non-fiction vampire books [as in proposed as scientific books at the time]

I’ve got quite a few e-mails asking me for reading recommendations, readings that actually treat the subject in a scientific way, not Twilight. So… this post is intended for those people.

A lot of people are apparently doing research on vampires from fiction books, which is… ironic. No, I’m not using the word ironic wrong, it really is ironic, but you can’t see the irony if you don’t know the story below.

Anyway, apart from the short stories posted in the documents section of the website, I am proposing in this post right here, a series of books, which are really old and I seriously doubt you can find them, however, if you do have the time, you might find microfilms or copies on the books. Forget about finding them online.

The first scientific book on vampires, as it is widely accepted, is named “Magia Posthuma” and you will not find the term vampire in it because at the time the term didn’t even exist yet. It is a book written in 1706 by Karl Ferdinand von Schertz.

I could only find a copy of this book by going straight to the National Museum in the Czech Republic, in Prague. I didn’t go all the way there but I did manage to snatch a microfilm of it from someone.

This is a really old and really scientific book written on the phenomenon of vampirism – people who went dead and then returned to reign terror. I would take the “dead” lightly, with a grain of salt.

There is a blog, named after the book, who deals with this book and others of its stature in great detail. I highly encourage you to pay that blog a visit. You can find it here http://magiaposthuma.blogspot.com

What I can offer you is a chronicle of detailed events or reported cases, a chronicle even older than the previous book, a chronicle that is actually debated and presented in the book itself.

However, there is a catch: because the chronicle is so old, it’s written in Latin. So, if you can read Latin, then you’re in luck. It’s called Iohannis Neplachonis Chronican, just in case you might find it translated someplace. But if not, here is the Latin one.

Here you can find a full bibliography with books that treat the issue seriously, in a non-fiction way. Old books, many of them hard to obtain, but books that exist nonetheless.

And now, my favorite one, is a book called “Diss. de hominibvs post mortem sangvisvgis, vulgo sic dictis Vampyren” – again, this book is in Latin. However, it is easier to find. I believe you can also buy it online, by some miracle, although not printed, but photocopied. In any case, here is the preview available on Google Books. The title loosely translated to “Dissertation on men who suck blood (are bloodsuckers) after death, commonly called Vampyren””

There are many, many more books which treat the subject more seriously that what you find today, but these three books are pretty old and very interesting to read. So, if you have the time and interest, go for it.

Related articles

• Real vampires are not pure fiction… (demonizerdoom.wordpress.com)
• The Effect Of Fiction On Perception Of Vampire Reality (housevalur.wordpress.com)

proof beyond any doubt? no such thing. not today. my lament.

It truly is funny you know… you try to tell a true story and nobody listens.

You tell a friend and he laughs, then, upon you insisting that it’s true – he wants proof – you try to prove it, and he gets hurt – because it is dangerous. Then, you keep it inside, and when someone else finds out – it goes: You’re a freak, how can you side with them? How can you hold such a secret and not tell me, your friend?

Everything you do, is bad.

If you tell – it’s bad. You’re crazy and you’re pushed aside. If you don’t, then they get to push you aside because you start missing, you start acting weird, you freak them out because they don’t know what’s happening with you – and again you figure: maybe if they would know, they would support me, and you think: I would like my friend to tell me if he would have been a part of such a thing… but no… you can’t tell them again.

And yet, you do – and once again, they suffer and call you crazy. Such a thing does not go lightly. It may be a good story to tell after a movie, over a dinner or just on a night out, and yes, they listen, and laugh and compliment you on what a good story it is.

And then, when you insist it’s true – and you keep insisting – you freak them out, and they never ever want to deal with you again, slowly, they distance themselves. You’re the crazy one.

So what do you do?

I ask you: WHAT do you do, when you have this – and you want to tell – yet nobody listens?

What do you do, when you’re in it SO BADLY that you have to leave the country – and even then – when you explain – they still don’t listen and believe. you’re still the crazy one. Your best friends, people who have known you all your life: You tell them that you have to go someplace deserted, to be alone, away from everything. you tell them your life depends on it and they take it lightly and laugh.

