest person
at the time to be consigned to Florida's Death Row
(24:41):
after being convicted of the double slaying of a couple.
Ferrell had been the leader of a cult that centered
around a teenage gang in Murray, Kentucky, known as the
Vampire Clan. Ferrell claimed to be a five hundred year
old vampire named for Sago, a character he created for
(25:01):
himself after becoming obsessed with the role playing game Vampire
the Masquerade. His death sentence was subsequently reduced to life imprisonment.
Despite its grisly associations, vampirism has persisted among small groups
(25:24):
of people, who, in the Internet era, have built thriving
underground networks for the medsas who John Edgar Browning questioned
the hunger for blood seems to strike around the onset
of puberty. One interviewe told Browning that as a teenager
he felt weak all the time until one day, while
(25:46):
fighting with his cousin, he drew blood, tasted it, and
felt a sudden rush of vitality, which turned into a
compulsive hunger. Another reported being plagued by irritable bow syndrome.
Which only got better when she consumed around seven shot
glasses of blood. While one young, self confessed female vampire
(26:09):
told Browning that following a blood meal, she feels instantly
more mentally alert, and that any joint or muscle pain
she has disappear for up to two weeks at a time.
Browning also learned that the donors for these modern vampires
are most often sympathetic, close friends or relatives, who are
(26:29):
said to understand the perceived need. Both donor and vampire
will first get tested for potentially transmissible diseases such as
HIV and hepatitis before any blood is consumed. He also
learned that vampires make sure to clean their lips, brush
(26:49):
their teeth, and gargle with mouth wash before drinking. One
British vampire described the act of feeding as an impersonal one,
much more like taking a pill than a scene from Twilight.
It's rumored that thriving underground vampire communities exist in most
(27:10):
major cities across the world today, all comprised of everyday
ordinary people. Perhaps the person next to you right now
in the office, on the bus or train, or in
your bed is one of them. Thank you, as ever
(27:32):
for listening to the show. Please subscribe and rate it
if you haven't already done so. You can also now
find us on TikTok at TikTok dot com, forward Slash
at Unexplained Podcast. This episode was written by Diane Hope
and produced by me Richard McLean Smith. Diane is an
audio producer and sound recordist in her own right. You
(27:54):
can find out more about her work at Dianehope dot
com and on Instagram at in The Unexplained is an
AV Club Productions podcast created by Richard McClain smith. All
other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also
produced by me Richard mcclinsmith. Unexplained The book and audiobook
(28:16):
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and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and
feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or
ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps
you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.
(28:38):
You can find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com
and reach us online through Twitter at Unexplained Pod and
Facebook at Facebook dot com. Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast O M.
Hello, it's Richard McLain Smith here, not the impostor you've
been listening to on the podcasts the real one. Join
me for Unexplained TV at YouTube dot com Forward Slash
Unexplained pod. You're listening to Unexplained Season eight, episode twelve,
(00:31):
The Dark Banquet, Part two. When Bram Stoker's Dracula, the
story of an undead Eastern European count who rises zombie
like from a coffin, feasting on the blood of the
living to survive, was first published in eighteen ninety seven,
(00:54):
it became an overnight sensation. Today it is considered the
quintus viential vampire novel, spawning a reverence and fascination for
this most alluring of creatures that has persisted for over
one hundred and twenty five years. Though many of the
characteristics we associate with vampires, such as having no reflection
(01:17):
or not being able to enter a building unless they
are invited in, were invented by Stoker, he also borrowed
a great deal from the ancient folklore and even real
life history of Eastern Europe. There the vampire phenomenon can
be traced back to at least the ninth century Historians
(01:38):
have surmised that many of the folk tales likely evolved
from peculiar or inexplicable deaths that people may have witnessed,
combined with a lack of understanding of the symptoms of
certain diseases and the decomposition process in general. In the
Middle Ages, people who became infected by the plague often
(01:59):
developed ulcers and lesions around their mouths, which would bleed,
making them appear as though they had been drinking blood.
There was also the medical condition known as porphyria, a
disease of the blood resulting from the faulty production of hemoglobin.
