This Paranormal Life - #170 The New England Vampire Pandemic

Episode Date: June 30, 2020

When a skeleton is discovered buried in the ground with it's head removed and it's heart stolen, it's up to Rory and Kit to find out what's going on...Support us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to weekly bonus episodes!Buy Official TPL Merch! - thisparanormallife.com/storeFollow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunityAdvertise on This Paranormal Life via Gumball.fmIntro music by www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you kill the undead? What happens if you eat flowers? All of these questions you can find the answer to on This Paranormal Life! Hey everyone, welcome to This Paranormal Life, the comedy paranormal podcast where every week we investigate a brand new tale and come to a conclusion as to whether or not it truly is paranormal. My name is Roy Powers. This guy over here is Kit Greer. How are you doing today, Kit? You ready to investigate the paranormal? Always, Roy. I'm ready to dive right in. Hope you got a spicy investigation for us. I do. I do. Well, this week, our investigation comes from an email we got sent in to this

paranormal life podcast at gmail.com from a person called Alex Seidel. Now Alex says, Hey guys, I love the show and would really like to hear what you think about the new England vampire pandemic. Really fun craze that often gets washed over by the Salem witch trials. A fun craze? It doesn't sound fun. We actually did an episode on the Salem Witch Trials. So I felt like it was at least our obligation to lend this case as much passion and enthusiasm as the Salem Witch Trials. Because, yeah, he's right. Disneyland gets lots of visitors. But, you know, sometimes Legoland needs visitors, too.

Exactly. Legoland is pretty fun. It's all right. It's all right. Let's not big it up too much. The food is better than, all yeah it's it's all right it's not yeah let's not big it up too much the food is better than well no it's not better than disneyland they're both equally bad but the weather it well it's in england so it's worse it's still pretty bad so but mickey mouse can't hold a candle to the green lego nin ninjago i don't even know the name of the guy i honestly i don't even know

the name of him we should move on we should but this case will be just as fun as the salem witch trials i assure you and way more fun than lego land guaranteed all right let's dive in to the story the year is 1990 and we're in connecticut 1990 1990 jesus we're gonna be time this is gonna be like 300 years ago look we're gonna go back to the past we're gonna go forward to the future vampires are immortal and they can fly kit those little probably invented cheese that's how old they are i don't know why that was the first thing i could think of that's old. Sure, there are older things. I'm pretty sure that was pretty old. Well, look, okay.

The story begins in 1990, and we're in Connecticut. It's a beautiful day. Birds are chirping in the sky, and a group of local children are in the woods, playing along the rocky mountains and abandoned gravel mines. But as they trek through the forest and rocky terrain, one of the boys spotted something emerging from the dirt. It was a bone, and it didn't look like it was from an animal. He called the rest of the gang over to investigate, and they began to search the area.

It wasn't long before they found another bone, and another bone. This was bad. One of the boys ran home to tell the town what he'd discovered. He burst through the front door of his home and began yelling, Mom! Mom! We were out playing in the gravel mines. We found a bunch of bones buried in the ground. The boy's mother didn't care at first, assuming it was a story or exaggeration.

That was until the child handed her a human skull. That's not a bone. It's a, it is a bone. It's a skull. God damn. Aren't bones, aren't skulls bones? Can you imagine the shock of being that parent? Yeah, because you think like, oh, he's found a chicken bone.

He's found like one of those, like basically a chicken wing. Listen, kids don't have great critical thinking or analysis skills yeah they find a freaking shell and they'll tell you that they find yeah a bloody corpse or something and if a child hands you a human skull he either is going to be killed or needs to be killed because he is either a demon or he is angered a demon that's a dangerous position to be don't accept the skull that's what i say right yes it could be some kind of indiana jones crystal skull yeah it's kind of a difficult situation when you're handed a skull because

it's a pretty much lose-lose situation you throw that thing out in the garbage you're disrespecting the skull you take that thing inside your house you're inviting the skulls ghost into the house and even if it's not paranormal uh you don't need your fingerprints on a skull no absolutely i will sleep better at night knowing my fingerprints are not on skulls i remember the last time i found a skull uh in the woods i was like hey i don't want to be disrespectful so i'm gonna bring it home i'm gonna just use it as like a beer holder so like for my bud lights i just okay so that sounds disrespectful well it wasn't disrespectful because i i was using the skull to serve a purpose which is what a lot of you could have buried it or maybe made a little altar that's where he came

from i'm not gonna rebury him so you dug it yeah i dug for like 20 minutes to find the thing i'm not gonna rebury it just tell me one thing was there a headstone where you dug coincidentally that's not and you're not gonna believe this it's not but yeah right you went you broke into a graveyard and you dug up that's illegal look i think i saw a police statement in the paper asking for this masked uh body thief am i just going around digging up bodies am i just supposed to put my beer on the table and let it ruin the regular beer holder man why do you need to dig up this poor dead old lady to use her skull as a beer holder you sick bastard. I like to think that it wouldn't even hold the beer well it was like spilling the beer to the sides it was basically

just opening up the mouth and kind of setting it in the jaw. Well immediately the boy's mother contacted the town's police who blocked the entire area off to the public assuming the body parts were connected to a murder, making the excavation site an active crime scene. Using flat edge shovels, brushes, and bamboo picks, the police working alongside archaeologists began to excavate the site. And when the dirt had been cleared, they discovered the remains of multiple humans. Oh man. But the condition of the bones implied they weren't recently buried. In fact, these remains were over a century old. Ah, phew, who cares?

