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It’s Hard to Keep a Good Vampire Down, by Brian Righi

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

For many of us, the mere mention of the word "vampire" evokes images of pale Romanian counts with thick Eastern accents, slicked back hair, and tuxedo suits complete with opera capes. Younger generations might instead picture handsomely brooding teenage vampires more in keeping with a modern interpretation of the Byronic hero of older literary traditions. In either case, our images of the creature are often culled from the movies with which we grew up and that, for the most part, shaped our understanding of the archetype. Yet, whether we grew up loving or hating them, we often see vampires as either the product of entertaining fantasy or as a part of the colorful yet outdated mythos of our ancestors. We like to think that we've tamed the vampire this way, laid them to rest, if you will, in our modern age of science and reason, and that we can confidently scoff at the idea of a creature that drinks the blood of the living. Given such a view, it might surprise you to learn that in some parts of the world today the belief in real vampires or vampire-like creatures continues as strongly as it ever has.

For instance, in certain regions of the American Southwest, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, local inhabitants believe in a bloodthirsty creature known as el chupacabra, which in Spanish means "the goat sucker." Eyewitness accounts claim that the elusive beast stands approximately four feet tall, with grey, reptile-like skin, glowing red eyes, sharp fangs, and is often accompanied by a foul, sulfuric stench. It's frequently reported in rural areas, where it preys upon livestock during the night, attacking its victims and draining their blood. In most cases little remains as evidence of the attack other than three odd puncture wounds on the chests of the animals and unidentified three toed tracks at the scene of the crime. While its victims are primarily smaller livestock, such as chickens, goats, and sheep, they have been known to prey on cattle and other larger animals, with even a few unconfirmed reports of attacks against humans.

The first recorded sightings occurred in rural areas of Puerto Rico in March of 1995, but rumors of the creature are said to date back to the 1960s. Perhaps the most sensational claims occurred in the fall of 1995, when reports of bizarre attacks began surfacing from the town of Canovanas in northeastern Puerto Rico, where as many as one hundred and fifty animals and pets were said to have been killed by the creature. Over time the bloody slayings continued, spreading to other parts of the world, including the United States (in the spring of 1996 numerous animals were reported drained of blood in a rural area northwest of Miami, Florida). Soon after, sightings flooded in from the Rio Grande Valley of southern Texas; Juarez, Mexico; and even as far away as Queensland, Australia. In each case the facts are the same: livestock are found dead with strange wounds and obvious blood loss, area residents are stunned and frightened, and the shadowy creature known as el chupacabra has disappeared back into the night from which it came, leaving in its wake mysterious deaths and puzzling tracks. The prevalence of such sightings has become so widespread, in fact, that renowned writer and cryptozoologist Loren Coleman states that el chupacabra is "the single-most notable cryptozoological phenomenon of the past decade."¹

While early beliefs in vampirism found their most fertile ground in the dark woodlands and bleak mountain villages of eastern Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, vestiges of the age-old superstition still leak out today from remote rural areas barely touched by modern urbanity. In 2004, in the tiny hamlet of Martotinu de Sus, Romania (just one hundred miles southwest of Bucharest) a man named Gheorghe Marinescu was arrested for desecrating the corpse of his brother-in-law Petre Toma, who he believed was a revenant returned from the dead to prey upon the living. According to Dr. Timothy Taylor of the University of Bardford in England, who investigated the case first-hand for an article entitled "The Real Vampire Slayers," Petre Toma died shortly before Christmas 2003 at the age of 76 years old. By most accounts he was thought to be a good man, but like most farmers he was given to strong drink and a hard life. After his death members of the Marinescu family became unexpectedly ill, and Toma's niece Mirela Marinescu claimed that she suffered from nightmares in which her dead uncle visited her at night and fed from her heart.

Determined to save his family from the evil menace, Gheorghe and five relatives, fortified with homemade schnapps, disinterred the body of Petre six weeks postmortem. After finding the traditional signs of vampirism, including fresh blood in the body and around the lips, they cut the chest cavity open with a scythe and removed the heart with a pitchfork. From there Dr. Taylor reports "[t]he men took the heart, spiked aloft, to the crossroads outside the village. There they roasted it over a brazier and, as far as I could understand, stuffed glowing coals into the ventricles. Held up to the night sky, the heart shed charred flakes that were caught in a tea towel."² The ashes were ground up and mixed with water for the niece to drink, after which it is claimed she made a full recovery.

