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Vampires

Vampires, the Lords of the Night

Out of the many horror folk tales, the vampires is the most scary yet popular.

The history of vampires folktales traces back to old old times. While most popular in Eastern Europe, monsters and demons that exhibit vampiric traits can be found in ancient Asian, American and African tales as well.

The vampire myth may stem from many sources. The primary one is, unsurprisingly, death. In the past many diseases were unidentified and unknown, which led to beliefs and speculations that today seem ridiculous. But think- if you've seen the population of an entire village die for reasons you can't point out, are you more likely to explain this by some disease that spread around naturally, or by a monstrosity released upon the village one dark night?

What are vampires?

There are many variations of the original vampire myths. Most of them have to do with the consumption of their victim's blood. In some cultures vampires had red skin, while they were pale in others. Some vampires had a skull for a head, while others had one eye. Some vampires could transform to different animals, from wolves and spiders to bats.

Vampire tales started to become popular with books such as Dracula by Bram Stoker. The modern views of vampires generally classifies them as horror figures. They are undead, since they cannot die naturally of old age, and require blood to live (generally human blood, sometimes animals suffice). Vampires sleep in coffins and are only active during the night, since sunlight weakens them. They also dislike garlic. In addition, vampires can be killed by stabbing them with a wooden stick straight through their heart.

Vampires now belong to the horror cinema genres, as well as comic books. Dracula films are numerous, and Blade the Vampire Hunter is a popular superhero.

Are vampires real?

Hard to say, since they wouldn't publicize themselves. Some people still believe in the dwellers of the night. Others believe that their now extinct, mostly due to the fact that it was impossible to live out of the sunlight in the past, but their descendants and part-vampires can still be found today. So if you meet a person who's pale, hates sunlight and can't stand garlic, you'll know who's to blame.

Long Live the Undead

Photo Credit: Donnaphoto


  1. oLahav saidMon, 28 Jul 2008 19:34:30 -0000 ( Link )

    Do you believe vampires exist, or have existed in the past?

    Have any boogie-fying stories to share?

    Who’s your favourite vampire?

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  2. lechuck saidMon, 28 Jul 2008 19:44:03 -0000 ( Link )

    I don’t believe they exist or existed, but they are certainly a interesting folk-lore. I guess it’s hard to believe that after this long, and the fact that many human’s are fame-seekers that it’s never once popped up in some sort of way. Though there are a lot of blood-drinkers out there who do it for the high.

    Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles are some of the most amazing vampire related stories. If you haven’t read them and are interested Vampires you’d love these books. Interview With a Vampire is just a taste into the depth of vampire lore she goes into.

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  3. acrosstheuniverse saidMon, 28 Jul 2008 19:44:52 -0000 ( Link )

    I do not think vampires exist. A lot of our folklore to me reminds me of a large version of broken telephone; things always get exaggerated. You could even compare this to something like Hannibal, the story of the human cannibal. I say that if these creatures did exist in the past we’d have some sort of way to prove this. However, most know them as just a figment of the imagination, a fiction just like Shelley’s Frankenstein became.

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  4. lechuck saidMon, 28 Jul 2008 19:55:29 -0000 ( Link )

    Wait, you don’t believe in Cannibals?

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  5. acrosstheuniverse saidMon, 28 Jul 2008 19:57:33 -0000 ( Link )

    I think I’m just naive, or rather scared from the movie version. I mean I’ve heard of cannibal tribes, although I doubt someone’s going to just jump me from behind and eat me anytime soon!

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  6. oLahav saidMon, 28 Jul 2008 20:07:16 -0000 ( Link )

    I believe in cannibals… I don’t like to think about them though. Humans aren’t kosher!

    I’ve known a few people who thought I’m a vampire. I can’t stand sunlight, I hate garlic, and I used to be nocturnal for a while. Plus I look a bit scary… don’t worry though, I won’t suck your blood (at least not consciously).

