Real Vampires, Night Stalkers and Creatures from the Darkside. Brad Steiger

Vera, but she was able to divert them by saying that she did not know that the man was married. Since the police had no other evidence, they had to drop the case.

      But the wife of the banker was persistent. She poked around, asking questions and finally turned up enough evidence to link Vera with the disappearance of over a dozen men. The police reopened the case, and a search of the Renczi house revealed the incredible basement crypt with the body of the young banker and over 30 other occupied coffins. In the raid that uncovered this grisly secret, the police found Vera Renczi sitting among her lovers. Inspection of the coffins showed that one of them contained the body of a young boy. “My son,” Vera explained coldly. “He threatened to expose me.”

      When asked why she did it Vera’s only explanation was that she could not stand the thought of her lovers in the arms of another woman, so she had successfully kept them “faithful” to her.

      Vera Renczi entered prison, feeling no remorse for her crimes; but a few years after her imprisonment she went insane, spending the nights laughing and talking with her dead lovers. Not many years later she joined them.

       Fritz Haarmann, The Hanover Vampire

      In their Perverse Crimes in History, R.E.L. Masters and Eduard Lea identify Fritz Haarmann as one of the vampire breed, but add that it is “somewhat more accurate to regard him as a homosexual sadist and lust murderer—and of course as a cannibal.” Haarmann had at least a six-year reign of terror (1918–1924) before he was apprehended by the authorities. During that time, he cannibalized as many as 50 victims. However, some researchers point out the alarming statistics that during that same period of time over 600 boys disappeared from Hanover, Germany, a city of about 450,000.

      Some of his posthumous analysts and biographers have characterized him as a dull and stupid youth who served a number of jail sentences for child-molestation, indecent exposure, and homosexuality. Haarmann’s antisocial acts graduated from the petty to the perverse when he became enamored with a young male prostitute, Hans Grans.

      Haarmann, then in his forties, had made a token effort to work at gainful employment and had opened a small combination butcher shop and restaurant. With the urging of Grans, Haarmann would lure a young man to his shop, overpower him, and begin biting and chewing at his throat. In some instances, he did not cease his bloody attack until he had nearly eaten the head away from the body.

      After Haarmann had satisfied his desire for blood and flesh, the body of the victim would be butchered and made into steaks, sausages, and other cuts of meat. Both Haarmann and Grans ate regular meals from their private stock of human flesh. What they didn’t eat, Haarmann sold in his butcher shop. His patrons never questioned how it was that his shop always had choice cuts of meat for sale when fresh meat became scarce in other stores throughout the city.

      When the sensational news of Haarmann’s vampirism and butchery came to light, there may have been a number of citizens of Hanover who were horrified to consider that by patronizing his butcher shop they had become unwitting cannibals.

      After his conviction at about the age of 46, Haarmann was beheaded with a sword. His brain was removed from its skull and delivered to Göttingen University for study.

       Albert Fish, A Different Kind of Christ

      Albert Fish was a cannibal and a vampire who was believed to have killed, eaten, and drunk the blood of between 8 and 15 children. He somehow believed in his demented interpretation of the Old Testament that he was paying homage to Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son, Isaac by actually completing the sacrificial acts. In addition, official estimates tallied that Fish had molested more than one hundred children and castrated a number of boys before his criminal career finally ended.

      Born in 1870 in Washington, D.C., Fish came from an extremely dysfunctional family in which nearly every member was mentally deficient in some way. Systematically whipped and abused as a small boy, Fish later grew to become erotically stimulated by the cruel treatment.

       Later, he justified his murders as an aspect of his religious mission. Fish said that he was Christ returned….

      Later, he justified his murders as an aspect of his religious mission. Fish said that he was Christ returned, and he proclaimed that it was his divine duty to administer God’s vengeance upon a sinful and depraved humanity. His killings of the children, he explained, were actually sacrifices that spared the chosen children from living a life of depravity and sin that would have led to their eternal damnation.

      For six years after one of his most heinous crimes—the murder, dismemberment, and eating of 10-year-old Grace Budd—Fish continued to send obscene letters to the girl’s parents, describing in perverse detail the sadistic acts that he had performed upon their daughter. It was this series of profane correspondence that led to Fish’s eventual capture.

      The monster died in the electric chair without showing any signs of fear or an awareness of his own mortality. It was witnessed that he even helped the attendants adjust the straps and apparatus as he sat in the chair awaiting the moment when the warden pulled the lever.

       Blood Drinking as Religious Ecstasy

      John Haigh was another vampire who justified his thirst for human blood by his religious fanaticism and an incredibly distorted interpretation of the Old Testament’s admonition to “drink water out of thine own cistern and running waters out of thine own well.” By some bizarre process of Haigh’s twisted mind, the Bible passages became a commandment that he should start drinking his own urine and blood.

      The only child of a pious Plymouth Brethren couple, little Johnny had been a devout boy until he was sexually abused by a member of the Brethren. Later, in his confessions, Haigh said that shortly after the abuse, he began to have dreams of bloody trees and strange men offering cups of blood for him to drink.

      Haigh matured to become a fairly resourceful businessman leading a very tranquil and nonviolent life until 1935 when, at the age of 25, he was imprisoned for forgery.

      In 1944, the vampire had his first taste of human blood—his own. He was in an automobile crash in which he suffered a scalp wound that bled profusely. The blood flowed down his face and into his mouth, thereby creating a subsequent thirst that would lead him to the gallows.

      Perhaps it was the wound’s accompanying blow to the head that had somehow deepened Haigh’s psychosis. Shortly after the incident, he had a dream that he interpreted to mean that his early religious fervor had so sapped his spiritual strength that he could only restore his rightful energies by the regular consumption of fresh human blood.

      Haigh’s first taste of another human’s blood came with his murder of William Donald McSwan when the young man brought a pinball to his workshop for repair on September 9, 1944. Haigh simply got the idea that he needed blood to drink, so he hit McSwan over the head, slit his throat, caught the flow of blood in a mug, and drank it. He disposed of McSwan’s body by placing it in a tub of sulfuric acid.

      The ceremonial drinking of blood inspires a sense of religious ecstasy for some fanatics.

      In keeping with the religious trend of his illness, Haigh evolved a ritual that he generally followed with each of his subsequent murders. He would sever the jugular vein of his victim, then he would carefully draw off the blood, a glassful at a time. The actual drinking of the vital fluid was observed with great ceremony. Haigh later became convinced that his faith could only be sustained by the sacrifice of others and by the drinking of their blood. With a supply of sulfuric acid at hand, their corpses would be transformed into a sludge that could be poured into the sewer