Haunted Cosmos - Vampires: The Life Is In The Blood

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

Join us as we investigate the high strangeness found in the dark corners of God's spoken world.In this episode, Brian and Ben take a look at tales of vampirism, both ancient and more recent. Why is blood so central to so much dark and demonic phenomena?Enjoy! We're glad you're here.Love Haunted Cosmos? Get access to our exclusive show, The Dusty Tome, early ad-free access to main episodes, monthly AMA's, and livestreams with Ben and Brian by becoming a patron of the show: https://www.patreon.com/c/HauntedCosmosBuy the Haunted Cosmos book: https://www.newchristendompress.com/cosmos PS: It's also available as an audiobook!This show is sponsored by our friends at Lawrenz Contracting out of Dallas, TX. Need roof work done? Check them out here.This show is also sponsored by author Blake Bobechko. Check out his new children's novel, Frog of Arcadia. Pick up your copy here and tell Blake we sent you!Support the show

This episode of Haunted Cosmos is brought to you by Blake Babechko, author of the new novel, Bragg of Arcadia, Lorenz Contracting, out of Dallas, Texas, and our supporters at patreon.com. Did you know that patrons get early access to ad-free main episodes, as well as an exclusive weekly show, The Dusty Tome? Support the show today and get these benefits and more. And now, on with the show. While we always labor to keep our content within the bounds of robust Christian ethic, Due to the topic of this episode of Haunted Cosmos, we advise parents to listen through before allowing children to interact with this episode, as it contains some descriptions that may be frightening

to younger listeners. And whatsoever man there be of the House of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eateth any manner of blood, I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, no soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that sojourneth among you eat blood.

Leviticus 17, verses 10 through 12. The superstition upon which this tale is founded is very general in the east. Among the Arabians it appears to be common. It did not, however, extend itself to the Greeks until after the establishment of Christianity. It has only assumed its present form since the division of the Latin and Greek churches. At which time, the idea becoming prevalent that a Latin body could not corrupt if buried in their territory, it gradually increased and formed the subject of many wonderful stories, still extant of the dead rising from their graves and feeding upon the blood of the young and beautiful.

Excerpt from The Vampire by John Polidori They See, it is said, men who have been dead for several months come back to earth, Talk, walk, infest villages, ill-use both men and beasts, suck the blood of their near relations, make them ill and finally cause their death, so that people can only save themselves from their dangerous visits and their hauntings by exhuming them, impaling them, cutting off their heads, tearing out the heart, or burning them. These revenants are called by the name of upires or vampires, that is to say, leeches, and such particulars are related of them, so singular, so detailed, and invested with such probable circumstances, and such judicial information, that one can hardly refuse to credit the belief which is held in those countries, that these revenants come out of their tombs and produce these effects which are proclaimed of them.

Excerpt from Treaties on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires, or Revenants of Hungary, Moravia at all by Antoine Augustine Calmedt, a Benedictine monk writing in 1751. In the early 1700s, the country of Serbia was in turmoil. With the Treaty of Pissarovitz in 1718, rule of a portion of the country passed from the Ottomans to the Austrians. While political upheaval strained the already difficult lives of the Serbian people, something else brewed beneath the surface in the small village of Kiselova that would soon prove to have longer lasting and far.

stranger consequences for all of Europe. In the year of our Lord 1725, a man named Patar Blagojevic died at the age of 62. A peasant for his entire life, Patar really was nothing special, with no station warranting a lasting memory beyond his most immediate family and friends. But if you believe the stories, Patar's death may have just been the beginning. Soon after his death, within ten days of it, in fact, eight other villagers from Kiselova perished from a strange malady. The onset was swift and brutal, killing its victim within 24 hours of the first symptoms.

Now, by itself, unexpected deaths weren't all that unusual. 18th century villagers were actually no strangers to death, as you might expect. If not for the other details of the case, the deathly outbreak would have been lost to history, just one more sad turn in a long story of Adam's mortal sons. But this was no ordinary outbreak. There's more to the story, a macabre twist that captivates the curious down to the present day. What gives the story of Kisilova's unfortunate villagers such staying power?

And what does it have to do with the death of a 62-year-old peasant named Petar? Here's what? Every single one of the victims, as they lay on their deathbeds, made the same unbelievable claim. They said that they had been attacked, strangled and bitten by a bloated and purple-looking man. And despite his gross and decaying appearance, they all gave the same. name to their attacker. Patar Blagojevic. After eight of these reports in nearly as many days, the village of Kisilova was fraught with terror. And one thing you have to understand is that scared

men will go to desperate lengths to escape the objects of their fear. And so the villagers made their decision. They would exhume Patar's body and examine it for signs of a condition they had only heard of in whispers and dark stories. Tales they had assumed before were nothing more than that. Tales. However unbelievable, it would have seemed even a few weeks before, the villagers worried that Patar Blagojevic had somehow been transformed into a terrible monster, a vampire. To ensure that their stories were taken seriously, the villagers demanded the presence of a local Austrian leader, Imperial provisor Ernst Frumbald,

who described the scene in an official government report. As they gathered in local cemetery, the whisper of metal shovels in the soft black earth, mingled with the nervous whispers of a small crowd of onlookers, the hushed conversation faded into expectant silence as the mud-streaked coffin was hoisted out of the ragged hole. Nails creaked in protest as the men worked the wooden lid off of the simple box. Almost unconsciously the crowd leaned in as the cover broke free, revealing the horrible sight within. Something was wrong with Pitar. His fingernails seemed to have grown. Along with his hair and beard, his body seemed not to have

decomposed and most disturbing witnesses described smears of what appeared to be fresh blood around the dead mouth and nose. Outraged and terrified, the people acted swiftly, driving a stake through the heart of the vampire, which is said to have resulted in a massive flow of blood out of the corpse's mouth and ears. Unsatisfied with this measure, the people burned the body to ashes on a great pyre. Fearful that I might be censured by the Austrian government for this desecration of the dead. The imperial provisor concluded his report with the plea, quote, if any of these

actions be found to be wrong, do not blame me. The villagers were beside themselves with fear. End quote. His report sent to higher authorities elicited no response. What could they say? And so the first documented case of vampirism in Europe was

uneasily closed. Well, welcome back to another episode of Haunted Cosmos, our first ever with a content warning. So, wow. You know it's going to be a doozy. Yeah. I'm Brian Sovey. As always, joined here by my good friend, Benjamin Garrett.

Yes, thank you. Say hi to listeners. Hey, hi, listeners. I'm glad that y'all are here. This is going to be a killer, pun intended, episode. Oh, wow. If you're still here after Loeb and the AI and the great white sharks getting drug to the deeps by sea monsters, you're probably our people. Yeah, we know that you're a real one.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, we appreciate you hanging around. Appreciate. And shout out to all those of you who are supporting the show. We appreciate that. And today, as you have probably already surmised, we're going to be talking about vampires. Yes. Yes. That's right. Vampires. Brian, doing this episode was my idea. You know what? Just for plausible deniability, yes, it was, it was Ben's idea on record. Look, I take full responsibility. Doing this topic was my idea. When I brought this up in that beautiful Chili's restaurant in Riverdale, Utah. What a good Chili's. What did you think? I thought to myself, well, haven't been in trouble online in a while. Also, this is going to be weird.

