Speaker 1: Monster House Presents. It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever
Speaker 1: seen before.
Speaker 2: A giant, hairy creature Part eight parts.
Speaker 3: In Luckness, a twenty four mile long bottomless lake in
Speaker 3: the Highlands of Scotland.
Speaker 2: It's a creature known as the Luckness Monster.
Speaker 3: Monster tal.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
Speaker 5: I'm Blake Smith.
Speaker 1: And I'm Karen Spooky.
Speaker 5: Greetings.
Speaker 4: It's finally October again and we're kicking off the month
Speaker 4: where everyone else finally remembers the gothic vibe that Monster
Speaker 4: Talkers hold deer all year. And it's time to start
Speaker 4: season four with a friendly little chat with Karen and
Speaker 4: her husband Matt Baxter about our theme for October Vampires.
Speaker 4: We'll be talking about a Croatian vampire whose name maybe
Speaker 4: Arnold Paoli Pioli or maybe it's Pool, who was hinted
Speaker 4: at in our previous episode with Professor Nick Groom. I
Speaker 4: was amused to notice in preparing for this episode that
Speaker 4: Arnold was a hi duke, a word I previously only
Speaker 4: recognized from the lyrics of the viral song Dragons Tied
Speaker 4: Dente aka the Newma Numa Song. When they have this
Speaker 4: line helloo heiduk, which means hello, Hello, I am an outlaw,
Speaker 4: So we'll be getting into his outlaw story and how
Speaker 4: it ties in with our modern understanding of vampires. But
Speaker 4: this also got me thinking about stuff that I read
Speaker 4: as a monster kid growing up, like the idea that hypertrichosis,
Speaker 4: or the hair growing medical condition behind famous sideshow figures
Speaker 4: like Julia Pastrana or Jojo the Dogface Boy might be
Speaker 4: behind werewolf stories.
Speaker 5: And then there's that whole.
Speaker 4: Idea that vampires might be explained by the disease porphyria.
Speaker 4: But where did that idea come from? I mean, I
Speaker 4: knew about those two diseases, as well as neurofibromatosis, which
Speaker 4: is the condition that John Merrick the Elephant Man may
Speaker 4: have had, all from reading books about monsters and weird
Speaker 4: medical conditions growing up.
Speaker 5: But it appears that the first paper.
Speaker 4: Connecting these diseases to monster lore was a journal paper
Speaker 4: called on Porphyria and the Eteology of Werewolves by Lee
Speaker 4: Illis in nineteen sixty four, And then in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 4: Canadian scientist David Dolphin suggested that porphyria might be behind
Speaker 4: vampire legends.
Speaker 5: Porphyria is a.
Speaker 4: Horrific disease, and we don't need to invoke this rare
Speaker 4: genetic condition to explain vampires more accurately. The condition can
Speaker 4: resemble some of the worst effects of what movie vampires
Speaker 4: go through when they're exposed to sunlight. It's a fascinating
Speaker 4: set of symptoms that do overlap with some vampire lore.
Speaker 4: But it's such a rare genetic condition and so appallingly
Speaker 4: debilitating that it's a bit absurd to imagine anyone suffering
Speaker 4: from this condition lived long enough to become the basis
Speaker 4: of a vampire legend. Yet invoking the word porphyria outside
Speaker 4: of a medical milieu is kind of a shiboleth that
Speaker 4: you're plugged into eighties vampire books. Anyway, We've got several
Speaker 4: vampire episodes in a row for you, and now let's
Speaker 4: get onto the monstrutle. Okay, first of all, listeny, welcome
Speaker 4: back to another Monster Talk tonight. We have Matt Baxter
Speaker 4: joining us. Hey Matt, and Hey, we're going to be
Speaker 4: continuing because you know, by the time this episode comes out,
Speaker 4: we will have officially inch into two things. First of all,
Speaker 4: the spooky season of October, and second of all, our
Speaker 4: fourth season considering that our first season was more than
Speaker 4: two hundred episodes, that's such a weirdo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, things up nowadays.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so well we're going like fifty two to fifty
Speaker 4: three episodes of season, so that's pretty cool and fantastic.
Speaker 4: So we'll beat This will be season four, episode one.
Speaker 4: And we just got through talking to Professor Nick Groom
Speaker 4: about vampires.
Speaker 5: But even though we.
Speaker 1: Could sound like we just got through, no, no.
Speaker 5: I'm just saying, it was like it's fresh.
Speaker 4: No, it was absolutely delightful, and I felt like we
Speaker 4: could have talked to him for several more hours and
Speaker 4: still just spent the whole time learning new things.
Speaker 6: And that's that's funny, because I think all of us
Speaker 6: have been lifelong fans of vampires, except for I told
Speaker 6: you about my recent discovery that my wife.
