A sophisticated synthesis of cross-cultural folklore that effectively traces the vampire's evolution from ancient demonology to modern myth. It offers a compelling look at how human fears have been personified across different civilizations.
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DISENRAGE : Vampires (Before Dracula)
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[music] [music] What's up everyone? Disenra is back. I have had a nap since last time. And uh Jennifer's finished an editing project and now we're back. Now we're back. Show in full effect. Hi Jennifer. What's going on?
>> Hey Carlin. Actually, I should be done with that thing tomorrow. Today was taken up by other things. Yeah. I'm I'm literally like 40 pages away from it being done >> and I can't wait. I am so excited for this to be over.
>> Yeah. Yep. [snorts] Fun times. Well, I'm I'm excited. We're talking about uh vampires tonight, but uh but I got a couple other updates before we get started to fill you in on uh what's going on in the world. And Jennifer, I I I thought of this after I already hit live. Can I ask you to psychic something for me?
>> Oh god.
>> You in some sort of like thing or something? You know, I will. But like, can I can I ask for some psychic tree tonight?
>> I can certainly try.
>> I I I I swear I just thought of this.
Like I literally I hit go live and I was like, fuck, I should have. So, I'm going to sort of put her on the spot and it's going to be fine.
>> Awesome.
>> Okay. So, the first thing I wanted to tell you, I almost told Jennifer, yeah, you got a couple minutes to get your chi in order so you can psychic to your maximum ability. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Like, spirits, uh, get Jennifier all tuned in. You got like three minutes to give her a tuneup or something. Align the fucking chakras. Open the third eye.
We need psychic magic tonight. It's going to be awesome. Okay, so I was telling you this. I almost told Jennifer this and I was like, why don't we just do it on the stream? Do you know what what has been going on for me today, Jennifer? Do you know what's been going on for me?
>> No.
>> In the in the great theme of I take way more shit from the right than I do from the left, there is a conservative independent media site that got pissed off that I questioned their position on people traveling from out of state to cover the anti-ICE protest going on in Maine. Because of course I was traveling from out of state to go cover those. So I was just like fuck you assholes. Like I'm going to do what I want. You can't prevent me from coming to Maine. I live 90 minutes away. Like fuck off. And >> free travel in this country. It's >> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Yeah. It's like you can't prevent sh and and and my position was listen mainwire.
If you want to cover the anti-CE protest, fine. No one is telling you you can't. The problem is you don't want to get off your lazy asses and actually go out and do it. And so other people are coming to Maine to do it for you because you are not doing what you should be doing in Maine. And I don't give a fuck if they're a conservative outlet or not.
They were also fighting with a lefty streamer that was going there to stream.
And I was like, I want Marco Media streaming because then I have on the ground coverage I can watch to find out what actually happened when I was there because it's just two different perspectives, right? And so I was like, no, like this is stupid. Like anyone can go from wherever they want to cover whatever they want. You guys are being retarded.
Well, ever since then, The Main Wire and its various journalists and employees have been attacking me on Twitter, but they're not attacking me for anything good. Like, they're not attacking me for anything. Well, I shouldn't say that.
They're they're they are actually attacking me for for something good, but they're not attacking me for anything intellectual. It has nothing to do with my work. It has nothing to do with the positions I'm taking. Has nothing to do with my coverage. Do you know what they're attacking me for, Jennifer? Do you know what they are uh pissed off about today at the uh the main wire?
>> Well, I can't.
>> They're pissed off that I'm thin.
They're pissed off that I'm thin because I took this video yesterday of me wearing a sassy outfit that I wore with Victor on like a little outing or something. And I posted it to Twitter. I was I I'm posting it to my Instagram where I talk about clothes and bags and stuff. So that's why I took the video.
But then I posted on Twitter to troll people because people lose their minds when they find out how much fucking weight I've lost. Like it's like they they lose the ability to function and then and then and they claim I'm still 300 lb and I'm I not that I was ever 300 lb, but you know what I'm saying? Like they they they think that I'm 300 lb and I'm using some secret mega filter to make myself look like a size four when in fact I am still like 300 lb even though I never was 300 lb. But this is the shit I have to deal with all the time. So this is this is a person that actually works for the Main Wire. You can see he's a he's an editor at the Main Wire. The fact that she's still rattled about this kind of proves that it's filters. So he's trying to make it seem like I'm using filters. And then he said that this video I posted today was also filters when in fact I just was sitting in my car and recorded a video and I happened to have sunlight shining on me. So sunlight apparently is a filter. And he doesn't understand that.
Um I'm on live fucking video six days a week.
>> Yeah.
>> And so people can see I'm not even wearing makeup.
>> You can filter, Jennifer. Filter. It's not just that I have good skin. It's not just that I've spent thousands of dollars on skin care products to keep myself looking like this. That I use twice a day on my skin in the morning and at night and occasionally moisturizing during the day as well just because. It's not because of any of these things. It's because I'm using filters and I don't actually look like this.
>> I think that's really because you know when you were asking me what what were they attacking for? I'm like, "Oh, please don't say the way. Please don't say because it doesn't make any sense.
It's n it's unprofessional."
>> Yeah.
>> And it has nothing to do with any issues. And if they are a publication and they're going after someone for how they look, I'd be like, how can I report them somehow for something? Like there's got to be an oversight somewhere that you can say listen your reporter is behaving unprofessionally and is um like what would what's the word I'm looking for? Um when when you're smear somebody in public for some reason my brain is not working but you know what I mean the >> when they're bismerching you in public for no good you know just to be mean.
>> You know you would at least expect them to make some sort of intellectual argument. You would at least expect that. But then they had a friend they had a friend that was uh that was that was posting with them and uh and she says in response to my my outfit here, which I freaking think I look good. I think I look fucking good. I I I I love that outfit. I think that outfit is fun.
I think it was very cool cuz it's like a hot day, so it was like just legitimately like functionally cool and also looks good. And I'm carrying a gold python bag that I bought during disenrag. So you can see the gold python bag in action. And this dumb bitch says says that is an unflattering outfit. How in the how in the ever loving fuck is that an unflattering outfit? It's a fucking This is like straight out of the fucking 60s. Like whatever. And so I posted her picture and called her ugly.
And then she says, "I have a fashion degree and I know better than you.
>> Me and my fashion degree are crying."
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Like she has a fashion degree, Jennifer.
I should take all my advice from her on how to look like a miserable bitch with an ugly nose ring.
>> Fashion shows I mean has there there's people walk out wearing a rubber raft.
So I'm sorry if I don't listen to your fashion sense.
>> I mean listen I don't fundamentally oppose people with fashion degrees, but we can all just acknowledge that some fashion is good and some fashion is terrible. And just because you have a fucking fashion degree doesn't mean you are the arbiter of what is good and what is terrible.
And you know what? People are allowed to like whatever the fuck they want to like. And like and it should be the fashion people saying that. Like not I have a fashion degree. I'm going to tell you what to wear. Like go like literally go fuck yourself. Fashion is fun.
Clothes are fun. It is about playing. It is about dress up. It is it is supposed to be fun. And we don't actually need to like the same things. And if I want to wear something that looks fucking 60s and mod, I will. And if I want to wear something that looks like fucking ostentatious and like egregious like Versace or something like that, I fucking will. And I will carry whatever fucking bag I want. And I don't give a fuck what anyone thinks about it because I don't care about appealing to you.
That is not the point of what this is.
>> Yeah. I don't know.
>> Stupid bitches.
>> That's so s Yeah, it's dumb.
>> Big bitches.
>> It's dumb. It's They're going to hate you. They're going to hate you. It doesn't matter. You could be wearing, you know, you could be wearing a live polar bear and there's like it doesn't matter what you're wearing or what you're look what you look like. I think that we've proven that point from one spectrum to the next, but one end of the spectrum to the other end with weight and with style and whatever. So, I mean, it has nothing to do with how you look.
They just don't like you.
>> Yeah. Exactly. And they choose the most >> retarded possible argument. I have a fashion degree, so I know better. Okay.
Yeah. Okay.
>> Well, that's nice. I'm glad you're taking me on in my journalism. Me and my my psychiatry degree will go analyze you and your your burnt brain.
>> Yeah. And especially when you look like a tranny. Especially when you look like a tr lady. You look like a tranny. Okay.
>> And you got an ugly nose ring and you're just like I mean, >> come on. Come on. I mean, come on.
Listen, man. I used to have my nose pierced, too. And then I grew out of it when I was in my early 20s. She's got the bull one. The like >> Yeah, she's got the septum piercing.
Yes, she is. Exactly. It's the fucking septum piercing.
>> It's ugly as shit. And she looks miserable and she looks like she's taking too much ompic cuz she does. I do not have ompic face. She has ompic face.
She looks like a fucking skeleton.
>> They lose all their adapose tissue. I I I don't know. I mean, she does. She looks like she's trying to do fierce and it's not working.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Okay. Well, she can take her fashion degree and shove it. And I just I again like I don't really care. Like I don't internalize this stuff or anything. I just think it's funny that like this fucking independent media thing in Maine is attacking me over they don't think I'm thin. Like >> of all the things >> I cannot even I fuck I cannot. Murphy's pool. What the hell? With the 50 bucks.
With the 50 bucks, bro. Oh my god. I got to I got to buy Jennifer something nice with that since uh she's about to do some psychic tree for me. Thank you, Murphy's Cool. Um, everyone ready for dad joke? Dad joke uh preparation. I went to see my doctor. She said I needed to provide a stool sample. So, I enrolled in basic woodworking course.
I hope you build a good stool. Murphy school. Hope you build a quality quality quality stool.
Um, all right. Now, the important part.
Would I need Jennifier to psychic for me? So, Jennifer, you're gonna you're going to fucking love this. Are you ready? Are you ready? We've had a Pisces sighting, Jennifer. Uh >> oh. Uh oh.
>> Yeah.
>> We've had a Pisces sighting. We've had a Pisces sighting. So, Master Shake, who is in the community, Yeah.
>> doesn't come around as much to movie night and stuff, but I think you know who he is.
>> Yeah. He was watching some James Lindsay stream the other day and the Pisces showed up in the chat of the James Lindsay stream. And so then Master Shake being Master Shake and an asshole and an antagonist, but we still love him anyway, but but a shitster. Yeah, he's like even worse than me sometimes.
Master Shake decided to poke at him in the chat and laugh at him and then asked him uh like, "Oh, what's going on with Algo?" which of course you remember is the name of the demon that the Pisces created that he says is controlling me and uh he needs to feed Algo to feed my need for for attention.
>> Get that name.
>> It's like the algorithm. Algo like the algorithm.
>> Oh, okay. Okay.
>> Yeah. Yeah. So So his premise is he needs to feed Algo Goth every now and again. now. But I thought that this whole Algo thing was over because the Pisces has been giving me maximum super silent treatment ever since he made AI porn of me. And I told him if he ever fucking did that shit again, I was going to get his kick channel banned because that's not cool. And then he made some excuse and he said, "Oh, it's someone else's fault that I made I point of view." I just couldn't help myself. And I was like, "Um, yeah, I think you could have actually. I think you could have."
And then there's a little bit more back and forth where I fucked with him a little bit and he didn't like that and like whatever. And then after that he locked down on super silent treatment which basically means I can say whatever the fuck I want and he will never respond to it or acknowledge it or anything like that which worked exact which works great for me because I feel like I'm the total winner in this scenario. I can say whatever I want and I feel like this really is his punishment for making AI porn of me in the first place is like it's his time and and you predicted he was going to do this. You said something was going to happen where he was going to go too far >> and then there was going to be silence and I'm like >> it's it's beautiful. Like I have complete control of the situation now.
He has no the control freak Pisces has no control. I have all the control. I was like this works out well for me.
Well, when Master Shake provoked the Pisces in the chat.
>> Uhoh.
>> He said Algo sees and hungers. So he obviously knows that from time to time I talk about him whether he likes it or not. which duh, obviously he was going to know that. Must be fed soon, but not quite yet.
What the fuck does that mean?
>> What does that mean? This is why I need your psychic powers. What does that mean?
>> So, okay. Is he saying that Algo is the critter? You supposedly get your power from >> power or whatever. He says that Algo Goth is a demon that has possessed me and that every so often he needs to feed Algo Goth to keep it at bay or some such shit. And and feeding it means feeding it means giving me attention.
>> Oh.
Oh. Well, I mean, I think it's self-explanatory if if he feels like he's going to come out of silence and say some things.
>> Yeah.
>> But here but here's my question. Is he actually because my initial thought was he's so full of shit he's not going to do anything. Like I I I fully believe that he has like locked in and he's like gonna he may talk a big game to like you know his friends that I don't know about or something like that and like shit talk me or whatever. I'm sure that's how I'm sure he's shit talking me to Amch or has in the past. I'm sure he shit talked me to Adam and he has in the past or like whatever. Maybe he's not doing it anymore but I think he did then. I don't think he's actually gonna come out and do anything though, just because I like I don't understand why he would.
>> Um, he would he would need to be poked.
>> Mhm.
>> I feel like there would be a poking of some kind where he's like, "That's it."
And lashes out.
>> So, I mean, it's it to me it feels like it starts under the don't start none won't be none category.
And so like if you if you just kind of leave it alone, I don't think he'll do anything.
I don't feel like he's I don't feel like you're on his radar like you were.
>> Mhm.
>> You feel very background. So, I don't think that he's looking for trouble, but like it could have been that Master Shake got under his skin a little and now he's looking at you as if your community fully represents you because that would be sad given his community. If his community represents him, that would be fucking sad.
>> Yeah. Ain't that the truth.
>> So, I mean, and and you know, we it's not like you pay us and we're your Dennis in some way, shape, or form.
We're just people who hang out. Um, so but if if someone is poking him in your name, it will come back to you.
So that's up to you to decide whether or not it's going to be a problem. If you care or if you want to say, "Hey guys, just back off. I don't want to. I'm just done having trouble with this person."
>> I don't care if people poke him or not.
If I'm being really honest about it, I don't I don't care if people I I I don't care. I don't think that there's anything that he can do to me. And uh quite frankly, um you know what? Listen, had he settled this stuff a long ass time ago and just, you know, owned up to like what he like his role in all the bullshit, I wouldn't even care. He should have just smooth things over a long time ago. But he didn't. He kept perpetuating it. He's a fucking petulant fucking child that dug his heels in like a spoiled little fucking brat. And I don't care if people poke him now. And like I said, like I don't think that there's like literally anything he can do to really impact me anymore at all.
And so if people want to poke him, if they see him in the real world, then go poke him. I don't I don't really give a fuck. And if they keep us something, then it'll be entertaining for me and it won't actually impact my life in any way, shape, or form, but it'll be entertaining. So like, whatever.
>> Well, we have we all have free agency and stuff, and I know you respect that and and everybody here is they're going to do what they're going to do, and you know, we've got a we have a little a little group of shit starters, you know, and that's it's and it's very amusing from time to time. I don't think anyone's going to cause real real trouble. I don't think there literally there's nothing he can do.
>> That's what I'm saying. It's like even if he does something, it's like >> no one listens to him anyway.
>> So >> he can run to the end of his chain and bark and the only time you would know about it is if somebody here brought it to your attention.
>> True.
>> To get you go to react to it.
>> So I mean it's up to you if you want to know or if you don't want to know. I mean if you if you don't know about it, it's it'll be like it never happened.
>> Oh no. I definitely want to know about it. If someone sees him says saying something, I I want to know about it.
Now, would I necessarily react to it?
>> It would depend. I suppose >> you will. [laughter] >> I honestly don't know. Like I've actually thought I've actually I've actually thought about this. I I think that I think that he would want me to if he does something is because he wants me to react to it.
>> Yeah. And so the best thing I can do is just not because again it's like I have a million times more relevance than he does. And so >> yeah, I I don't think I think if you if you don't if you just leave it alone, it will go away very quickly.
>> I didn't say I was going to leave it alone, but like obviously I'm not leaving it alone. We would not be doing this segment. We would not be doing the psychicing segment on the internet if I was going to leave it alone. But like I'm going to do whatever the fuck I want. Like I >> Then why are you asking me to psychic something and you're not going to listen?
>> Well, because I was actually I was actually curious about your your like intuition over whether or not he was actually going to do something or whether he's just like like being like a dick on the internet or whatever or whether or not like my intuition was correct, which is I don't think he's actually gonna do something. I don't actually think this is something that's gonna like turn into anything.
>> I feel I feel like right now he's just mouththing off, you know? I don't I don't feel any action. I feel just I feel like he's already forgotten he left that comment.
>> Probably true.
>> You know, and true.
>> So, anything it it would only turn into something if Sorry, husband is getting himself some dinner. It would only turn into something if it became a repeated burr under his saddle, >> if you will. And then and then he'll he may say, "Okay, I'm done." But right now, he's just ignoring it for the most part. He's just being a dick. Mouth mouth mouth. like a challenge. Maybe that's like actually a community challenge. What would it actually take?
See, now I wasn't actually thinking about this before, but now that you've said like this is like an act like like what would that actually I don't know.