Symptoms include abdominal and chest pain, vomiting, and fever. One
(02:22):
form of the disease, known as porphyria cutanee tardia, concentrates
the porphyrins, organic building blocks that help create hemoglobin in
the skin. Exposing the affected skin to sunlight causes the
abnormal pigments to damage surrounding tissues, resulting in severe skin
(02:43):
rashes and blistering. It may also lead to severe anemia,
giving sufferers a pale spectral appearance, along with receding gums,
which leads to the teeth becoming more exposed and causing
canines to take on a fang like appearance, all symptoms
that likely contributed to the stories of why vampires avoid sunlight,
(03:07):
burning up and being destroyed if they are exposed to it.
When people are buried, if the soil is especially acidic
or temperatures are low, the decomposition process can be very slow.
If grave robbers were to dig up a corpse under
such conditions, they might find the body still looking eerily lifelike.
(03:30):
In other cases, uneven rigor mortis sometimes caused corpses to
sit up in the grave, churning blood up the esophagus
which issued from the mouth. People could be forgiven for
thinking that such bodies had come back to life and
were feeding on blood. On occasion, it has been known
(03:52):
for wooden stakes or metal rods to be driven through
the chest of these seemingly errant corpses just to make
absolutely sure that they were dead. In recent decades, a
slew of medieval vampire burials have been unearthed across Eastern Europe.
(04:16):
Bulgaria alone is home to at least one hundred. In
two thousand and four, archaeologist Peta Balabanov discovered six nailed
down skeletons at a site near the eastern Bulgarian town
of de Belt. According to Balabanov, the pagan rite was
practiced in neighboring Serbia and other Balkan countries too, and
(04:40):
that wasn't all. An alternative to staking a corpse lest
it returned from the dead was to behead the body,
then place the head between the knees. Sometimes huge stones
were placed on the corpse too to weigh it down,
or the corpse was buried surrounded or pierced by sharp
agricultural implements. Incredibly, these methods haven't been completely consigned to
(05:06):
the history books, with some regions continuing to harbour these
long held beliefs and practices. In Romania, in two thousand
and four, reports emerged of a woman who'd become strangely
ill after a farmer relative of hers named Toma Petrie
had died. Believing her illness had something to do with Tom,
(05:28):
it fell to six of her family's menfolk to remedy
the situation, and so it was that, in the dead
of night, together they went to the village cemetery and
proceeded to dig up Thoma's corpse. Once unearthed, they removed
its heart and burned it. The ashes were then mixed
(05:48):
with water and given to the sickly relative to drink
it said that after downing it all, she reportedly made
a swift recovery. However, when the news gone out, the
six men involved in tomas exhumation were promptly arrested, prosecuted,
and jailed for six months. Though Toma Petrie was most
(06:11):
likely not a real vampire, the animal kingdom are there's
many vampiric creatures, most being very small by comparison to humans,
though potentially no less intimidating, such as bed bugs, leeches, fleas, ticks,
female mosquitoes, and the especially unsettling lamprey. Only one bird
(06:35):
species is known to drink blood. It lives on the
Galapagous Islands, and far from being a scary predator, it
is an actuality. A diminutive song bird, The vampire finch
is closely related to the sharp beaked ground finch and
normally eats seeds and insects, though it will occasionally peck
(06:55):
at the skin of other birds for nourishment. There's only
one group of mammals that have evolved to live a
life completely on a diet of blood. The creature moves
(07:16):
slowly with a stealthily tread across the bare ground in
the warm, humid blackness. It stops, raises its head and
sniffs the air. It listens intently to an almost imperceptible
sound up ahead, the steady breathing of a person lying
on a bed sleeping deeply. The creature recognizes the exact
(07:41):
pattern of those breathing sounds it has fed on this
victim before. It raises its nose into the air, once more,
sensing the faintest hint of warm air drifting through the
darkened room. Then steadily it moves in closer towards the
sleeping victim, using the minute changes in air temperature to
(08:04):
navigate through the darkness the sleeper's body heat. With surprising agility,
The creature hops up lightly onto the person's chest and
begins moving inexorably towards their neck. Once there, it licks
at a small patch of exposed skin, its saliva, dispensing
(08:26):
a painkiller, a skin softening agent, and an anti coadulant
at the same time. Then, finally, the creature sinks its
strikingly white raisor sharp teeth into the flesh of the
victim's neck. The puncture wound is so small and the
bite so gentle that the victim senses nothing. As the
(08:48):
creature begins to extract its blood. It does not suck. Rather,
the blood flows by capillary action along a pair of
grooves in its tongue, which moves rhythmically unceasingly in a
piston like motion. When it has finally drunk its fill,
the creature simply withdraws as quietly as it came and
(09:10):
vanishes silently back into the moonless night. It's certainly easy
to see how the humble vampire bat provided such rich
inspiration for bram Stoker. Despite its obvious influence on the writer.