It's very weird. It is. The thing is, though, listeners, remember that a lot of what we're doing is we're saying that with the rise in popularity of these 14 and high strangeness subjects and folkloric subjects, that Christians actually ought to be the ones who say, hey, we have answers to these things. Yep. Or we at least can point you in the direction of truth so that you won't be misled by the demons. What may be unexpected.

The Nephilim spirits. The Nephilim spirits that were, you know, caged by Christ in the underworld, but they still tried to see people. That's right. Yeah. All that stuff. Yeah. So, well, just real quick. The weird thing is that a lot of people, when they hear about vampires, they wouldn't

immediately think, like, oh, demonic attack. Right. You know, it's more like your classic ghost story. Yeah, they turn to Bramstoke. And this more modern take on what the vampire is. It's very romanticized. European. Which is not to say that those stories aren't great because Brom Stoker's Dracula is great.

It's a good book, yeah. But you'll actually find, our goal is to lead people to this conclusion that these things actually are connected. Yeah, they are. There's connections. Demonic powers in the world, the unseen realm, and the legend of the vampire all the way back to its origins is connected to something that's relevant to it. It absolutely is. And listeners, if you're like us, as you hear some of these stories, maybe even the story of Patar, there in the opening, in the cold open, you'll probably ask the question that both of us ask right away, which is simply, are there such

things as vampires? Like, are these stories remotely true? We'll talk about that. Yep. If so, what are they? What are they? What is a, like, where, are we talking demons? How do we even begin to categorize this thing? And how can I be protected against vampire conditions if they're real? Garlic capsules from your local. Just simply be Italian. If you're Italian, you're good. You're set.

Okay. And second question, okay, if there aren't actually vampires, I hope as you see through our episode today, then you might ask, why do these stories that seem to share an astonishing number of details and themes across so many times places and cultures seem to appear, and cultures that might even appear to be totally isolated from each other. Yeah. Why do we see so many of these dark stories seem to connect a lot of themes and features, like a deep fear for creatures who thirst for human blood, along with nearly universally overtones of sexual impurity, sexual violence, progeny, children. children being stolen or worse?

Yeah. And the thing is, we might not have all the answers to these questions out to the edges, but we do believe that as you get all of it in front of you, a picture does begin to form, even if it's a little hazy around the edges, as you consider these stories. Because the life is indeed in the blood. The scriptures tell us that. The life is in the blood. in the darkness, the powers of death and defilement,

they hate the light and the life wherever they see it. So, in this episode of Haunted Cosmos, we'll take you back through some of the lore and legends surrounding these vampiric, folkloric stories and see if we can't find some strange connections as we go along. That's right, Brian. Many assume the origins of the vampire are found in the folklore of the Balkan and Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe

during the medieval age. I mean, who doesn't? Right. I mean, I immediately was like, Right. Balkan Slavic. Pitar Blagojavik, that guy is the first. Clearly, and there's nothing before that.

Yeah. And he is the first of that example of an Eastern European vampire. But he's not the very first. Vampiric entities have been described for as long as language has been written and stories have been carved into stone. There's this carving called the Bernay Relief. And it's a terracotta carving in Mesopotamia. It dates back to almost 4,000 years ago.

In the earliest and oldest days of the civilization that would eventually become Babylon, this relief features the figure of a woman with bird feet flanked on either side by owls. And as we go forward through this episode, I want you to start making connections between the archetypes. There's this woman figure connected to a bird. We'll see soon connected to a serpent. Sounds familiar. Yeah, it does sound familiar. this relief provides one of our first insights into this strange and ancient connection

between the female demon of death and her association with night birds. This is one of our first examples of that. And it's believed by some to represent the old Mesopotamian goddess Erish Kigal, who was the overseer of the underworld. So there's that association with death, LDK. Many, though, reject this view. Even though it is pretty compelling, they instead believe this to be the first depiction in the...

in picture form of the ancient demon we know today as Lilith, the legendary mother of vampires and succubi. Very strange. You may remember Lilith from our recent discussions in some other episodes. Yeah. But the first written account of Lilith is found in a Sumerian king list from almost 4,500 years ago, so well before this Burnay relief. And according to this list, the great ancient hero Gilgamesh's father

was a type of demon categorized as a Lilu. In that ancient culture, the Lilus were one of four categorizations of demons that were all thought to have descended from Lilith, this mother demon sort of figure. In all of these demon types, terrorized humans in vampiric or succubus-type ways. In both cases, the focus is on tainting or stealing the life essence of a thing, usually in the form of blood and often in a way that causes impurity in the victim. whether it's sexual impurity or just impurity in the blood itself. So these tropes of shame and purity and life and even bloodline are closely intertwined in these myths. In the later story called Gilgamesh and the Hulupu tree,

a goddess tending this tree in a lovely garden is dismayed to find her tree overtaken by three evil beings, a serpent, a night owl, and a lilith demon, establishing this crucial link, this ancient link, between the evil imagery of a deceptive serpent and a demon witch shrouded in a lovely frame who can also take the form of a bird. At any rate, the tradition of the vampiric demon witch

heavily influenced ancient literature. And at every turn, she's set to prey on the life and essence of others. You know, a lot of these themes, Ben, I think, are fascinating to consider the way that each of them functions as essentially a reversal or a complete perversion of some good, glorious thing that God made. Yeah. Right? I'm thinking about like the woman. So you have this woman wisdom in Scripture.

You have the bride of Christ, who's the church, who's glorified church, clothed in white, prepared for God. You know, we have these glorious pictures of the woman in her, in her. her perfection. Mother Eve, mother of all living. And it seems like one of the ways that the folkloric sinful perversions, and with potentially demonic origins

we'll see, or origins that cut back to essentially the deceiver, the haters of life, the haters of God, you almost always end up with some kind of woman figure who uses what is supposed to be in one of the most potent symbols of life, which is

female sexuality, that She's like a fruitful garden. She is created to be the life giver, the bearer of life. I mean, all the way through, even to the original gospel promises the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. Yeah. It's the life-giving mother who will give birth to bring new life just generally in normal everyday life. I mean, that myself is glorious, all the way up to Mary giving birth to the serpent-crushing. Yeah.

The hero of the world. The Messiah, the anointed, the king, the ruling. or the true hero who's going to set things right. And it seems like so many of these stories, when we talk about vampiric folklore, as well as like we've already seen the connection here with succubes, lilith-type demons, one of the great concerns just seems to be

portraying an anti-female, like an anti-woman who uses her sexuality to pray and destroy and kill. I'm wondering if there's anything there to you that you're connecting as well. I think so. So the big connection that I was trying to make with this Lilith thing, the origins of this thing, is that when you're, Lilith is primarily trying to steal the seed of a man and then devour the product of that, devour the child.