>> I mean, if you want to rile them up and start your little battle all over again, I would think I think that's beneath you. Personally, >> it is totally I'm not sure I want to do that, by the way. I'm just I'm just like say I can ponder what if for a moment.
Like what would it actually require? How hard would we would we have to work harder to get him to actually speak than we would to infiltrate a socialist meeting?
>> Like what's the scale here?
>> He's got the kind of energy where if you do something once or twice, you do it all the time.
>> Yes. Very good.
>> So it wouldn't take that much >> in my You think it would be easy?
>> Yeah.
And I don't know. I mean like I've only seen him from what you've shown me of him to me and but I just get the impression he's just very very petty and so it and people who are petty make very big deals out of very little things >> because it makes them feel important and they do a lot of you know the displacement kind of stuff. So, I mean, I'm it it wouldn't take much, but it would have to be something that would be rapid like release, like in within a week, you could have him like streaming about you again.
Well, why don't we take this idea and why don't we set it on the shelf of if we get bored and there's nothing going on in the news, perhaps we revisit the boredom shelf. put it in the jar that says like the fuckery for my enemies or how to fuck with my enemies.
>> Yeah, like on the [laughter] fuckery shelf, the nonsensical fuckery shelf.
But if we have something more important to focus on, we should probably do that.
But like it's just going to sit there.
It's going to sit there until I'm good and ready to to think about it again.
>> I mean, if we're bored, sometimes the summer gets boring, Jennifer. Like, sometimes it just gets boring. Like people go on vacation, there's not as much news. like leftists are going to be going back to school next month at the end of August. Like I can't even believe the summer's fucking over and we're gonna get a couple weeks. I'm just saying we're gonna put it on the shelf and we're gonna If you guys want to fuck with him though, you totally can. Like if you guys want to just on your own like take initiative and go fuck with him. I don't really care and I think it would be actually pretty funny to watch.
But I'm not going to actively lead any effort until I'm bored.
[laughter] >> [gasps] >> I think it's stooping personally, but that's me.
>> It is completely stupid. Yeah, this [laughter] is completely fucking beneath me. I'm an Aries genifier. I can't fucking help myself. What are you talking about? I'm like the child of the fucking It doesn't matter if it's fucking stupid. [laughter] >> I know it's stupid and I want to do it anyway. [laughter] >> Now that I'm thinking about this, I'm like, this is like an interesting psychological experiment.
Okay.
>> How well can I psychic the Pisces? We'll see. We'll see. [laughter] We'll see.
Anyway, you want to talk about vampires?
Speaking of me sucking up all the energy uh on like ill thought through games.
You want to talk about vampires? We're talking about vampires tonight. What about vampires, Jennifer?
>> Um it was just a suggested to me. Um and I thought, you know, I kind of did the uh I did the skinwalkers and stuff the last time. And like what other kind of critters are out there? So, I I feel like we kind of have done aliens and stuff for a really long time and >> like all that. I'm like, what else have we got? What? Let's see what other things we haven't really looked into into the vampire thing. And so, I thought that would be fun. And then I thought, well, maybe I should wait for Halloween. I'm like, vampires are around all year.
>> We don't need to wait for Halloween.
>> Wait till Halloween. No.
>> Yeah.
>> So, I think it it'd be just interesting to see some like documentary style background on them. I think the first video you want to show is it's actually a channel that does the like the actual anatomy of a vampire. So it can't how do they eat? What does why do they need to eat blood? What does their body how does it look inside? Like yeah.
>> Is a vampire like a real thing? Like I I understand like the the concept of like energy vampires, but is this like I mean you see all sorts of creatures and things that I don't see. So So explain please.
>> Um there are energy vampires. There are also people that are energy vampires and there are there is an energy vampire creature which I have seen in person and it looks kind of like a black cloud and it will siphon energy off you when you sleep and I did see it over a friend of mine once one night and I looked it up because I was so freaked out.
>> That's wild. You saw that over a friend?
That's wild.
>> I have a book of monsters and it's exactly what it described it as. It was like it it wasn't like a big puffy cloud. It was like I just and it was it was a dark room. So, I mean everything's fucking dark, but he had a window just on the other side and it looked like like a black mist and it it just looked like it was encompassing his head like it was like this. And I woke up and I was like, "Get out." You know, and it went through the just out. And I and my friend had been complaining about just being really tired all the time. And he would take caffeine and immediately want to get a nap.
>> Like he just couldn't get it together.
Yeah. He was always tired. He was not on his best game.
>> It was affecting a lot of things in his life. And then I got rid of it and I told him about it and he kind of half believed me kind of, oh that's cute. You know, but then like he started feeling better and he he never really was like, "Wow, thanks for doing that. I feel so much better." But I asked him, "Are you seem like you're doing a little better?" And he's like, "Yeah, I am." And I just And I wasn't like, "Cuz I got rid of your energy vampire." No, I was I just was like, >> I totally would have done that. You know, if I was want to get be like, you know what happened? Well, you know, you're welcome. You're welcome. I got rid of the energy vampire. You're welcome.
>> Yeah. But um so and then there [laughter] are there are people who do have rare blood diseases that some people thought maybe it's a vampirism, but it's not. But uh because you don't eat blood to fix it, so it's not vampirism. Now then you have your psychological vampires. And by that I mean they're fucked in the head. They think they're vampires.
>> And then you have like black witches who will do a lot of blood magic. And that can include drinking blood directly from someone else.
>> Wild. Have you ever drank blood and richy witchy rituals?
>> Yes. I do not do blood magic. I've done I've done two blood magic spells in my Well, maybe three.
>> [laughter] >> blood magic spells, but one of them was a bonding ritual, which takes about seven years to undo because that's how long it takes for you to work out.
>> Wow. You better be sure if you do one of those then.
>> Absolutely. Well, people just think, "Oh, we're going to need blood brothers." Well, because you know, you replace your cells every seven years, right? So if you if you we did like a ham f we did a blood magic ham fasting kind of thing and then we broke up about almost two years later and well about a year and a half later and it took you know seven years for that to finally clear and he kept trying to come back and it was it was just a very it was a very dark time for me actually. I'll never do that again.
>> While >> yeah I never I didn't even do it with my husband. We didn't we don't mix. I'm like that's just it's just not a good idea. And then um I've done some blood magic for protection and abolishment of agreements, but I never do it on somebody else. I never mix my blood that way and I don't use anyone else's.
>> We got a question. Are vampires demons or is the blood a mortal grounding thing? What do you I don't think they're demons, but what do you think?
>> No. No. Well, I mean, what's a demon?
There are some people that call everything that's not an angel a demon.
But if if in my realm, no, they are completely different things. Um, uh, what was the other part? Mortal grounding thing. What does that mean?
>> Like the blood, like the human blood grounds them to the earth.
>> Well, they're meant to be immortal essentially, but I mean it it's a purely >> Well, they're immortal as long as they continue to drink the blood and do and and don't die, you know, in the way that vampires can die.
>> Yeah. Yeah. So, no, they're very different creatures. Um, although they are in the same vein as critters of darkness, if you want to think of it that way, they are they can be considered brethren of the night, if you will.
>> Brethren of the night. Like that. All right. Well, we got a couple videos to watch tonight. Um, we are watching the shorter one first because I thought it would be better to do it that way. And this is the biology of a vampire. And I thought that was actually a pretty good place to start because then we're going to watch a more generalized documentary about vampires before Dracula. So, we're going to do the biology first so that we understand that and then we can like suspend some disbelief and actually engage with the ideas of the documentary. Sound good?
>> Sounds good.
>> All right, everyone mount the like button if you would be so kind. John Fire and I do disenra every Tuesday night at 9:00 p.m. where we talk about mystical things and uh spirituality and tarot cards and psychic and magic and all this stuff, aliens, conspiracy theories, whatever we want. Just as a reminder for any Christians in the house, it's fine that you're Christians.
We are not Christians. No prostilitization, no damning us to hell.
We don't come into your church. Don't come into our fucking spirituality fun time. Okay, let's uh get this party started.
This video is a work of fiction for entertainment purposes only. For those in the back, [laughter] >> us for eons. Stories of ogres, werewolves, dragons, yetis, giants, and other terrifying creatures lurk in every culture and across all recorded time.
And though societies rise and fall, it seems the tales of other worldly creatures are harder to kill. One such creature is said to stalk the night, seeking any unfortunate souls upon which to feed. Each victim providing the creature's immortal body with a dark sacrifice of blood. I'm speaking, of course, of the vampire, a kind of undead leech, a species nearly indistinguishable from human, save for its cold, pale skin and enlarged canines. For hundreds of years, and perhaps even longer, people have lived in fear of these mythical shape-shifting.
>> Yeah, that is a is a great uh perspective here, Melinda. What if uh there really are vampires ruling the world like the Vuri and the half breeds are the ones running things for them? Is that really out of the realm of possibility, Jennifer? Are the vampires actually the world?
>> Anything is possible. I think anything is possible at this point. Like it wouldn't surprise me if half the critters we think are myth are actually real and maybe running things or or are denisens of those who are running things. Like at this point, I'm like whatever, [laughter] >> why not?
or alternatively have been perversely fascinated by them. However incredible it may sound, I posit, dear listener, that vampires are not only based on truth, but walk among us even today.
Indeed, they are real. And now I present the culmination of years of research into vampire lore, biology, anatomy, physiology, and behavior. For this brief time together, I ask you to lend me your ear as we dive deep into the disturbing biological reality of the vampire.
>> There is likely no discernable patient zero when it comes to the disease of vampirism. When asked, historians and theologians may point to Lilith or Lilitu, a figure in both Hebrew and Babylonian mythology. In stories, nocturnal sanguy or blood eating is a common thread. As previously mentioned, the concept of the vampire is present in cultures around the world. The strigoy in Russia, the mananal of the Philippines, the Jangi of China, the Caribbean sooant. These monsters differ in many ways, but they share one common trait, a thirst for human blood. But it was the legends of 12th century Europe that truly cemented our modern conception of the vampire. It was this era that gave us many of the superstitions and traits we associate with vampires even today. Though of course Stoker's Dracula and Rena's Noseratu have been arguably even more influential in the modern era. Like many of you for years I considered these myths of nocturnal blood sucking creatures to be nothing more than primitive fantasy relics of bygone religions and the products of overactive imaginations. Then many years ago I was confronted with something I couldn't explain. A dear friend and colleague was attacked by cover of night, her blood drained from two small pricks in her neck, seemingly as she slept in her bed.
Since that time, I sought her killer and stumbled upon a truth purposefully hidden for millennia. And though I haven't yet filled in all the gaps, I now believe that I have enough evidence to draw a conclusion.
>> Now, Bella vampires are not super sexy.
>> Yes, >> totally. Because vampires be went from being fearful creatures to like the hot guy, you know? Yeah. [laughter] So true.
>> Beings as the stories tell. They are as real as you or I. But as the result of a mutagenic virus, they possess abilities that I am only beginning to comprehend.
I hope that you'll withhold your judgment as to my level of sanity for just a few moments longer. I will present to you now the findings it's taken me decades to compile. And thanks to some new colleagues, much of these findings are taken from firstirhand observation and dissection. But before we can discuss the details of these creatures design, we must first understand how their condition spreads.
Contrary to popular thought, it is not a supernatural imbuing of life force nor a selling of one's soul to the devil that causes the dark transformation into a vampire. It is in fact a lowly virus transmitted through bodily fluids. A monga virus with properties similar to rabies, mumps, and measles. Unlike most others, this insidious virus infects its hosts cells via endoccytosis or full absorption rather than a more aggressive injection into the cell or outright cell destruction via licis. Not content to target a single tissue type as other viruses do, the human vampiric virus, as I've come to call it, infects every living cell within the human body with the exception of red blood cells. This alone is frightening, but it doesn't stop there. HV appears to alter its host cells in a uniquely insidious manner, allowing them to continue normal processes such as regenerating their membranes while also hijacking them in order to produce its own virus clones.
In short, while cells are infected and altered, they are not destroyed, a trait that makes the virus immensely successful. Adding to this success is a staggeringly rapid replication cycle.
Infection of the thyroid gland initially increases the speed of metabolic processes throughout the body, and the virus's incubation period is a nearly unprecedentedly brief 6 to 12 hours.
Once incubation is complete, victims of HV begin to manifest an array of symptoms not unlike the common flu.
Headache, fever, chills, as well as the effects of the aforementioned metabolic increase, rapid heart rate, severe thirst, excessive sweating, and frequent urination have all been observed. These symptoms generally last another 6 to 12 hours. But while these particular effects are disturbing, they are by no means unique to HPV. 12 to 24 hours after these symptoms first appear, however, the victim will slip into what I term a vampiric coma. And it is this state of active unconsciousness that begins the true transformation. If the victim lives through this extraordinarily taxing process, they will awaken an entirely different creature.
When Bram Stoker set out to write one of the most influential pieces of Gothic horror to date, he likely had little idea what an undertaking it would be.
With an ensemble of fleshed out characters and a world rich in history and lore, at times he likely felt as overwhelmed as many modern novelists, worldbuilders, and even dungeon masters do. If only he had access to World Anvil. With World Anvil, even the most complex world building is a breeze robust tool.
peaceful slumber with the aforementioned symptoms. The victim though the body under goes numerous anatomical and physiological changes in a very short amount of time. Based on my own observations, pulse and breathing become erratic. The pupils dilate, the skin sweats profusely, and significant weight is lost. Toward the end of the coma, the victim appears to be calm, and they could be mistaken for dead. There is little doubt that some unfortunate victims have been prematurely buried this way. But the victim doesn't always survive the vampiric coma. In elderly and very young victims, mortality is very high with a majority of survivors being aged between 18 and 35 years. Many outside this range simply never wake up.
For those that do survive, however, the changes are unmistakable. Victims often undergo a kind of acclamation period characterized by confusion and paranoia along with the physical effects of thirst and malnutrition. But this state doesn't last long. Within a day, the first signs of sanguy manifest, and these newly transformed vampires are a danger to anyone close to them. The mutagenic changes wrought by this pernicious virus are largely complete within a week. And by then, the virus enters a dormcancy only to be reawakened by severe stress or injury or when it has entered the bloodstream of a new victim. By now, you're probably wondering just what these changes are.
We will now move on to that exact subject, and I thank you for listening this far. Though the exact mechanisms are as yet unknown to me, I believe that the virus works in essence by a process known as horizontal gene transfer. This phenomena isn't unheard of in nature.
For example, the genes that facilitate stinger growth in certain nidarians appears to have been incorporated from the genome of a foreign bacteria. What is clear even to the outside observer is that by the end of their transformation, vampires exhibit elongated grassal extremities, extended mandibles, and numerous other anatomical and physiological changes. It is my intent to publish a deeper analysis of each facet of these changes, but since our time is short, I must be succinct. Some of the less obvious changes, at least to the outside observer, occur in the vampiric brain. There appears to be a reduction in serotonin levels, which would normally temper urges. neural pathways associated with dopamine and endorphine release are strengthened, specifically in response to feeding. For this reason, for the vampire, drinking blood is an intensely pleasurable act.
Circadian rhythms are also reversed in vampires to allow for their newly nocturnal biology, but that's only the tip of this proverbial iceberg. The vampire amydala is hypertrophied, roughly 7% larger than in the uninfected, and the visual cortex is a staggering 13% larger. Synaptic interconnections between the anterior singulate gyrus and the rest of the brain are much lower than normal almost as if the core of the brain is being isolated from the neoortex. Furthermore, the corpus colosum is 20% larger in vampires than in humans resulting in a near instantaneous communication between hemispheres. Finally, inter neuron density and cortical folding and lamination far exceed normal parameters particularly in the visual cortex. In short, vampires are omnisants with pattern recognition abilities and intelligence far beyond ordinary human capabilities. The enlarged amydala also seems to facilitate vampires a level of perception that borders on precognition.
On the other hand, likely partly because of this, vampires are much more prone to obsessive habits such as rearranging and counting objects.
>> Oh yeah. You know how >> additionally vampire motor god >> if you're being pursued by a vampire they say scatter something in front of them >> because they have to they have to stop and and pick it up or organize it.
>> Why? Why?
>> Because they OCD.
>> Oh, he was talking about they have >> they're like a superest.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Yeah. Super autist. Great. Super.
>> Exactly what we need. A fucking virus that makes autistic blood suckers.
[laughter] There was >> one of my favorite X Files. Um, they had this kid who was they actually find a real vampire and Scully, it was Scully or I can't remember now. I think it was Scully to get away from him. She like threw a bunch of papers or something on the floor and he stops and he's like, "Why did you do that?" And he gets down and starts folding them up and like get them all organized. And it was really funny. But yeah, that's like one of the things to do is to scatter something because they're obsessive about keeping things in order.
H, good to know. Vampire pro tip.
>> Yep.