The common vampire bat is in fact not found in
Europe at all, but South America, in parts of northern
(09:34):
Mexico and south into Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. The bats
roost in caves, hollow trees, old mine shafts, and abandoned buildings,
emerging after dark to hunt for blood. In common with
other bat species and their fictional human vampire counterparts, vampire
(09:56):
bats are most decidedly lunophobic, which is say, only active
when there's no moon or on a cloudy night. Contrary
to popular belief, vampire bats feed mainly on domestic livestock,
typically cows and goats, and to a lesser extent, on
wild mammals and birds. They are thought to have become
(10:19):
common in the early fifteen hundreds, when there was an
influx of Europeans to the continent, bringing with them a
wealth of domestic animals for the bats to feast on.
Biologically speaking, life as a vampire is tough, and that's
why all known living vampire bats are small. The larger species,
(10:40):
Desmodu rotundus, weighs just under one and a half ounces,
the same mass as a large grape or a small
sachet of sugar. However, a giant vampire bat, appropriately named
in Latin Desmodus straculi, has been found in the fossil record,
with some believing it might yet still be alive, living
(11:03):
undiscovered deep within the Amazon. As it happens, blood is
not a very nutritious food, comprised mostly of water and
proteins with no fat, vampire bats can't store energy like
(11:25):
other mammals, which means they have to consume around fifty
percent of their body weight in blunt each night. Failure
to feed for three days in a row could mean
starvation and death. So how would this all play out
in a real life human vampire transmuted into human form?
(11:45):
That character would be a far cry from the fictional
portrayal of human vampires as terrifying and sadistically sexy, like
Edward Cullen in the Twilight series or the Start From
Interview with a Vampire, for example, due to physiological constraints,
your vampire lover would far more likely be short, barely
(12:08):
five feet tall, and very slight. He wouldn't want to
go out until after dark and only on moonless or
cloudy nights. He need to drink around half his weight
in blood every day or two, and while feeding, the
stomach would swell to such vast proportions he'd be forced
to urinate while drinking. If in line with modern vampire
(12:31):
fictional tradition, you'd chosen to be bitten and had become
a blood drinker yourself. If you weren't able to feed
for two or three days, your vampire compatriot might share
some of the most recent meal with you via the
perhaps unromantic or romantic method depending on your kink of
mouth to mouth regurgitation Vampire bats in the wild commonly
(12:56):
share food this way, both with their young but also
with unrelated adults, in an example of naturally socialist behavior.
It's done on a reciprocal basis. Bats who don't share
eventually become nosferatu non grata in the colony and are
more likely to die from starvation in lean times. Some
(13:20):
more attractive aspects of fictional vampires are biologically accurate, though,
like being amazingly athletic and fast. Some species of vampire
bats can make spectacular acrobatic jumps in any direction, using
powerful pectoral muscles along with elongated thumbs which they use
(13:41):
to push off from the ground, and they can run
up to two meters per second scaled up to small
human size, that is impressively fast. Vampire bats can also
effectively see in the dark, too, using leaflike structures in
their nose to sense differences in temperature, an adaptation that
(14:04):
helps them approach warm blooded prey in complete darkness. This
ability is so sensitive that once a bat gets within
around six inches of its prey, its thermo receptors can
detect the minutest temperature variations on the surface of the skin,
which allow it to locate where the blood vessels lie
(14:26):
just below the skin's surface. Your vampire lover, should you
choose to take one, would also have the most extraordinary
sensitivity to specific sounds. In a two thousand and six
paper published by Udo Gurger and Lutz fe Greep on
(14:49):
the common vampire bat, they explain how they solve the
puzzling problem of how vampire bats have been observed to
relocate and feed on the same human host night after night. Incredibly,
the bats can hear and recognize your breathing. The researchers
(15:09):
found that the bats were able to discriminate between the
breathing patterns of three different human subjects, even when mixed
with additional random breathing sounds, a distinction which human subjects
hearing the same sounds couldn't make. When vampire bats find
a source of blood that tastes good, it appears that
(15:32):
they remember the unique ultrasonic components of that individual's breathing pattern,
using it to repeatedly relocate their favorite supplier. Human vampires
would also have an impressive immune system. Bats have hyperactive
immunity needed to repair the frequent micro injuries to cells
(15:53):
and DNA from having to ramp up their metabolism every
night for flying. In the wild, vampire bats typically live
for around nine years, although in captivity they've been recorded
as surviving to the grand old age of thirty, a
very long life equivalent to roughly one hundred and twenty
human years for such a small mammal. Vampire bats don't
(16:18):
age the way they should by controlling inflammation and slowing
down the aging process, so although your vampire bow would
not be immortal, they would be long lived. Watching a
vampire bat feed can be a compulsively gruesome sight. The
species Deemus young guy typically approaches a bird from below
(16:42):
its roosting perch, moving like a stalking cat, one limb
at a time, taking care to keep the branch between
itself and its prey. Once beneath the bird, it picks
the potential bite sight, usually on the bird's big toe.