    I don’t really believe vampires exist, but like everything, we can’t prove they don’t, so who knows, right? Maybe they’re hiding among us and come out at night, and nobody ever notices anything, it’s not impossible.

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  7. lechuck saidMon, 28 Jul 2008 20:07:42 -0000 ( Link )

    I don’t think there are serial cannibals… but I’ve read countless of stories about real-live cannibals both in cities and in the wild jungle. That is definitely a reality! Though it’s really uncommon and I doubt there are many tribes anymore that actually do it.

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  8. acrosstheuniverse saidMon, 28 Jul 2008 20:10:43 -0000 ( Link )

    What stories involve cannibals in the city? I feel like I should read up.

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  9. lechuck saidMon, 28 Jul 2008 20:31:38 -0000 ( Link )

    http://stonemirror.wordpress.com/2007/11/11/cannibals-in-the-news-5/

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  10. rkotay saidWed, 30 Jul 2008 21:43:02 -0000 ( Link )

    VERY GRAPHIC!!! DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE ISSUES WITH GRAPHICALLY WRITTEN MATERIAL! VERY GRAPHIC!!!

    The following was copied from the website: http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/cannibals1.html

    There are many incidents of cannibalism and serial cannibalism in the “civilized” world. The Donner Group in the US. Tried to cross the Rocky Mountains during the covered wagon days. Ran out of food. Got caught in the mountains during the winter. Cannibalized to stay alive. I also think of the soccer team on the plane that crashed in the mountain and cannibalized to stay alive.

    This is not all listed on the site. The list would have been too long. When I read the previous posts, I thought of Jeffrey Dahmer. Searching for some info on Dahmer, I found this site. NOT FOR THE FAINT- HEARTED!! YOU’VE BEEN NOTIFIED.

    “Albert Fish: “We had lunch. Grace sat on my lap and kissed me. I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already picked out. When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not, I would get her blood on them. When all was ready I went to the window and called her. Then I hid in the closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked she began to cry and tried to run down the stairs. I grabbed her, and she said she would tell her mama. First I striped her naked. How she did kick, bite and scratch. I choked her to death, then cut her into small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms, cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me nine days to eat her entire body. I did not fuck her, though I could have, had I wished. She died a virgin.”

    “I always had a desire to inflict pain on others and to have others inflict pain on me. I always seemed to enjoy everything that hurts. The desire to inflict pain, that is all that is uppermost… What a thrill that will be if I have to die in the electric chair. It will be the supreme thrill. The only one I haven’t tried…. I am Christ! I am Christ!”

    Jeffrey Dahmer: Found by police in Dahmer’s apartment: Skulls stripped of hair and skin, stashed on the shelves and in the fridge. A pail full of hacked off hands. A torso in the kitchen sink ripped open from the neck to groin. A jar containing a pickled penis, a severed penis lying on the sink. Another severed penis in a lobster pot in the fridge. Two 50 gallon garbage cans filled with rotting torsos.

    Ottis Toole: Just like that Mexican wasn’t going to let me out of the house. I took an axe and chopped him all up. What made me… I’ve been meaning to ask you… that time when I cooked some of these people? Why’d I do that? Henry Lucas: I think it was just the hands doing it. I know a lot of things we done, in human sight, are impossible to believe. OT: When we took ‘em out and cut ‘em up… remember one time I said I wanted me some ribs? Did that make me a cannibal? HL: You wasn’t a cannibal. It’s the force of the devil, something forced on us that we can’t change. There’s no reason denying what we become. We know what we are. Ottis, you know everything you say is going on tape here? OT: I know… Remember how I liked to pour some blood out on them?