Or she's trying to prey on young mothers and take away their children from them. And there's also legends of her stealing the blood and being more purely. vampiric. Yeah. But it's very succubis-esque as well. And I was, I ended up being like, wait a minute, that's the same thing. Yeah. If you're stealing the progeny, yeah, it means that you're stealing the life blood, the seed, the, yeah, it's all connected. You're stealing the blood line. Yeah. So then I was thinking about the woman of folly described in Proverbs. So there's the contrast between Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly and how she's calling out to these men. Yeah. Begging them essentially to come into her so that she can ruin their lives. And what does Solomon say to warn his son that if you do that, you will go down

the path of destruction? You will be brought down a shield. Even in Proverbs, in Proverbs 30, verse 15, we've talked about this off air, but Solomon talks about this leaching creature named Akula. And this leaching creature has two daughters, Solomon says, give and give. Which is so poetic. It's just, yeah, it's like, beautiful language. It's beautiful. Beautifully describing the horror of this anti-woman. Yes. Who is thought by modern scholars sometimes to mean like a horse leech. It's like they're describing a leech creature.

But some scholars actually give weight, more weight to the contextual lore of the time in surrounding this term. And say that Solomon might actually be referring to this kind of like folkloric figure of the feminine bloodlusting monster. Essentially a vampire. Essentially a vampire. I mean, and that's what a leech is. It's a creature that latches onto and sucks away, not just your life, but you need to think like an ancient. Right. I was going to say, even if what we're saying sounds like nonsense, this is at least a little bit of how these people would have read this.

Yeah. Because they were steeped in the culture, the lore of the culture therein. Yes. So Solomon isn't just painting this really vivid word picture of a woman who is full of folly and she'll just take from you and she'll give nothing back and she's always begging for more. Thomas is an aquarium toad of unknown parentage. He doesn't know his past and the prospects for his future are dim. While he's read extensively about faraway lands, Thomas has never ventured beyond the glass walls of home.

But when happenstance leaves a door open to a brave new world, Thomas hopes he'll finally discover where he belongs. The premise to the new kid's book, Frog of Arcadia. That sounds like an amazing story, Ben, one that has a lot of parallels to the modern man who often feels stuck in a cage of life. So true, King. The author, Mr. Blake Babeschko, he actually wrote the story because he wanted to leave his own children a story that he always wanted as a kid, which is why he, being a well-read man who grew up reading some of the classic books, decided to write a fully illustrated traditional style novella for kids that was full of timeless morals, great adventure, and good lessons. Go to www.orgofarcadia.com to learn more and purchase your copy of this amazing kids book.

Make sure you provide your kids with good stories. The right stories make all the difference. So true. But actually, he's talking about a monster. Yes. He's painting a graphic picture in your mind of a leech woman who will suck every ounce of life that you have in you. Yes, she will steal your life. So the point is not, the point isn't that Solomon, Solomon necessarily believed in the succubes. There was... Yeah, that's not what we're saying. But the point is that he's using potentially this Akula, this picture, to describe in vivid and

horrible terms, like sons, if you go down this path, if you go down the path of the woman folly or the woman adultery or the woman sexual sin, whatever it is, she will be like a succubist demon who will steal your very lifeblood and suck you dry and leave you a dead husk who is completely destroyed. Yeah. So just one takeaway for the Christian in this episode. Even if you think that it's nonsense to believe vampires could actually be real, that's fine. We don't know.

Yes. But one point is that sexual sin is a vampire. Yes, sexual sin is, so think about, again, think like an ancient. As a modern, we've disconnected a whole lot of things that ought not have been sundered. Yeah. We've taken fertility and we've disconnected it from sex. Right. So we've, you know, the pill, all these modern interventions.

up to an including abortion, which is just child sacrifice. Which is also like an egregore of Lilith that we've now just made sound more scientific. Yeah, right. And we've said those two things aren't connected. And then the life and the blood and the seed and sexuality and all these things, they're not really connected. Blood is just this red liquid that carries oxygen. And, you know, we give things names and we seek to understand them. And then sometimes in doing that, we allow ourselves to dismiss the powerful symbolism.

of what these things actually are. Yeah. Because just because blood, it's like when, in Lewis, when he says a star in our world is just a burning ball of gas to Eustis, and I think it's Coriakin. I can't remember who it is.

I think it's Voyage's Don Treter. I think it's Coriakins Island or, no, it's Ramanu's Island. It's definitely Voyage of Don Treter. It's either Coriakin or Ramandu, who are both stars. And they say, even in your world, son, that's only what a star is.

That's only what it's made of. That's what they're made of, but that's not what they are. So when you think, about blood, like a modern, you think about hemoglobin, you think about iron, you think about oxygen and plasma, you think about all those things, but blood is life.

Right. Right? Just because we've figured out how to take it out and have a blood bank and put it back in, and by the way, actually in the Mothman stories, there's one about the UFO encounter where the, the blood mobile is driving down the road. Oh, man, I forgot about that one.

They've just gone through this whole day, let's sound design the heck of this right now. I'm just going to like, I'm going to call my shop right now. I'm calling my shot. He's driving down the road. This is vaguely connected. Everything is connected. The thing is, it actually is.

We're going to get to. They're driving down the road in this blood mobile that's like, you can picture it's almost like an ambulance type vehicle with a box on the back where they've gone and they've done a blood drive for the blood banks, for the hospitals and great. They've got a full supply of blood in the van, this truck. They're going along the road. And all of a sudden, there's a young man and a young woman who are, I think nurses or they've been the one of the technicians.

And the woman says stop or look out. And there's a UFO, supposedly, in this story that was descending upon the vehicle. And it was like, it was going, and I think it almost like put down a claw or something to try and grab the vehicle. And then something happened like another car appeared or something and like the UFO just took off. Dude. So again, we're talking about angelic beings sometimes. We're going to get into this UFO episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're talking about angelic or demonic or, you know, these Nephilim spirit beings potentially who are masquerading as demons. And think about it. Here's a connection where a lot of these UFO stories will see connect to stealing blood. Yeah. And here's the big points. Why do they care so much about stealing blood? And why do humans seem to have some innate fear about our blood being stolen? Because it is the life of the thing.

It's the life. We know that. So we know, even if we don't think of it this way, The reason that we're all afraid of the idea of a vampire, and that it's universally terrifying is because you know that if your blood is tainted, it's now, there's this impurity. And so imagine how horrifying it would be if someone were to come in and do that to you. That would be an incredible violation. An absolute violation.