They throw their tools back in the pit. They're like, alright boys, free beer holders! I'll have gifts for all the family for years to come. Most of the bodies were laid to rest in quote thrifty yankee style which meant simple wood coffins no jewelry not even really much clothing with their arms just by their side it's like the uh shitty b-side to oppa gangnam style thrifty yankee style played on a banjo and the dance is just you lying flat in a grave ass naked covered in dirt

thrifty yankee style well i believe the commune has a new national anthem that's that's uh that's the moment in the concert you realize you got the wrong tickets and you're not there to see South Korean star Psy. You've come to see some kind of f***ed up hillbilly band. South American star Psy. All of these bodies were buried. Thrifty Yankee style. That was, of course, except for burial number four.

Burial number four was one of only two stone crypts at the site. Working tirelessly, an excavation team made it through several feet of dirt before finally they reached the top of the crypt. They carefully removed the large stone lid, and underneath, the team were met with a chilling sight. Unlike the regular remains of the other graves, the skeleton inside the tomb had been beheaded. Whoa.

His whole body had been rearranged. His skull and thigh bones rested on the ribs, making it appear almost like a pirate's skull and crossbones. A warning for those who found it. The strangest part was that after analyzing the remains, the team discovered that the decapitation and tampering with the skeleton happened around five years after the person was dead. What? Someone smashed into the grave and tampered with the remains of the body five years after they had died. Interesting. Weird, huh?

So some kind of grave robber activity, but not traditional where they just steal valuables, but rather just to f*** with the dead. Yeah, and because it is worth noting, these people were buried thrifty Yankee style. There's not a lot to gank from the dead yeah and because it is worth noting these people were buried thrifty yankee style there's not a lot to gank from the dead so true this isn't like an egyptian priestess where you know there's amulets there's probably a couple mummified cats in there you could take home as souvenirs maybe like an amulet cursed or otherwise that's i think baller pharaoh style the exact opposite um thrifty yankee style i mean the only thing that you're gonna get out of that is maybe maybe they've rigged it with a shotgun so that you dodge it in time you can keep the gun i guess that's like as much treasure as you're gonna get very. The answers began to form when they discovered that the ribs of the skeleton had been broken,

like someone dug it up to steal its heart. Nope. Shut it down. That is when you fill up the hole again. There is some sort of curse. As if it being reorganized to make a skull and crossbones wasn't enough of a warning. The thing's been decapitated and its heart has been stolen. The goddamn shaman from Indiana Jones.

Which one was it? He was in two. Temple of Doom. Okay. Sorry, I thought you were saying two different movies. I was like, he came back? He was actually one of the Nazis in the background. The one with the bucket of hearts. He had great agent got him a good contract multiple movie deal uh yeah the shaman that steals people's hearts that freaked out as a kid right it was so scary oh my goodness it was weird

did you ever see get going on a little bit of a tangent here but i think it was in the first indiana jones do you ever see it's a super famous scene now because it was like a character who's playing a nazi i believe and he during a line of dialogue it's like the most evil thing you've ever seen a fly just crawls into his mouth and he just eats it i think oh yeah i forgot that like while they're filming and it's in the movie you can see this fly going to his mouth. So was that, I wonder, was that like planned? No, I think it just happened and he just ran with it. That's beautiful.

It's crazy. You've got to look it up if you haven't seen that clip before. It's definitely got to be on YouTube. I love those things that happen in movies that weren't supposed to happen. I only found out recently. Well, I already knew about Django Unained leo uh cutting his hand open yeah i didn't know about the um hey i'm walking here line what is that it's from the movie midnight cowboy it's like a 60s movie with dustin hoffman and that's where the line was coined hey i'm walking here oh wow and it wasn't

supposed to happen it was like you know one of the one of the like taxis who's like on the street that like extra or whatever accidentally drove forward and dustin hoffman like jumps out of the way he's like yeah i'm walking here oh that's good imagine accidentally coming up with a line that good pretty cool i mean i opened the show with you know what would happen if you ate flowers, which I think is also like an important- It could be a classic. 20, 30 years down the line when everyone's eating flowers, they're going to be like, he was a pioneer. I can't believe it.

Or, you know, dad from eating toxic flowers. My bones reorganized into a flower shape. But why would anyone steal another human's heart? Well, Kit, because the person who was buried in that grave was a vampire! I don't get it. I still don't get it. What more do I need to say? You just continue to thrash around the room.