    Nina Beletskaya: “I wanted to see this man who could rip open my son’s stomach and then stuff mud in his mouth so that he would not cry out. I wanted to know what he looked like, to know which mother could bear such an animal.” (For more info, see Cannibalism in the USSR)

    Robin Gecht: “Have you ever heard of the ‘Ripper Crew murders’? Robin Gecht, Tommy Kokorolies, Andy Kokorolies, and Eddie Sprietzer made up this horrible group. They killed over 18 women. Robin Gecht was considered ‘the boss’. He was the most evil out of them all. I have recently began corresponding with him. The way they killed these innocent women is unimaginable. They would abduct a female, cut off one of her breast, and would take turns having sex with the open wound. After they would take the severed breast home and each would masturbate into the fresh portion of the breast. Then they would cut the breast into little pieces and then eat it.”

    Georg Karl Grossmann: Another post-WWI-German degenerate that made a living selling human flesh. Georg, a horrifying individual, was acquainted with every kind of perversion, even bestiality. A former butcher, after nights of heavy drinking, he would bring prostitutes home, have sex with them, and hack them into pieces. The next day he would peddle their flesh as beef or pork. He was arrested in August, 1921, when his landlord summoned the police to his door following a loud altercation. Inside his pad they found a freshly butchered lass ready to be chopped up. They also found evidence of at least three other divvied up girls. The mad butcher laughed when he was given the death sentence and proceeded to hang himself in jail.

    Karl Denke: A German innkeeper from Silesia with a taste for the “long pig,” Denke butchered at least thirty of his lodgers and kept their pickled remains in the basement of his inn. When he was arrested in 1924 he told police that for the past three years he had eaten only human flesh.

    Fritz Haarmann: Haarmann stalked the train stations of post-WWI Hannover searching for young boys. He enjoyed biting his prey to death and making sausages with their remains. Always the enterprising killer, he sold the meat and clothing of his victims in the local black markets.

    Joaquim Kroll: Kroll operated in the Ruhr-area of Germany for over 20 years to the tune of 14 dead. In the mid-sixties, after his six murder, he tasted human flesh and discovered an affinity for it. On July 3, 1976, police entered his apartment and found plastic bags full of human flesh in the refrigerator as well as a stew simmering on the stove with carrots, potatoes, and the hand of a missing four-year-old girl.

    Stanley Dean Baker: When Stanley Dean Baker was stopped in Monterey County, California, for possible involvement in a hit-and-run accident, he shocked the arresting officer when he uttered the highly unusual phrase: “I have a problem, I’m a cannibal.” To prove his point he pulled out of his pocket a handful of human fingers. The fingers, which Baker had been snacking on, belonged to the hand of a missing 22-year-old social worker named James Schlosser.

    Baker - not a shy cannibal - boasted to police about eating Schlosser’s heart raw, and claimed to have developed a taste for human flesh while undergoing electroshock therapy for a nervous disorder. A prototypical hippie Satanist, Baker is one of the growing number of modern cannibals currently making headlines worldwide.

    Issei Sagawa: While taking classes at the famed Sorbonne, Issei Sagawa, the son of a wealthy Tokyo industrialist, invited fellow student Renee Hartevelt to his apartment to discuss literature. Once the unsuspecting “dinner guest” arrived, the slightly-built Sagawa shot her in the back of the neck, had sex with her corpse, and started nibbling on her nose and part of a breast. “It had no smell or taste, and melted in my mouth like raw tuna,” he wrote in In the Fog, his post-cannibal best-selling account of his dinner with Renee. “Finally I was eating a beautiful white woman, and thought nothing was so delicious!”

    In custody Sagawa was found incompetent to stand trial and placed in the Paul Guiraud asylum in Paris. Through family connections he was transferred to a hospital in Tokyo. And within fifteen months of hospitalization his influential father secured his release. By then, Sagawa had become a national celebrity, an accomplished author, and his “Parisian affair” was parodied in the song “Too Much Blood” by the Rolling Stones.

    Daniel Rakowitz: In 1989 Daniel Rakowitz cannibalized his girlfriend, Monica Beerle, after accidentally killing her during a sadistic beating in her apartment in New York’s Lower East Side. “I killed her and boiled her head,” he told a friend, “Then I made soup out of her brains. It tasted pretty good.” A small-time drug dealer and devil-worshipper, Rakowitz enjoyed his cannibalistic trangression so much that he scrawled on the door of his apartment, Is it soup yet? Welcome to Charlie Gein’s Ranch East… Home of the Fine Young Cannibals.