And so one thing we want you to notice is the picture comes into focus is that many of these folkloric traditions are recording the actions of actual malevolent, spiritual beings and realities. Yes. And their assault against God who is life, Jesus Christ is the life. God is life himself. He's the essence of what it means to be alive. And when he breathes into man in the beginning, man becomes a living spirit. Yes. Told in Genesis. And so whenever you see demonic attacks or these malevolent spiritual attacks on the world that God made, they always attack at the place of most of greatest potency in the symbolism for life. and the image of God, and the presence of God.

So you see things like, I'm going to make a connection that maybe we'll draw out in another episode more, but there's a UFOologist named Jacques Valet, who's a French, I think he was like a computer scientist by day and a noted euphologist by night. Sounds like a cool guy. Cool guy to get a beer with, not a Christian, but he was involved in the studies of trying to figure out,

like, what are all these UFO sightings? And he actually noticed that there were parallels between, and you've probably heard this, Ben, but parallels between satanic ritual abuse. Oh, yeah. And UFO abduction stories. Yes. And he actually ended up, I think it was more than 20 parallels that he drew

between stories of satanic rituals, which often involve, these are real stories, that often involve the abuse of children, horrible stuff, with satanic or with UFO abduction stories. And I would now claim, as we've gone through this episode and thought about these vampire stories, same thing. Yeah, it could be the same thing. They're degrading. They attack the life.

They steal blood. They're interested in using the blood for magical, wicked magical sort of seances. And so when you think about some of these stories, you think about a mother or a father who's telling his children as he's explaining to them the nature of reality as a good father does. And he sits him down at night and he says, son, now you need to beware of the lilith demon. Right. You need to be, and you can picture him saying she, she comes at night, she promises this, she delivers death, she sucks blood, she brings impurity. She says give, give, give.

And you see how all of these stories connect to the warning of don't go down the path of the malevolent spiritual forces to death. Rather, look to the blood of the temple. Yep. Look to the blood of the sacrifice, that the life was given so that we might have life. Right. And that's the pathway to Christ. The other one's the pathway to demonic blood magic.

Yeah, it's in vampirism. It really is like which way Western, I guess, Eastern. Yeah, which way, oh man. Which way, oh man. Yeah. You know, to the left, you have, give your blood from my life. Yeah. And it's going to require more and more blood from more and more people versus what the truth of, like, the beauty of creation that God is baked into the world is actually, that's just a corruption of the

truth, the true myth, as we say, which is, let me give my blood for your life. Yes. Let me, God, the God man, give my blood for your life. And the temple was obviously a picture of that. Yes. So this is more than just fancy footwork in literature. This is actually a deep truth of the world that we live in. Even if you take the modern European iterations of the vampire stories, like the one that we

opened with in Eastern European story, all the way up to Dracula and the Western European stories of the vampirism, you see that even if they're just myths, they're myths that live in harmony with the grain of reality. Right. That there's this anti-gospel of the blood. A lath spell. A lath spell I named the... That's a Tolkien reference. Which is actually very potent. Again, Tolkien understood these references and baked them into his world as maybe Ben will get into, but Sauron was a vampire. He was a vampire. Essentially, he was a spiritual vampire, sapping the strength of Theodon, etc. But he also took the... the form of a European vampire at times in the silver land in first age.

Bro. So anyway. Anyway. So we get these stories, though, even the Western European ones or Eastern European, even if they're purely myth or purely folklore, a lot of those folkloric accounts exist to tell the truth through myth. Yeah. So whether or not you believe that Peter Blagagovic, Blagojavik.

Blagojavik. I can't believe I got that right. I don't know. Does the little symbol mean the ch sound or the k. I don't know. I went with kuh and I ran with it. Okay. I'm going with and we're going to listeners write us right in. Who's right on? Eastern European listeners. I know we have. And if you think that I'm wrong, don't write in.

If you think that Ben is wrong, do write in. But my point is that these stories, they preserve in compelling story form the truth. Yeah. That there is an anti-gospel that will say live forever at the expense of others. like you said, your life for mine. And all that is, is a mythologized in fleshing of the true, of the anti-gospel. Where the true gospel says, my life for yours. My life for yours.

My blood for your life. Yeah. Which is just, when you start to see that, it's very beautiful. That is powerful. It is powerful. And it does force you to look at the world. Here's the example. Here's the boots on the ground example.

It forces you to look at your children different. Because now, when you look at your children, you know, your children, it's true. The same, you know, Aragorn says, the same blood flows through my veins. Yeah. Talking about the... Same weakness. Even though he's not like that in the book.

He's not like that. But he does say it in the movie. Fake Aragorn says that. Farragorn. Farragorn. But he's right. Yeah. You know, it's right to say when I look at my son, that's my blood. Yeah. That's my bloodline.

And so you're going to do everything you can, like Jordan Peterson says, to keep your children from doing anything that would cause you to dislike them. Yeah. Because they represent the life that is in you. Yeah. So why would you allow them to do something that would be detrimental to themselves?

Yeah. Because that's your life too. Anyway. So these stories are encoded throughout civilizations. Another one, why don't you tell us about the ancient Greeks and the iterations of the myth we find there or the vampiric witch? Yeah, I think that this, the Greek myth really helps us tie a nice bow around the connection between the serpent figure, being a universal figure of evil, and then also this demon woman. So in ancient Greek myth, we find numerous examples of the vampiric witch. Consider the myth of Lamia, who was thought to be a beautiful Libyan queen whose affair with Zeus inspired Zeus's wife,

Hera, to steal Lamia's children and slay them. Lamia was driven insane by the loss of her children, and in her madness she began to devour any child she could find in the hope of finding peace and vengeance. Her physical appearance then began to change in accordance with the wickedness of her axe. She became a monster who used to be beautiful, forced to roam the earth

in anger and despair. Physionomy check. Yeah, physiognomy check fail. Taking the children of others since she could have none for herself. And her legend became that of a phantom. So she actually lost her physicality. She became a phantom who began to steal the purity of men

before killing them and devouring their flesh. So she actually withered away. The lie of your life for mine will cause you to vanish. Yes, it shrivels you to a. So one of the points is that when you reject the life and who is the life? God is the life. He is the blazing heart, the heartbeat of all life. And when you reject the life, you cut yourself off and you become a dry branch.

Yeah. Like you become a husk. You wither. You even lose your physical. I mean, these are, this, again, Tolkien. I'll make a, here we go. This is a reach. Okay, let's go.

Because part of what I, what I haven't said yet is that the lamea myth, for a large, really for all of it, both in her phantom appearance and Anna, she was degrading into this monster. Yeah. She took the form of a snake, almost always. Or like half woman, half snake. And what does a snake do every now and then? It sheds its skin. It molds out of its skin because its skin is dying. How did I know that that's where you were going?

that is like i don't know you reached and my hand was on your hand and we reached together we it's like bin still or tom cruise yeah i uh i don't i can't flesh that out anymore that that's that's it i mean that's it again when we get into the the the witch in lewis as well the lilyph figure in lewis and um you you often see the same imagery and and what happens one interesting thing is you read history and understand the myth mythology and folklore of history that that is rooted in in reality, by the way. Yes. Routed in real spiritual experiences and real experiences.