>> Nerve axons are nearly twice as thick as a normal humans, resulting in lightning fast reflexes. Paired with their extraordinary perception, it's no wonder why our ancestors conferred supernatural powers on the infected. Sight is an additional highly affected sense. Upon awakening from their coma, the vampires irises are visibly hyperdilated to the point where they appear almost entirely black. Increased reflectivity causes the irises to shimmer even in faint light, similar to the tapetum lucidum found in many nocturnal animals. In my testing, I've also determined that vampires possess quadrochromatic vision. While we humans only have three types of cone in our eye, vampires have four, the fourth being tuned to near infrared.
>> You have four. You have that uh that anomaly that lets you see more color, right?
>> Yeah, I I can see extra colors.
>> Oo, Jenfire is a vampire. Confirmed. And I'm >> all of this gives the vampire vastly superior night vision, though at the cost of severe sensitivity to light.
This seems as good a time as any to bring up a common myth though surrounding vampires, a severe aversion to crucifixes. Since ancient times, vampires have been thought of as a kind of evil spirit, a concept solidified in the Middle Ages. Of course, the greatest threat to any dark entity is the cross of Christ. But as we've seen, the vampire condition is not supernatural.
Is there any legitimacy to this bit of lore? Let me explain with a bit of context. Our eyes contain arrays of specialized receptor cells. Some only activate when they see light and shadow in conjunction. Some activate only when they see horizontal lines, horizons, and so on. In vampires, the receptors that respond to horizontal lines are cross-wired with those that respond to vertical ones. When both sets of receptors are fired simultaneously in a very specific way, that is when intersecting right angles occupy more than 30 degrees of visual arc. Positive feedback seems to generate a neuroelect electrical overload in the visual cortex. This overload can lead to violent seizures, though in my testing only in specific situations. When the virus first appeared, likely millennia ago, this glitched caused few problems for vampires. After all, right angles seldom appear in nature, and Uklidian architecture was likely millennia in the future. It seems probable that once humans began constructing buildings, vampires found it difficult to cope.
With humans virtually protected by simple geometry, it's possible that the vampiric plague went into remission. In more modern times, however, I believe that HV is making a resurgence. How is this possible given the modern ubiquity of right angles? Again, I must reference my own testing. It appears that vampires have developed the ability to selectively focus, keeping certain elements in the background of their vision. In several individuals brought to me, right angles only presented a visual overload when it was thrust into their direct forward field of vision and even then only in well lit conditions.
In short, the so-called crucifix glitch is no myth. There are however many actual myths associated with vampires, which I will discuss shortly. But of course, vampires heightened senses aren't only limited to sight.
Hypertrophic cerebral neurons and additional receptor cells dramatically increase hearing range, and the same is true of smell. Unfortunately for their human victims, hiding from a vampire is nearly impossible. Some of the more impressive changes, however, occur in the more visible aspects of vampire anatomy. For one, muscular composition is drastically altered during the vampiric coma. Human muscles are made up of two main types of fiber, fast twitch and slow twitch, at a ratio of about 50/50. In vampires, an astounding 90% of their fibers are the fast twitch variety.
>> Fun fact about me. So, endurance athletes like successful endurance athletes have a higher proportion of high twitch mus muscle fibers to low twitch and that's why they're successful endurance athletes. I have that same thing. And I found this out when I did a DNA test. They were like, "You got like the high I have the high twitch muscle fibers, which probably why I did like marathoning and stuff like that." Not that I was ever very good at marathon. I was never an elite athlete or anything, but I still ran 26 fucking miles, and that's still like a lot. So, I have the endurance fibers of uh of endurance athletes, the high.
>> That is really That's cool. I I definitely don't have that at all.
>> Yeah.
>> No, >> I've always I've always been very athletic. Like if I want to be athletic, if I don't want to be athletic, I'm not. But like if I want to be athletic, I'm extremely athletic.
>> I build muscle really easily, but I I'm not an endurance person at all for sure.
>> I've thought about like maybe I'm going to start running again. I've been I've been experimenting with running a little bit and I haven't been in pain doing during it. So maybe it's just like the weight loss was helpful in fixing some of the issues that were going on my leg.
Anyway, >> it's hard to run when you're carrying extra weight because it's it's heavy. I mean, you it's like people run with weight to increase their endurance, but it's hard on your joints and your body.
All that jiggling and jarring, it's too hard.
>> Uh I I did I did, you stupid motherfucker. I did. In fact, um in fact, I did it I did it so many times that I have I have these here medals.
And these are just two of the medals that I have sitting on the on the desk right now. There's two Boston Marathon medals. You stupid fucking cunt.
[laughter] Do you have two Boston Marathon medals?
No. Shut the fuck up. So, uh, so, no, I mean, I wasn't like overweight when I was running. Um, like I gained the weight. I gained the weight after I stopped running because I wasn't I was >> Well, your metabolism will slow down because it's used to a certain level, but I mean like I've seen those amazing video and I love these videos of people who are like four or 500 pounds that they start to walk and jog.
>> Oh, yeah. That's a whole other thing.
Yeah.
>> That I can't even imagine. Wow. know that's that's dedication. I'm so impressed with that kind of stuff. It's amazing.
>> That's hard to do. That's I mean people like I mean I know that they're fat but like uh hey bro um banned from my channel. Go away to be a dick in my chat. It's just like the guy who said I didn't run 26 miles is uh you know being an asshole. Um no but I thought about maybe starting to try to run again but like >> I'm still working my way up to go back to the gym regularly and I'm not I'm not quite I was still traumatized by the fitness days. I'm just excited to get my rower again. I need my house so I can have my rower out. I love my rower.
>> I used to be really good at I need to go back to Orange Theory is what I need to do. I used to do Orange Theory before the pandemic. Like when I was I was trying to get my ass back into shape essentially. And so like in the year leading up to the pandemic, I did Orange Theory almost like every day, which is basically like Orange Theory is like this fitness class thing where you go and you do rowing and then you do weights and then you do treadmill and you do each of those for 20 minutes and they do different things every time. and like whatever. I was going to that a lot and so I actually was like in my they do these like competitions among the members. I was like the number one rower in terms of like power of like any woman in my age range at Orange Theory because I'm just like but it fucking hurt my back to do it. So I don't know like maybe maybe that's changed since I was because I'm good at rowing but it just hurt my back all to hell. Well, it's if you're if you're doing it properly and you're not doing it to compete because that is a lot of strain, you know, but if you're just >> We're talking like 30 seconds or a minute. I wasn't doing like 10 minute rows. I was doing a lot of power for 30 seconds to a minute. [laughter] >> Yeah. I just like it because it's low endurance. It's really good. It's nice to lubricate your joints. You're It's almost a full body workout and it's just fun. I like the motion. I like to move, but I don't like I don't like jarring. I don't like to run. Bicycling is fine, but then it's like where am I going to go? And I just I just love the the fluidity of it.
>> So ifant increase in myoglobin and mitochondria, which allows for a greater amount of activity without lactic acid buildup, and elevated intracellular ATP, means that vampires are not only frighteningly fast and strong, they are nearly inexhaustible. Interestingly, the heart is one muscle that is not strengthened after the change. It is in fact the exact opposite. The vampire circulatory system undergoes a complete inversion as the heart ceases to beat.
Instead, blood is pumped via the contraction of skeletal muscle and the heart eventually atrophies from disuse.
While at rest, involuntary spasms known as viciculations take place in the limbs and emanate from the furthest extremities inward, similar to the wavelike paristalsis of the GI tract. As a result, hand tremors can be a dead giveaway for a disguised vampire. But along with their teeth, one of the most obvious indicators of vampiric infection is their skin. Around 3 days after awakening from their coma, blood circulation begins to slow, especially in the epidermal capillaries. At the same time, capillaries in the core begin to proliferate, drawing blood away from the skin and into the trunk, giving vampires a signature sickly and almost ghostly power. Thinner areas of skin, such as the eye sockets, lids, and lips are the first to be affected by these changes. To disguise themselves, vampires will often cover as much skin as possible with clothing and apply thick makeup to the rest. Now, the time has come to speak of arguably the most disturbing aspects of vampire biology, the diet of blood. Digestion begins in the mouth, as they say, and vampires aren't so different. In most other respects, however, they are much more similar to the vampire bat. An animal whose insect parasites, I hypothesized, may have been the original source of the virus. Of course, we can go no further without discussing the vampire's characteristic teeth. During the latter half of the vampiric coma, both the upper and lower eye teeth experience extremely rapid growth produced inside the pulp. It appears that specialized amilasts travel through the narrow pores of the dentin and crown and upon reaching the surface will deposit additional enamel onto its tip, creating a sharp fang. As a vampire ages, fluid loss causes a noticeable recession of the gums, making the teeth appear longer. This process bestows the iconic enlarged canine upon its hosts, but they're certainly not for show. Upon locating a slumbering victim, vampires will use their sharp canines to make an incision in the skin, ideally over a major vessel. Believe it or not, their saliva contains an anti-coagulant called draculin, a glyoprotein also found in the saliva of vampire bats. Once blood is flowing freely, they begin to feed using a groove in their tongue as a kind of siphon. An additional salivary constituent causes an anesthetic effect in the victim, keeping them inert until blood loss overcomes them. At this point, you're likely wondering exactly how a human adjacent being can subsist solely on blood. For that matter, what benefit could eating blood have for a previously human organism? I will attempt to address these very valid questions. First, I have discovered that a side effect of the virus is the loss of the ability to synthesize PCBH.
>> What's that? True blood's great.
>> I've never watched it. Oh, it's >> um it's great up until up until season four, then it kind of starts to go downhill, but up through season four is fucking awesome. And the books are great, too. I've read a lot. I've read most of them, actually.
>> Oh, nice.
>> I was really into them back in the day.
>> Very cool. One of my one of my next um monster books is going to be a vampire.
I'm still trying to figure out how I want to do it, but it's going to be inspired from my goth days. [laughter] If you wrote like a True Blood kind of like what is it called? Where you go off into a tangent?
>> Side story. Oh, you mean like a fanfiction or >> Yeah, like kind of like a fanfiction but like like an inspired by thing or something like that. You should totally do a story with uh Eric Northman being the protagonist and it being about him and his life and all like that would that would be fucking awesome because he was the best character in True Blood.
And you will find out what I'm talking about when you watch the series.
>> Cool. Well, I need something to binge because when I'm done with this um editing thing, I'm going to uh I'm g take like two days off and day drink and eat pizza and just like watch TV and just zone out because my brain hurts.
>> Somebody True Blood will be it.
>> I was actually thinking about watching True Blood again. You got to get through the The first season is not the best, but like the second season, the third season, the fourth season are really good.
>> Cool. I love it.
Why? A protein responsible for certain aspects of central nervous system growth. Since this protein only occurs in homminids, human prey is an essential component of the vampire diet. Without it, they are unable to sustain their enhanced nervous systems, which causes a loop of viral reactivation from which there is no recovery. The ability to extract PCDH- from human blood is a hallmark ability of vampiric digestion. But there is much more. It goes without saying that blood is not a viable food source for an ordinary human. To adapt to this need, vampires undergo severe and drastic changes to both the form and function of their digestive system. For one, the entire system is reduced in vampires.
The stomach atrophies and large portions of the intestines are shortened. Most impressive, however, is the alteration of the microbiome of the gut. Over a period of years, though the exact number is as yet unknown to me, the gut becomes host to a variety of immuneupporting bacteria, a kind of symbiosis that is facilitated, I believe, by changes to the vampire genome resulting from the HV virus. This paired with what appears to be an enhanced resistance to pryionic diseases make the vampire virtually immune to bloodborne diseases and bacteria. Additionally, the vampire digestive system is able to assimilate the high levels of iron found in blood and is able to process its high levels of nitrogen waste. But then there is the problem of volume. Human bodies generally contain about 5 to 6 L of blood. While the vampire stomach holds only about 1 and 1/2 L. As a result, the popular notion of a vampire draining a victim of all his or her blood is functionally impossible unless the feeding takes place over several hours.
And in fact, this is exactly what occurs. But not only because of limited stomach capacity. In order to cope with the excess nitrogen, vampires must take frequent breaks to urinate. Furthermore, the resulting urine gives off an extremely pungent ammonia based odor. At this point, we've discussed much of the changes that occur during the transformation from human into vampire.
But you may have picked up on another fundamental problem. If the virus is transmitted via body fluid and if vampires prey on humans, then it would stand to reason that eventually humans would be eradicated, leaving vampires with no remaining food source.
Paradoxically, it is the virus's inability to infect certain humans that has led to its continued existence.
Through some unconventional testing methods, I have determined that a significant portion of the population, though more testing will be necessary to determine just how significant, is effectively immune to HV. These immune hosts will produce antibodies as soon as they start showing symptoms. Whereas normally it can take days or weeks for the bodies to produce antibodies for a new infection. The one exception to this rule is natural antibodies which are believed to be the result of microbes native to the body since birth. By default, this limits the spread of HV.
But even among those who are susceptible to the virus, vampires have a solution to the problem of over hunting. Blood tests indicate that vampires have elevated levels of lu and keylin, a peptide partially responsible for inducing hibernation in animals like bears and squirrels. Indeed, vampires are able to enter a kind of suspended animation for extended periods of time.
And though my own testing has yet to find the limits of this ability, I hypothesize that by awakening every few years only briefly to feed, the vampire could remain essentially dormant for hundreds of years. This extended hibernation not only allows the vampire to survive when resources are scarce or competition is fierce, it also gives their prey an opportunity to repopulate.
And with a species as slow at reproducing as humans are, the longer the better. In fact, even when resources are plentiful, this hibernation period may be required as the transfer of food energy between trophic levels is very inefficient. But even with the ability to hibernate, how is it possible for vampires to live for so long, hundreds of years? In some purported cases, it appears that vampires are able to ward off the DNA damage that occurs during cell division in normal humans. In humans, the protective caps on the end of chromosomes known as telomeres become chewed up over time, but not in vampires. This is due to an increased production of telomease, an enzyme that adds DNA sequence repeats. In addition, it appears that higher levels of the antioxidant enzyme catalase protect the cells from free radicals and ambient radiation, preventing oxidative and ionization damage to the DNA. In short, it seems that vampire physiology is virtually immune to the damaging effects that lead to aging.
If you've stuck with me this long, your mind is likely still filled with questions.
>> All right. All right. We're basically at the end of this video, I think. Yeah, basically at the end of the video. Okay.
Well, that was a really interesting look into uh fantasy research of how it is possible that a vampire could be biological. Let's get into our documentary, shall we? Jennifer, >> I'm really impressed with the level of like actual science that was in that.
That was that was dope.
>> I thought it was great. I just It's like, you know, if you want to believe in this, here is exactly how this could work.
>> That's so cool.
>> Cool. Well, the next thing we have is a documentary about uh vampires before Dracula. And this is going to be the bulk of our time tonight. So, uh I don't know. Like the video if you haven't already. Let's uh see what this says.
But it said it was fiction at the beginning of the video.
[clears throat] Bots's not paying attention. Whatever.
Probably antagonizing Pisces instead of paying attention.
[music] >> They stalk the edges of our nightmares.
Creatures that drink blood, rise from the grave, and prey on the living. We know their name. We think we know their story.
But long before Dracula cast his shadow over Victorian England, the vampire existed in countless forms across centuries and continents. They have taken many shapes. Mesopotamian demons that stole infants from their cribs, Slavic revenants clawing their way from the earth, Chinese corpses that drained life with a touch, and African spirits that dropped from the treetops to feast on human flesh. [music] This is the story of vampires before Dracula. An exploration of how humanity's most enduring monster evolved across cultures rooted in the primal fear of the dead returning to feed on the living. Their names have changed.
Their legends have spread. But one thing has always remained true. The vampire never truly dies.
[music] >> [music] >> The music is very uh anticipatory.
Very spooky. Very psycho for >> Oh, animated with mid journey. That's cool. [music] >> [music] >> Emerging from the mists of prehistory, the earliest whispers of the vampire take shape in the lands where civilization itself was born. In Mesopotamia, the first great cities rose, but so too did tales of creatures that fed on human life. Long before the name vampire existed, the people of Sumer, Akad, and Babylon feared something far older. Demons that drank blood, [music] stole infants, and haunted the darkness between the stars.
The moonless night stretches over the fertile crescent, where the first cities of humankind rise beside the Tigris and Euphrates. It is a land of towering ziggurats, of scribes pressing cune form into clay tablets of laws carved into stone.
And it is a land of demons.
>> Demons.
>> Among them, none is more feared than Lamash. The child snatcher, the bloodrinker, the terror of Mesopotamian mothers. She is no simple spectre but a div.
>> The terror of Mesopotamian mothers.
>> It's like next fucking level.
>> Yeah, that's very specific.
>> Yeah.
>> Divine horror. [music] A goddess demon whose cruelty surpasses mortal understanding.
Descriptions of her are etched into ancient Sumerian and Accadian texts invoking her monstrous form. The head of a lioness, the ears of a donkey, fingers tipped with talons. Her breath is disease. Her touch is death. Unlike many demons who serve the gods, Lamashtu is a rogue entity, a force of chaos that answers to no divine master. She roams the night, slipping into homes and cradles. Her jagged teeth bared as she leans over sleeping infants. The text says she nor on bones, sucks the marrow, and drinks the blood of men. She's the darkness in the bedroom corner, the cold wind that unsettles a newborn's sleep.