Speaker 5: As well that I guess, I don't know how else
Speaker 5: to put it. She's a vampire racist.
Speaker 1: She is more of a fan of were Wolve's correct.
Speaker 5: I think she likes were wolves. Yes. In fact, she
Speaker 5: likes to say that the first movie we saw.
Speaker 4: Together was an American werewolf in London. So she likes
Speaker 4: to say is that Well, it's one of those things
Speaker 4: that it's an important part of our marriage lore. It's
Speaker 4: also broussly inaccurate because it's the second movie we watched together.
Speaker 4: But that's another story.
Speaker 1: She oh, well, won't get into that. That would truly
Speaker 1: be monstrous.
Speaker 5: I don't want to open those old wounds again, arose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I guess why are we talking about vampires
Speaker 1: again since we spoke to Nick Groom. Well, I've got
Speaker 1: a vampire related project that's coming up, and this is
Speaker 1: Halloween season two. And as you say, most people love vampires.
Speaker 5: Most many, many people. That's right, but not my wife.
Speaker 4: So I guess I could say whatever because she won't
Speaker 4: listen to this because it's got vampires in the title.
Speaker 1: So well, then she'll listen to this to see if
Speaker 1: you're talking a bit about her.
Speaker 5: She doesn't even know I have a podcast.
Speaker 1: It's kind of kind of like that with my family too.
Speaker 1: Even though Matt sometimes appears on here, that doesn't make
Speaker 1: any difference.
Speaker 2: I thought this was a joke on Blake that we
Speaker 2: really don't have.
Speaker 4: Sorry, I've been talking into a bucket for since two
Speaker 4: thousand and nine.
Speaker 5: What what?
Speaker 1: Yeah? We have spoken about vamp? Yeah, vampires, back to
Speaker 1: the topic. I think we did a live episode on
Speaker 1: vampires once before, speaking about our favorite vampires. Yeah, and so,
Speaker 1: I mean it all comes back to Osbourne Osborne on
Speaker 1: Usborn Guides, because that's where I first heard about vampires.
Speaker 1: I mean it was probably an Osmosis thing, hearing about
Speaker 1: vampire movies Dracula, And that was one of my first
Speaker 1: encounters with the vampires, was in one of these supernatural
Speaker 1: guides on vampires where wolves and demons. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: because Blake, you and I kind of came together because
Speaker 1: of stories like Jeff the Talkie Mongoose and Lord Dufferin's
Speaker 1: ghost story. And I think that this was a connection
Speaker 1: that Matt and I made that we both came across
Speaker 1: this particular tale, the story of a fellow called we
Speaker 1: thought it was we both thought it was Arnold Paol
Speaker 1: And we've recently been hearing more and more people pronounce
Speaker 1: his name is Arnold paul.
Speaker 5: Ah interesting, correct, Matt?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So.
Speaker 4: Well, all vampires are pale, pale, Yeah, at least in
Speaker 4: the South they are this, you know.
Speaker 1: But Matt, how did you hear about on a poll?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: I I don't think I had like one particular place.
Speaker 2: It was probably in a book that that I might
Speaker 2: have checked out from the school library or something, but
Speaker 2: it wasn't from the uh the Born books like you guys.
Speaker 2: You guys had all the cool stuff. But I remember
Speaker 2: reading about it and thinking, this is the coolest thing ever.
Speaker 2: It's like this, this was a real vampire. And it's
Speaker 2: interesting because I had written a piece of Highlander fan
Speaker 2: fiction as we.
Speaker 5: All do, as we all do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's pretty pretty average, you know, I'm I
Speaker 2: know what I'm talking about it, But yeah, I thought, okay,
Speaker 2: this is great. You got these these immortals and everything.
Speaker 2: So what would happen if if somebody died and came
Speaker 2: back to life and thought that they were actually a
Speaker 2: vampire and not just like one of these immortals, you know,
Speaker 2: because why would they know? And what horrible things would
Speaker 2: they you know, get up to not knowing any better?
Speaker 2: And so yeah, I wrote this whole whole story. You know,
Speaker 2: Duncan McLeod, you know, and he has his little flashbacks.
Speaker 2: He flashed back to that time when he and Arnold
Speaker 2: were on that Hey rack or they trailer and he
Speaker 2: fell off and became an immortal and everyone thought he
Speaker 2: was a vampire, and it was a really fun little story,
Speaker 2: and how he had to Trent now in modern day,
Speaker 2: had to go track him down because he's still alive
Speaker 2: and helped his other you know, new be adjust to
Speaker 2: life as an immortal.
Speaker 5: So it was just a vampire, yeah, possibly, you know.