Macabre scenes such as this were not new to the region, but when the daughter of Petre Toma complained to authorities the police arrested Gheorghe and the other participating relatives and sentenced them to six months in jail for the unlawful exhumation (their sentences were later commuted). The group of "vampire slayers," on the other hand, believed they had committed no crime and claimed instead that they were saving lives and following an ancient tradition handed down to them from their fathers and practiced still in many other villages throughout the region.

Yet, we would be remiss if we thought that tales of vampires only occurred today in rural, faraway places ruled by peasant superstitions. A case in point occurred in late December of 2005 in the Ward End area of Birmingham, England. Rumors began to circulate that a man, later dubbed by the press as the "Birmingham Vampire," was stalking the environs of Glen Park Road biting people. The story goes on to claim that the vampire bit a man walking down the street and then several other pedestrians who came to his aide. One woman was said to have chunks missing from her hand after the attack. Following the incident the vampire was said to have walked down the road knocking on doors and biting anyone who answered.

While no police reports chronicling such an attack were ever filed and no one was ever admitted to the local hospital with the bites described in the alleged attack, the populace nonetheless flew into a panic. The local newspaper, the Birmingham Evening Mail, stated that they were inundated with calls from terrified residents who believed that they had caught a glimpse of the vampire yet none of which provided any solid leads.³ People refused to answer their doors unless they knew the caller, and parents escorted their children to and from school personally. For days the Ward End was ripe with tales of vampires in what today has been dismissed as a classic example of mass hysteria and shelved away by authorities as an urban legend.

This, however, wasn't the first account of vampires roaming modern-day England. On February 6, 1970, a letter to the Hampstead and Highgate Express from a man named David Farrant, who claimed to have seen a grey figure wandering the cemetery of Highgate, London at night, touched off a flood of reports from local residents who believed the burial grounds haunted. Soon after, a second man, Sean Manchester, claimed that the figure was that of a vampire who had been buried in the cemetery long ago and was recently raised by the ceremonies of modern Satanists who had infiltrated Highgate.

The media loved the story, as both men went on to make claims that they would seek out the lair of the vampire and end its evil reign on exactly March (Friday) 13th, 1970. Other vampire hunters, eager to get in on the action, also arrived on the scene and broke into the cemetery, causing a great deal of vandalism despite the best efforts by local police to keep them out. Both David Farrant and Sean Manchester went on to write books emphasizing their role in the macabre affair, and the story is even believed by some to have inspired the Hammer Horror film Dracula A.D. 1972 with Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing.

We like to think that vampires are merely the stuff of bedtime boogeymen meant to titillate and entertain on cold, dark nights, but never the real flesh and blood monsters that our pitchfork- and torch-carrying ancestors feared. Yet, as we have seen, the image of the vampire is indeed alive and well, and continues to be feared as a real threat in certain regions of the world today, popping up in some of the most unexpected places. The belief in vampires is as old as humankind itself, and the notion that they can so easily be resigned to the realm of mere entertainment is a foolish one indeed. After all, it's hard to keep a good vampire down.

Source Notes

1. Herman, Marc. "El Chupacabra." The Cryptologist: Accessed November 29, 2011.
2. Taylor, Timothy. "The Real Vampire Slayers." The Independent, October 28, 2007.
3. Jefferies, Stuart. "Reality Bites." The Guardian, January 18, 2005.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2012. All rights reserved.

For the second time in two years, I seem to be experiencing a lot of spiritual activity when I think about moving. I relocated for the first time two years ago, when I moved to a new state after my husband left me and our children. I felt I was being pushed out of the only place I had ever called home by my guides, who would bring me messages via my dreams. The state we moved to has such a negative spiritual vibe, however, that I'm thinking of once again relocating, and again, my guides are showing up in my dreams with messages to move. They are not giving me a location to move to, however. With the first move, they spelled the location out loud and clear. Why would I get that push but not a location? Do guides sometimes want us to figure things out for ourselves? Are they ever like jokesters? Is there a good reason they might make us guess?