The fear of Lamashtu is so potent that even the gods do battle with her.
Pizuzu, the winged demon of storms, is invoked to drive her away. Small clay amulets bearing his snarling visage are placed in homes, a grim protection against the mother killer. These artifacts buried in ruins across Mesopotamia are remnants of an ancient war, not between mortals, but between spirits. The mere existence of such widespread charm suggests how deeply ingrained the terror of Lamashtu was in the Mesopotamian psyche. This was not a myth to entertain. This was a danger to defend against. But Lamashtu was not alone in the pantheon of bloodrinkers.
Another more elusive figure haunts the same shadows. She is Lilith, a being whose legend would stretch across millennia, evolving with every retelling. The earliest references to her appear in Sumerian incantations where she is one of the Lilitu, desert spirits who dwell in wastelands and ride the night winds. Unlike Lamashtu, who is brute force, Lilith is seduction. She's often depicted with flowing hair. Her body both alluring and unnatural. In Aadian texts, she is said to steal children from their cradles and feed on their lifeblood, a theme that persists when her myth migrates to the Hebrew tradition. It is there in early Jewish writings that Lilith is reshaped into something more powerful, more terrifying.
>> Are you telling me the Jews took a myth and then reshaped it into something else that was advantageous for Jews?
[laughter] They would never do that. The Jews are a peaceful are a people that would never make shit up, Jennifer. That would never happen. No anti-semitism. Why are we watching this deeply anti-semitic video on on my channel? What are you thinking?
[laughter] [gasps] >> I I'm so I I'm caught off guard. I just >> But you're like, "That's the thing you picked up on, Carla. That's That's it."
Okay.
>> Well, no. I because I I kind of SCREENED BITS AND PIECES.
>> I love this. [laughter] Where's Amblec? Someone page Amblec right now. [laughter] Jennifier, I need you to disavow this overtly anti-Semitic.
[laughter] >> So, I mean, are you telling me that they like wrote fiction into their spirituality? [gasps] >> Are you telling me that the Jews have invented things that were not based in reality that was advantageous to that?
They would never.
>> Nobody would ever do that. No religious leaders, especially not the Jews, would ever >> ever.
Everything in a religious text is 100% accurate to reality and truth.
>> Jews are God's chosen people, Jennifer.
Never doubt them. Never doubt them.
Never question them. Just go along with whatever they say, no matter what.
>> No.
>> Cadian texts. She is said to steal children from their cradles and feed on their lifeblood. A theme that persists when her myth migrates to the Hebrew tradition. It is there in early Jewish writings that Lilith is reshaped into something more powerful, more terrifying.
>> Thoughts on it, honestly. The alphabet of Ben Sira, a text from around the 8th century CE, reimagines her as the first wife of Adam, created before Eve.
>> Just uh for the record, when we started talking about the Jews, like 20 more people started watching. It was like it was it was it was a Jew moment that the it was like oh, we thought they were talking about vampires, but they're talking about Jews. Oh, >> that's I mean that's a real speak of the devil moment, isn't it?
>> Yeah, it really is. Yeah, it is.
>> But Lilith will not radar on YouTube. He speaks the secret name [laughter] of God and flies from Eden, rejecting subservience to man.
>> Hey Jews, I already said you're God's chosen people. Settle the fuck down. All right. Settle the fuck down.
>> Or it could have been people going, "Oh, are they trashing them?" I don't know.
Could go either way.
>> Mhm.
>> Disavow punishment. She is cursed to become a demon of the night, hunting infants in their sleep and drinking the blood of the newborn.
Medieval Jewish mysticism furthers this transformation. Lilith becomes the bride of Samuel, the queen of the demons, a seductress who lures men in the night, leaving them drained of life. Her image is stamped on protective amulets, much like Lamashtu before her. Mothers carve prayers into clay bowls and hang them upside down to trap her spirit. The warnings are always the same. Do not let her near the child, for she will steal its breath, drain its blood, and leave only an empty shell behind. The parallels between Lilith and Lamashtu are undeniable.
One an ancient demon goddess, the other a myth reforged in a new religious framework.
>> People were really scared of heaven, but their hunger [clears throat] remains the same.
>> Yeah. Well, >> is that a thing that happened back then is that children were just stolen out of their I mean >> I I wonder because even the Irish have like the have [clears throat] myths of the little people coming in and taking the babies or they would replace them with one of their own babies that you would raise that's not your own child but you're raising their children >> and sorry husband is helping um the God when you do that I always lose my train of thought dude non-helping husband. Bless your heart, you mean well.
[laughter] >> Um, so what I think it might be a reference to instead of literally the child has disappeared from the crib >> as I'm wondering if this has to do with like SIDS, >> like sudden infant death syndrome or like babies dying in the crib or becoming ill and um things like that. So I'm wondering if it's like, oh, they stole my baby. In other words, they took its spirit or something like I'm wondering if it's something like that because babies did not have a really high survival rate for, you know, over a long time like until recently. So, he had to be super careful with them. I'm wondering if it was something to that effect.
>> John wants me to write a story about a vampire story about communism. Yeah, we'll put that on the list of like eight or nine books I'm currently working on.
John, thank you.
>> Actually, it's not a bad metaphor.
>> I do like the initiative. I I'll write another fiction book at some point, I'm sure, cuz they're fun.
>> It is in Lilith's legend that we see the first clear echoes of the later vampire archetype, a being that is both monstrous and sensual that seduces and devours in the same breath.
[music] Unlike Lamashtu, who is wholly monstrous, Lilith has an eerie allure.
She is not a creature of mindless destruction, but of deliberate predation. She embodies the fear of the night, of the unknown, of a predator that does not merely kill, but takes something essential, life itself. These figures, forged in the fires of Mesopotamian belief, are among the oldest recorded nightmares of bloodrinking entities. Their influence would not die with the civilizations that worshiped and feared them. Their forms would shift, their stories would migrate, but their hunger would remain.
From the clay tablets of Babylon to the scrolls of Hebrew mystics, their presence lingers, and soon they would find new homes in the myths of other lands, where their thirst for blood would only grow stronger.
The world of the ancient Mediterranean is one where gods shape the fates of mortals, where curses are as real as the breath in one's lungs, and where things that feed in the dark are spoken of only in hushed voices. Unlike the grotesque beastial entities of Mesopotamian myth, the bloodrinkers of Greece and Rome are more human in form, yet no less terrifying in their appetites. They are predators who walk among mortals, hiding behind beauty, seduction and illusion, always waiting, always hungering. In the fading glow of a dying hearth, an old Greek storyteller weaves a tale of warning.
There once was a queen named Lamia, a woman of great beauty and regal grace.
But the gods are cruel and so too was her fate. She was loved by Zeus, and for this she was cursed by Hia, his jealous wife. The punishment was a horror beyond reckoning. Lamia's children were stolen from her one by one until she was left with only grief and madness. It is said that something inside her broke. The sorrow twisted her, reshaped her, [music] transformed her into a monster.
Her beautiful face became a mask of deception. Her [music] lower body stretched and coiled into the form of a serpent, and her thirst became unquenchable. If she could no longer mother children of her own, she would steal them from others. She became a creature of the night, lurking in the shadows, her glowing eyes piercing the darkness, her mouth ready to drink the blood of infants as they lay sleeping in their cradles.
>> Gastly.
>> Greek poets from as early as the fifth century B.C.E. describe Lamia and her kind as beings that live off the life force of the young, a fate they call worse than death.
These myths did not merely serve as entertainment. They were warnings shaping the fears of generations.
Parents would speak her name only in cautionary whispers, invoking protective charms to keep her away from their children.
>> [music] >> But there is something else about Lamia that makes her different from earlier demons like Lamashtu or Lilith. Unlike those monstrous figures, Lamia retains a degree of tragic beauty. Later versions of her myth describe her as a seductress, one who can disguise herself as a beautiful woman to lure men into her embrace. In these stories, she is no longer just a horror that devours children, but something far more insidious, a predator who presies on desire itself. This evolution is important for it marks the beginning of a theme that will appear again and again in vampire folklore. The deadly allure of the creature that should not be trusted but cannot be resisted. But Lamia is not the only thing that stalks the Mediterranean knight. If she is a creature of seduction and sorrow, then Impuser is something else entirely, a being of unrelenting terror.
Sent forth by Hecy, the goddess of witchcraft and the underworld. Impuser is a shape- shifter, a creature who walks in disguise, who takes the form of a beautiful woman to lure men into her grasp. But those who fall into her arms do not wake again. They are drained dry, their bodies left lifeless and pale, as if the very essence had been sucked from them. The poet Aristophanes, writing in the fifth century B.CE, TE describes Impuser as a spectral being with a flaming head, one leg of brass, and the other the limb of a wild beast. Other sources claim she's a demon who feeds on blood and flesh as she moves between the world of the living and the dead. If Empusa is the hunter [clears throat] of men, then the stricks is the unseen terror that prays on infants in the dead of night.
This Roman nightmare was described as an owl-like creature with a shrieking cry, an omen of doom, and a drinker of human blood. Roman writers like Ovid and Plenny recorded accounts of the stricks descending upon cradles, using its beak to pierce the flesh of newborns and suck their blood until their fragile bodies withered. And it is here in this tale of the [music] stricks that we find something fascinating, a direct connection to later vampire folklore.
For the Romans believed that garlic could ward off the stricks just as it would later be used to repel vampires across Europe. Even the word stricks would later evolve influencing medieval Latin and early Slavic languages where [music] it would give birth to the terms Stregaer and Stregoy words that would come to mean witch, revenant or vampire.
So it is in the shadows of ancient Rome and Greece.
>> Hang on. Go ahead.
>> The Italian witches, which is a line that I come from, are the Strega. So that's >> you come from the like the Baltoui basically. What the fuck? Jon of fire.
>> I'm kidding.
>> The old Italian witchcrafts, the bush witches. But yeah, >> that the roots of the modern vampire legend first begin to take shape.
Here in the flickering [music] fire light, myths of seductive bloodrinkers, monstrous night feeders, and shape-shifting demons converge. The fears of these ancient civilizations do not disappear. They transform, passed down through generations, crossing cultures, languages, and belief systems.
And so we move forward, following these creatures as they slip from the pagan world of antiquity into the realm of the early Christian era, where they will be reshaped, rebranded, and reborn as the demons and witches that will terrorize the medieval mind.
With the fall of Rome and the rise of Christianity, the gods of old faded into memory, but the monsters remained. The ancient bloodrinkers, Lamia, Empusa, and the stricks, did not vanish. They were transformed. Their legends whispered by merchants and scribes, carried from port to port, merged with new fears, new beliefs. The creatures of antiquity did not die. They simply changed names.
As Christianity spread across Europe and the Mediterranean, many of the old gods and spirits of earlier pagan religions were absorbed into the framework of Christian demonology.
The church, seeking to extinguish pagan beliefs, did not erase these stories. It repurposed them.
>> The fearsome of Greek fiction books.
>> No. Everything the Christian church says is obviously true in the word of God.
blah blah blah yada yada yada yada aka Jews >> night in search of children found new life in medieval Christian texts in some translations of the Latin Vulgate Bible Lilith first mentioned in the book of Isaiah was translated as Lamia the association was no accident the church drawing on Greco Roman traditions reinforced the idea that nightflying child snatching women were not just myths they were agents of Satan [clears throat] laying and Lilith, once separate figures, began to blur together. Their stories intertwined into a single undying nightmare of the vampiric she demon. This merging of legends had profound effects. The stricks, which had already become the Latin Streger, evolved further in medieval Europe. By the early Middle Ages, the word streger no longer referred only to a nightbird or a monster. It now meant witch. And witches, as the church would come to teach, were not just workers of dark magic. They were creatures of the night, stealing infants, drinking blood, and consorting with demons.
>> I love a tasty baby.
>> In Slavic lands, the term Streger took on a life of its own. By the 11th century, these terms had mutated into Stregoy, which would later come to mean vampire. The ancient Roman fear of the bloodrinking owl demon had taken root in new soil, reshaped by medieval superstition.
As the power of the church expanded, so too did the fear of creatures that lurked beyond the light of salvation.
If the pagan gods and spirits were to be dismissed as false, then the terrors of the night had to be given a new explanation. They were no longer simply monsters. They were minions of the devil himself.
>> Minions of the devil. By the early medieval period, early Christian writers began recording accounts of demonic entities that bore striking similarities to the vampires of earlier civilizations.
The church fathers wrote of nocturnal spirits that attacked infants and women in childbirth. Echoes of Lamashtu and Lilith, now framed in Christian theology as demons praying on the weak.
Tertullian, a Christian writer from the second century, warned that demonic forces could take physical form and consume human flesh and blood. His writings were among the first to suggest that demonic possession could manifest as an unholy hunger, a concept that would later find echoes in vampire folklore. St. Augustine, one of the most influential early Christian thinkers, wrote in the 4th century of revenants or restless corpses returning from the grave. He did not explicitly describe them as drinking blood, but the idea that the dead could rise and torment the living was already taking shape in religious thought.
By the sixth century, Christian scholars had labeled many of these ancient bloodrinking spirits as manifestations of Satan's influence. In some texts, they were described as stri or witches, women who had made packs with the devil and feasted on the blood of the innocent. These beliefs would later fuel the widespread European witch trials where thousands, mostly women, were accused of supernatural predation. But even as witches became the scapegoats of medieval Europe, the belief in the undead, the revenant, the restless corpse was quietly growing. These were not spirits or demons, but flesh and blood creatures who clawed their way from the earth to feed on the living.
and they would come to define the next great evolution of the vampire legend.
The classical world had given shape to the nightmare, but the medieval mind would give it a body.
>> Yo, >> the blood drinkers [clears throat] of the ancient >> Hey, with another super chat, Murphy's, but we got another dad joke coming.
What's going on? What does the receptionist at his sperm bank say to clients as they leave? Thanks [clears throat] for coming. [laughter] >> This joke pleases me.
>> [laughter] >> Yeah. Okay. Well, you and Murphy's full are two peas in a pod, identifier.
Jesus, >> he's such a bad little monkey.
>> I love it. I love it. Thank you, MP. We love you. Thank you.
>> World had prowled as demons and spirits.
[music] In the centuries to come, they would rise from their graves.
And so the ancient fears of Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome would find new life in medieval Europe, not as myths, but as horrors that walked among the living.
[music] The ancient world had given the vampire its form, a predator lurking in the shadows, a phantom feeding on the breath of infants, a demon slaking its thirst in the dark. But in the medieval era, it would find something far more powerful, a body. Where the vampire had once been a spirit, a god, or a cursed entity, [music] it was now something tangible.
It could walk. It could be found in the grave, exumed, examined. And most terrifying of all, it could come back.
This was the age of the revenant. The dead who did not stay dead. Across the villages and cities of medieval Europe, stories spread of corpses rising from their graves, of figures once loved and buried, returning to drain life from the living.
The vampire was no longer a creature of myth. It was the recently deceased, still warm beneath the earth, waiting for nightfall.
In the 12th century, an English monk named William of Newberg began compiling a history of his time. His chronicle written in Latin was not a book of myths or fables. It was a sober account of real events as they were understood.
Yet yet within its pages are stories of the dead that refused to rest. William described them as certain prodigies which are believed to have happened and are known to be true. These were not ghosts nor demons, but corpses that climbed from their graves and terrorized their former neighbors.
One such story recorded in the late 1100s tells of a reanimated corpse in Buckinghamshire. A man of ill reputation who after death began to walk at night knocking on doors calling the names of those within. Soon the people he visited fell sick and died. The villagers, gripped by fear, dug up the [music] body, only to find it grotesqually preserved, its limbs stiff but swollen, its lips red as if still fresh with life.
In another case set in Beric, a recently deceased man was said to have returned from his grave each night at the same hour, spreading disease and panic. He was finally stopped by local clergymen who exumed the body and burned it. The idea of the revenant, the restless corpse, was so prevalent [music] that chronicers like William of Newberg stated, "It would be impossible to believe these things were there not so many cases supported by such weighty evidence >> for this."
>> And these >> Okay, explain >> this. This is this is real history. So um there were times when they would dig up a body and upon viewing you know like how corpses decompose they didn't have documentation of decomposition. They didn't have the knowledge of what happens to a body when it is passed when the soul has passed on and it is just rotting. So gases expand making them look bloated. It also sometimes can cause blood that has coagulated but to it will be forced out through the mouth. Sometimes the eyes and ears even um because of the pressure of the gas. So it makes it look like they have recently fed on blood. Um of course they look gaunt because they're dead. Um, but then the moisture in the body of course is they're it's evaporating so they're drying out and this causes, you know, your mouth to open, your tongue to swell, and then everything recedes. So your teeth look longer. The fingernails will look longer because this this all recedes and come and draws back. So the fingernails look like they've grown. They haven't grown. It's impossible, but they just look visually longer because everything is shriveling up. And so when people saw that they thought that they were alive and feeding on the villagers and you know sometimes they would exume bodies because they suspected a disease um or they they were just superstitious because you know of course they got to blame something. They didn't understand how diseases traveled and things and if somebody was sick and passed away and then they are looking at them to see are they the cause of the curse and then they see this depending on when they dig it up this thing you know this vision of [laughter] of death then they're going to think it's alive.