Speaker 4: You know, I haven't seen any Elvis is still Alive
Speaker 4: stories in a long time. But those, man, those were
Speaker 4: all up in the eighties. I mean they were all
Speaker 4: over the Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh I remember that a kid because what his middle
Speaker 1: name was misspelled on his tomb and all kinds of
Speaker 1: folklore about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I still always will love the Tommy Lee
Speaker 2: Jones comment in Men in Black that he didn't die,
Speaker 2: he just went home.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, so with the story of Arnold Paul Blake, are
Speaker 1: you familiar with it?
Speaker 5: No, please tell me about it?
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I was going to read from the book
Speaker 1: if that's okay.
Speaker 5: That's sure, I mean from the Osbourne book pages long.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I've got it here, accompanied by all of.
Speaker 5: The fan I know. The illustrations are.
Speaker 4: Also, it's so funny because I think it's I've definitively
Speaker 4: come down that my introduction to Jeff had to be
Speaker 4: from the Osbourne books.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: So, uh, it's just funny because there's these small, little
Speaker 4: children's books, yet they managed to cramp so much.
Speaker 5: Legendary coarse material there. I mean, and sure you can
Speaker 5: learn more, but I mean.
Speaker 4: Golly, they get the basics really good.
Speaker 5: They do a great job.
Speaker 4: Or as my wife will say, they get the basics
Speaker 4: very well.
Speaker 1: So yeah, reading from this story, so that the story
Speaker 1: of Arnold Paul. In seventeen twenty nine, a young soldier
Speaker 1: from Serbia named Arnold Paul was sent to a remote
Speaker 1: and haunted part of Greece. One night, he was viciously
Speaker 1: attacked by a vampire. He knew that unless he acted quickly,
Speaker 1: he would die and become a vampire himself. The only
Speaker 1: solution was for Arnold to find his attacker's grave, eat
Speaker 1: some earth from it, and smear his body with the
Speaker 1: vampire's blood. Although he carried out this remedy, Arnold was
Speaker 1: so afraid that he left the army and returned to
Speaker 1: his home. Arnold settled on his small farm in the
Speaker 1: village of and I think it's Medvega. It's got a
Speaker 1: little kind of diacritic on the d and have asked
Speaker 1: a Serbian friend to if that's pronunciation. He said, yeah,
Speaker 1: so we'll go with that.
Speaker 4: If any of our Serbian listeners want to correct us,
Speaker 4: you know how to contact us, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Please please do and they will ah so, and he
Speaker 1: seemed to be quite unharmed when he returned. However, during
Speaker 1: the harvest, he fell from a hay cart and died
Speaker 1: soon thereafter. He was buried in the local churchyard, but
Speaker 1: he did not rest there in peace. Within a month,
Speaker 1: Arnold was seen wandering the village at night. People who
Speaker 1: saw his spirit became very ill, and four died within
Speaker 1: a few days. Panic spread and it was decided Arnold's
Speaker 1: body must be dug up and checked for any signs
Speaker 1: of vampirism. This gruesome task was carried out one gray
Speaker 1: winter morning, about ten weeks after Arnold's funeral. The grave
Speaker 1: digger dug up the coffin, watched by officials from the
Speaker 1: capital city and army doctors, as well as local dignitaries.
Speaker 1: When the coffin was opened, what it revealed made everyone
Speaker 1: certain that they were dealing with a vampire. Arnold had
Speaker 1: moved to one side of the coffin, his hair and
Speaker 1: nails had grown, and his mouth was red with fresh blood.
Speaker 1: He looked like a living man. Arnold's corpse had to
Speaker 1: be dealt with in one of the traditional ways for
Speaker 1: ending vampirism before his soul could rest quietly. The villagers
Speaker 1: scattered garlic over Arnold's body and said prayers for his spirit.
Speaker 1: A steak of white whitehorn wood was driven into his
Speaker 1: heart with one blow, warm crimson blood gushed from the wound,
Speaker 1: as if Arnold was still alive, although he had been
Speaker 1: buried over two months. The corpse writhed in agony and
Speaker 1: let out a dreadful yell. The four victims of Arnold's
Speaker 1: nighttime attacks were dug up in case they had become
Speaker 1: vampires too. The reports of this epidemic of the undead
Speaker 1: in Medvega do not mention the condition of these corpses. However,
Speaker 1: it seems that they were vampires, as they were dealt
Speaker 1: with in the same way as Arnold had been stabbed
Speaker 1: by white thorn stakes and beheaded with a spade. Finally,
Speaker 1: all the vampires were thrown into a roaring bonfire and
Speaker 1: burned in the fierce flames. Fire was supposed to be
Speaker 1: the ultimate weapon for destroying vampires. A pile of smoldering
Speaker 1: ashes is impossible to revive. Once deprived of an earthly home,
Speaker 1: the vampire's soul was forced to go to the spirit world.