You find that men like Tolkien and Lewis, one of the things that makes them so compelling as fiction writers, some of the greatest fiction writers of the 20th century and maybe even a broader period than that, they were deeply informed by and shaped by the types and symbols and mythological shapes of antiquity. Yeah. I mean, it entered into everything they did.

Just Lewis, for example, in Chronicles of Narnia, we have two glaring examples of Lewis giving us a figure of this demon vampire witch. Yeah. The first is everyone's favorite, Jadis, the white witch. Yes, the queen of Charn, who, if you remember in magician's nephew, how did she become a Narnian, so to speak? How did she get into Narnia? Well, she uttered the deplorable word in Charn as a sorceress that would kill all

so that she could save herself. Yep. Kill every living thing except her. It's the trope of your life for mine. But then even clearer in silver chair. Yeah. Oh, so good. The Queen of Underland, who is, first she appears beautiful, she reveals herself to actually

be this grotesque serpent who's seeking to consume all of life. The green serpent. You know, I think it's worth pointing out that when Ben says the Lilith vampiric demon witch, Jack, C.S. Lewis doesn't leave that to your imagination. nation. He actually, through the beavers, the beavers are giving an account of this white witch. And one of the things that they, they reference is actually the Talmudic legend of Lilith. Lilith being Adam's first wife. Which is nonsense, by the way. It's Jewish cope, but it's not true. It's Jewish Talmudic cope. Which is the worst kind of cope. But it does give us an insight into the way that the ancients actually put words and story.

to these demonic and spiritual encounters that they seemed to have and that seemed to continue in some ways down to the present day. And so Lewis actually makes this reference explicit in both cases where he's telling us like, this is what I'm referencing here. It's a,

and again, he was so rooted in those worlds that when you understand that picture, both of those characters and the arcs of the story surrounding them become so much more powerful. Yeah, you don't, you almost, Lewis didn't need to write more character development for them because it was already there.

Yep, it was already there. All of the myth was already there. And he used every ounce of it to bring his message home. Now, the connection between the serpent and the woman, that makes sense to me. Yeah. What I want to hear from you, Brian, is how are we thinking about the connection between the bird? Why is this vampire?

I mean, even European vampires, they're bats, right? They can turn into a bat. the origin of the myth Lilith she had bird feet and she's like a night yeah owl thing what is going on there Ben here's the thing there comes a certain level of unhingedness

where you actually surpass me okay you you you go and I said I would have gone with you to the black gates to the end I'm just kidding I don't know if this is one of those cases but I'm actually before before you hear my thoughts I want to hear what Ben Garrett

thinks about this connection I'll show my hand right away and say, I don't have very good thoughts, but I do have some ideas. That could be a T-shirt right there. I don't have very good thoughts, but I do have ideas. So speaking of Tolkien, we've talked a lot about Tolkien. But there's a good reason for that. One of the things that he talks about in the Silmarillion is how when Morgoth began to corrupt Middle Earth and his corruption spread from Angband out, something that happened was even the trees and the animals,

and the birds of the field, or the birds of the air, started to pick sides. That's right. And so I was like, oh, that's an interesting idea. Yeah, it's very interesting. It shows up throughout his work. It's CS Lewis, too. Yeah, even Old Man Willow.

Yep, that's right. That's right. And Tom Bambadil. Yes. Wow, this is really interesting. We're about to go off on a 45-minute engine. This is no longer about vampires. And through self-control, we're going to continue.

We're going to reel it back in. Yeah. And I'm going to say, You know, what if? Just what if? What if? There are parts of creation that are more cursed than others. This is not new, okay?

Jonathan Edwards believed that crows were cursed. Really? More so than some other birds. I'm like 90% sure. I know that he makes a reference to how, like, typologically, in our world, typologically, crows are supposed to represent omens of evil and death, as if there's some sign of the curse that is laid heavier on them. Yeah.

And so I'm wondering like, well, maybe, maybe night owls are more cursed than other animals. They may be the jackal, the dragon, the, the night owl. All of these things appear in conjunction with another theme in scripture, which is the wilderness. The desolate waste. There's a, there's a Hebrew phrase. reference to the curse. Yeah. It's like a desolate wilderness, and it's the

haunt of these creatures. And so I actually agree. That's an interesting thought. It could be true. And it also makes me wonder if, so you see like the serpent in his connection, the serpent's connection, which is a physical beast. Serpents are actual animals you can catch.

Right. You can say, look, cry, look, there's a 40-foot-long anaconda. Oh, no. So you can do that. Rest and peace, peace. RIP. And you can actually handle one,

but it also is representative of, and even was a character in the embodied serpent. Yeah. The spiritually, the serpent becomes a vehicle for the spiritual. So one question I have, and I know there's lots of debate about many Hebrew words in the Old Testament, is do some of these words actually mean representatively spiritual entities? Okay. I think so. Yeah.

I think, and we've mentioned this in another episode, but Isaiah 34. 14 sticks out to me. Right. Because it mentions a night bird who's able to house and care for her young in the ruins of Edom. When Edom is judged by God and it becomes this actually darkness is a huge theme of destruction as well and the lack of life. Darkness, wilderness, desert. Right. Which is comedic because in the new heavens and new earth, we will have no night. Yeah. Apparently, you know, supposedly. Whether symbolically or literally, there is no night. And either way, that's an important connection to make. Yeah.

But the implications of the word used in that verse, Isaiah 3414, actually does refer back to Lilith, the Mesopotamian legend. It does. So why not? You know? Yeah. I mean, it doesn't give us any theological problems. Right.

In my opinion, it actually gives us a richer understanding of the cultural implications of what Isaiah is saying. Right. Where the point is really driven home. which is if you disobey God like Edom did, you are going to become a haunt of witches and vampires and all this stuff, not just birds. Yeah, and it reminds me of something that is common in scripture as well, which is the biblical authors often take the symbols of the enemies of God or of the background culture, the eastern culture, the near-eastern ancient culture, and they use them to demonstrate the superiority of Yahweh, of the God of Israel, over the gods and rulers. of the pagans. So in Ezekiel, you see this vision to really boil it down. Part of it is a vision of these angelic beings with four heads. Yeah. And what's interesting is that the heads of this, of, that are shown, Ezekiel's writing, you know, people are captive in Babylon. And if you

look at the Babylonian star charts, the astronomical, you know, like where you give that, that's the crab and that's the, the chicken. Yeah. Like, he, The stars align. This was a culture that no light pollution. They looked at the stars. They obsessed with the stars. Right. And they built even ancient temples all the way back to go back Lee Teppoli and other other ancient.