For us to understand why this happened, we have to go backwards once again in time to the 1790s. The very beginning of what would be known as the New England Vampire Pandemic. Now, life around the 1970s in New England was sweet and simple. Small towns of God-fearing citizens farming the land, living until the ripe old age of probably 40. That was, of course, until New England was rocked by a disease they referred to as consumption. Sure. It was a horrible disease.

It would start slow and drain the life out of the infected. The victim would lose weight, lose color in their skin. It was as if the life was being sucked out of them. And it would spread too, like butter on hot toast, or Nutella on toast, or any series of jams or marmalades on toast. The epidemic was so devastating that scientists today believe it could have killed perhaps 25% of the East Coast citizens. could have killed perhaps 25% of the East Coast citizens. It's kind of sad when to think that the citizens of New England at the time were happy with their quaint life. You know, sure, we don't live that long, but it's a good life,

and it's a healthy life, and we get to enjoy our best years until we hit the rocks. And then consumption rocks in and says, I hope you weren't too attached to those 40 years, i'm gonna cut it down to about 22 yeah already it's so low yeah and now you're the very few years that you have are shit because basically from the age of six on you're dying slowly which i guess is still true to this day which is pretty sad yeah at what age do you start to die you know because you kind of like as soon as you're born you begin dying pretty much you're heading towards the grave but i mean like at a certain point this is just you and your therapist's office at a certain point you asked you about your childhood what age does one begin to die

really really because for me it felt like day one because you definitely hit a point you hit a point i guess what i'm thinking is like you stop growing at some point yeah you stop like becoming a bigger human and a healthier human yeah you typically and you you know people who are into sports will recognize that you hit you know in some depending on the sport you might hit your physical peak in that sport at a certain age. Yeah. You know, for some sports, it's depressingly low. Esports is like 13.

Not the kind of sports I was thinking of, but yeah. Well, it's the one that matters for sure. You know, whenever, if you watch like competitive, like climbing or something like that, which is going to be in the Olympics next year, they they're depressingly young those climbers are like 16 17 18 max wow uh but then other sports you know it's a little older but you can win the gold and then you go back to your coach next year and your coach is like you're dying you're 20 years old man you're on your way out you need to climb your way out of the grave you old ass 21 year old your coach is 12. grave you old ass 21 year old your coach is 12 you're washed up jimmy you're never gonna make it in this industry the villages needed to gather together and find out what was going on and how they could stop

consumption all right all right Everyone settle down, please. Please take your seats. We're here today to talk about consumption. All right, this thing is bad, folks. It's rotting away our families, turning them all into Voldemort-looking motherf**ks. We need a cure. I heard there ain't a cure.

Only God can show us mercy. We need to stop wearing purple. Everything was fine until we started wearing purple. But finally, someone from the crowd cried out, you fools. It's not a disease. It's a creature. What we've got is a bad case of the vampires. The man spoke about a newspaper he read, about a foreign quack doctor, who theorized that the reason why consumption would spread through a family is because the first person who died would emerge from the ground and suck the life out of their family,

causing them all to eventually die one by one. Let's hear him out. This sounds compelling. The only way to stop it was to dig up the deceased and burn their vital organs. Wow. So almost immediately, frightened villagers were convinced that their family members that had passed away were most likely vampires, and in the dark of night, they would emerge from their graves, sneak back, and suck the life out of everyone. Bodies of deceased family members were often

dug up and if the course appeared to be less decayed than expected or if the body still contained liquid blood, the person was deemed a vampire and they had their organs burned to quote, destroy the evil bond between the living and the dead wow i kind of like that idea of digging someone up but being like we need to make sure they're 100 of vampire checking for basically any signs of life left in this person so if you give them a little nick and there's some blood coming out it means that person is like sucking it out of other people you know there's a reason they're not just a that person is like sucking it out of other people. You know, there's a reason they're not just a full skeleton.

A bit of science behind it. Can you imagine, you know, what those late night grave digging sessions must have felt like? It must have been the most stressful thing imaginable to think that you were actually going to dig up a vampire, come face to face. Yeah, it's interesting to note that, at least in New england at the time uh the vampires that they were referring to were always exclusively people who had passed on and

were now rising from the grave you know vampires take a lot of forms in popular culture and over history you know you got your nosferatu looking sons of bitches. You got your sexy ass Twilight Twinkle guys. My personal favorites, to be honest. Most hunky. Even though I am Team Jacob myself, I will say, sure, the vampires are still pretty cool. They play baseball in thunderstorms. That's pretty badass.

I will say that in this case, this early instance, what did I say? 1790s? Vampires at least being framed in the uh in the case of consumption were simply just more like zombies like the dead coming back to life gotcha and leeching off of humans doesn't even mention uh bite marks or blood sucking or anything like that it's more of just cause and effect. Yeah, that's a really good point.