    Gary Heidnik: Gary Heidnik’s cannibalism grew out of his abusive relationship to women and his willingness to break all taboos. Heidnik, Philadelphia’s most dysfunctional citizen, amassed a small fortune playing the stock market while running his own church and gathering a harem of sex slaves whom he fed dog food and kept chained to water pipes in the basement of his home. When two of the slaves died, Gary, the resourceful type, dismembered and cannibalized them. In an inspired twist of cruelty, he also chopped up pieces of their flesh, mixed it with dog food and fed it to his other captives.

    Dale Merle Nelson: A sexually dysfunctional lumberjack, Dale fought his impotence with violence and liquor. On September 5, 1970, tanked up with booze and hatred, he drove to his wife’s relatives’ house where he killed a women and her seven-year-old daughter. Feeling a bit hungry, he slit the young girl’s gut and munched on the half-digested food in her entrails. He then went to a neighbor’s house and killed all six inside, sodomizing an eight-year-old girl as she died. Feeling hungry again, he returned to the first house and stole the corpse he previously had for dinner.

    Marcelo Costa de Andrade: Over a nine-month period Marcelo tallied 14 dead in the streets of Rio de Janeiro. His victims of choice were poor street urchins whom he attracted to deserted areas, raped and strangled. He also practiced necrophilia, decapitated one of the boys, crushed the head of another, and, in two occasions, drank their blood. Later he confessed his vampiric thirst was merely “to become as beautiful as them.”

    Cannibalism in Sebastopol: “These were people who cut up and ate corpses, who killed their own children and ate them, I saw one. She had been brought to the district centre under convoy. Her face was human but her eyes were those of a wolf.”

    Cannibalism in North Korea: On October 7, 1997, ABC News reported that starving North Koreans are now resorting to cannibalism for sustenance. “People are going insane with hunger. They even kill and eat their own infants,” said a North Korean military officer who fled to China with his family. Another North Korean who got out said that in his home city of Wonson a husband and wife were executed in May for murdering 50 children and storing their salted flesh in a hut.

    New reports of cannibalism in North Korea have surfaced in a TV documentary about the 200,000 orphans being raised by this Communist state. Carla Garapedian, producer of Children of the Secret State, a BBC-Channel 4 co-production, said that her interviews with refugees escaping North Korea revealed, “acts of unspeakable barbarism not seen since Pol Pot’s Cambodia”. In an article for the Japanese Daily Yomiuri newspaper she writes: “(The) footage is shocking. Starving children abandoned by the state. Orphans thrown into state asylums and left to die.” According to the filmmaker farmers have been ordered by the government stop growing food and grow opium. “The opium would then be processed by the state into heroin and then sold abroad. The proceeds would go to arm the military.”

    In her article the documentarian describes the drawings of 15-year-old Jang Gil-su, who with his family fled North Korea and is now living in China. The pictures, given to Garapedian by a refugee support group in Seoul, depict families eating pine bark, rats, snakes and anything else to stay alive. “All of the North Koreans we interviewed knew about it. Jang’s picture of a dismembered child in a cooking pot says more than any of the numbing statistics,” Garapedian wrote.”

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  11. lechuck saidWed, 30 Jul 2008 22:05:27 -0000 ( Link )

    Wow….

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  12. rkotay saidThu, 31 Jul 2008 02:14:28 -0000 ( Link )

    I agree.

    I struggled with myself on if I should post that material or not.

    I find it difficult to read and very disturbing that people like this actually exist. .

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  13. oLahav saidThu, 31 Jul 2008 14:54:26 -0000 ( Link )

    Scary stuff… now I am worried about someone jumping me and trying to have a bite! Luckily I’m skinny, all bones, nobody would want to eat me.

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