Then, you write a book and figure: Maybe someone will listen, and will read it, but nobody reads it because again, in there, you claim it to be true, lose credibility, get people angry, and they don’t read.

Every single time people enjoy it, and when you try to convince them to be true – they repulse it – and yet, everybody WANTS TO KNOW, everybody is craving for the “truth”.

I fail to understand humanity anymore. I do. Everybody wants the truth, an adventure, a fantasy… and when you put it in front of them and tell them: here it is, let me show you.

Then, they deny it, put it in the “crazy” department and move on.

They want to believe in ghosts, yet call everyone who claims to have seen one a lunatic.
They want to believe in vampires, yet they do the same thing with it.

What can one do – to make people believe – that such stories, once in a while, from people with no mental diseases of theirs or in their family, are true?

What can one do?

Stories face to face don’t work.
Publishing a book under a real name would not only be dangerous but also ruin the chance of life I might have, because such stories, in an academic background, have no room.  Even if you risk and publish the book – it’s still fantasy.

So what’s left?

You decide to make a website – and yet, realize that you are among hundreds of websites, all of them with fangs and blood and weird stories, and all of them go into different things and start talking about all kind of paranormal things that of course nobody would believe, and you, your website, gets put in the same category.

“it’s just another of those paranormal crazy stories website”

If you make it a plain simple blog, black and white and nothing else, then it’s not serious enough, you don’t put enough time in it.

If you try to put some photos and color and a theme in it, to make it look better – thinking you’ll attract more readers – because you want the people to know, then it’s “too childish” and people stop believing, because it looks just like the others.

So how does one differentiate from the other websites?
How does one – from all the disinformation through too much information – gets someone to believe such a story. How?

We’ve all seen thousands of fake photos, videos and stories. So yes, it’s hard to get trust. We’ve all seen “documentaries” with people (who I really think are deranged) claiming to be “real vampires”. Just two months ago there was a dude on Discovery drinking blood from his girlfriend. He was clearly no vampire because he was throwing it up after each 50ml or so, the maximum amount your stomach can hold before puking.

This post is my lament.

People ask me: who are you, really? and they answer themselves, because I can’t. “He’s just another crazy dude.”

I’m a young man, with a high school, college, masters and heading towards a PhD.

I have no mental cases in my family nor do I have any history of it. I have no interest in paranormal, I have never wrote or read stories about ghosts, miracles, magic.

I’ve always enjoyed facts and I’ve always been a skeptic. I’m an atheist, at times agnostic maybe, since birth, I’m not baptized. I have grown in an atheist environment where everything without proof was considered a fairy tale. Including the bible.

I’ve studied since a fragile age, even since before I could walk properly, everything that was accessible to me. Like I said in the “prologue”, I’ve studied biology, mathematics, philosophy, religion (as a discussion), politics, economics. Don’t think anything formal or fancy. I just enjoyed (and sometimes forced) reading those kinds of books instead of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Peter Pan, etc. Although I did read the latter also.

I’ve studied self-defense with my father, geometry, astronomy, arts, photography, engineering, conventional medicines, constructions, architecture and the simple laws of physics by myself and with a teacher that acted as a guide, pointing me into the right direction. I’m not saying I understand all of those, that would be ridiculous, I’m merely trying to point out that I’ve been raised as a skeptic, a realist and a person of facts and testable definitions. All these before even starting high school. My parents made sure I was prepared in smaller, but important things also. I played the piano, I developed hand-eye coordination beyond anyone’s belief, through games: countless pool games, darts, and more serious – medical purpose games. IT was important for me.

I was never emo, rocker, club freak, or any other category kids these days fit into.

I was never the weird kid, I knew how to behave, I studied enough psychology to know that the reason to happiness is being stupid, so I’ve dumbed myself down while in society. I known how to keep my social life social. I studied, read and practiced whenever I had free time. I partied, got drunk and went to school like any normal kid. I never did anything just to attract attention to myself. I was neutral to being in the center of attention. It was ok with me both ways, didn’t matter.

I was the man with the head on his shoulders – as seen by everyone who knew me.
That is who I am.