Certainly the pyramids. Megalithic structures, the pyramids. They would align them with astronomical symbols. The star, Sirius, which was the brightest star in the sky in many places. They would align them the doors of their temples with these stars. Well, Ezekiel actually sees this angelic being. And those four faces represent the four. cardinal points on the Babylonian basically their astronomical system.

I didn't know that. And then, not only that, but if you go and look at the Babylonian illustrations and carvings that we still have on their thrones, you would often have these symbols. And so Ezekiel's seeing actually not Marduk, not the gods of the Babylonians, but who is riding on it? It's the Israel's God. Yeah, they are pulling his throne. And this, the craziest thing about this.

So here's this little embattled Jewish people who are exiles in an empire that has swallowed them up, just like many other empires who have fallen into its maw. And yet Ezekiel is saying something. He's saying, who is the true God? It's not the God of the Babylonians. It's the God of the Israelites who's telling the story, who's writing history. His throne is being drawn by these, is surrounded by these angelic beings. Not the Babylonian king or their God.

So when we get to these references, even if they're opaque or oblique references to the ancient Near Eastern background cultures, we need to take them seriously. Yeah, they do matter. Because often they dunk on the demons, like to put it word on the street. Often they take the symbols and then the prophets demonstrate God's superiority over them. So Brian, as it turns out, Dallas, Texas is our biggest listener, if you narrowed it down to a single city. Can you believe that? That's amazing. I don't know why that's true. I have no idea why that's true. Also, my hometown Atlanta is number three.

That's a fun fact. Nonetheless, we thank the Lord for all of you Dallas listeners, and we want to do our best to throw you specifically a bone. Yeah, everyone knows that buying a new roof for your house can be difficult. You know, you're always getting scammed by hucksters, but you know what would make it better? buying a new roof from a Christian or getting an inspection from a Christian. If you're in the Dallas area and you need roof work done, then you need to reach out to Lauren's contracting at www.rusroofing.com. That's right. If you are a slightly unhinged, haunted cosmonaut in Dallas, Texas, who needs some work done on your residential or commercial roof, or maybe there's been a recent hailstorm and you just want your roof inspected to make sure it's safe.

Whatever it is, go check out our friends at Lauren's contracting, and you can find them at www. www. rusroofing.com. That's www. russsroofing.com or call Russ himself at 940-395-9413. Again, that's 940-395-9-4-13. You know, that reminds me of something that I read in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews. Take this for what you will. Josephus was not anerrant by any means. Yes.

Right. Not even close. But one of the things he says is that a lot of people think that Solomon's kind of fall into idolatry began much later in his life. But if you look at the description of Solomon's normal year, even at the bit near to the beginning of his reign, he's checking all the boxes of what Moses said would be a bad king, right? But even beyond that, when he describes his own house and his throne, what is lining the steps going up to his throne? Do you remember? No, what? Tell me.

Lions. Oh, yes. Josephus said that he, according to him, the tradition of the Jews was that that the creation of that throne was the beginning of Solomon's idolatry. Interesting. Because depicting lions in that state was basically stu. Solomon showing his hand that he was giving up the God of Yahweh. Wow. Or the God of Israel, Yahweh.

And he was instead embracing, or at least flirting with these other foreign gods. And the way that he started it was embodying them in a lion. Yeah. It's very strange. One thing, we've talked a lot about the ancient mind, is that you have to understand that the ancient mind doesn't necessarily think in the terms of the modern, where we deconstruct things to their part and seek to understand them scientifically. the ancient mind was a wash with symbols with the night sky and the astronomical signs and with

the animal symbols and what they represented and they understood very much they were much closer to reality in a sense there because they understood that the world isn't just stuff right that you can just keep chopping down until you get to the smallest part and then you understand it and that's it there's no mystery that they understand that the world is not just stuff it's a supernatural natural connected. Yeah, there's a Venn diagram. Yeah, there's supernatural, natural,

and then there's this God who is the creator of all of the sons of God and the sons of men, the angelic beings, the spiritual world, and of the physical world. Yeah, even in Genesis 1-1, where it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Yeah.

The word there that refers to world is the unseen and the scene. It's not just what you can see. It's also this other category that Yeah. We have a really hard time perceiving, but we have to know that it's there. We're going to talk about this, too. We are. Yeah. The connection with Gnosticism, the false gospel of Gnosticism, that there's this, that the God who created the physical world was a bad God.

He was evil. Mm-hmm. And so physical is bad. And we're going to connect this with UFOs and aliens maybe in the next episode. There's going to be a lot of connections. But back to vampires. Back to vampires. What we're talking about is blood-sucking wraiths. I'm actually going to switch gears.

Yeah, let's just, Ben, switch gears on us. I'm going to switch gears, and I'm going to harken back to something that you read in the intro. Harken. Harken away. Is that even the right use of the word? I'm going with it. It sounds good. You've harkened me.

So in the passage from the book, The Vampire, by that clearly Italian man with an Italian last name, he says that the myth of the vampire only started to move west with the spread of Christianity. That to me is a really interesting. idea. And in my research, I couldn't find any examples of something that's overtly vampiric in the more European and, you know, the Americas before the spread of Christianity. Except for one, I found a Native American legend that was extremely vampiric. It ticked all the boxes. But it didn't happen with the spread of Christianity. And so here's my question to you. Yeah, yeah. I feel like you're about to appropriate my culture.

but go ahead. That's right. You are very Native American. Do you prefer Amerindian? Is that what you prefer? I prefer. My brother always says I prefer engine. Okay.

Honest engine. Our family is, you know, it's like the thing where they go to the, the guys dress up like really stereotypical Mexican guys. Oh, yeah. And then they ask all the white college students like, does this offend you? And they're like, yes, absolutely. That's extremely offensive.

And then they go to like the Mexican marketplace and all these old like ponchos. They're like, oh, man, I don't. like our hat. Cool sombrero. The sombrero is so cool, man. Really, they're not even speaking English. It's like real Native Americans. We're not that concerned, but go ahead.

Okay, so here's my question. Yeah. In, like, episode one of the show. Yeah. Back in Sea Monsters. I threw out this idea that maybe, maybe there's a geographical connection to be made between these things. And so is there any,

do we have any merit to say that ideas spreading to a new geographical region can open the door. to these myths then invading. And when I say myth, I mean, if there's any actuality to them, like actual demon activity, could we say that if a certain region learns something new or is introduced to something new, like, for example, the truth of Christianity,

there's also baggage that comes along with that that is insight into the evil world that they may not have known yet. And so could we say, is there any reason to say, that, Yeah, the reason the European countries didn't have a vampiric myth is because they didn't know enough about the truth of the world that Christianity offers

to actually understand the evil of the vampire, so the demons weren't trying that on them yet. Interesting question. Does that make any sense? It's a little, wow, I mean, wow, first of all. I mean, I'm having a hard time articulating it because I myself have had a hard time thinking clearly about it. Yeah. Well, I do think that there's multiple ways,

that these stories invade and become powerful. And one of them is, certainly people tell stories to name things in the world in accordance with their map of reality. So if you go into the Eastern world, pre-Christian Eastern world, or, you know,

where a lot of Eastern mysticism and different religious ideologies where Christianity hadn't penetrated yet, you see people telling, basically interpreting the world through the lens of those Eastern mystic stories. And then, where Christianity goes, the stories change or they warp, but there's also reality under that

that because all of those people live in the world, in the real world, where there is objective truth, objective evil, objective beauty, objective goodness, you see themes that just continue to develop over and over. Right. So one of those, I think that's one mechanism. Mm-hmm. I think another mechanism, and I have three, this is the second one. I think the second mechanism.