After licking the site, it bites gently and begins to feed.
(17:05):
The vampire bat is even more crafty when it feeds
on a chicken. It's been seen hopping onto a hen's back,
imitating the behavior of a mating male chicken, assuming she
is being mounted for another purpose. Altogether, the hen instinctively
adopts a crouching posture while the vampire bat contentedly feeds,
(17:30):
but not all vampires, it seems, are bats or bed bugs,
or works of fiction. It was early evening in the
French quarter of New Orleans, and John Edgar Browning was
(17:53):
feeling apprehensive. Things began as if it were a medical procedure.
Asked Browning to take off his top, then took out
an alcohol swap and wiped a small patch of skin
on Browning's upper back. Next, he made a small puncture
wound with a disposable hobby scalpel and squeezed the flesh
(18:16):
around it until the blood started to flow. Browning's companion
lowered his lips to the wound and began to drink.
He lapped at the blood with his tongue briefly before
cleaning and bandaging the cut. When Browning asked why he
drank so little, the man explained that the blood was
(18:37):
not quite to his taste. It was not as metallic
as he usually liked, the vampire said. He explained that
many factors, including diet, hydration, and blood group or make
subtle differences to the flavor. Browning later reported that he'd
been relieved to get the experience over, especially since he
(18:59):
was a bit of a needle fobe who preferred to
avoid sharp objects. But why had he subjected himself to
such a situation in the first place. John Edgar Browning
has made a career studying and writing about horror, in
particular works of vampire fiction. Currently a professor of Liberal
Arts at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, Georgia,
(19:24):
Browning often works as a consultant on TV documentaries and
films depicting vampires. While a graduate student at Louisiana State University,
as part of his doctoral dissertation research, Browning embarked on
a two year ethnographic study of a community of self
(19:44):
described vampires in New Orleans. He decided that the only
way to conduct genuine research was to immerse himself in
vampire culture. His field notes document how on the eve
of the second Tuesday of every month, he would become
a diligently observant bystander. Strolling around the Bourbon Street neighborhood
(20:08):
in the French Quarter, Browning would often see bats darting
about in the twilight sky above. As he walked the streets.
He began to home in on places where vampires seemed
to hang out typically goth clubs. In terms of personal safety,
it helped that Browning was six foot four and two
(20:30):
hundred and twenty pounds, but he was more concerned for
his study subjects than himself. Outing a vampire could potentially
put their personal and professional lives in jeopardy. After several
nights of observations, the owner of a goth clothing shop
he was visiting subtly pointed to a woman standing with
(20:51):
her two children in one of the aisles. Sidling up
to her, Browning began to tell the woman about his
study of vampires. She told him that she might know
a few, then smiled, revealing two fanglike teeth, which to
Browning looked atrociously sharp. John Edgar Browning managed to make
(21:19):
friendships with a large group of vampires, whom he interviewed
repeatedly before he began his study. He assumed they'd simply
be delusional types who were enamored with vampire fiction and
merely fetishized the lifestyle rather than lived it. Certainly, there
were a few who wore fangs and slept in coffins,
(21:41):
for they weren't the majority. Instead, most of the vampires
he met had little or no belief in the paranormal
at all, and often had only a passing knowledge of
vampire fiction and TV shows like True Blunt. He certainly
didn't expect to find individuals who actually drank human blunt.