So that's when they started um burning the bodies um and started they started doing other rituals like decapitation putting a steak through the heart things like that. Um, garlic to my knowledge was associated with vampires because it has been known it's very healthy for your blood. Um, but also the it's it's like an anesthesic in many ways. So it's um wait, is that the right word?
>> Yes.
>> Anesthetic.
>> So it it it helps kill uh germs. It's it's a good it's a good thing to eat and have and it keeps you quite healthy. But and that's the other thing. If vampires feed on blood, they don't want that, you know, that flavoring. Um, but it's it's something that is good for you and so therefore bad for vampires.
>> All right, fair enough. That makes a ton of sense. Actually, >> fears were not confined to England.
In Scotland, the priests of Melrose Abbey uncovered something far worse. In the year 1197, a dead priest was said to have clawed his way from the grave each night. He was seen creeping along the corridors of the abbey, whispering into the ears of the monks, driving them into a sickly madness. When his tomb was opened, they found his corpse grotesqually intact, its mouth curled into a grin, blood smeared around its lips. The monks, horrified, followed an ancient ritual. They dragged his body into the courtyard, drove a stake through his chest, and burned him to cinders. This was not the work of storytellers. These were written as fact in the minds of medieval chronicers. The undead were real and they were not to be trifled with. But it was not just strange tales and whispered rumors that fed these fears. There was something else, something far deadlier, a horror that no one understood. A sickness that swept through entire villages. And so the dead were blamed.
Medieval Europe was a world without science, without germ theory, without any true understanding of disease. When a sickness spread, when entire families wasted away, there was no clear cause, only suspicion. The plague was not a [clears throat] new terror, but each outbreak brought new horrors. Those who died did not simply pass. They took others with them. It often seemed that when one person died, their family followed, falling sick days or weeks later. The logical conclusion, something was stealing life from the living.
In many villages, people turned to the graves of the recently deceased. And when they dug up the bodies, what they found only confirmed their fears. Some corpses were bloated as if they had gorged on something in the grave. Some had blood at the mouth staining the burial shroud. Some had nails and hair that seemed to have grown as if they had not stopped living at all. To us, these are all natural signs of decomposition.
The release of gases, the loosening of bodily fluids, the skin retracting to make hair and nails seem longer. But to medieval villagers, they had their proof. These were not ordinary corpses.
>> It's like when Christians went to church in medieval times and they couldn't read the Bible or anything like that, but they heard all this music and there was candles and there was singing. It was all very mystical. And then these people in robes get up and they say, "Here's what's going on." And it's like, "Well, I don't have any reason to disbelieve that. It makes sense." I guess it's like they put their own stories around things to make it sense to them.
>> Regardless of like I mean, they couldn't possibly have known like, "Okay, here's what's going on, bro."
>> Yeah. They weren't doing anything sciency. They were just trying to interpret what they saw >> and were very naive people at that time.
>> Were feeding and so drastic measures were taken. Some bodies were staked to the ground. A long wooden pole hammered through the chest, pinning the corpse to its coffin so it could not rise. Some were decapitated, their heads placed between their legs so that even if they did return, they could no longer see or find their way back home. Some had bricks or stones forced into their mouths, a desperate attempt to stop them from feeding.
>> [music] >> These rituals became standard practice in parts of Europe, particularly during outbreaks of disease. But the word vampire did not yet exist. These beings were simply revenants, the restless dead, spreading sickness even after burial. The fear was real, and as it spread, it evolved. In Western [music] Europe, revenants remained ghoulish creatures waking from the grave to bring death in their wake. But in the east, the legend took on a new form. In the mistladen forests and graveyards of Slavic lands, the vampire was about to be born. [music] Ooh, the Slavic lands.
>> To the Slavic peoples, the up was not just a rumor. It was a real and immediate danger. Long before the word vampire entered English, the term upier was recorded in 11th century Keven Rous.
Unlike the Western Revenant, which was a mindless walking corpse, the UI was something far worse. It was a deliberate predator, one that left its grave to drink blood.
The signs were unmistakable, a corpse with a red, bloated complexion, an unusual ruddy glow to the skin. That was not decay. That was a body still feeding. The upia could be anyone. a sinner, a heretic, a suicide, a witch, someone who had made a pact with evil.
And unlike the aimless revenants of Western Europe, the Slavic vampire was cunning. It chose its victims. It started with family members, attacking its own bloodline, appearing in the night to drain their strength. It could shift its form, becoming mist, a shadow, even an animal. Traits that later became core elements of vampire mythology. But most horrifying of all, it could turn others into its kind. [music] Entire villages lived in fear of a single corpse spreading vampirism like a plague. And so the Slavic people developed their own grim protections.
Corpses were buried face down so that if they tried to dig out of the grave, they would only burrow deeper.
Sickles were placed around the necks of the dead so that if they did rise, they would sever their own heads. Garlic was stuffed into mouths, not for flavor, but as a weapon against something far worse than rot. These rituals shaped the vampire we recognize today. And as time passed, the vampire's legend only grew.
But there was one more transformation waiting. One final evolution that would cement the vampire as a creature of horror, a being both feared and hunted.
>> [music] >> The fear of the undead feeding on the living was not unique to Europe. Across the deserts of the Middle East, the jungles of Southeast Asia, and the mountains of China, the dead walked.
They were known by different names. They hunted in different ways, but their hunger was the same. These were not the elegant noblemen of later literature, nor the decayed revenants of medieval graves. They were spirits, [music] demons, curses given form. And in some cases, they were far older than the vampires of Europe. Their legends stretching back to the earliest recorded histories of human civilization.
[music] In the shifting sands of the Arabian Peninsula, where the night winds carry the voices of the lost, a far older predator waits. It is called the ghoul, a creature whose name still lingers in languages around the world.
Unlike the European vampire who lingers in burial shrouds, the ghoul does not rest in a coffin. It stalks the lonely traveler. It waits in the ruins of lost cities. It feeds on flesh and drinks the blood of the living and the dead alike.
The ghoul's origins stretch back to ancient Mesopotamian demonology where a class of underworld entities known as Galloo were [music] said to drag souls down into the abyss. These creatures were later woven into pre-Islamic Arab folklore, becoming night spirits that feasted on the weak. The word alul, meaning the demon or the devourer, first appears in early Arabic texts and later finds its way into the famous 1,01 nights. Here, the ghoul is depicted as a shape-shifting creature that can take the form of a human to lure victims before revealing its monstrous hunger.
Unlike the European vampire, who is often linked to aristocracy and forbidden desire, the ghoul [music] is a predator of the desolate places of graveyards and wastelands.
Travelers fear losing their way at night, for that is when the ghoul emerges, digging through the sands, feeding on corpses, and waiting for the living to stumble into its grasp. In some versions of the myth, the ghoul is said to attack children, a theme that mirrors the fears of the stricks and lamia in Greek and Roman mythology. The ghoul can also be female, such as the dreaded ghoul, a monstrous being in bedin legends who lures men into the desert with beauty only to tear them apart. There is a chilling familiarity to these stories. A nocturnal creature that consumes blood and flesh, lurking on the edges of civilization, waiting for the unsuspecting.
Even in later centuries, the term ghoul would spread into western horror fiction, taking on new meaning as an eater of the dead, a grave robber, a revenant with an unholy appetite. But in its homeland, the ghoul is still spoken of with caution. Its legend remains intact.
In the dense forests and burning cremation grounds of India, another ancient predator waits. It does not lurk in a coffin or emerge from a grave, for it has never been buried. It lives in the corpse itself. The Vetala is a being described in Hindu mythology, an undead spirit that possesses and reanimates the dead. Unlike the European vampire which feeds on blood, the Vetala's hunger is different. It steals life force. It whispers in the ears of the living. It drives [music] its victims to madness.
The most famous collection of Vitala stories appears in the 11th century Sanskrit text, the Vitala Panchavimi, 25 tales of the Vitala. These tales depict a world where the dead do not always stay dead, where a Vetala can take over a body [music] and pretend to be alive, only revealing itself at night.
Kings, sorcerers, and holy men encounter these creatures, often requiring special rituals to banish or trap them.
The most terrifying trait of the vetala is that it cannot be killed by conventional means. A stake through the heart is useless. Fire is meaningless.
It must be removed through spiritual or magical intervention which often involves complex rights performed by brahinss or tantric priests.
>> There are also similar entities described in Indian folklore.
>> These creatures are flesheaters depicted with dark shriveled skin and glowing red eyes. Who who knew it would be the tantric priests that would be uh the protectors against the vampire shadow?
Who could have seen that twist coming?
Plot twist.
>> Love does conquer evil.
>> Can you please do a a an adult novel about a tantric priest vampire hunter?
>> No.
>> Why?
>> I don't I don't want to. [laughter] That is the identifier. That's like a readymade plotline for smut like tantric priest vampire hunter.
>> It's just so I don't >> you can have sex scenes with the vampire and the tantric.
Oh my god. I don't even know how it would relate those two things. Like you would have to do tantra in front of the vampire or aim the energy to the no.
Yak. [clears throat] Uhuh. [laughter] >> You know what? Just let that one marinate. Just let it marinate. It'll it'll come to you. [laughter] The spirits are going to bring you a vision that's going to explain tantric priest vampire hunter to you. It's going to be great. [laughter] >> Lurking near cemeteries and feasting on both the living and the dead.
Some texts claim that they spread disease, a belief eerily similar to the plague spreading vampires of medieval Europe.
>> The influence of these tales [music] did not remain in India. During the British colonial period, translations of the Vetila Panchchevy reached the west, >> most notably Sir Richard. The magic's already working. Jennifer's already come up with an idea. Go ahead.
>> No, no, no, no, no. I technically it's a very powerful energy force.
that is easiest inspired by sexual contact. I am confused by the tantric priest vampire hunter thing. I'm very confused by that. I'm wondering if maybe that's because that's who was around. But it is >> like it's like one is like light energy and one is dark energy. It's two sides of the same coin.
>> I guess it could be. I'm I'm I'm very interested in what this is about now, but I don't think I have any knowledge that I could write a book.
>> Jennifer, that's precisely Hang on. Hang on a second. Hang on a second. Hang on.
Hang on.
>> What? What are you doing? What are you doing?
>> We're touching PT this shit right now.
Okay. Give >> No. be a plot for an erotic fiction novel about a tantric priest vampire hunter.
Let's see. You don't know how this would work? Well, let's see. Let's Let's just ask the AI. I'm not saying you the the title, the Blood Sutra. Father Adrien Vale is a disgraced tantric priest trained in an underground order that hunts vampires by manipulating the same force vampires feed upon human desire.
Unlike conventional hunters, Adrien does not rely on stakes and holy water. He uses breath, ritual touch, meditation, and controlled erotic energy to draw vampires out of hiding, weaken their psychic influence, and sever the bonds they create with their victims. His newest target is Countest Sarapin Vea, an ancient vampire who has opened an exclusive spiritual tree in a decaying coastal monastery. Wealthy guests arrive seeking transformation and leave euphoric, obedient, and strangely bloodless. Adrien infiltrates the retreat, posting as a rival teacher, intending to expose Saraphin and destroy the nest beneath the monastery. Saraphin recognizes him immediately. Rather than kill him, she proposes a bargain.
Someone with Adrienne's own religious order has been secretly supplying vampires with tantric sacred tantric rights. Those corrupted rituals allow vampires to feed not merely on blood, but on intimacy itself, draining a person's capacity for love, pleasure, and attachment. Sarapin claims [laughter] she doesn't will create a new breed of vampire powerful enough to overthrow both worlds. Adrien does not trust her, but he needs her knowledge. The investigate this is really fucking 114.
>> Can you Can you email that to me?
>> I will. I will. We're going to finish this now, though. Adrien does not trust her, but he needs her knowledge. Their in investigation forces them into increasingly intimate rituals designed to enter in one another's memories.
Adrien discovers Saraphin was once a temple initiate centuries ago, and the founder of Adrienne's order betrayed her, transformed her, and erased the truth in its sacred history. Their attraction becomes dangerous because Adrienne's dis. Jennifer, you have to write this fucking book. It just goes on and on and on.
That's, you know, you put that in a word doc and and send an email to send this to you on Discord.
>> Oh my god, my eyes are watering. I'm like crying over because I'm I'm like laughing internally. Oh my god.
>> I'm sending this to you on Discord right now. Are you happy for your records for when you start writing Tantric Priest Vampire Hunter? See, like you you thought you couldn't come up with a connection. There you go. AI.
>> I'm not that wellversed in Catholic priesthoods.
I mean, I would have not Catholic tantric priesthoods. I would have no fucking >> It's a fiction. Yeah, this is erotic fiction, Jennifer. You don't have to have >> You have to base it in reality somewhere so that it's not completely, you know, dumb and I don't I now I have to look up Trice because I really don't know anything about Oh, damn it. Okay, listen. I'm already fucking idea. Okay, it's You've already written one book based on my ideas. Like, why not two? I am very angry at chat GBT for coming up with something that fucking cool.
>> I know, right? See, listen. We don't use AI to write our books completely, but if you want to use it for research or brainstorming, it's fucking great.
>> It's fucking great. Actually, >> we're working on a workplace romance right now. And I have my sequel to The Seed Bear and I have a werewolf book that I still have to figure out how I'm going because it's written and done, but it's not it's not good. It needs to be reworked. So, I have three things I'm working Oh, and then the Golden Dildo St. four books I'm working on right now.
I don't need a goddamn Cantric Vampire Hunter, but now I do. Now I need it.
>> Write it down. Just write it down. Put it on a sticky note somewhere.
>> I've got Vampire Hunter.
>> That is That is ridiculous.
>> This is like a smut movie on Cinemax waiting to happen. Jennifier, it really is. It really This is like the next Fifty Shades of Gray. You're welcome.
>> Oh, no. I don't want to be Well, I mean, I wouldn't mind that.
>> YOU DO WHAT? ARE you serious? You be like a gajillionaire and can DO WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT. [laughter] >> YEAH, I'll take I would like to write.
>> Yeah, maybe.
>> Yeah, John's working on a vampire romance right now.
>> John Morgan is.
>> Yep.
>> I bet I bet it's a very sweet book, John.
>> John John will trick you with his writing. I I I remember he made me whip James Lindsay while I demanded he say whiteness means capitalism. I I'm I recall I got in massive trouble for John Morgan writing that fucking fanfiction.
[laughter] >> It You loved it. You loved it.
>> I did love it. I did love I was very proud of John to incite basically an internet firestorm in response to a fanfiction that was read by 40 fucking people. [laughter] >> Yeah. No, it's it's his sequel. He's working on his sequel. And this one has a little romantic tinge with some vampires.
>> It occurs to me.
>> We've gotten so many new members of the community that don't know the John Morgan fanfiction lore.
>> Oh.
>> Oh shit. We've got to tell this story.
Okay. For people who weren't around back then. John Morgan one night as a joke wrote a fanfiction based on the movie Midsummer Summer. This is back in our war against James Lindsay where basically we we we tortured and then burned James Lindsay alive in a ritual sacrifice as based on the movie. And and basically I whipped James and made him say whiteness means capitalism and then we burned him in a ritual [laughter] sacrifice because that's what Midsummer is about. And and and I didn't tell John Morgan to write this fanfiction. He just did it cuz he was feeling fucking creative one night. He's like, "Carla, I adapted your war with James Lindsay into a horror fanfiction." And I was like, "This is actually fucking great." And then without even reading it, I I I trusted in John Morgan's ability so much, I didn't even read it. And I retweeted it thinking I was going to read it later. I was like, "Okay, I'm going to retweet this so that uh" So, so, oh, something's going on with the Rumble stream for some reason. Um, I'm going to retweet this so I remember to read it later. And because I retweeted it, James Lindsay had a massive public meltdown about this fucking fanfiction.
And no one even like it was only for people in my community. Like barely anyone had even read it. It was like you could even see the stats on the it was like 40 people had read it because he just shared fun.
>> Yeah. It was just for fun. It was just fucking around and like he shared it in movie night where there weren't like that many people there. And then when I retweeted it, James Lindsay had a massive fucking meltdown and he blamed me and he said I was sexually like uh like stalking him or something because of John Morgan's fanfiction when I hadn't even read it yet. Carl in the dominatrix whipping whipping was [laughter] I I think I read it for him on movie night when I um and I read the fanfiction. I cannot I was so hard to make it through because it is legit hilarious. It's so funny.
>> It it it's fucking funny. And James James just kept going and going and going about the fucking fanfiction and he blew it up into much bigger proportion than it was. And then we decided to have Eyeswide Shot movie night and we created an invitation inviting James to Eyes Wide Shot movie night and he uh he never showed up.
Birthday.
>> Yeah, it was on his birthday. We had Eyes Wide Shot movie night on his birthday and he didn't show up and it was very sad and you know we couldn't smooth things though. It was incredible.