Of course, he just pulls this out of nowhere. Well, listen, I've been meditating on these things. I think the second mechanism that you see, which is underestimated in our modern Western materialist world, is that spiritual beings are not bounded by geography. So certainly, it doesn't mean that an island people somewhere in the middle of the Pacific have to have direct contact with people in Asia or North America in order to end up with similar spiritual events happening to them. Totally agree.

Because the spirits are like the demons that these different classes of spiritual malevolent beings are going to attempt to steal, kill, and destroy wherever they see the image of God. Yeah. And they can cross oceans. They can cross time. I mean, I don't know how they, if they can cross time or not, whatever, but they're undying. Yeah. So they're lasting. The third way, though, that I think some of these things spread is that I'm convinced that our ancient, that our current archaeological and.

anthropological story which is deeply evolutionary and and i and i think um just just inaccurate in many ways doesn't quite get right the interaction of ancient peoples so i think that there's at least a possibility that people from the ancient near east did have activity in the north american in the americas yeah i think there's potential there you know there's actually an idea tossed around. You know how in First Kings, is it First Kings or Second Kings that it talks about Solomon's reign? Oh.

I think it's First Kings. Anyway, it mentions how Solomon gets all this gold from a land of Ophir. Yeah. Some people think it's the Americas. And like not Mormons. Christians think that it could be the Americas. And that would then give some possibility to there being some, at least Judaic influence on the American people.

Yeah, and this comes from the accounts in Scripture of Solomon sending out ships, bringing back vast riches, and no one knows of any place in the Middle East or near East named Ophir. Yeah, you can look up like the legend of King Solomon's minds. Yeah. And you can look at maybe it, you know what, put a pin in it, Ben. We should do an episode on the Legend of King Solomon's Minds because it's fascinating. We should. It's a departure here, but I think that you can see even in that show with Graham Hancock, the kind of

ancient apocalypse, bad boy archaeologist, who's not an archaeologist. And he has a bad reputation, but a lot of what he took, and he's also deeply anti-Christian, by the way. Just so everybody knows who's watching that show, Graham Hancock hates Christianity. This isn't just a blank an endorsement of Graham. He loves, or Grant Hancock. He loves doing DMT or people doing DMT and interacting with interdimensional beings. The Hatman. Okay. But Graham Hancock, shows some powerful evidence of these commonalities and myths of like the civilizing foreigner who shows up like Quetzal Coato in the ancient South American world and Central American world who shows up and gives technology and gives advancement and it's after a flood

after a great flood I mean he ties to the younger dryass period and the ice age of the you know about 10,800 BC but it's like again deeply anti-Christian timeline worldview whatever all that However, we do see this third mechanism where we underestimate because of our hubris, the technological abilities of the ancients. Yep. Their travel abilities and things that are just difficult for us to find through archaeological finds. And the easiest example of this to sell you on this idea is that what we do know is that there was a group of people in the Bronze Age called the Sea Peoples. And no one knows where they went. No one knows.

Or where they came. Yeah. We can speculate. We do speculate. but we actually don't know. We know they existed. So just to tell you that this was real, this did happen. And who's to say how much more it happened than what we actually know of?

Yes. Go back to the Ricotte structure and the ancient Atlantis. Atlanteans and the stories that were preserved through the Egyptian hieroglyphs. So, I mean, there's all of these stories that sound fantastical sometimes because they defy the modern story that we're telling. But we have to remember that the modern story we're telling, especially the evolutionary anthropologists, one is itself just a supposition overlaid on history, on data, where they say, well, we're going to connect all these data points. And often the people in the sciences, they overestimate how much of the total data they have in their hands. Yeah. How much they don't know. Right.

Because the truism holds, you don't know what you don't know. Yeah. So we can sometimes assume that We're looking at like a large percentage of the evidence and then making our stories from it and drawing our conclusions from it. And it turns out our data set is like one-tenth of one-tenth of one percent of the data. It's just lost history. And this happens all the time. They thought that Troy was a mythological city until, oh, actually, no, it's this massive city. Oh, it's actually real. We haven't found it yet.

And there it is. Or, you know, the Hittites, which were only described in the biblical records until the 1800s. Yep. Or Gallio and his paving stone in the book of Acts. there's a book by Colin J. Hammer I think it's called The Book of Acts or the setting of Hellenistic history. And he talks about 50 or 60 points

where Luke, who wrote Luke and Axe is vindicated against archaeological conclusions that said that he was wrong for hundreds and hundreds of years until the last 100, 200 years. And he, don't quote me on the exact titles there. I think that's the name of the book. But he just demonstrates,

we just didn't know yet. And then they say, oh, well, it still wasn't Luke that wrote that. It was cute. And they're totally certain. So again, we have our modern scientific cope of over certainty and underestimating

the legends and the things the ancients actually wrote down. They were like, no, no, no, there were dragons. And we're like, there are dragons. There's no way. Meanwhile, there's a television show on Netflix about a family that relocates

giant ancient dinosaur crocodiles in Australia. You're like, well, there's some right there. Look, I found one. Yeah. For example. Well, one of the best examples of this. Let's talk about laughing sky. Yeah, let's talk about laughing sky.

I don't know if that's where you were going. That's 100% where I was going. We are locked in. We're locked in. We're locked in. Because this is one of those examples where we have a written record from people. Yeah. We have a shared myth across oceans.

Yeah. All right. Brian, please tell us about laughing. Sure, yeah. This is from my ancestors, probably not, but maybe. This is a Native American legend that tells of the medicine man and his wife, Laughing Sky. So the story goes like this. The medicine man was a wise, beloved chief of ten tribes in the early history of the Americas.

And he had his queen, whose name was Laughing Sky. And the two of them, I mean, it's a classic story, beginning full of joy. Loved each other. Loved each other. Peace and tranquility in their marriage between them, ruling the lands. And there's peace. But eventually, the medicine man learns that his wife laughing sky is barren. She can't have children.

I mean, there's that theme of children. You get an ancient theme of the barren woman. And so as she approached the end of her childbearing years, the medicine man was becoming more and more desperate for an heir to his throne and to his rule. He was desperate enough that he began to reach out into the dark corners of the world and attempt to leverage the powers of dark magic to remit. to remedy his wife's barrenness. This is another theme that you find

through many cultures. People violate the boundaries of what God has appointed for their life, barrenness or some other trial, and they seek malevolent powers. Yep. Think of Anacian magic from the Egregore episode. Exactly.