(22:03):
Over time, Browning began to feel a great degree of
empathy with people he described as often highly intelligent, who
more often than not, were pursuing the lifestyle because of
a medical condition. Many claimed to suffer from frequent fatigue, headaches,
and excruciating stomach paint, which they believed could only be
(22:24):
treated by drinking another human's blood. They called themselves medical
sanguinarians or medsancs for short. As it happens, there are
many cases in history where human blood was once considered
a bona fide curative. It is claimed that at the
end of the fifteenth century, Pope Innocent the eighths physician
(22:49):
allegedly bled three ten year old boys to death and
fed their still warm blood to the dying pope in
the hope that it might pass on their youthful vitality,
but the treatment failed. Although the story is most likely apocryphal,
there is little doubt that in medieval times, blood was
(23:10):
viewed as enhancing connections between the physical and spirit world,
with the ability to confer strength. People suffering from ailments
would sometimes gather around gallows and collect the warm blood
dripping from recently executed criminals, believing that by drinking the
blood of healthy young men, they would imbibe their youthful
(23:33):
spirit and cure whatever afflicted them. Such practices only fell
out of favour following the Enlightenment, when more prudish sensibilities
took hold. In modern times, real life vampirism has conjured
horrible images, and the practice is seen as taboo in
much of mainstream society, partly through association with gruesome acts,
(23:59):
like the case of Richard Trenton Chase from Sacramento, California,
who in the late nineteen seventies reputedly began his vampire
habit by killing rabbits and drinking their blood. He was
sectioned and spent time in a psychiatric facility, where he
allegedly bit the heads off live birds. He went on
(24:20):
to commit murder, after which he was said to have
drunk his victim's blunt. He later apparently told a fellow
prison inmate that he believed it would improve his health.
In nineteen ninety eight, Rod Ferrell became the youngest person
at the time to be consigned to Florida's Death Row
(24:41):
after being convicted of the double slaying of a couple.
Ferrell had been the leader of a cult that centered
around a teenage gang in Murray, Kentucky, known as the
Vampire Clan. Ferrell claimed to be a five hundred year
old vampire named for Sago, a character he created for
(25:01):
himself after becoming obsessed with the role playing game Vampire
the Masquerade. His death sentence was subsequently reduced to life imprisonment.
Despite its grisly associations, vampirism has persisted among small groups
(25:24):
of people, who, in the Internet era, have built thriving
underground networks for the medsas who John Edgar Browning questioned
the hunger for blood seems to strike around the onset
of puberty. One interviewe told Browning that as a teenager
he felt weak all the time until one day, while
(25:46):
fighting with his cousin, he drew blood, tasted it, and
felt a sudden rush of vitality, which turned into a
compulsive hunger. Another reported being plagued by irritable bow syndrome.
Which only got better when she consumed around seven shot
glasses of blood. While one young, self confessed female vampire
(26:09):
told Browning that following a blood meal, she feels instantly
more mentally alert, and that any joint or muscle pain
she has disappear for up to two weeks at a time.
Browning also learned that the donors for these modern vampires
are most often sympathetic, close friends or relatives, who are
(26:29):
said to understand the perceived need. Both donor and vampire
will first get tested for potentially transmissible diseases such as
HIV and hepatitis before any blood is consumed. He also
learned that vampires make sure to clean their lips, brush
(26:49):
their teeth, and gargle with mouth wash before drinking. One
British vampire described the act of feeding as an impersonal one,
much more like taking a pill than a scene from Twilight.
It's rumored that thriving underground vampire communities exist in most
(27:10):
major cities across the world today, all comprised of everyday
ordinary people. Perhaps the person next to you right now
in the office, on the bus or train, or in
your bed is one of them. Thank you, as ever
(27:32):
for listening to the show. Please subscribe and rate it
if you haven't already done so. You can also now
find us on TikTok at TikTok dot com, forward Slash
at Unexplained Podcast. This episode was written by Diane Hope
and produced by me Richard McLean Smith. Diane is an
audio producer and sound recordist in her own right. You
(27:54):
can find out more about her work at Dianehope dot
com and on Instagram at in The Unexplained is an
AV Club Productions podcast created by Richard McClain smith. All
other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also
produced by me Richard mcclinsmith. Unexplained The book and audiobook
(28:16):
is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon,
Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and other bookstores. Please subscribe to
and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and
feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or
ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps
you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.
(28:38):
You can find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com
and reach us online through Twitter at Unexplained Pod and
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