We we extended a very nice offer and >> yeah, >> we were rebuffed and it's just never It's never fun. It's never fun.
>> Yeah. You try to be a good guy and >> I said golden dildo, Heather. That is what I said. I have a story about a woman who falls in love with a golden dildo.
>> Yeah. I mean, who wouldn't fall in love with a golden dildo?
Makes sense.
>> It's a It's a It's my one comedy, my one romcom. [laughter] >> 1870 collection, [music] Vikram and the Vampire. This work introduced the Vitala to English readers, explicitly calling it a vampire and describing it.
>> When are we going to channel the ghost of McCarthy? Well, we have to do a crowdfunding campaign to send We actually probably should start that. We have to do a crowdfunding campaign because we are going to crowdfund to send this is actually serious for people who are new. What I It's going to sound like I'm not being serious, but I am being 100% serious with every single thing that I'm about to say. We're going to do a crowdfunding campaign to send Jennifer to mediumship school. She has found a mediumship school that I think starts in November. And so we need to crowdfund like $3,000 or something, which I totally think we can do. It's not going to be a funky like and and basically what's going to happen, Jennifer is going to go learn how to be a medium and then we will have our own channel like a real medium that can actually speak to like spirit.
>> Yeah, Jennifer can already do this, but she wants to hone her abilities and get really good at it. So then we will have a dedicated channel medium where we can literally channel anyone we want. And we're going to we're going to start it off light. We you know we're going to start off with like I don't know maybe some historical figures or maybe some spiritual stuff. We're gonna work our way up to McCarthy and then eventually Hitler obviously but like but >> but but that's what's going on. We're gonna we're gonna crowdfunded.
Yeah, >> Mr. Rogers.
>> Mr. Ro That'd be a great one. We're going to give you some some softball. I would like you to channel the queen. I want to talk to the queen. I'm be like, "Okay, queen." Like, are you reptilian or not?
>> Yeah. Queen Elizabeth II, right? Yeah.
>> Yep. Yep. We can channel historical figures. We could channel, you know, people like politician. We could channel Lindsey Graham after he's met his untimely demise.
>> We could channel Lindsey Graham. Um Eric von Danakin. Um and then we can kind of work up to some like I mean we could we could even try Charlie, you know. We could try >> He could.
>> Yeah. But uh yeah, I I'm uh I'm interested to see how because I I have my one the thing that holds me back is I get very shy and I get very um like oh I can't that's not I can't do that and he you know and so it's going to h I need to work on that my confidence level and I think that having a class where they say no actually you can do this shit will will be very helpful because that's hold me back.
>> Everyone needs a class to learn skills.
if you're like I I you know I worked with teachers to learn how to be more psychic even though probably that was a mistake but I did it anyway and so now I know and I can't unknow that stuff but like uh >> but like I mean everyone needs a CL it's okay we're going to we're going to professionalize this you I mean you like you you do a lot of the community we can send you to mediumship school and then use you as our dedicated channel medium forever >> well and Hans I could channel Jeff Epstein if he was dead >> if he's dead we could find out if Mitch McConnell is really dead by channeling him. Like there a a channel medium has so many uses.
>> Very true.
>> And Jennifer will be ours because we will have crafted her and molded her into a medium.
>> Yep. Spirit talks to me all the time. I just And I have chneled before, but in order to do this kind of level, I feel like I really need the training. I don't want to dabble. I am not a dabbler. I very much support being educated in the thing that you do so you don't just welcome in the bullshit because I've seen that happen and it's never pretty.
>> Why was it a mistake to learn to be more psychic? Because you can't >> you you you can't unlearn it and you know shit that maybe you don't want to know and maybe you know life would have just been a little bit easier did you not have that information.
>> But it can also be really useful. Why do you think I'm so good at analyzing socialists? I'm I'm extremely intuitive.
It's But that's like I'm It sounds like I'm joking, but I'm not actually joking.
Like I was a great workplace coach because I'm very intuitive. Like so >> has benefits and drawbacks, you know, whatever.
>> Yep.
>> So, and sometimes it's hard to turn off if you don't know how to like if you don't know how to kind of isolate your energy, they just come at you constantly. And I'm sure we've all seen like movies where they have the psychic who's just constantly getting barrageed with voices and stuff and it's it's really hard for them to navigate their life. And that's someone who doesn't know how to shield.
>> So you want to make sure you got that first.
>> And then try getting gangstaled on the internet for two straight fucking years when you have that type of energy coming at you all day every day and being s and I'm not always the best about, you know, shielding and all that. I should be better at it at this point, but I'm just not. So anyway, whatever.
>> I'll work on you and Sedona.
>> You're going to work on me and Sedona?
We got to We got to figure that out, too.
>> Yeah, we do.
>> That's going to be awesome.
>> Hanging upside down from trees waiting [music] to strike.
>> Even Bram Stoker is believed to have been aware of these translations.
[music] And some scholars suggest that elements of Dracula's abilities, his mind control, his ability to shapeshift, his connection to madness may have been influenced by these Hindu legends.
The Vetala is a vampire of the mind as much as the body. And in the shadowed burial grounds of India, its legend endures.
In the dim glow of the lantern, the villagers whisper of a corpse that does not decay. It stands upright, its limbs rigid, its skin pale and tinged with green. It moves in sudden jerking hops.
It does not drink blood, not in the way of European vampires. Instead, it drains the very life force from those who cross its path. This is the Jang Shir, the hopping corpse of Chinese folklore. A being both feared and ridiculed. Its legend surviving in stories passed down for centuries.
>> Corpse, the >> unlike the ghoul or the vital, >> the jung is not a creature of seduction or trickery.
>> It is an unthinking corpse brought back to a form of twisted half-life by improper burial rituals or the interference of dark sorcery.
>> [music] >> InQing Dynasty legends, a jang could be created if a body was exposed to yin energy for too long or if it was buried in the wrong place, disturbing the balance of nature.
The jang does not hunt in silence. It moves [clears throat] in a stiff hopping motion, its limbs [music] locked from rigor mortise. Some versions of the myth say it feeds on the chi or life essence of its victims, draining them of energy until they collapse lifeless. Others claim that it drinks blood, a detail that would later lead to comparisons with western vampires. Tauist [music] priests were often called upon to deal with these creatures using special talismans, yellow papers marked with red inscriptions to stop the jang in its tracks. Other protective measures included mirrors which the creature was said to fear, and the ringing of bells, which could disrupt its spiritual energy. The Jang Sha's legacy in Chinese folklore is still strong today. In Hong Kong cinema, it has been portrayed as the Chinese counterpart to the Western vampire, reinforcing the idea that the fear of the dead returning to prey upon the living is universal. [music] Beneath the heavy jungle canopy among the villages of Malaysia and the Philippines, another nightmare unfolds.
Here, the vampire takes its most grotesque form. In Malaysia, it is called the Penangalan. A woman by day, but at night she separates from her body, leaving only her floating head, her endtrails dangling beneath her as she takes flight. The penangalan hunts newborns and pregnant women drawn to the scent of blood and birth. It slips through windows, its long, [music] thin tongue reaching out to drain the life from its victims. In the Philippines, a similar creature exists, the mananangal.
It too is a woman who detaches from her lower half, flying into the night with leathery wings. It hunts sleeping villagers, drinking their blood with a needle thin proboscus. Much like the vampires of Western myth, these creatures are defeated not with crosses or stakes, but with salt, garlic, and sharp thorns, which trap their trailing entrails. These Southeast Asian vampires, unlike their Western counterparts, are not the undead.
>> You know what I should do? You know what I should I'm I'm thinking about the John Morgan fanfiction and just like the whole kurfuffle of that I should do at some point we're just adding it to the list of like 87 things I have to do at any given time. You know how I did surviving Carrie Smith which was just a book of screenshots of Carrie Smith's tweets about me and just showing like all the the the shit this woman said online for years. I should do the same thing with James Lindsay and all of the crazy unhinged posts that he sent about me and then work into the story like different things that we did to antagonize James and basically tell the story of the war with James Lindsay and put that into a short book of some sort where people can literally just go through and see the fucking messages and and hear the story of how the songs were written and hear the story of like the the times that we ambushed James on live streams that he was on. It's like it's like the story. We need to document our our history and our lore is what I'm thinking. And John Morgan's fanfiction would be a part of that. And then obviously James' reaction to it and all the people who like you know like blew up over it like anyone was free.
[laughter] >> Well, like read from like a satirical angle like you know like like you know like a like a future like narrator or something that's like here is this absurd thing that h it's like oh you know what it is? It's like a historical thing where you've got some like sort of absurd narrator in the future that's like here's this crazy shit that happened back in the day and it's written almost like a like a satire like >> Yeah. Like once upon a time >> a comical chronicle.
>> Yeah. [laughter] A comical chronicle. I like that. I like that. And then and then we take it and we set it all to music in some sort of like animation. I What what the fuck movie was that? some sort of movie where what Little Shop of Horrors I'm thinking like Little Shop of Where they start by just like singing the song of the story and all that. We we make our own Little Shop of Horrors type musical based on the war with James Lindsay.
>> It was April 27th and the second full moon or like whatever.
>> Yes. [laughter] Yes. Exactly. Someone sings a song to intro the whole thing and it would be fucking phenomenal. It would be great. [laughter] >> That would be very cute. We could do a whole stage production on Broadway.
Carllin's comical chronicle of J Lindsay. [laughter] >> So true. And then we display the tweets from like giant signs off of the stage and they just keep coming like one after another after another. They just keep like scrolling down the stream as I'm like going through some like wast like like like you know hallucination where I'm just like surrounded by all these.
[laughter] That would be amazing. That that's a that's a fun idea actually.
but living creatures [music] cursed or born with their horrific affliction.
But their hunger remains the same.
[music] The vampires legend had taken shape in the east, in the gulls of the desert, the vetala of India, the jang of China, and the winged horrors of Southeast Asia. Each culture gave its own name to the predator that drained life from the living. Proving that this fear was not isolated to one people, one land or one time.
>> I need the hunger of the dead did not stop there.
>> Okay, go ahead.
>> Um, there are some channelists who who actually they are possessed by the thing like Bashar possesses his human host. I do not do that kind of channeling. I do not allow something to inhabit my body.
I act as an interpreter. So the spirit speaks to and through but does not take me over or come inside me.
[laughter] >> As long as you can tell us what spirit is saying to you and and and be an accurate like that's that's fine. You don't need to like go full bashar on us or anything.
>> No, no, no. And and that's not my Michael go away. Husband is not helping.
>> [laughter] >> Um, so yeah, there's there's people who do that and that's like a lot and a lot of the alien channelers, the plea pleadenss and things like that, they will inhabit the body and take it over. That's not what I'm going to do. I'm not interested in that. I'm more interested. We've all seen channeling Eric how when she talks to people, they're looking at the the being and the being is speaking to them and they're giving the message. That's more what I wanted. That's more that's where I'm comfortable.
>> That's fine, Jennifer. Yeah, I never step >> across the vast landscapes.
>> We want you to feel comfortable as our channel medium. You are basically our goddess that are going to give us access to information that we would not otherwise have access to. And I think it's going to be cool.
>> Nice.
>> Of Africa and the Americas. [music] Bloodrinkers emerged in forms both monstrous and familiar. Some lived among the living, hiding behind human faces, striking in the depths of night.
Others roamed the wilderness. Creatures that lurked in trees that flew through the air that carried the scent of death itself. These beings formed in different cultures, untouched by the vampire myths of Europe, nonetheless shared eerie similarities.
The vampire was not a single creation.
It was a universal fear.
The forests of West Africa are dense, their shadows deep and unmoving. Among the Ashanti people of Ghana and Togo, stories are told of creatures that dwell high above, hanging from the treetops.
They are called the Asan Bosam, human in shape, but with iron teeth and feet like hooks. They do not wait for their prey to come to them. They drop from the branches onto unsuspecting victims, their teeth sinking into flesh, drinking deep. Unlike the European vampire which hides in the grave or the castle, the asen bosom is a creature of the wild, a predator that belongs to the forests.
Hunters speak of hearing them in the trees, the faint creek of shifting weight above, the snapping of branches just before something falls onto them from the darkness.
[music] Closely related to the [clears throat] asam bosom is the sasabons, a being far more fearsome. It is said to be 20 ft tall, covered in thick red hair, its enormous bat-like wings folding over its body like a cloak.
Unlike the solitary vampires of Western law, the sassabons does not hunt alone.
It is part of something [clears throat] larger, something communal. The Ashanti believe that to speak its name too often is to invite its attention. Villagers avoid the deepest parts of the forest knowing that something is always watching. But in Africa, the vampire is not always a monster of the wild.
Sometimes it walks among the people.
In Ash Shanti belief, there is a figure known as the Oaiifo, a being both human and not. Unlike the vampires of Europe, which are created in death, the Oayifo is born. It is a person, man or [music] woman, who harbors a hunger so great that it cannot be sated by ordinary means. By day, they live among the village unnoticed, unsuspected.
But at [clears throat] night they leave their bodies behind, traveling unseen, slipping into homes, drinking the blood of children, withering the crops with their >> How do they drink the blood without having their body?
>> The fear of Oifo witches runs deep.
Typical Africans were taken across the Atlantic. These >> typical fucking black African culture making up a myth that doesn't even make sense.
>> Having a spirit drink a physical thing.
>> Yeah. Like where does it go? It's a spirit. Like where does the blood go?
Maybe they absorb it energetically. I don't know. Yeah, >> doesn't make sense. This is low IQ Africa. Obviously, we love black people here. There's no racism allowed on the channel. I'm just making a joke. This is for entertainment purposes only. My my content is satire.
>> Maybe >> beliefs did not.
>> What?
>> John says maybe they use Bluetooth.
>> Maybe [laughter] they use Bluetooth.
Yeah, probably. Yeah, probably the Africans used Bluetooth, John. Probably that's true. Yeah. [laughter] >> Not die. They merged with new ones, adapted to new lands. In the Caribbean, the Oayifo became the Sukuyant and a new kind of vampire was born.
[music] But before following the legend across the sea, there are still others to meet in the darkness of Africa. In southern Africa, the impendulu or lightning bird is said to serve as a familiar to witches, attacking victims at their command, drinking their blood.
In East Africa, tales of the Papova, a winged [music] demon that presies on sleeping victims, persist even into modern times, with reported sightings as recent as the late 20th century. Each of these creatures is different. Some live in the trees, some fly, some walk unseen among men, but their hunger is the same.
The vampire in its many forms had crossed oceans long before the Europeans ever set sail. Long before the arrival of Spanish ships. Long before the Catholic priests brought the fear of the devil to the new world, the Aztecs already knew something terrible waited in the night. They called them Chihuahua, the spirits of women who had died in childbirth, forever cursed to wander the roads and crossroads, [music] their pale skeletal faces frozen in agony, seeking vengeance against the living. To the Aztecs, childbirth was a war, and those who died in labor were honored like warriors. But there was also fear.
>> These women had died unnaturally before their time. And so they were not at peace. The Kateo did not just haunt the crossroads. They sought out children much like Lilith, much like Lamia. They would press their spectral mouths to the lips of the sleeping, stealing their breath, draining their life. Their cries in the wind were a bad omen, a warning that death was coming.
Even after the fall of the Aztec Empire, the legend did not vanish. It merged with Spanish Catholicism, transforming into the weeping woman, Laorona, forever searching for lost children, her sorrow now eternal.
But the vampire of the Americas was not always a ghost. Sometimes it was flesh and blood, and it lived among the people.
In the humid darkness of Trinidad, Haiti, and Dominica, people lock their doors at night, not for fear of robbers, but for something far older. The sukuant is a woman, a neighbor, a healer perhaps. But when the sun sets, she sheds her skin.
>> I love it. The old woman is a vampire.
>> The disguise of human flesh. She is something else entirely. A glowing ball of fire flickering through the night, slipping through keyholes and under doors, seeking blood. She does not kill outright.
>> She takes just enough to sustain herself, leaving her victims marked by strange bruises, signs of her passing, >> but should she take too much, >> her victims grow weak, then die, and she moves on to another town. The suku yont is not without weakness. Salt, garlic, rice, these can slow her down. Like the vampires of Eastern Europe, she is compelled to count grains left in her path, [clears throat] forced to pause and tally each one before she can enter her home. But the true way to defeat her is far worse. Some say that if you find her discarded human skin, you can burn it before dawn, trapping her in her monstrous form, leaving her forever exiled from the world of the living.
Like the Oaiifo of Africa, the Sukuyant is not an outsider. She is one of them.
She walks among them in daylight, blending in. And so people watch their neighbors carefully. They avoid eye contact with the old woman at the market, whispering that she is not what she seems.
[music] The vampire had been lurking in the shadows of folklore for centuries, whispered of in villages and recorded in medieval chronicles. It had been a revenant, a restless corpse, a family curse. But in the 18th century, it became something more. It became a crisis. What had once been local superstition suddenly erupted into full-blown hysteria, not in darkened taverns or among uneducated peasants, but in the courts of European rulers and the records of government officials.