So they were accusing these vampires of causing the consumption. But yeah, there's no like silver bullet in the bite marks. You know, it's almost just like a kind of psychic or telepathic vampire-ness. Yeah. Well, this practice was in effect for a long time. One of the most famous cases takes place in 1892 when a farmer

from rhode island named george brown noticed his wife was looking a little under the weather a little pale a little golem-y it wasn't long before she was killed by consumption and buried outside of the town now you know what's gonna here. The townspeople went to George and said, look, I know you miss- I'm not saying she's a vampire. I know you miss your wife. She was a beautiful woman. She was a pillar in this society. However, she is now a vampire. She's a threat. We need to dig up her still warm corpse, steal her heart. She had a big heart by the way time for everyone in the community and we need to burn it it's a direct correlation the nicer a lady that you were the more deadly a vampire you will be george of course wanted no part in it he refused to let the town go near his

wife's grave then slowly but surely his two daughters became seriously ill and eventually also both passed away, meaning George and his son were the only two left. So the town came back. George, look, your wife. God rest her soul. She was a fantastic woman. Always had time for everyone. She is a vampire demon. And we need to nuke her lifeless corpse!

George once again refused. No, you will not desecrate the graves of my beautiful family. I like the idea of the son being like, right! Although, yes, bear in mind, we didn't do that last time and my sisters died. So, you know, Dad, maybe let's not completely, let's not just rule out the thought. Are you saying, son? You're talking about your mother. Of course. And the two girls.

Right. Just because the same thing happened to them, it doesn't mean that she's some kind of, Jesus Christ, some kind of vampire. My dad's right. Everyone, get kind of vampire. My dad's right. Everyone get the, get out of here. But bear in mind, dad, that obviously the human soul is not encased in the body and that's now in heaven. So the body is just bones. So if we were to dig it up, you know, that could be, we could just try it once. It would break my heart.

What is left of it? What is left of my heart? Of course. To see them dug up. God rest her soul. God rest her soul. Although maybe if we just, we could like burn like a half of it and just see what happened. Because I have a cough. Do you know that, dad?

I have a cough and I have a headache and I think I'm feeling a little weak. So maybe we just burn like a tiny bit of the heart, a tiny bit of mom's heart. They stay put and I will, sure, I will go to the graveyard and I will, I'll just reserve your plot. Oh, what? graveyard and i will i'll just reserve your plot oh what well of course it was only a matter of time before george's son fell ill at this point he's like all right stop around now we need to dig up these sons of bitches and burn all of it desperate to save what was left of his family george allowed the town to dig up the bodies of his wife and daughters. When the townspeople dug up the bodies, they discovered something strange. The wife and one

of the daughters' remains had rotted away, just as you'd expect a body to. But his daughter, Mercy Lena, was different. After being buried in the crypt for several months, the body looked fine. In fact, its hair and fingernails had grown. And most terrifying of all, when the townspeople pierced her skin, she began to bleed. Nuke it! Now the town were certain that Mercy was a vampire. A local town doctor who examined the body explained to the villagers, look, look, I know that this looks weird, but honestly, the cold weather combined with the area she was in- Kill the vampire!

No, no, you misunderstand. I'm saying she's not a vampire. It's the only way! Remove the head! The townspeople didn't listen. Any doctor, of course, who says vampires aren't real is a vampire himself. So they grabbed the girl's body from the grave, removed her head oh i was joking

guys burned it on a rock and then george's son ate the ashes what no one even told him that wasn't even a thing george if anything that's not gonna help you he's that desperate he's on death's door he'll try anything i love that you know george has totally joined their side now and he's that desperate he's on death's door he'll try anything i love that you know george has totally joined their side now and he's like yeah we need to behead her yeah burn the ashes yeah yeah and then i'll eat him whoa then i'll drink my own piss oh what the f**k george i think you're just using this as an excuse to go psycho yeah when you know that the crowd of vampire hunters has turned against you you're either insane or a vampire either one is bad of course george's son died almost immediately afterwards really it did nothing for him granted now i will say if it wasn't obvious at this point

consumption as it was known back then was their term for tuberculosis. Right. That is what they were dealing with here. It didn't seem to be really vampires or like a curse that was passed on through the family. And in 1882, the year that the German physician Robert Koch proved that tuberculosis was caused by bacterium and not vampires the vampire rituals eventually slowed to a halt that's disturbingly recent history 1882 pretty embarrassing for the old red white and blue by the way that a german guy had to come in and teach them what tuberculosis was you probably heard about the great freedom state

where he didn't realize at that point the American dream was being able to dig up and burn the hearts of your loved ones. It's changed over the years. I think now it's like to have a successful Patreon. But back then it was pretty much to kill vampires. Yeah, it is kind of funny to think that, you know, all those people, those kind of founding fathers of America, were fighting vampires tooth and nail.