The day when I started saying this story – people who knew me, close persons, told me I’m mental. They had forgotten everything that I was and knew, they had forgotten how many times they’ve put their trust in my judgment, IN A SECOND. That’s how long it took everybody to transform me from: the guy who you can trust to be honest and straight with you – to – the crazy guy with the vampire story.

So I shut it and went on with my double life.
Years later, it’s still going on, and people, still oblivious to what’s around them.

You see riots on TV, you see financial crisis, you see wars and famine, and you stop caring. You stop caring because of two things: you’re part of the biggest secret ever covered AND you know, first hand, that everything happening today, happened before and it will happen again. You’ve had people sitting next to you, telling you that they’ve been there when Napoleon was killed, that they’ve been there when the first movie was shot, that they’ve been there when the first light bulb went on and the first photograph was taken. You’ve had people telling you how they fought in ten or more wars, over the centuries. How could you care about yet another war? You already know it happened before and it’s going to happen again. You stop caring.

So you decide that for your own safety and well-being you need to get a new life. So you leave the country? Flee to the dark north where nobody knows you, start a new life in a new country in a new college and make new friends and never talk about it again. There, in the middle of nothing, where nobody can find you. You go there and sit, waiting for your life to catch up. Waiting for a promise to be fulfilled. Waiting for the greatest person you’ve ever known to come back to you, and you’re not sure whether it will ever happen.

And you start doing other things, you focus on a blog – where you try to tell a story. And people start sending you e-mails, asking for proof. You refuse, you say you don’t have it. Because you don’t. You have a few photos of a girl with fangs – so what? Anyone could fake those these days. It’s not worth spreading them – plus – that’s not your purpose. I’m trying to protect that one girl, even if it doesn’t seem like it. So what do I do?

You didn’t take really mind-blowing photos or videos, ever, because you risked your life and because even if you had them, nobody would believe them anyway.

“They are fake” people would say. So why would I risk everything – maybe not my life – but everything else, like being pushed out of the life that I loved, for taking a photo that would be categorized as fake anyway. Would you?

This is my lament I say again.

And I ask you: what would you do?

What would you do if you would want to make people believe and YET still keep it a secret?
What would you do if you’d like to form a circle of a few persons, maybe ten of them, make those believe beyond any doubt – but still keep it a secret for the rest of the world.

They have it all figured out: everyone who knows must either become one of us, or die. So how do you build a circle with people who can know and continue knowing?

How would you go about it?
I’m serious – I need help with ideas. I’m out.

I tried everything. I tried books and they didn’t work. I tried blogs and they fail.

Should I try a scientific paper? Can you imagine sending a scientific paper to Science magazine explaining in detail everything. How would I name it? “How vampires work.” Funny.

I tried telling people in person, that not only didn’t work, but turned out very, very wrong.
People would rather believe in Santa Claus.

I’ve been to the north pole and there’s nobody there. Trust me. I have photos with that also, if you want.
I’ve also been to other places, and there IS somebody there, but not Santa. However, people don’t believe that.

People ask me: So ok, let’s assume everything you say it’s true, then how are you allowed to do this? How are you not dead or your blog taken down?

Well – my blog was taken down – twice. I don’t know how, by who, or why. And I can’t prove that either – people say well… websites go down sometimes. And it’s true, they do.

As for the dangerous part – if you read the story, I will get to that part also. But for a short summary – I don’t present a danger so I’m not in danger myself.

As long as I don’t reveal certain sensible things ( which would make absolutely no difference in getting people to trust me, so why reveal them? ) everything is fine.

Because whoever I’m trying to make known – knows that it’s impossible, if not hard. Knows I’ll get over it and shut up. They know it because they have dealt with it countless times. And that’s true also. It’s impossible to prove something like this without…. proof. I don’t even know what proof I should have!

Just saying one sentence: “Hey, I’ve seen a vampire. They’re real, seriously.” will get you banned from any normal social circle. You get left with the people who ALL claim they’ve seen a vampire, which I know for a fact that is impossible, but not even those believe me that I know that, because if they would then they wouldn’t claim what they are claiming.

So what’s left? What now?
“Round up some and let them under the sun.”

For one – you try rounding up “some”. And second, the sun is worthless in that respect. It’s not the movies.