- Deborah

Dreamchaser:

I want to address one thing before I answer your questions, Deborah. There are absolutely places on earth that disagree with us. I personally can't go to New York City. I have been to some of the world's biggest cities and enjoyed exploring each one, but NYC completely freaks me out. I am paranoid, scared and basically miserable when I am there. I'm sure I was killed there in a past life. So don't think you're crazy if there is a place that everyone else loves but you just cannot stand.

You ARE being shown the answer about where you should move; you're just expecting it to come in the same way it did last time. You are more evolved now, however, so you have a more evolved "messaging system." Pay attention to songs, television snippets, written material, etc., around you. Look for a common theme, for ideas and places that "pull on your gut," and you'll realize that you are being shown the way.

On another note, guides do often want us to figure things out ourselves. Sometimes they will step into the background of our minds and get very quiet. A really good example of this is when Jesus Christ was dying on the cross, and he looked up and said, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" He couldn't hear the voice of Spirit in his mind at that time either. One would think that of all the times Spirit would come through for us, it would be a time like that. So you're not the only one whose guides step back when you need them; you're in good company.

Our guides don't play games, but they do have a sense of humor and love to "tell" us funny things. They will not play jokes on us, however. When a guide does something you don't understand and you see it as some kind of game, you can bet that you are learning something. Guides teach us in ways that our human minds often don't understand.

There is also a little reoccurring spiritual lesson in your life called PATIENCE at work here. As you ARE being shown the answer, however, you don't have to guess, and you can always speak out loud to your guides. You can say something like, "Okay, enough is enough. I feel like I am swinging in the wind here. Please give me a sign that I can RECOGNIZE clearly."

Remember, guides and angels work for you, but these helpful spiritual entities can't go to work for you until you ask for them to. So kindly ask to be shown a clearer sign and then wait for it to come. If you remember to pay attention to EVERYTHING around you, signs will roll right in.

I wish you clear signs from Spirit!

*****

Astrea:

We have such a tenuous connection to our Guides, and nothing in life is truly black and white, so it's hard enough for them to get ANY guidance through to us, much less jokes and tricks.

They would NEVER joke around about something as important as moving your home, and they would never lead you in the wrong location. You must have wanted to move where you're living now for other reasons, and projected your desire onto the signs you got from your guides, which you interpreted as telling you that this is where you should be.

Guides don't usually do "should" - they give us ALL the options open to us so we can choose for ourselves. They are lucky to get through to us at all, even when we concentrate all our power on communicating with them, so they wouldn't waste a conscious connection by misleading you.

They wouldn't make you guess, either. They are leaving out the location because they don't want you to do what you did last time. They are not giving you an exact spot so that you can't misinterpret their signals. Instead of trying to make you guess, they are trying to make you think CAREFULLY about what you want for the future, so you can then figure out the place you can best fulfill those desires.

This is most likely what they did the first time anyway; they sent you the message to MOVE, but you decided on the location yourself. While they can help us make some of the more difficult decisions in our lives, Guides GUIDE us toward what we decide we want - they don't DEMAND or PRESSURE us to do anything, and they can never control what we do. In order for them to meet your needs, they first have to know what you WANT.

Try this ritual for clarity:

Get a sky blue candle and some oil of myrrh. Light the candle and massage your third eye chakra, saying: "By the power of water, I see clearly and divinely. When I ask, my needs are met." Anoint your throat with the oil, saying: "By the power of air, I mean what I say, and I say what I intend to." Daub some oil on your heart chakra and say: "By the power of earth, I stick to my goals. I remain steadfast. I understand what it takes to fulfill my dreams."

Then meditate on the messages you're trying to receive. This ritual works best under a clear sky when the Moon is in an Air Sign. As the Sun is also in an Air Sign right now, it will work even better.

Your Guides will appreciate this extra effort you're making to communicate with them, and things will come through to you much clearer as a result.

Good luck!

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.