And they were like, is this better than England? Like, England was bad for a bunch of reasons, but this seems kind of worse. Yeah, I would love to know what, you know, I'm just going to look it up. Who was president when america was still hunting vampires because it's going to be someone that you wouldn't even think yeah is like an old-timey president it's not going to be like because george washington he's the he's the og he's the first who was president in 18 when was the case where they burned the specific person 1892 that's 10 years after he proved it was caused by bacteria.

I guess it was news spread by birds and donkeys back then. And they actually thought a lot of the messengers were vampires, so a lot of messages didn't get delivered. Who was president? I'll just do 18 freaking 80. Rutherford B. Hayes. Can't say I've heard of him. I have, but I'm going to admit he does look pretty, it does look pretty old timey. Yeah, he's holding actually a wooden stake as well, so. Cloves of garlic around his presidential neck.

He looks terrified in his presidential portrait. So he was the 19th president of the United States. Wow. the 19th president of the united states wow there that was a lot of time where i guess maybe consumption wasn't a bit as big of an issue uh in the early days of america maybe so that was about the time where america was getting a little bored and they were starting to invent witches and vampires and stuff yeah it's a good thing we have lots of distractions these days you know they call us the age of distraction that's good because humans aren't good with time for idle hands. Now, as we said, even though the vampire craze died down in New England around this time,

as we know, vampires have continued to exist in popular culture, films, movies, television, and even folklore. So even though they are not a direct threat to us now in 2020, I feel like it's our responsibility to inform the listeners of this paranormal life, if they came face to face with a vampire, how to kill one. More than fair. I think because we did an investigation in the early days of this paranormal life about vampires, but we did leave out a lot of self-defense knowledge. And I think we probably let a lot of people down. And a lot of people probably died at the hands of vampires in the last couple of years.

So we need to set the record straight. Too many of our podcasts are just us talking about a very real cryptid and then ending the show by saying, good luck, assholes. Yeah. without telling you any way to defend yourself uh any way to stop from being attacked by these cryptids so we're gonna right those wrongs right now i'm gonna tell you the i believe five ways that you can kill a vampire how to kill a vampire first off we know this one it's easy it's sunlight of course vampires when they're exposed to sunlight allegedly it takes about 10 seconds for them to burst into flames yeah not a lot of vampires live in like malibu california exactly yeah they all live in castles in like

uh transylvania where it's cloudy and rainy and there's not a lot of sun. Yeah. I mean, we grew up in Northern Ireland. There was every other person was a vampire. I didn't even know what the sun was. I thought it was just that baby from the Teletubbies. I didn't realize it was a real thing that existed. You didn't see the sun from the age you stopped watching the Teletubbies to the day you moved to London and saw the sun again, which actually was only a gap of a couple of years. So we definitely recommend, granted vampires are pretty smart.

They're not just going to walk out onto a sunny beach. A lot of them will make their ventures into the world at night. So if you manage to trap them, handcuff them, tie them up in a place that at sunrise will expose them to the light that is a sure way to make sure they will be dead in the morning that's a great tip the next tip wooden stake in the heart apparently this is a sure way to do it i looked into this a little bit i couldn't find out a direct reason why a wooden stake would be the thing that would kill them because it's it's that's got to be hard i mean in the movies they always depict it as you got to have a hammer and a stake yeah because

that thing isn't just gonna go in like a knife through butter absolutely not no i don't even know what what side the heart is on it's like in the middle i think a tiny bit the middle what yeah it's the middle i always thought it was like my left boob. Is it not there? I think it's like, if you start at the middle and then go a tiny bit to the left, I think it's like there. Oh my god. Jesus, I hope I'm right. Because people are going to rinse us on Twitter again if we get this wrong.

I can't Google where is the heart. I'm already on too many government lists. If you start Googling where is the heart in a human you're definitely gonna be banned our internet service provider will apply some kind of child filter to the internet yeah i can't tell if that as we know from the story that we just investigated destroying the heart of a vampire is obviously a way to make sure that they are dead and remain dead so if a wooden stake is the way you want to do it hell go for it at least that's something pretty much everyone can have access to next on the list is silver i looked up briefly where this originated from some people believe that it was it comes from an old uh story in greek mythology where someone who i believe was tasked with stealing a silver bow

was ironically cursed so that anytime he touched silver it would burn his hands interesting and that has been kind of developed down to vampires these demons can't touch silver or it will burn their hands interesting i don't know if i had heard that one before because i always thought it was like crosses and it seems synonymous with i thought i mean i feel like there's at least one movie where it's werewolves need to be shot with a silver bullet that is true i think silver is pretty much the the ace of spades when it comes to fighting cryptids you can't go wrong with a silver bullet yeah if you're going out to hunt any sort of cryptid and you're at the guns and ammo store and they're like you know for an extra five bucks i can make them silver bullets take

the silver bullets yeah take the silver bullets always take them you never know next one on the list because if you're if you're being attacked by a bear the silver bullets will work at no point is the silver bullet not going to do the job and more of the regular bullet yeah the next one on the list is kind of a weird one uh i can't remember the website i got this on but this one just says fire okay and i was like okay are they weak to fire is this come from greek mythology where someone tried to eat fire but it basically just says vampires are not cursed with a weakness to fire if you're going to use fire to kill a vampire you're going to need to have a big fire and the vampire will have to be stuck in it for a long time okay so this is like saying a water pokemon