Speaker 1: Although all the vampires had been staked, burned, and reburied,
Speaker 1: within six years, a new epidemic broke out in the village.
Speaker 1: Once again, people were taken ill and became pale and weak,
Speaker 1: as if from a loss of blood. They died suddenly,
Speaker 1: just like Arnold's victims. The villagers now knew how to
Speaker 1: deal with the danger, and another party of investigators arrived
Speaker 1: from Belgrade. They examined every suspicious grave and found many
Speaker 1: corpses in a vampiric state. These included children and even
Speaker 1: small babies as well as adults. All were full of
Speaker 1: fresh blood so they would delt within the usual way.
Speaker 1: The ashes were then thrown into a river to carry
Speaker 1: them away. People suspected the new epidemic being caused by
Speaker 1: eating meat from animals once attacked by Arnold Paul. So
Speaker 1: that's the story, and I think it really encompasses a
Speaker 1: lot of that kind of Bulkan law you know prior
Speaker 1: to Dracula, following tales of Vlad the Impaler, But it
Speaker 1: really does cover a lot of the kind of peasant
Speaker 1: law as opposed to the vampires of fiction.
Speaker 2: I think it's also interesting that it also implies that
Speaker 2: there were vampire hunters. They called them investigators there, but yes.
Speaker 1: That's true, and I do wonder about that because I'm
Speaker 1: hearing a lot about even museums finding vampire hunter kits,
Speaker 1: and certainly a lot of YouTube videos, and I'm just
Speaker 1: a little bit suspicious about them. Do you know anything
Speaker 1: about vampire hunters?
Speaker 4: Blake, and yeah, so spoilers. It appears that most of
Speaker 4: the kids, well as far as I know, all the
Speaker 4: kids that have been identified, appear to be late Victorian
Speaker 4: recreations of what they think they should have looked like,
Speaker 4: which is disappointing because they look frigging cool. I know,
Speaker 4: Joe Nichol has a really nice one, and I've seen
Speaker 4: a lot of them in museums and it's just kind
Speaker 4: of sad because they look like authentically like they would
Speaker 4: be something. Well, they look like movie props. They look
Speaker 4: exactly like you would expect a vampire hunter to have.
Speaker 4: But they're mostly in response to sort of the rise
Speaker 4: of vampires in fiction, and as we kind of discussed
Speaker 4: in our previous episode, in the late eighteen hundreds, right yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: Not like we'd have too much leftover from the medieval
Speaker 1: era anyway.
Speaker 5: But well, true enough.
Speaker 4: But you know, it's interesting because I think in an
Speaker 4: interview with Professor Groom, he talked about the Habsburg dynasty
Speaker 4: and that they had been responsible for doing investigations into
Speaker 4: Eastern European vampires, and this is one of the two
Speaker 4: cases that that was kind of famous. I guess the
Speaker 4: other was Peter Blagojevich. I'm sure I'm slaughtering that name
Speaker 4: in the same way that he.
Speaker 5: Slaughtered as victims.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, but it's the whole idea of predates
Speaker 1: on he does.
Speaker 5: He does.
Speaker 4: But my understanding is that that they're both Habsburg related cases, that,
Speaker 4: in other words, that that there were official royal investigations,
Speaker 4: which kind of ties up all these sort of I
Speaker 4: guess a lot of people who read modern understanding of
Speaker 4: these vampire cases read them as sort of primitive understanding
Speaker 4: of forensics, like the first time people really start to
Speaker 4: pay attention to what happens post mortem to people.
Speaker 5: So there's there's a really interesting sort.
Speaker 4: Of science tie in there, because we know way more
Speaker 4: now about what happens when people die and how that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but at the same time we've got things like
Speaker 1: supercarbra sightings and cattle mutilations.
Speaker 4: And I'm not saying we're smarter, but yeah, that's definitely true.
Speaker 1: Just to get back to the vampire sure, sure, yeah quickly,
Speaker 1: Matt made a good observation. Are you watching a video
Speaker 1: on one of them, and you're looking at the little
Speaker 1: containers that they had of aztec and little cute bottles
Speaker 1: full of poisons and things.
Speaker 2: The person that was kind of showing this kit, which
Speaker 2: did look pretty authentic and everything in terms of aged
Speaker 2: they said that this was the kind of thing that
Speaker 2: was marketed to travelers that were going to strange lands,
Speaker 2: and that seems really act like a great demographic to
Speaker 2: buy a vampire hunter kit. That seems like the perfect
Speaker 2: person because they don't know what they're coming into in
Speaker 2: this this new country. And if you've got somebody there going,
Speaker 2: oh no, no, trust this, you know you'll you're gonna
Speaker 2: need this. This seems like a great market right there.