And the most frustrating part is – that now, with full access to such a life – I’ve become so accustomed to it that it only comes natural for me to think, act and speak about it. But I can’t.

To put yourself in my shoes, imagine you could travel 200 years into the past and tell people that you’ve been to the moon (not you, the human kind), or tell people that everybody can fly, in your time. Or tell them really common things like we have a magic pill that you swallow and it cures you from all the diseases (because back then, an antibiotic really did cure almost all the existing diseases).

Nobody would believe you of such things, they would call you a crazy, a drunk man.
A single person tried telling the world that the Earth is round and look what happened to him.

So why bother?

Because I want to be the one who gets to say: I told you so.

Ever seen Men in Black? I saw it and for me it seemed to be really science fiction. I couldn’t swallow it for nothing in the world. Yet, a lot of people believed that “such a scenario is indeed really possible.”

And I figured: Hey, if they would believe that, maybe I have a chance. So I tried telling them, and what do you think happened? Right. They didn’t buy it.

Yet what I was saying was much less science fiction, with more explanations, more proof and much likely to be real.

I’m telling you: whoever came up with the idea of making vampires a mass-media sensation was a genius. It’s the ultimate cover-up. The perfect story!

Doing that, you don’t have to actively try to shut down people who say it’s true. You really don’t. Because nobody will believe them and society will take care of them anyway. It’s infallible.

Imagine the following scenario: someone would publish a paper which proves, with scientific proof and everything that the Stargate is actually real. Would anyone believe it? No. Because of the movie.

Now think about this: what if the movie was actually made specifically for that purpose? To be a shield against possible information leakage.

Now I’m not saying that is true. It’s just an idea.

Which can be applied to everything today. If you want the perfect weapon against information leakage, so perfect that you don’t even have to use it yourself. It’s so impenetrable and so well-built that you’re just passive, throwing a rumor once in a while and then debunking it yourself.

That is what you do: you make it a media sensation, throw countless myths and “facts”, and then you yourself debunk them.
You make tons of movies and write tons of books which tangle the subject in such a way that nobody will ever be able to tell what’s real and what’s not.

You make it appealing for teenagers, because they are the voice of the future. They can spread it the fastest, they are the technological wing of the modern-day society.

Have you seen the amount of books and movies about vampires?
There is no other “fantasy” subject so well covered than this. None. Not even ghosts.

There are thousands of books, texts, manuscripts, poetry, movies, sightings, etc.

So you tell yourself: I know, I’ve seen it – how do I get past all the crap and make myself heard? Where do I start?

People don’t believe in global warming, yet it’s right there.
People don’t believe in the oil running out, yet it’s simple mathematics. Something finite will end. Sooner or later, whenever that is.
People didn’t believe in conspiracies, in corporations controlling governments, in banks owning their lives. Nonsense they said. Now they believe.

People would rather believe in god, which is repulsing.
Dumb people believe religion is good, smart people think religion is bad, the elite who controls thinks religion is useful.

You try to tell people something by turning it into something readable, something that they can understand, and they accuse you of just telling another fantasy story.

If you make a list, it seems made up and dumb. And yes, it does seem that to me too.
If you try to write a science article, you fail, because you don’t have scientific proof.

There’s one thing I can assure you of:

There will never be a movie or a book, written by someone other than me, who will present things how I did here. Simple, explained and to the roots.

There will always be vampires who apparently can’t stand silver or some made-up plant called vervain. They will have witches working for them and werewolves against them. They will go to hell and meet demons and all that. Always, always, the story will blend more and more and things will get more and more confusing.

Five years from now, when I’ll no longer be writing, if you read this blog then, you will know what I meant.
If you want to know now what I meant, compare the vampire today with the vampire from 30 years ago.

I dare you.

guest article: vampire accounts in mass-media – a methodological approach to the study of vampirism.

On my quest for more research about the subject, because of some readers accusing me (well, not accusing, but condemning the fact that I’ve only posted two or three stories like the ones below and then saying there are hundreds) that I’m exaggerating, I have come while scanning for sources across a very good blog which focuses less on the “imaginative” side of the myths like I’ve been pointed to be, and more on the “research” side.