sure you can kill a water pokemon with fire it'll take a long time you better have a lot of normal type attacks it's it's like saying oh also you can kill a vampire using a trash compactor um you will of course have to trap him there unconscious and compact him over several hours and he will die if you put a vampire in space they probably need oxygen so it probably would kill the vampire yeah i don't know if i would necessarily put that on the high list yeah it sounds like it doesn't even hurt them that much because it says you need to have them there for pretty much half a day it has to be a long a big fire that's a big fire i would maybe go for one of these other ones maybe the the silver or the sunlight possibly we could combine

double up a couple of these options as well just to be sure and finally one of the sure ways to kill a vampire similar to a zombie is tearing the head clean off yeah you can't go wrong with removing the head yeah tell you what it won't work with is uh bugs really what bugs bugs yeah i read this the other day bugs don't have like so much of a centralized nervous system as we do, where like for us, our entire nervous system is connected to our heads, our brains. If you if you remove a human head, it's game over. Yeah, but I don't need to Google where's the brain. I know where the brain is. That's right.

Yeah. Bugs. Apparently you'll see like, you know, like a praying mantis. mantis yeah you know like a praying mantis female will like chop the head off a male and the male's body will keep walking for like a minute or two because it it doesn't need the head that's disturbing it's pretty messed up we know we're in trouble when a vampire crossbreeds with a chicken yeah because you try and take off that vampire chicken's head that thing's still going to be flapping around laying eggs it's laying vampire vampire eggs as well i guess the only good thing is with a traditionally with a vampire uh if it's a vampire that uses its fangs to bite into a human neck yeah if you've decapitated it

you've basically removed its weapon so true it's it's still going to be pretty damn fast and powerful but it's going to be i don't know it's going to be just bouncing off the walls jumping around transforming into a bat back into a human yeah it's not going to know what's going on so i think that's a pretty safe way to do things and those are the i believe five best ways that i could find to kill a vampire. So never say that we don't give you practical tips on this paranormal life. One of our listeners is confronted with a vampire and they just try and light a really big fire. They're killed almost immediately. Kit, do you feel like you're better prepared for dealing with a vampire attack now after that brief list?

Well, you know, I kind of already knew that stuff apart from the ones that i said i didn't know uh on account of having gone to to harvard paranormal but uh sure sure it was a little refresher for me yeah and i feel like you know i might not i would have just used some sweet martial arts techniques but i might double up with some silver bullets or a steak this time honorable mentions are of course garlic and holy water but here's the thing about them guys you have to be alert for vampire attacks 24 7 365 yeah 100 that's years you can carry around garlic with you for that long yeah without making a few enemies people are going to think you're weird yeah holy water Holy water. That's also a little weird.

You can put it in an Evian bottle, but eventually people are going to be like, Hey, can I have a drink of the Evian bottle? You have to say no, which is super weird. Rude. And if you're going to do the garlic, I will say swap out the garlic every few days or a week because people will get more mad if the garlic is rotten. Even the people who aren't vampires are going to be pretty angry at the fact you're carrying around garlic it's not suspicious

don't assume they're vampires because they are getting mad at you don't burn your friends who are calling you out for carrying around a clove of rotten garlic around your neck but a lot of these things don't require you to be a weirdo, you know? A lighter, is that weird? With some logs? A wooden stake is pretty weird. Well, they didn't say what size a wooden stake. So, you know, maybe a pencil.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Could suffice. And they'd be like, oh, I just carry this around with me because I never know when I'm going to need to take any notes. So it's like, I never really know if... Yeah! I mean, you just... Someone's like, you don don't have any paper so what are you taking notes of fire lighters and pencils so kit granted vampires are a huge huge thing to investigate i don't want us to come down on a decision as to whether or not vampires are real sure because we've done vampire cases in

the past we'll probably do more vampire cases in the future it's true but plus enough to be pedantic but i think we already said they were real oh we did actually yeah it was one of our earliest earliest guesses for sure but this case in particular the new england vampire pandemic what are you thinking what how are you processing this it's pretty fascinating really amazing recently this happened that people believed in vampires so recently in human history because when we look really far back in time we say those people didn't know very much they had a completely different world view so it's hard to compare our brains to theirs but these people are so recent

that we can kind of place ourselves in what they were going through. However, I will say the revelation by the German scientists that consumption, which seems to have started this entire thing, no one seems to have been bothered by the vampires before consumption. Yeah. The fact that that is a bacteria-based disease has kind of ruined the paranormal element for me. What about you? Yeah, I think I'm kind of on the paranormal element for me what about you yeah i think i'm kind of on the same

page here it's more of an interesting case rather than an actual debate as to whether or not it was paranormal uh it did kind of make me think which was interesting if something like uh covet 19 had happened 100 years ago before a scientific understanding of how that disease spreads uh what would be the explanations that pop up yeah it's it's because it would definitely be paranormal absolutely it's i mean you can really use that logic and go back in time i mean maybe the source of all our legends i mean there's so many fantastic myths and legends in human history that seem to make no sense. And it would be fascinating to know what were all the things that happened that caused these wacky legends. Yeah, yeah.