Speaker 2: Still not authentic, but you know, an authentic fraud from
Speaker 2: from the get from.
Speaker 5: The get go.
Speaker 2: Now the thing is is I noticed that, you know
Speaker 2: the crosses that were also steaks of wooden stakes at
Speaker 2: the end were kind of held in the box with
Speaker 2: these clips that you had to kind of undo and
Speaker 2: really clumsy to get them out. And I'm thinking, Okay,
Speaker 2: if a vampires like you know, come and at that's
Speaker 2: probably not the best way to have those in there.
Speaker 2: And then like they had these candle holders and stuff,
Speaker 2: you know that you had to you know, there was
Speaker 2: some assembly required, and I think that's another great thing
Speaker 2: to have, is the vampires upon you. And then they
Speaker 2: showed this little packet of matches that you could strike
Speaker 2: a match and because fire is not the vampire's friend,
Speaker 2: was how it was stated, and I thought, oh lord,
Speaker 2: the only thing the vampire could do in its defense
Speaker 2: is to go.
Speaker 1: Maybe they can't.
Speaker 2: Well, but so yeah, just a lot of it just
Speaker 2: seemed absurd from the get go.
Speaker 5: But they are the coolest looking kids.
Speaker 2: I would love to have one of those kids, but
Speaker 2: I know that they are all fraud.
Speaker 4: Well, I think the lesson there is that LARPing did
Speaker 4: not begin in the twentieth century. I mean people were
Speaker 4: role playing way back in the day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they were out metal LARPing.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't know where we want to go
Speaker 1: to from here, because I just put in some notes
Speaker 1: for kind of general discussion, but we kind of started
Speaker 1: with the story and well I didn't take it anywhere
Speaker 1: we want to ticket Well, one of the.
Speaker 4: Ways I want to I was going to say, I
Speaker 4: wanted to.
Speaker 5: Talk about the latning.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well there is that whole flattening thing exactly talking
Speaker 4: about how you know, I think it's a very European
Speaker 4: thing to make everything that drinks blood a vampire, you know.
Speaker 5: And there's another thing.
Speaker 4: In fact, we'll probably dig into that more because I'm
Speaker 4: very interested in talking about some of the other so
Speaker 4: called vampires.
Speaker 5: Maybe we should do.
Speaker 4: Let's try to make an episode this month on Asian
Speaker 4: vampire pyrrhic creatures. I'm not willing to call them vampires,
Speaker 4: but they certainly they sort of fall in that category.
Speaker 5: And that concludes this.
Speaker 4: The Filipino monsters the head comes off and searches for blood,
Speaker 4: and the I think it's been Malaysian, Hey why not
Speaker 4: both at the penn and Gal is the Malaysian version
Speaker 4: of this monster, and the Myna non Gal is the
Speaker 4: Filipino version of this monster. And we'll probably be talking
Speaker 4: more about them in future episodes. And then the Chinese
Speaker 4: hopping vampires, all kinds of varieties.
Speaker 1: Well, I wonder if we can find an expert in
Speaker 1: that time to talk about that, because that does make
Speaker 1: me think of earlier stories and talking with Professor Groom,
Speaker 1: we were talking predominantly about vampires kind of eighteenth century
Speaker 1: and beyond, and yet there are a lot of claims
Speaker 1: that vampires are universals and that they have existed across
Speaker 1: time and space. And from all the reading and research
Speaker 1: that Matt and I have been doing, we hear about
Speaker 1: ancient vampires and always have that link, as you say,
Speaker 1: Blake with to blood, that connection to to blood somehow,
Speaker 1: either drinking blood or being bloodthirsty, something like that. But
Speaker 1: a lot of the ancient vampires don't necessarily seem to
Speaker 1: be the kind of it's a word I'm looking for,
Speaker 1: but just the canonical, canonical vampires, classic classic vampires.
Speaker 4: I've seen people describe Lamia and strigas like these are
Speaker 4: bloodsucking creatures, but they're not vampires.
Speaker 5: They're demons or something else in it.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's what I'm thinking of too, because you, Matt
Speaker 1: and I've been talking about Lilith and La Mache too.
Speaker 1: Going back to Jewish mythology and Mesopotamian demons as well,
Speaker 1: and yet they're a lot of sources will say, well,
Speaker 1: they they're the earliest vampires because they would drink the
Speaker 1: blood of children or attack pregnant women and children.
Speaker 2: So maybe we need to have a.