I have started talking with the author of this blog who is more interested in just historical accounts, facts, books, manuscripts, sources that can be confirmed.

I invited the author of the blog ( http://thevampiresrealm.com/ ) to be a guest author for one article on my blog. The author accepted and below you have the result, a list compiled by the author.

This is a list of the most well-known vampire accounts, with a focus on the ones that can be actually verified through mass-media (they have been present in newspapers and magazines).

***

The Alnwick Vampire was a man with a score to settle.
The Melrose Abbey Vampire kept trying to return to his village and enter his former church.
The shoemaker of Silesia was the first vampire case reported in Europe and was the “result” of a suicide.
Johannes Cuntius was believed to have made a pact with the devil and suspected of being the undead after death.
Peter Plogojwitz had a lot of people claim that he was visiting them during the night even after his death.
Arnold Paole stood at the very core of the vampire hysteria that swept across the continent in the 18th century and that was based on a very poor understanding of the decay process.
Visum et Repertum [english version of the document that tells the story of A. Paole]
The Eywanschitz Vampire account is based on a text by Erasmus Franci.
The Varna Vampires are known as a “pack” and even vampire hunters are involved.
Michael Caspareck may seam more of a rumor to some.
The Wollschläger vampire remained an enigma for those that covered his story…
The vampire of Ivanovka was considered a vampire after rumors of his suicide started to surface.
The Radojevo Vampire was also inspected by authorities and dealt with accordingly.
The Sarbanovac vampire was accused by a priest and the locals proceeded to the “extermination” of the undead.
Sarah Tillinghast was the first of the Rhode Island Vampires.
Mercy Brown – the sad story of a supposed vampire.
Nancy Young was the eldest daughter of Capt Levi Young.
Abigail Staples was exhumed “in order to try an experiment” to save the life of another daughter, Livina Chase.
Lemuel and Elisha Ray – truly a strange story indeed; read and try to understand.
J.B. – the only corpse that presents signs of rearrangement in the New England area.
Ruth Ellen Rose [or Phebe Rose] – Records on this matter are not very clear.
Rachel Harris was  a healthy, beautiful girl when she married but after less than a year she weathered away. Her husband remarried. and she was suspected of coming back to torment the new bride.
Petre Toma was for a time the most recent “vampire” of Romania but he remains the most famous to this day.
The vampire of Afumati was covered in mystery until the locals started to give a couple of hints to a Romanian interviewer.
The vampire of Amarasesti was supposed to have survived an anti-vampire ritual so more drastic measures were taken.
The cripple of Cujmir is one of the few cases where the judgement was based on a distinct sign from during the lifetime of the suspect.
The vampire of Cujmir Perhaps the most interesting thing about this case is the fact that the vampire isn`t immobile during the vanquishing ritual.
The vampire of Vaguilesti – “They got together brushwood, shavings, and bits of old crosses, they poured wine on her, they put in straw, and set fire to the whole.”

Below I list a couple of cases that happened recently and were considered a media sensations… (later debunked or solved).

The Highgate Vampire [A media sensation in London from the late 1960s, if focused around a famous Victorian cemetery].
The Cesky Krumlow incident drew a lot of attention and a lot of speculations were made about the identity of the skeletons uncovered.
Eleonore von Schwarzenberg as presented in many documentary-type movies.
Irina Ciorobea – assumed vampire from modern-day Romania; she was actually exhumed 3 times and the family was never tried for it.
Ghiulten Memedali – the supposed vampire of Medgidia turned out to be an innocent since it was later discovered that the manifestations were invented by  her family members.

***

Now keep in mind: I, under no circumstance, adhere to any of the articles above. I do not condemn or agree with them. It is simply reading that you might want to do. I have no connection with them, I do not have an opinion on any of them.

They are not related to my blog or my story. It is a list because I’ve been asked for one, and I’m now delivering.

If you want to know more and read more in this direction, including lists of nearly all vampire movies made, books written and poetry plus literature about vampires, and many more such documents pertaining to the research, science approach to the matter, the please visit the author’s of this blog website, http://www.thevampiresrealm.com/ where you can do just that.

I’d like to thank the author of the blog for taking the time in compiling this list and being a guest on this blog.