Because they don't just come from nowhere. It's pretty much very naive, dumb early humans trying to frame biological disasters within their very limited sheltered mindset. Yeah. Which I think is what we've got here. People don't understand what bacteria is, so they call it vampires. I believe this is not paranormal,

making the New England vampire pandemic a double no. But thank you so much to Alex Seidel for emailing us that case to thisparanormallifepodcast at gmail.com. Thank you. Guys, thank you to everyone who listened this week. I hope you enjoyed this case. We had a blast investigating it

and learning a little bit more about early vampires. If you want even more sweet This Paranormal Life content, you just can't get enough. You're burning your way through these episodes. I have some great news for you. From as little as five dollary dues a month you can get access to a whole backlog of secret classified redacted this paranormal life bonus episodes and hey i know what you're thinking oh i don't know if i want to listen to those

maybe the quality is not good maybe they're not as funny as the main episodes first off there's a grain of truth there sure of course but secondly we are going to put all those doubts to rest right now by giving you a tiny little clip from this month's bonus episode i think i weirdly have played more arcade games retrospectively than i actually did in arcades we were a bit young for the the arcade movement uh but we also grew up in northern ireland where there were very little facilities of any kind arcade or otherwise we were just we were arcade or bathrooms there was very little for children to do. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if just to give people an idea of the kind of facilities for young people.

One of the most beloved places of our childhood was the pool in Port Sturt. of all ages and adults would come together to skateboard and do kind of rollerblading and and any kind of extreme sport like that in peace and unity and um basically you know get them off the streets and our local council i think uh filled it in with cement one day and turned it into a giant fountain which i think pretty illegally only played the pirates of the caribbean theme music which i don't think they had the rights to do. No way. Also, the fountain was shut for 11 of 12 months. Yeah, so it just made it impossible to skate.

It was wet. It was violating copyright law, and it was very unfriendly. Which is more, you know, skateboarders get a bad rap for disrespecting society and its laws. Yeah. That was worse. You disrespect society and its laws? that was worse you disrespect society and its laws pirates god damn it and here they are parading their theme song and then you have the gall

to steal captain jack's theme tune well that's what we're talking about guys you know if anything it's even funnier because it's behind a paywall so we can actually say that we're vampires ourselves. I hope you enjoyed that clip. Head on over to patreon.com for that. If you also want to get t-shirts, merchandise, a bunch of other cool stuff. I'm not going to lie to you guys. As you know, one of the reasons we started that Patreon

was to eventually fund our all-orc remake of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. That's right, because Peter Jackson started off strong, but he dropped the ball towards the end. And we really think we could do the lore better justice. Exactly. You know, we all know it. We all know about the ring.

We know about Gollum, Frodo, Bilbo, blah, blah, blah. You have my axe. Oh, well, I want your orc. I want it all to be about the orcs. From the moment the orcs are born to the moment the orcs die, which granted is about 45 minutes. Orcs do not have a long lifespan. No, they're born from mud, I think. And then they die in battle pretty fast.

Born from mud and from mud they return. That's actually not a bad working title. That's actually, yeah. Orc of the Rings. Sure. From mud they come to mud they return that's actually not about a working title that's actually yeah orc of the rings sure from mud they come to mud they return yeah we'll workshop it it's a little long but yeah i like i think there's something there there's something in there uh but obviously the patreon is um pretty much all the money from the patreon is going to paying the orc actors yeah who we did genetically uh make in a laboratory they are test tube orcs assuming that they would be cheaper than regular actors yeah a lot of them eat 20 to 30 pounds of raw meat a day yeah and when you have a cast of two 300 orcs it really starts to add up it really starts i think that's maybe why i went

for the hobbits they have like a little piece of bread and a leaf for dinner yeah orcs eat hobbits plus they're not stupid and they have unionized since their creation they realized that they could band together um as a community and lobby for more money from us and we said guys we love to we just don't have it and they said what about the patreon we said well sure but that's our money to live on and they said we want it so you can't getting it you can't say no to an orc army i mean they're they're actually pretty aggressive when it comes down to it um so head on over to patreon.com and uh and check out all the awesome rewards that we have available over there and as always if you do support us on patreon we like to give you a very

special shout out on the podcast special thank you to natalie stubs wherever she walks natalie stubs her toe in every room on every corner and we're just telling her like put on a even a single shoe or a boot or something she refuses she's like i want to feel alive it's like her little like living on the edge thing being able to stub your toe at any second her toe it's kind of weird he must be in agony thank you to thomas freed Thomas, I don't want you to be afraid of joining this paranormal life commune. Yes, the door says keep out. Yes, it says, you know, trespassers will be cursed. Yeah.