Speaker 1: Content noted here as well. But even Goddess is like
Speaker 1: segment from ancient Egypt, and it's claimed that she's one
Speaker 1: of the earliest references to vampiism, that she was the
Speaker 1: blood drinking goddess of war. So I don't know where
Speaker 1: do you draw the line in.
Speaker 4: I don't know where to draw the line, but I
Speaker 4: we should probably see if Joe Laycock would come and
Speaker 4: talk with us, because he's done a lot of research
Speaker 4: about vampire culture. And I think a lot of this
Speaker 4: erupts after the creation of Vampire the Masquerade, the game
Speaker 4: from White Wolf.
Speaker 2: Awesome game.
Speaker 4: Awesome game, and it sort of kicked off a really
Speaker 4: well what's interesting, I don't know how many A big
Speaker 4: chunk of it is people identifying with vampire culture and
Speaker 4: wanting to larp it full time and like like becoming
Speaker 4: full time vampires and saying that that's their sort of
Speaker 4: that's their thing, and they some of them literally drink blood.
Speaker 4: And then there are people people who would call themselves
Speaker 4: psychic vampires.
Speaker 5: Who who you know and.
Speaker 1: Colin, yes, his name from Colin Robinson. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: thinking in the Shadows.
Speaker 4: Oh, I see from what we're do in the Shadows
Speaker 4: the TV show, right and not the movie.
Speaker 5: And also there are people who.
Speaker 4: I mean they they self identified that way and they
Speaker 4: take it quite seriously.
Speaker 5: So I think it.
Speaker 4: You know, Lake Cox done a lot of work on that,
Speaker 4: and I'm curious about what of that.
Speaker 5: Predates the game.
Speaker 4: I mean because obviously the vampires are obviously far older
Speaker 4: than the game, but the game, well.
Speaker 1: When did the game come out? Do you have any idea?
Speaker 5: Had to be late eadies right, Uh, ninety one ninety one.
Speaker 4: I game with people who worked for White Wolf, so
Speaker 4: and my brother in law used to work for White Wolf.
Speaker 4: So I've got I've got lots of the gaming side,
Speaker 4: I know real well.
Speaker 5: But but but it crept out into the real world.
Speaker 5: I mean, people.
Speaker 4: Actively participated in vampire culture in a way that is
Speaker 4: i'd call it LARPing, but they seem to really identifies
Speaker 4: that were really happening, So I don't you know, and
Speaker 4: when you're really drinking blood?
Speaker 5: What are you doing?
Speaker 1: Well? I think we should also mention Brian Sharpless's book
Speaker 1: The Monsters on the Couch. Oh yeah, yeah, and he
Speaker 1: talks about what was it called Matt Renfield syndrome.
Speaker 2: Renfield syndrome, Yes, white man, look at his dye. Why
Speaker 2: the name's gone crazy?
Speaker 1: But apparently as part of that Matt correct me if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, people will have a bloodlust or want to
Speaker 1: actually drink blood and you know, physically go in search
Speaker 1: of blood, and that it can be even a kind
Speaker 1: of sexual paraphilia.
Speaker 2: Woh yeah, absolutely, absolutely, that's hot.
Speaker 1: Yes, you too may have this syndrome.
Speaker 2: So, but it's not only you know, these these things
Speaker 2: that are that are interesting. I want to talk about how,
Speaker 2: you know, vampires were terribly feared throughout that period when
Speaker 2: they were just folklore, and then when it became fiction
Speaker 2: with with brom Stoker it again, people were terrified through
Speaker 2: the years, the Hammer films, they were all horror movies.
Speaker 2: They were terrifying, and then we reached a point where
Speaker 2: suddenly vampires are not so terrifying anymore. And and with me,
Speaker 2: I mean I as a little kid loved Dracula.
Speaker 5: He was the.
Speaker 2: Coolest thing in the world, and you had like on
Speaker 2: the Monsters, and then you had the count from Sesame Street,
Speaker 2: and it's like we were kind of the little kids
Speaker 2: were now getting exposure this vampire thing without it being
Speaker 2: terrifying anymore. And so then suddenly what happens, Boom, Bob's
Speaker 2: your uncle dry Sparkle. You know, it just you know,
Speaker 2: it just went through this really weird process where suddenly
Speaker 2: vampires aren't scary anymore, but they're still incredibly beloved, but
Speaker 2: now we identify with them, we want to be them,
Speaker 2: and it's it's no longer this thing that we're terrified of.
Speaker 2: You know, we don't keep garlic in the house because
Speaker 2: we're trying to see.