Vampires became a matter of state.
>> [music] >> The panic began in the remote corners of the Habsburg Empire in regions that had long been steeped in vampire beliefs. In the villages of Serbia, Moravia, and Wakia, disturbing reports began to surface. Stories of the dead rising from their graves to attack the living, of entire families wasting away, their blood seemingly drained from within. The accounts spread rapidly and unlike the folklore of earlier centuries, these were not cautionary tales or monastic scribblings. These stories were official reports signed and sealed by government representatives.
In the year 1725, in the small Serbian village of Kisilova, a peasant named Petar Blagoyovich died suddenly. Days later, his son claimed that his father had come to him in the night, appearing at his bedside, pale and wideeyed.
The next morning, the boy was dead. More deaths followed, each one preceded by reports of visitations from the deceased Blagoyovich. The villagers, gripped by terror, pleaded with the authorities.
When the local magistrate and a contingent of soldiers arrived, they dug up Bluyovich<unk>'s body and recoiled at what they found. The corpse looked fresh, its hair and nails appearing to have grown, its mouth smeared with blood. To those present, this was no ordinary dead man. This was something still feeding. Without hesitation, they drove a wooden stake through his chest.
Some witnesses later claimed that the body let out a groan as the wood pierced it.
>> It might have ended there. a single case, an isolated exumation, but it did not. Just a few years later, in 1732, another Serbian village, Medveda, became the epicenter of an even greater vampire panic. The case revolved around a man named Arnold Pow, a former soldier who had died suddenly from a fall. But in the weeks after his burial, villagers began to report seeing Powley walking through the streets at night.
His eyes hollow, his skin salow, his breath carrying the stench of decay.
Then the deaths began. Four villagers died under mysterious circumstances.
Each one sickening rapidly after claiming to have been visited by the dead man. Panic spread through the town.
Fearful that Powell had become a vampire, the villagers took drastic action. His grave was unearthed. The reports say that his body was found completely undeayed with blood pooling around his lips as if he had recently fed. In a desperate bid to end the nightmare, the villagers followed long-standing vampire rituals. They drove a stake through his chest, whereupon, it is said the body let out a terrible shriek.
>> To prevent further horrors, they burned his remains and scattered the >> Go ahead. So bodies do weird shit even, you know, when they're when they're done and they've just been dead even for a while. So things build up air, gas, and even lungs can or will have air trapped inside them. And so very frequently you will have, you know, happening >> right >> from that coming out. [clears throat] >> So my mother when she was just starting nursing worked in, she worked in an ER.
She did like the night shift because that's all you could do, you know, to start your career. and she was also working with um in um elder care like terminal elder care. So there was this dude who had passed away and she had gone into you know get his clipboard and do things dude it was just within an hour or two of passing away sat straight up and went >> no way >> fell back down. Yeah.
>> No fucking way that Yeah. Michael says they do. There's it's residual energy in the muscles. Sometimes they'll twitch all of a sudden because the residual energy is still in there. It just has to it has to release and then or sometimes they'll just thrash and the air comes out and it Yeah, it's like terrifying.
It is absolutely terrif I can't I can't imagine. But yeah, >> crazy. I would like shit myself if that happened. I think most people I'm like what the fuck?
>> I quit. I'm gonna go work for Hogands.
Goodbye. I need something nice to do.
[laughter] >> Wow. Yeah. Okay. Good to know.
>> Good to know. If you ever see a dead do that, don't freak out.
>> In the months that followed, others who had died after Powell were also seen rising from their graves. These two were exumed, their bodies similarly intact.
Once again, stakes were driven, heads were severed, [clears throat] and corpses were burned. But this time the event was documented in full >> if it if the air activates their vocal cords and they'll go and then yeah that happens too. You roll them over they go >> wild.
>> Yeah.
>> Detail by Austrian officials.
One of these officials, Johannes Flockinger, a regimenal medical officer, compiled a thorough report titled Visum Edum, >> seen and discovered.
>> His report described with clinical detachment the signs of vampirism observed in the bodies. The villagers believed without doubt that these corpses were feeding on the living.
[music] Pluckinger's document was sent to Vienna where it circulated among the educated elite, making its way to scholars, noble courts, and military strategists.
[music] The vampire hysteria had become official. The reports from Serbia ignited a firestorm across Europe. The word vampire, previously an obscure term from Slavic folklore, now appeared in print for the first time in Western newspapers and academic journals. The educated elite, rather than dismissing the accounts outright, found themselves enthralled and horrified. These were not medieval fairy tales. These were documented exumations conducted under the supervision of government officials and medical examiners.
Could it be possible, some wondered, that vampires were real?
The case of Arnold Powell and the vampire epidemic of Serbia became the subject of dozens of essays and dissertations.
Scholars across Germany, France, and England debated what might be causing the phenomenon.
Some turned to medicine. Was there a natural explanation for why some corpses seem to resist decay? Others sought a theological answer. [music] Were these revenants damned souls cursed to walk the earth for their sins?
One of the most famous works to emerge from this debate was a 1746 treatise by Doman Calme, a French benedicting monk.
His book dissitations zaparic deesple vampier was an exhaustive analysis of vampire cases blending theology folklore and contemporary reports >> book that they used to do that >> he neither confirmed nor denied the existence of vampires but he treated the accounts with serious consideration compiling eyewitness testimony and detailing cases from across Europe. His work became widely read fueling both belief and skepticism. [clears throat] Even the great Voltater weighed in, writing in his philosophical dictionary in 1764.
Vampires in Poland and Hungary, it is said they go out from their graves at night to suck the blood of the living.
But what is most vexing is that these vampires have been the subject of official inquiries by magistrates. These reports are sworn on oath. If vampires exist, what must we think of the rest of history?
Voltater, ever the skeptic, was mocking the very idea of vampires. Yet, the fact that he even acknowledged the hysteria demonstrates how widespread the debate had become. But not everyone was content to let the matter linger in the realm of speculation.
As the 18th century wore on, the vampire craze began to meet its greatest opponent, the age of reason. In the 1750s, Empress Maria Terresa of Austria took an interest in the vampire hysteria plaguing her lands. Concerned that superstition was undermining public order, she dispatched her personal physician, Gerard Vaneten, to investigate.
>> Van Sweden, a man of science, dismissed the entire phenomenon outright.
>> He argued that vampireism was nothing more than ignorance and fear mixed with the natural processes of decomposition.
His report to the Empress was blunt.
There are no vampires, only frightened villagers and corpses behaving as all corpses do. On his recommendation, Maria Teresa issued a decree banning exumations and vampire executions across the empire. The government took swift action, cracking down on local officials who had allowed these rituals to continue. The panic began to subside.
The vampire was not dead, but it had been exercised from the concerns of rulers and scholars. It had retreated back into the darkness of folklore. Yet, even as the official hysteria died, the legend did not disappear.
The vampire had been transformed by the 18th century, [music] not just in fear, but in fascination.
It was now something that could be studied, written about, debated. It had entered history, and soon the panic would spread to America.
[music] The year is 1892 and in the quiet town of Exat, Rhode Island, a family is dying. Tuberculosis, consumption as it was known, had long haunted New England, a wasting disease that struck with no warning and lingered for months, even years. It stole weight from the body, left the afflicted pale and gaunt, their ribs showing through thinning skin, their cheeks sunken, they coughed blood into handkerchiefs, their breath coming ragged and shallow. [music] The people of Exat had seen this before.
But for George Brown, [music] it was a horror unfolding within his own home.
His wife, Mary Eliza Brown, was the first to succumb.
Then his eldest daughter, Mary Olive, wasted away in much the same fashion.
Another son died soon after. Now his only remaining son, Edwin, was fading, and the town began to whisper. "This was no ordinary illness," they said.
"Something was feeding."
By the late 19th century, tuberculosis was the leading cause of death in the United States. Yet, it was still poorly understood. It did not spread rapidly like cholera, nor did it strike in obvious outbreaks like smallpox.
Instead, it moved slowly, insidiously, consuming one family member after another. To those left behind, it seemed that the dead were preying upon the living. This belief was not new. It had existed in New England for over a century. It came from a time before germ theory, when disease was an enigma and death a creeping shadow. In small towns and farming villages, people sought answers not in science but in folklore.
And in their minds, there was only one possible explanation. The dead were refusing to stay buried. They called them vampires. Though these creatures were not the aristocratic bloodrinkers of European legend, the vampires of New England did not stalk the night in elegant capes or transform into bats. They were family members, recently deceased, lying in their graves, siphoning the life from their own kin. There was only one way to stop them. Desperate to save his only surviving son, George Brown allowed the town's people to do what had to be done.
On March 17th, 1892, a small group of men, including the town doctor, gathered in Chestnut Hill Cemetery. They unearthed the bodies of George Brown's wife and daughters. The mother, Mary Eliza, had long since decomposed. So had Mary Olive, the eldest daughter.
>> Mary.
>> But when they opened the coffin of Mercy Brown, buried only 2 months before, what they found chilled them to the core.
Mercy's body was too well preserved. Her face was unmarked by decay.
>> Her nails and hair seemed to have grown, a common but misunderstood [clears throat] phenomenon caused by the skin receding after death. And when the doctor cut into her chest, they found liquid blood pulled in her heart. Uhoh.
>> To the town, it was all the proof they needed.
>> Mercy Brown was still feeding >> vampire.
>> The villagers followed the ritual that had been practiced throughout New England. They cut out her heart, burned it to ashes, and mixed the ashes into a tonic.
>> Edwin was given the mixture to drink, a desperate attempt to break the vampire's hold on him, >> but it did not save him. He died two months later.
The Mercy Brown case is the most famous, but it was not the first. For nearly a hundred years, New England had been gripped by vampire panic. From Maine to Connecticut, families plagued by tuberculosis had turned to the same solution. Dig up the dead. Find the culprit. Destroy the body.
>> I need to go.
>> Some of these cases left behind.
>> I'll bet it's amazing.
>> Yeah, you need to you need to come to New England. Yeah. So many haunted places here.
>> Got to go. Got to go.
>> Mhm. Ling evidence.
In 1817 in Griswald, Connecticut, a group of children playing in a hillside graveyard accidentally left.
>> Jennifer, I meant to tell you this. So, I was uh so when I went to do protest coverage in Maine the other day. I got up there a couple hours early because I wanted to just look around and I wanted a chance to go in some of the shops in port in uh Portland and all that stuff just to see what's going on. And I go into this one shop and there's a pile of Zen there. Of course, I'm going to go over to the pile of Zen like immediately. That's what I'm looking for, right?
>> Yes.
>> They had a zen about the wind doggo.
>> Really?
>> Yes.
>> Oh, >> yes. They had a zen about the wind doggo. I was like, are you shitting me?
Like, there weren't really any socialists. I just thought that that was like really funny and coincidental given the timing.
>> And now you know what that is. And >> now I know what it is. I would have had no idea. I would have and and had the socialists at that uh organization in Florida that I've been stalking had they been paying attention. So basically there's this organization in Florida that I'm trolling because they're so desperate for us not to record their webinars and they keep putting the they're basically sabotaging their own events trying to prevent us from recording them. So of course I keep trying to record them. They actually had one today and I was going to ask someone to record it but I was just like we're going to give them a break for once.
We're to let them self-sabotage on their own completely and then we're going to come back and record them another time.
Anyway, the email address, and I can say this because I've burned the email address now, because one of the things they did to prevent me from recording their webinars is they figured out how to display the email I'm signed up under on the screen. So, if they saw me, like if they saw my recording, they could tell what email I was signed under, they could kick me out, right? Oh, so I created a specific burner email address and I was like, I'm going to use this one time and that's going to be it. And had they been paying attention to the Wendago episode, they would have known that the it was said it was Windago 777 or something like something [laughter] like that.
>> Nice.
>> I was like, I created the demon email to infiltrate them and they didn't even know.
>> That's glad to [laughter] help.
>> Yeah. Yep. Yep. [snorts] >> The skeleton. [music] Its bones arranged in a peculiar way. The skull and femurss crossed over the rib cage like a pirates's emblem. [music] When archaeologists later examined the grave, they determined that the body had been exumed years after burial. [music] Someone had dug it up, broken open the ribs, and reeried it in the shape of a warding sign. This was not a careless grave robbing. It was a vampire ritual.
Similar cases were recorded in Exat, Rhode Island, 1874 when the body of Sarah Tillinghust was dug up and burned.
In 1854 in Juit City, Connecticut, the Ray family suffered multiple deaths from tuberculosis.
The town exumed two of the Ray brothers, burned their bodies, and scattered the ashes. In nearly every case, the method was the same. Bodies were dug up and inspected for signs of unnatural preservation. Blood in the heart was the ultimate sign of vampireism. The heart was removed and burned to stop the vampires influence. In some cases, the entire body was burned and the ashes were fed to the afflicted as a cure.
There is no evidence that these rituals worked. But for the desperate, for those watching their families die one by one, logic did not matter, only hope.
Mercy Brown's exumation was widely reported not just in New England, but in newspapers across the country and even in London. One of these clippings found its way into the hands of Bram Stoker.
At the time, Stoker was in the final years of writing Dracula, a novel steeped in Eastern European vampire law.
But within his research notes discovered decades after his death, was a newspaper article describing the Mercy Brown case.
Did it shape Dracula? The novel's character, Lucy Westenra, shares chilling similarities with Mercy. Both young women, both dying mysteriously, both found too well preserved after death. And in Dracula, the removal of the heart and the burning of the body are key elements of vampire destruction.
It is possible that Stoker, drawing from European and Slavic folklore, found something hauntingly familiar in the Mercy Brown story.
He may have realized that the fear of the dead feeding on the living was not just an old world legend. It was happening in America.
[music] The vampire has always lived among its victims. In Europe, it wore the face of a lost loved one, creeping from the grave to feed upon its own kin.
In the Caribbean, it moved among the villagers in daylight, only revealing its monstrous hunger after sundown. In China, it hopped stiffly from the coffin, hunting those foolish enough to cross its path. In Africa, it dropped from the treetops, fangs gleaming in the dark.
Every culture has its own version of the predator, but certain fears remain universal. The dead should stay buried.
Blood is sacred. Life can be stolen.
These ideas are not unique to one people or one place. The legends, though shaped by different landscapes and traditions, share something deeper. A connection that transcends borders, passed along trade routes, whispered in the ears of travelers, woven into the beliefs of the next generation.
The vampire was never confined to a single story. It spread across continents, taking on new forms, transforming with each encounter.
It moved through the minds of merchants, priests, and scholars, carried not in the bloodstream, but in language, in myth, in fear.
No myth exists in isolation.
For thousands of years, humans have carried their stories with them, passing [clears throat] them from village to village, from one continent to another.
Vampires, like all monsters, were shaped not only by local superstition, but also by contact with the outside world.
In the ancient world, traders moved along the silk road from China to Persia, from India to Europe. Ideas traveled with them. The merchants who carried silk and spices also carried stories. Tales of Jang Shir in the east, of Vetala in the south, of ghouls in the deserts. These stories blended with local beliefs, mutating, adapting until they took on new names, new rituals, new horrors.
When Arab traders reached West Africa, they brought with them the legend of the ghoul, a creature that devoured human flesh and drank blood. In turn, the Ashanti spoke of their own nightstalkers, the Asen bosom and Obayo.
Did the ghoul influence African vampire legends, or had the fear already existed, waiting only for a new name? It is impossible to say, but the parallels are undeniable.
In the age of exploration, European sailors arrived in the Americas, encountering indigenous myths of bloodrinking spirits and cursed souls.
The Aztec Kiweto, [music] the Caribbean Suku Yant, and the New England vampires were distant cousins, their stories altered by conquest and time. But the fear remained.
Even in the 19th century, as colonial powers expanded into Asia and Africa, European scholars recorded the vampire legends of the people they encountered, reframing them through a western lens.
>> Hey Carlin, >> so Richard Burton in his 18 this Zen Melinda's talking about in the chat. I am fascinated.
>> I saw her mention a Zen >> Lesbbo vampiric libidinal contagion.
Oh yeah, that sounds like something that would be a zen. Yeah, that sounds like a thing.
>> Are they >> Don't start reading queer communist porn, Jennifer. It's going to it's going to corrupt.
>> Is that what that is?
>> Probably.
>> Probably.
>> Blah blah blah.
>> The esoteric estro erotic order of the dikes. Yeah, that's communist.
[laughter] That is a thousand% communist. You know how I know? Because when I went undercover at the Dyke March in Chicago, I heard a speech where they said dyke is a political position. I swear to God.
>> Oh, for the love.
>> Yes. Yeah. Not lesbian dyke, >> right?
>> Different things.
>> Yeah. Not to be confused with bully.
>> She got it in an air kiss. Yeah. She got it is communist. Yeah.
>> Oh my god.
>> She got it in book. Yeah.
>> Yeah. In 70 translation of Vikram and the vampire introduced English audiences to the Hindu vetera explicitly calling it a vampire despite the fact that it was a spirit more than a bloodrinker. It was a translation choice but one that stuck.
