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

the vampire’s image to be that of a “person who never dies … [who] takes a blood sacrifice in order to love, and exerts a charm over people.” In her view, the vampire is “a handsome, alluring, seductive person who captivates us, then drains the life out of us so that he or she can live. We long to be one of them, and the idea of being sacrificed to them becomes rather romantic.”

      It seems that in the great majority of the current cinematic and literary portrayals of the undead, attractive, buff male vampires and beautiful, seductive female night stalkers drink human blood only from hospital storage units or get along by feasting on animal blood. In certain contemporary variations of the classic tales, the vampires have developed a synthetic bloodlike formula that enables them to avoid the taking of human vital fluid. A number of popular television series have even portrayed conscientious vampires in the roles of police officers or private detectives who defend human society from vicious fanged mavericks who still seek human victims.

      The sexual metaphors to be found in the cinematic and literary portrayals of the vampire’s seductive bite are many, and Anne Rice has touched a responsive, atavistic chord in her many enthusiastic readers. In the view of Rice and other authors and screenwriters who have popularized the mythical vampire, the vampire’s overall goals may be incomprehensible to a human being’s limited point of view, but to the undead, human value judgments do not apply to them.

       Closing the Curtain of Myth to View Real Vampires

      The moment one begins seriously to discuss the possibility that the ancient multidimensional spirit-parasites may truly be responsible for predatory acts of the real vampires that have stalked humankind since pre-history, one may receive a raised eyebrow and the accusation that one is attempting to push the study of mental illness and antisocial behavior back into the Middle Ages. Nonetheless, there are a growing number of medical doctors, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, and members of the clergy who are becoming open-minded enough to suggest that we might reconsider certain areas of mental health and particular categories of abnormal psychic states to be demonic possession by spirit parasites rather than mental illness.

      Christopher Lee’s Dracula (left) emphasized even more than Lugosi that the vampire was both sensual and seductive, while Bela Lugosi’s iconic interpretation of Count Dracula as a sophisticated aristocrat in the 1931 motion picture version of Bram Stoker’s novel changed the image of the vampire in film from hideous demon to an attractive stranger that promises immortality in his bite (illustrations by Ricardo Pustanio).

      In recent years, a growing number of parapsychologists and other researchers have been investigating the possibility that mental slavery to a spirit parasite may be rather commonplace. Humankind has progressed to a plateau of enlightenment where we condemn the slavery of one human being to another. Soul slavery is more sinister, however, because the phenomenon remains largely unrecognized and undetected.

      Many researchers believe that the spirit parasite can seize the controlling mechanism of the host body and direct the enslaved human to perform horrible, atrocious deeds. The spirit parasite might implant murderous thoughts in a host’s mind, such as the desire to taste human blood, to slash a victim’s throat, even to eat some of the person’s flesh. After the crime has been committed, the vampiric spirit parasite withdraws back into another dimension of time and space, thus leaving the confused human being alone, charged with murder, while the true assassin has escaped.

      Certain psychical researchers have created a kind of pattern profile of what may occur when someone has become the unwilling host of an uninvited spirit guest.

      The host-being may begin to hear voices that direct him to perform acts that he had never before considered. He may begin to use obscene and blasphemous language in situations that make his friends or relatives feel very offended or uncomfortable. Friends and family will remark that he is acting like a “totally different person.” He may frequently see grotesque images of the parasite spirit as it exists in its paraphysical dimension.

      In the weeks and months that follow, the host-being may fall into states of blacked-out consciousness, times of which he has absolutely no memory.

      On occasions, in the midst of conversations, the host-being may find his conscious mind blocked and a trancelike state will come over him.

      The host-being will be observed walking differently, speaking in a different tone, and acting in a strange, irrational manner.

      In the worst of cases, the parasitic spirit will completely possess the host-being’s mind and body. The evil inhabitation may reach a climax with the host-being committing murder, suicide, or some violent antisocial act.

      It is hardly comforting to read the reports of some investigators of such phenomena who state that possibly everyone at one time or another may become susceptible to a spirit parasite.

      An examination of the case histories of diagnosed schizophrenics reveals that many of them underwent a period of severe stress prior to the onset of the illness. People under stress seek to control the tension in their lives. Unfortunately, far too many use alcohol or drugs in order to put themselves into a relaxed state—which very often deteriorates into a drunken or a drugged stupor. Alcohol and drugs leave the user wide open to spirit parasites.

      Traditionally, researchers of the human psychological condition have assumed that the change of personality in one habituated to drugs or alcohol is due to the ingestion of the substance of preference. Certain psychical researchers have found that parasitic spirits frequently move into the mind and body of drug and alcohol users and actually encourage the host-beings to use more drugs or alcohol, for they are more easily controlled while under the influence of mind-altering substances.

      The physical appearance of a vampire in European folklore is a grotesque, nightmarish creature with twisted fangs and grasping talons (illustration by Ricardo Pustanio).

      Current literary and cinematic portrayals of the vampire have made the ancient blood-sucking creature of darkness the most popular monster in the world. In this present book, however, we deal with Real Vampires who continue to prey mercilessly on their victims and brush aside human values.

      A Gallery of Classic Vampires

      At the meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences held in Denver, Colorado, in March 2009, Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence in Italy said that he may have forensically examined the first skeletal remains of a vampire.

      While excavating the mass graves of victims of the Venetian plague of 1576 on the island of Lazzaretto Nuovo, Borrini found the skull of a woman with a brick in her mouth. According to Borrini, grave-diggers placed small bricks in the mouths of vampires, those men and women who were suspected of spreading the plague, as well as drinking people’s blood.

      Undoubtedly, during the demon-haunted Middle Ages, there were many corpses buried with bricks in their mouths for there were numerous recently deceased individuals under suspicion of being vampires. In the popular mind, Vlad Tepes, Dracul (1431–1476), might well have been responsible for creating a good number of blood-drinking night stalkers.

      Vlad Tepes, King of Wallaschia, present-day Romania, may have been one of the inspirations for Bram Stoker’s classic work Dracula, and his very name may be synonymous worldwide with vampires, but he will not be included in our Gallery for the very good reason that he was not a vampire. His bloody sobriquet, Vlad the Impaler, did not come from fangs that impaled the throats of his victims, but from the stakes that were driven though the warriors who had yielded to him in battle. History records that Vlad might have tortured, roasted, boiled, and impaled as many as 100,000 enemy soldiers, but he was never seen drinking a single drop of their blood.

      In 1410, King Sigismund