Speaker 1: Vampire anyway romantic. And that is a question I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask Professor Groom. We just kind of run out
Speaker 1: of time, but I wanted to say, it's entirely speculative,
Speaker 1: but where will vampires go to from here? Can we
Speaker 1: kind of make some forecasts into where the direction that
Speaker 1: the folklore might go and the literature might go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wouldn't even want to speculate, except to say
Speaker 4: that since they deal with life, life force, and there's
Speaker 4: probably a lot of stuff that could be said about
Speaker 4: sort of economic sort of versions where people, you know,
Speaker 4: suck out the life force from a culture or suck
Speaker 4: out the economic resources from a culture, so that I
Speaker 4: mean they're a parasite. They're a parasite.
Speaker 7: I mean ultimately, well, doctor yeah, Professor Groome was talking
Speaker 7: about that as well, about I guess vampires as leeches
Speaker 7: and throughout time, how political figures have been branded vampires
Speaker 7: and so yeah, I can.
Speaker 1: Certainly see that as a as a metaphor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean they've been a metaphor for contagion
Speaker 4: and all kinds of interesting.
Speaker 5: And one thing other.
Speaker 4: Another thing I'd like to talk about over the course
Speaker 4: of this month is you know, I'm sure you grew
Speaker 4: up on the same monster books I did, which which
Speaker 4: they always talk about natural explanations. Now, as vampires representing
Speaker 4: con agent, they get tied in with things like cholera
Speaker 4: and tuberculosis. Maybe, but how many times have you heard
Speaker 4: of porphyria as being an explanation? I mean, like, you know,
Speaker 4: for many proferia for vampires and hypertrichosis for werewolves. I mean,
Speaker 4: every every kid's book has that, and it's like it's
Speaker 4: not it doesn't really address the sort of the fact
Speaker 4: that this is folklore and monsters and they don't need
Speaker 4: to have a medical basis to spread. There's so many
Speaker 4: you know, you don't really need to have spiders erupting
Speaker 4: from boils for the folklore of that story to work,
Speaker 4: you know, like folklore does not need a real world basis.
Speaker 5: I guess that is one point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think that there are no two vampires
Speaker 1: are the same. I think that it could possibly account
Speaker 1: for some cases maybe, but I think that you just
Speaker 1: have so many things at play, so many potential illnesses
Speaker 1: or just folklore or stories, and you really have to
Speaker 1: look at each individual case to be able to ascertain
Speaker 1: what's going on. But certainly that's one of those kind
Speaker 1: of chestnuts that is coming up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, skeptics, we love a natural science
Speaker 4: explanation anything, but letting vampires be real.
Speaker 5: Come on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, yeah, it's just not one size fits.
Speaker 5: All, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: Well, like, did you ever have a favorite vampire?
Speaker 5: A favorite vampire?
Speaker 1: Yeah? He does, right, and people should go back and
Speaker 1: listen to that episode.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, do I have a favorite?
Speaker 1: Remember? No, I've forgotten Highgate.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, yes, no, I totally love that story.
Speaker 5: Oh my god. Yes, the Highgate Vampire is absolutely a favorite.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh my god, yes, no, that is fantastic.
Speaker 5: I really do.
Speaker 1: An episode on that topic because.
Speaker 5: That is Yeah, I think the like side of it
Speaker 5: slowly dying off.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, probably probably safe, probably safe to discuss at
Speaker 4: this point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, safe safe for Yeah, what about you, Matt, because
Speaker 1: you know mine is well I've spoken.
Speaker 2: About yeah, and you know he's he was a great
Speaker 2: introduction into real world vampires for me. But that is
Speaker 2: a tough one. I mean, I did really like Gary
Speaker 2: Oldman as Dracula, you know, at the time. It was
Speaker 2: a lot of fun seeing it portrayed more as you know,
Speaker 2: Lad Impaler being Dracula. That was that was a very
Speaker 2: interesting take on it. I love the count from Sesame Street,
Speaker 2: especially Blake. Have you seen when he's censored?
Speaker 1: Just introduced me to that.
Speaker 5: No, are they just beeping out what he's talking about?
Speaker 5: Is that what they're doing?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: He sings a song about how much he likes to count,
Speaker 2: and every time he says the word count, they bleep it.
Speaker 8: You'll know that. I am called the cow.
Speaker 4: I love.
Speaker 8: Sometimes I sit and told day, but sometimes I get
Speaker 8: cally away.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, when I'm alone, I count myself nice.
Speaker 2: That's really funny, it is, it is counting hilarious.
Speaker 5: I want to say that, like as much as I love.
Speaker 4: That story with the Highgate Vampire, the Gorbels vampire story,
Speaker 4: where the nineteen fifty story of like the kids in
Speaker 4: Scotland hunting a vampire in the graveyard Ginny with the
Speaker 4: iron teeth is now becoming one of my favorite vampire stories.