>> Even Bram Stoker while writing Dracula was influenced by these cross-cultural exchanges. His notes contain references to the Slavic Stregoy, the Icelandic Dger, and even the Mercy Brown case from New England. Whether intentionally or not, Stoker was gathering pieces from centuries of vampire belief, merging them into something new, something that would outlive its predecessors.
If the vampire legend developed independently in different parts of the world, what does that say about us? Why do these creatures appear again and again in so many cultures?
Perhaps it is because they speak to something fundamental, an ancient and persistent terror that lingers in the human mind. In nearly every culture, vampires are tied to anxieties about improper burial, restless spirits, and the consequences of disturbing the dead.
Whether it is the juncture of China, the strigoy of Romania or the Naxera of Germany, there is always the belief that the dead, if not properly laid to rest, will come back.
In some cases, this fear led to complex burial rights. Stakes driven through corpses, graves lined with salt, heads removed and placed between the legs to prevent the body from walking. Across cultures, blood is sacred. It is the essence of vitality, the thing that separates the living from the dead. It is no coincidence that nearly every vampire figure feeds on blood or life energy. The Aztec Chiwet drained the life force from infants. The Vetala of India fed on human spirits. The Sukuyant of the Caribbean stole energy from its victims. Even in folklore, where literal bloodrinking is absent, the vampire is always a parasite, feeding off the living in some form. Before [music] germ theory, people sought spiritual reasons for why sickness spread. The European plague vampires and the New England tuberculosis vampires were both born from the same fear. When a family member died of a mysterious illness, it seemed only natural to suspect that they were still feeding on the living.
Across cultures, there are patterns in how people defended themselves. Garlic was used in Slavic and Chinese traditions. Stakes were driven through bodies in Europe and India. Salt was a weapon in African, Caribbean, and Asian folklore alike. These protective rituals developed independently, suggesting a shared psychological need to believe that there was a way to stop the thing that comes in the night.
This is what makes the vampire unique among monsters. It is not just a single story, but a collection of shared fears adapted to different times, different places. [music] The vampire had traveled far through time, across continents, through the voices of storytellers and the fears of the superstitious.
It had emerged from the deserts of Mesopotamia, clawed through the graveyards of medieval Europe, and whispered through the candle lit rooms of New England's dying. It had taken many forms, shifting from demon to spirit to revenant. And now it was about to undergo its final transformation.
By the 19th century, the vampire was no longer a creature of whispered folklore, nor merely a thing of ritual and fear.
It had entered literature, and in doing so, it became something more than a superstition. It became a story. The vampire's first true step into the written word came in 1819 in [music] a tale that would change its nature forever.
That year, an English doctor named John Polydori published a short story called The Vampire. It was the first work of fiction to depict the vampire not as a bloated reanimated peasant but as something aristocratic, intelligent, and alluring.
Its central figure, Lord Ruthven, was a predator unlike those of folklore. He was a nobleman, pale and brooding, possessing an unnatural charm that allowed him to seduce his victims before feeding on them. He did not rise from the grave with dirt beneath his fingernails. He walked among high society, whispering in the ears of the wealthy and powerful.
Polydori's story was born from one of the most famous literary gatherings in history, the summer of 1816 when Lord Byron, Mary Shel, and Percy Bishell spent a stormy night at Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva telling ghost stories.
>> Oh, that sounds amazing.
>> Mary Shel's tale would become Frankenstein.
Byron's unfinished fragment, a sketch of a bloodrinking nobleman, was taken up by Polydori, who crafted it into something new.
The story was a sensation. For the first time, the vampire had entered English literature, not as a mindless corpse, but as a character. It was no longer just an object of terror. It was an antagonist, a seducer, a figure of dark fascination. Polydori's work set the stage for everything that would follow.
By the 1840s, the vampire had become a regular figure in penny dreadfuls. The cheaply printed serals that entertained England's working class. The most famous of these was Vani the Vampire or the Feast of Blood, published between 1845 and 1847.
Sir Francis Vani, the novel's titular vampire, was an evolution of Lord Ruthven, a monstrous but strangely tragic figure. He had sharp fangs, one of the earliest literary descriptions of a vampire's teeth, hypnotic powers, and the ability to revive himself from death. He was also tormented, cursed to his existence, oscillating between predation and regret.
Despite its melodrama, Vani the vampire left its mark. The pale fanged vampire had now become the standard image, one that would be repeated in future literature and eventually film.
>> [music] >> Then in 1872, a new kind of vampire emerged. One that could seduce, not just terrify.
Sheridan Lefanu's Carmela introduced the first major female vampire in fiction. A creature of beauty and danger in equal measure. Unlike Ruth Van Orvani, Carmela did not prey on high society. She prayed on innocent young women slipping into their lives like a lover, like a shadow.
Set in a lonely Austrian castle, Carmela tells the story of a girl who is slowly drained of life by a mysterious visitor.
The Predator does not attack outright.
She charms. She lingers. She whispers in the dark, draws her victims into an embrace that is part love, part death.
Camila was daring for its time. The book contained undeniable homoerotic undertones depicting the vampire not just as a threat to life but as a corrupting influence.
>> A being who existed outside the boundaries of morality and that the lesbian >> it was carer that first introduced >> if we're being honest about it. The lesbian really is one of the most terrifying horror creatures that one can come up with. So I I think it makes sense >> why >> lesbians are fucking terrifying. Have you ever met a lesbian? Have you ever like >> lesbians are fucking terrifying.
with the list.
>> They're insufferable.
They They want to move in with you right away. They They are They're insufferable. Like Like [laughter] I' I've never dated a woman, so I mean I don't know anything about that, but I have lesbian friends that are perfectly fine.
I don't know. Like my Well, one of my best friends of 36 years was a lesbian. Then she went psycho crazy.
>> Exactly. Exactly. That's exactly my point, Jennifer. You think everything's fucking normal until she goes psycho crazy. Okay. And maybe she was always psycho crazy and she was just better reigning that shit in than other lesbians.
>> I think Well, I don't want to get into it, but um let's just say I think she was a little more of an abusive type person than I understood until I started keying into it and I went, I don't like being treated like this. So, we Yeah.
But anyway, >> you don't say the lesbian was terrifying and insufferable when you started really paying attention to it. You don't say identifier.
>> Her partner, who was not her lover, but just her partner, like roommate, was lovely, very class act, very cool, adored her, very sweet person. Never had a problem with her. Um, but I mean, anybody can be crazy and mean and brutal and abusive. I wouldn't say that's a trait for lesbians. I've had many abusive hetero relationships, you know.
I don't know. I don't think anybody's better or worse than anyone else. Well, listen. I would just say that like I'm I'm sure there are nice lesbians that are not psychotic, but I think pretty much every gay man that watches me would would agree with me on this. Lesbians are insufferable and they are terrifying and and no one really wants to hang out with them. And I'm sure there are great lesbians that would be that would be fine to hang out with that wouldn't be an annoying pain in the ass. I'm sure that's true. And I'm so sorry that you are getting painted with the broad brush of most lesbians being insufferable. But if you're honest about it, you know it's true. And I know it's true. And every gay man in the chat knows it's true.
[laughter] Like, come on. I I'm more I would be more agreeable to like queer people are insufferable. Like, >> well, they're also insufferable. They They can both be insufferable. Lesbians are insufferable and queer people are insufferable. And gay men are generally okay.
>> I love my gay boys. I love them. There's a when they go out the deep end, they really go off the deep end. Yeah, they have their moments as it can be very fucking dramatic. But on the whole, gay men are pretty much awesome and everyone else sucks.
>> Yeah, I'm not a shock.
>> You're not a gay man, honey.
>> Oh, okay.
>> He's half listening. [laughter] >> Okay. All right. You're allowed to have your opinion. That's fine.
>> Yep. I'm allowed to have my opinion. the idea that a vampire could transform into an animal, [music] taking the form of a cat. It was Carmela that perfected the slow, creeping dread of a vampire's influence rather than an outright attack. And it was Camila that decades later, Ram Stoker would study as he wrote his own vampire tale. The vampire had evolved. It was no longer just a monster. It was an idea, an infection, something that spread through literature like a disease. And in 1897, it would finally be given its most enduring name.
>> Ram Stoker was not the first to write about vampires.
>> He was not even the first to depict them as elegant, cunning creatures. But he was the first to bring together everything that had come before and mold it into something truly immortal.
>> Dracula was not an accident. It was the result of years of research, of digging through folk tales, historical accounts, and existing literature.
Stoker studied the Serbian vampire cases of the 18th century, the Slavic Stregoy, the witchcraft trials of Europe, the New England vampire exumations, and the legends of Vlad the Impaler, blending them into a single character, an embodiment of every fear the vampire had ever represented.
Stoker's Dracula was the culmination of centuries of vampire myth. He carried the noble predation of Polydori's Lord Ruthven, stalking his victims with aristocratic ease.
>> He possessed the fangs and hypnotic allure.
>> Yeah.
>> Amber Bamba. Lesbians have the highest domestic abuse rates. They also have the highest divorce rate.
>> Second to that is heterosexual couples.
The lowest rates of abuse and divorce are gay gay men couples.
And I saw a com a comedian talking about this and he's like, "hm, what's the common denominator >> in the upper two most abusive women?
>> It's women.
>> Maybe it's women are horrible and lesbians just happen to happen to be more women in the same space than a heterero couple."
>> Women are really sorry. I don't I mean there's so many of us that are absolutely >> awful.
just that's why I try so hard to like not to be the best I can be because there's so many women out there just fuck it up and ruin it for all of us.
>> See, I you know what? I've embraced the fact that I I have many flaws. Most of which is that I like poking the bear probably more than I should and do it on a regular basis and that gets me into trouble. I can acknowledge this, but I feel like if people just own their shit, people are more forgiving of it. be like, "Yes, I know I can be crazy, and yes, I know I can be antagonistic, and yes, I know I can be childlike, and yes, I know I can be selfish. I like my my selfishness is one of the best things about me, I personally think." And and I know all these things and I admit to them. And so, you can't hold them against me.
>> I do. Yeah, I have my cray cray moments.
I do. I'm But >> you are a Capricorn.
>> I Well, I think that balances me out and keeps me from getting too cray cray.
Have you ever met a Scorpio woman?
They're insane. They're fucking crazy.
>> Yeah, but Capricorns are also insufferable as much as lesbians, Jeff.
So, like I mean, maybe it's the Scorpio that's balancing out your inner your inherent nature.
>> No, Scorpios are crazy. They're geminis especially and Pisces women.
Piscian women are the worst.
>> Yeah. Well, Pisces are crazy like regardless of gender. Pis maybe not crazy, but um annoying would annoying.
>> Harmful.
>> Harmful. Oblivious. oblivious and harmful at the same time >> and maniacal occasionally. Like they do shit on purpose that they know is going to actually hurt you and it's not funny.
>> Yeah. Like making AI porn about you on the internet. That was, you know, a perfect example. Excellent. Excellent genifier. I we we've come full circle with this entire episode.
>> We did it again. All right.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
>> And solving the problems of the universe.
>> Poke poke. Poke poke.
were ofani the vampire drawing his prey into submission before the final bite.
He exuded the corrupting influence of Carmela, a presence that seeped into the mind as much as the body.
He embodied the slow wasting death of New England's vampire panics, the unseen force that drained families from within.
And he was the resurrected corpse of Slavic folklore. A revenant bound to the earth yet desperate to rise.
Yet he was also something new. Stoker crafted his vampire with rules. Garlic repelled him. Crosses burned him. He could not cross running water. He needed to sleep in the soil of his homeland.
These were drawn from various vampire traditions, cementing them into a single codified legend. Dracula was not simply a vampire. He was all vampires. The novel was not an immediate success upon publication, but in time it became the definitive vampire story. It was the last step in the vampire's journey from folklore to fiction, from grave to immortality. And from there, the vampire would take on a life of its own. [music] The 20th and 21st centuries did not bury the vampire. They resurrected it, reinvented it, made it something new again and again. From Noseratu to Bella Lugosi's Dracula, from Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire to the Twilight series, the vampire has taken many forms. It has been feared, romanticized, turned into metaphor, reclaimed, reimagined.
Even today, echoes of the vampires past remain. In Romania, some villagers still drive [music] stakes through corpses to prevent them from rising. In rural Africa, modern reports of vampire attacks occasionally surface. In pop culture, the vampire still appears as a symbol of the outsider, of disease, of sexuality, of power and corruption. Yet in each of its forms, the vampire carries traces of what it once was, the ancient demon, the medieval revenant, the whispered fear. One thing is clear, the vampire will never die. It has lived in shadow and fire, in parchment and ink, in fear and fascination. It has survived time itself. And as long as humanity fears the night, fears death, fears something waiting beyond the grave, the vampire will endure. It will always return, watching, waiting, feeding.
[music] >> Oh, the vampire.
>> I know we have Geminis and Scorpios and all the people and the Pisces in the chat. We're just we're riffing on our own bad experiences, but there are always exceptions to those rules. So, >> well, everyone has an astrological chart that goes beyond your sun sign, okay?
It's not like just because some one one Aries does one thing doesn't mean you do that thing, although you probably fucking do. And uh and maybe you don't want to want to admit it because it's not very flattering, >> but every fucking zodiac sign has their things, okay? No, like none of you are fucking perfect. Not even the Capricorns.
Especially [clears throat] not the fucking Pisces. [laughter] Aries of course are perfect because we are the number one sign of the zodiac and we are first and >> Yep.
>> Yep. Anyway, vampire night was a I think a successful night. Jennifer, thank you.
>> Yeah, that was good.
>> That was good. Um, do you have any announcements?
>> I do. I do. I do. I'm just getting to them. Yeah.
So, we are in the last week of Patriotic July for movie night.
Coming up this Sunday, I will be showing and I don't think I've ever covered any of the Middle Eastern wars, any of the Gulf Wars or anything. We will be watching Jarhead on Sunday.
>> That's a good one. That's a good one.
>> I watched it a long, long time ago and I did not care for it. Um, but I have since grown into my appreciation for the military, military movies and um, history and things. At the time, it just wasn't my vibe, but now I'm like I'm interested. So, you know, but so >> you should have uh Oh, go ahead.
>> I'm stoked to present it. I'm looking forward to seeing it again with with new eyes.
>> You should watch uh The Hurt Locker sometime.
>> I have seen that and I was actually between the Hurt Locker and Jarhead and I was watching the previews. I've seen both of them, but there was just something about Jarhead that I felt was had a more interesting character study element to it that would bring that experience a little closer to home and that's kind of one more intimate experience and that's kind of what I wanted to do.
>> I just thought Jeremy Rener was fucking fantastic in the Hurt Locker and he was also hot >> and also an amazing actor but also hot >> but also hot. Yeah, Jeremy Rener for the win on that one for sure.
>> Yeah.
>> And and it's a about diffusing bombs and stuff. I think what I liked about Jarhead is it was a bit more of an overview of the military experience in the Middle East and that's kind of what I wanted to do. So that's why it won.
But we'll probably we might do the Hurt Locker next year. Oh, you know what I was thinking of doing next next July >> because you know how I plan ahead and I get ideas so I make notes. So I was thinking next July for patriotic July I would do >> instead of movies I would do Band of Brothers >> Band of Brothers.
three, two, three. There's 10 episodes.
And just do like the if I can find it somewhere. It depends on if I can find it.
>> I know it was on Netflix, but we'll see.
It might be on Amazon, but if I can find it and it's not going to put me in the poor house to rent it, I'm thinking I might do that just for all of July because that is an excellent series. So, so good. Cool. Well, that sounds like a plan. As always guys, you can join Jennifer from movie nights on Sunday nights in the supporter discord starting at 7 pm and Mac B does movie nights on Monday nights at uh 900 PM. And do you happen to know what Mac is watching uh this coming Monday?
>> I do. He is in James Bond July and he will be doing Live and Let Die.
>> Live and Let Die. There you go.
>> It's an excellent one. Love that. So yeah, we'll be that's what's coming up for you guys this weekend. Um beyond that, I don't think I've got anything else.
>> Right on. Right on. Well, that's all we've got for tonight, guys. We do Disen Rage every Tuesday night as a way of blowing off steam and having fun. And we have a small but mighty audience for Disenge. And that's awesome. And we appreciate you guys hanging out with us.
And we will be back uh next Tuesday. And I will be back tomorrow at 5:00 PM. I mean, probably thereabouts. Um and I'll see you guys then. All right.
>> Bye guys.
>> Take care. Bye.
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108 views•2025-07-15
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Literature
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day - Judith Viorst Illustrated by Ray Cruz
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Literature
Love & Sex in the Time of Plague: Guido Ruggiero Book Talk
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165 views•2022-04-26
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Literature
Genres - Explore Fictional Genres and Discover What Makes Each One Special
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Law
WOW! Judge TURNS THE TABLES on Trump in His OWN $10B LAWSUIT!!!
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Business
Playstation NO DISC/NO BUY Fight Is Over...
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Business
Steam and Xbox Just Dropped The Hammer On PlayStation
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Anthropology
Americans Confused in Australia for 17 Minutes Straight
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