Right. You know, I couldn't have said it better myself, King. So there's a demon spirit known as Jumlin who negotiated with the medicine man in an occultic sort of session of opening portals to the netherworld so you could contact and leverage

the power of these dark powers. And so Jumlin promised the medicine man many sons and daughters could be born to the couple if the medicine man would simply let him this being from beyond cross the veil into their own world. There's a trip of having to be invited.

Permission. Yes. Permission. When we get to Skinny, Skinwalker. Skinwalky. Let me just tell you. Sweetie. The portals. We're going to talk about it. The tribes, the tribe. So the medicine man, of course, in the story, it would have been an uneventful story if the medicine man had been like, no, you're a demon leave.

But he didn't. He agreed. And so Jumlin took control of his body, of course, given him permission. He possessed his mind and heart for his own cruel purposes. Now, this demon spirit was a genuinely cruel, malevolent being who lusted after, guess what? The blood of all living things. The blood of living things.

And even medicine man knew this. He knew it. I mean, he knows what he's doing. Yeah. But he doesn't quite know. Right. He knows enough to be morally culpable. Right.

But we always underestimate what's going to happen to us and our people when we covenant with dark powers. Right. So in the form of the medicine man, then, he's taking his form. Loved by his people, this demon began to drink the blood of men, women, and children. in the 10 tribes. He also, again, sexual impurity, he cheated on Laughing Sky with numerous women and sired many a little,

illiterate, illegitimate. I guess when they were young, they were illiterate too, but whatever. And actually, a lot of ancient native people didn't have written languages. Anyway, so he sired illegitimate children by the dozens. And what was formerly a land of peace and joy, of course, now became

a desert waste. It became a realm of shadow, whose people dwelt in fear and despair. Eventually, though, Laughing Sky would give birth to a son. This Jumlun demon would actually live up to his promise to medicine man. A son who he would actually father named Laughing Bear. Upon Laughing Bear's birth, Jumlin drank the blood of Laughing Sky, his mother, leaving her for dead, and he took his new son to escape across the plane

because the people were now rising up to revolt against him. This is a stretch, but if we remember the truth of the biblical flood and think through how this area of the world may have been populated, we can easily find a way to connect even this myth of the vampire to those other origins found in the Middle East. And this is what we were talking about with maybe there were ancient peoples that interacted with early peoples in the Americas after the flood. It's certainly possible. Brian, there's actually been tablets and stuff that they find in Mississippi and up in Canada. that have inscriptions and they look like old Hebrew. Yeah. Again, like not to validate the Mormon legends,

which are completely wrong. We're not trying to get like that. No, no, no, no. We're not saying like all the Native Americans are lost tribe of the Jews. And this is a very popular idea in the 1800s when Mormonism and a lot of other cultic religions came out of the New York area.

But that's nonsense. That's a lot of that's nonsense. Yeah. But there is at least some evidence or the potential that there was connection between these places through travel and commerce that is not understood yet and maybe difficult or impossible

to fully understand with what has been lost. A lot of the ancient American megalithic structures and have been lost to history. I mean, you can think about the way the landscapes changed as people have colonized and transformed the world around them and just like any other ancient place. It's crazy, but I mean, you can even look into Aztecs where people are repairing a telehealth.

phone line and digging down. And then they just discover an ancient Aztec temple that's been down under your feet in Mexico City. And it's huge. It's huge. It's like so or, you know, again, like Gobeckley-Tepley in these ancient temples, which maybe we'll talk about a future episode, sometimes the ancients intentionally hid or buried these megalithic structures, which is, I believe the case with Gobeckley-beckley-tepley.

Yeah, they actually just lost. The evidence shows that they, just a side note, the evidence shows they tried to intentionally bury it very quickly. Like, carted in dirt, hundreds of people, tons of work, buried their temples. It's a lot of fun to think about why they didn't turn that. Who knows? You know, like, was it Christians? Who were like, no. I think they would have broken it, though. This is bad. Yeah, absolutely not. So we see that weather through that, again, the malevolent spirits, they aren't bound by oceans. Maybe they influenced some of these stories. In this story could have its root in some kind of real encounter between the gods, the lower G gods, that the malevolent spirits who came in are attempting

to rule and subjugate and deceive a people for their own ends, or there was intermingling through previously, you know, currently unknown commercial trade and things like that in the ancient world or etc. But I think one thing that we can say is that this myth is powerful. Yes. And it pervades history. Yes. The connection that we hope you make is not to come to the conclusion, oh, well, vampires for sure exist even today. We're not, we don't know. This is one of the stranger myths to me, and it's one of the more difficult ones to reconcile with the Bible and with history and everything.

But there's something there. There's an inherent connection in the human mind and heart and soul to the lifeblood, the purity, the progeny, all these things. Our final story tonight comes from the village of Cadam Bohemia. It's in the year 1706. According to a report filed by the village officials, a herdsman named Mislata of Blow continued to be sighted all throughout the town

even after his death. His undead corpse would wander the street and call out the names of those he passed that he recognized. The people he called, though, would see a vile form of Mislata looking at them, bloated and discolored, nothing like how they remembered him in life. They assumed at first,

it was some ugly apparition that stalked the streets. This would be terrifying in its own right, but then the people he called out began to die. One by one, soon after citing this mislata, this undead corpse, each person would die of a painful fever. The city officials began to take notice while the people's paranoia steadily grew until the call for an exhumation of Mislata's body

turned from request to demand. So somewhat reluctantly, the officials dug up the grave and oversaw the precise staking of the corpse through the heart, noting that the body did in fact seem very well preserved, given the amount of time it had spent in the grave. The townspeople, comforted by the staking, attempted to return to normal life. Soon, however, they found that the undead mislotta was not done. The exhumation and staking had failed. The vampire returned with a vengeance, terrifying the villagers with his appearance and suffocating.

and drinking the blood of many. The fear of the people seemed to make him stronger almost, to the point where he would seldom hide and began to openly mock anyone that tried to stop him. In this state of desperation, one night the villagers gave the corpse of the sleeping vampire to a local executioner, bidding him to do his worst,

hoping it would kill, or at least ward off, this unsettled monster. The executioner pierced the body with several stakes before burning its ash publicly, so everyone could see that it was done. But as the stories go, even as the flames consumed it, those present were horrified to hear howls of pain and curses escape the corpse, haunting the villagers for the rest of their lives. Did you know that patrons get access to a bonus show, the dusty tome,

as well as early access to main episodes? Support the show and get access to these amazing benefits and more at patreon.com slash haunted cosmos. Want more hunted cosmos? Then make your way over to Patreon. where you can get early access to our content as well as exclusive content in regular dusty tomes and monthly live streams with Brian and myself. So go to patreon.com slash haunted cosmos and sign up now.