Speaker 5: And I know we've talked about it before.
Speaker 1: But I think you said Gibels vampire.
Speaker 5: Gorbles Gorbles.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but just the the idea of a
Speaker 4: bunch of kids in Scotland roaming a real graveyard with weapons,
Speaker 4: trying to fight a vampire one of their parents don't
Speaker 4: know what the hell is going on.
Speaker 5: That is just it's so it could make.
Speaker 4: Such it's a true story. It could make such a
Speaker 4: great movie. Yeah, it would be so good. It would
Speaker 4: be so good. So yeah, that's it's increasingly haunting my imagination.
Speaker 2: What about let the Right One in?
Speaker 5: No, that's a great movie. It's a great movie. I
Speaker 5: have not seen the American version, but I love the
Speaker 5: European version.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I'm still a fan of Nosferatu. I think
Speaker 1: that's my.
Speaker 4: Thing, which is coming out soon as a remake. That'll
Speaker 4: be very exciting.
Speaker 1: Gosh just to think about. There's so many angles to
Speaker 1: this topic, and I think it'd be a good idea
Speaker 1: to bring Joe back on and we should. I really
Speaker 1: like to get into historical vampires and go back to
Speaker 1: Vlad the Impaler and Elizabeth Bathory and barely touched upon them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, that's right. Well, and it's interesting because
Speaker 2: you know, you really have those two different kinds of vampires,
Speaker 2: the ones that look kind of like nos Feratu and
Speaker 2: the ones that looked more like you know, Dracula. Yes,
Speaker 2: And but then it became a thing that the older
Speaker 2: of a vampire you were, and more powerful you were,
Speaker 2: the more you look like nos Faratu. Yeah, and I
Speaker 2: and the like the less human you looked.
Speaker 5: I think.
Speaker 4: That whole idea of scripteds that fiction drives folklore, and
Speaker 4: folklore feeds.
Speaker 5: Back into fiction.
Speaker 4: Vampires are one of the key places where that happens,
Speaker 4: and and where wolves I guess where it's the literature
Speaker 4: that really drives the imagination, which leads to the way
Speaker 4: people experience vampires and and and sort of play act
Speaker 4: in this space.
Speaker 1: So it's it's really yeah, it's aut imitating exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, our empathies life, then life impathates art, and it's
Speaker 4: just a cycle.
Speaker 5: It's just a circle. It's it's a it's a or boros.
Speaker 2: Well, then they did that great thing with Shadow of
Speaker 2: a Vampire with Willem Dafoe of playing uh Max Shrek,
Speaker 2: yes and so, and it just carried more of that
Speaker 2: sort of folklore and legend that there was just something
Speaker 2: wrong with Max Shrek. It's it's yeah, it's you know
Speaker 2: that he was somehow sort of haunted and inspired by
Speaker 2: the whole vampire thing. But uh, yeah, that was That
Speaker 2: was a fun movie too.
Speaker 5: It was a fun movie. Yep, yep. I enjoyed seeing
Speaker 5: that one. Yep.
Speaker 4: I got to see that one in the theaters. Weirdly enough, Yeah, well, Rare, we.
Speaker 1: Should probably we wrap things up, I think, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think another episode.
Speaker 4: And absolutely we sort of set a template for how
Speaker 4: we're going to handle October and this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, vamperific, vamporific exactly.
Speaker 5: I'll see if I can get Joe to join us.
Speaker 4: That would be really fun and sort of dive in
Speaker 4: on these things I'd love to I would really love
Speaker 4: to sort of sort of, if you'll pardon me, if
Speaker 4: you're saying so, hammer down some of these topics and so. Monstertle,
Speaker 4: you've been listening to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
Speaker 4: I'm Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner. You just heard
Speaker 4: a chat with myself, Karen and Matt Baxter about vampires
Speaker 4: to kick off our fourth season and a spooky October
Speaker 4: vampire marathon. I mentioned some research about porphyria and the
Speaker 4: opener and have put links to the Illis Paper into
Speaker 4: a New York Times article about David Dolphin's presentation in
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 5: In those show.
Speaker 4: Notes, vampires are such a big category, and hopefully over
Speaker 4: the course of this month you'll learn some new factoids
Speaker 4: for your Halloween party chat. We love it when we
Speaker 4: can help make you more interesting. We hope you enjoyed
Speaker 4: this episode of Monster Talk. Our goal here is to
Speaker 4: bring you the best in monster related content with a
Speaker 4: focus on scientific skepticism and critical thinking. If you enjoy
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Speaker 3: One thinking about living in Santa Carla, A never a
Speaker 3: good summer, All the damn vampires.
Speaker 1: This has been a Monster House presentation