The Epic Interactive Enc…lopedia of the Paranormal/The Epic Interactive Encyclopedia of the Paranormal (1997).iso/subjects/myths/vampires]_classic_vampires/text

Text File | 1992-09-02 | 2KB | 26 lines

   Fears of the traditional vampire still survive in many parts of the
world, and are far from extinct in the West. In 1973 a Polish
expatriate, Demetrius Myiciura, was found dead in his flat in
stoke-on-Trent, UK. He had choked to death on a clove of garlic which he
had obviously been in the habit of putting in his mouth last thing at
night; on his windowsill was a bowl of urine into which garlic had been
mixed; salt had been sprinkled over his bed. Clearly Myicura had been
terrified of nocturnal vampiric attack, and his death had come about
solely because of his belief. Belief by the perpetrator in the powers to
be gained through vampirism - literal, bloodsucking vampirism - has been
responsible for other deaths in comparatively recent times. One such
individual, a man called Salvarrey, was arrested in 1910 near Galazarna,
Portugal, after the body of a child, drained of blood, had been
discovered: he confessed to the murder, declaring it to be an inevitable
result of the fact that he was a vampire and required blood. The English
killer John Haigh (1910-49), the Acid Bath Murderer, was another. He had
a typical vampire's childhood: his parents were Plymouth Brethren who
depirved the boy of virtually all of the luxuries of modern life, up to
and including frienships with others of his own age, and instilled in
him a belief in the literal truth of the Bible, including the parts
about washing in the blood of the Lamb. He killed nine people,
dissolving their bodies in acid, but not before drinking of their blood
Although the court refused to accept his plea of vampirism (which the
defence maintained was a form of insanity), it seems likely that it was
genuine.