But once you get inside, we kind of don't know who the trespassers are anymore. Because everyone kind of looks the same. So we punish everyone equally we do it's the only fair way so come on in buddy thank you to l bladen l grab your blade and get over here because we're about to shoot the fellowship of the orc listen you don't look anywhere near enough like an orc to be in the in front of the camera for real but you know we could probably put you in the back somewhere yeah dress up up like an orc. Thank you to Jessica Swan Jessica Swan star of Swan girl. It's a bit like gone girl, but

Instead of disappearing she becomes a Swan. Oh It's nice sir. I guess you would think life of a swan is pretty tough really It's even worse than getting kidnapped. Special thank you to Gavin Murphy. Well, if it isn't Gavin Smurphy Murphy, who was turned blue in a

pretty tragic silver accent, actually. Do you know if you eat silver, you turn blue? Really? Yes. I don't know how humans know that i guess humans have pretty much tried to eat everything at this point yeah it's trial and error yeah you know god bless all the brave souls who died eating gold bronze and everything else because on paper eating gold is is gonna be great yeah you live forever yeah it's weird that that doesn't work but silver you turn

blue turns out you only live forever if you eat fool's gold thank you to daniel daniel the manual get the hell off my film set brother if i wanted a man in this film, I would just reshoot the original trilogy. I want Daniel. It had way too many men in it. Way too many men. And I think even then there weren't actually that many because there was a lot of like dwarfs, elves, hobbits, goblins, whatever. There was only a couple men actually. There was a couple too many, Daniel. So unless you come back as Daniel the oracle, then get out of here.

Thank you to Hannah C. Cadell. Hannah C. Cadell. Hannah C. Cadell. But Hannah also here Cadell. And actually now I think about it, Hannah speak Cadell. What's Cadell? I have to ask now. No f***ing idea. Only Hannah speaks it.

I guess it's some kind of lost orc language. Whoa. We need you in this production, Hannah. Thank you to David Maxwell. David Maxwell. Can you axe well? Also, are you a six foot five orc man? I thought you didn't want men, but you want men orcs?

Orc men. As in not orc boys, not orc ladies. I need orc men. Okay. Preferably who can axe well. And act well. But that's second. We need the axe thing is really important.

Thank you to Kelly Billington. Kelly is like the queen of Wall Street. Because she is always billing you tons. She's like Mrs. Monopoly. Raking it in. Hotels at Park Place. Hotels on Boardwalk. More money's coming in than she can get out of her system,

which is a good person to have on Patreon.com. Please give us some of... I'll take a little greenhouse at the very least. Thank you to Elise Stewart. Come on down to Elise's Leases. This is where anyone can come down and no cash up front, no credit needed. You can get any car, any vehicle you need. That's a steal.

Just ask me any car that you're looking for. Let me know and I'll get it for you. No Volkswagens, I'm afraid. No foreign vehicles, no German vehicles. Only UK-based vehicles. UK-based? Yes. I said any, granted, but no, it can't be German, obviously.

So anything else, though. Anything. I don't even know what a UK... Do they make cars in the UK? Nope. We're mostly operating skateboards. And even those between you and me, they come from the same factory in Germany. But they are not cars and therefore we're

allowed to sell them so any type of skateboard you want you just let me know we'll get you that just like an enjoy deck what the f**k is that no listen this is like we're talking handmade in germany i mean in england we're talking rollerblades stapled to a plank of wood that's what we can get at lisa's l's, we can honestly do you that. I don't want it. More than fair. Thank you to Kieran Kevlar Brooks. They call him Kieran Kevlar because he's f***ing bulletproof.

Oh, very cool. Which makes him a great orc commander. Yes, dude. Because he doesn't do things by the Brooks. Nice, dude. Please join the army. We are... We do need people.

As we said, we have managed to create a genuine army of orcs, but a lot of them actually... They don't want to be in the army. No. This is the problem. I mean, having just discovered sentient life, they don't want to act in a film. The problem is they got the internet,

and then they found out about Hawaii. Now they're obsessed with Hawaii. They want to live on a film the problem is they got the internet and then they found out about hawaii now they're obsessed with hawaii they want to like live on a beach i mean it's like obviously we all do want to live on a white beach yeah it's like the opposite of mordor so naturally they're drawn to it the only reason they were happy in mordor is because they didn't know anything else thank you to jesse dowd uh-oh, it's Rowdy Dowdy. Jesse is the life and blood of any party. And make sure it gets rowdy. Yeah, I love it.

She's always like, she's always telling the neighbors, like, oh, don't worry. Like, I'll keep it quiet. I'll keep it quiet. But they doubt it. They doubt it. They doubt it very much. Thank you to Andrew Howe. doubt it they doubt they doubt it very much thank you to andrew how andrew how did it feel when you were birthed in the mud pits of mordor how did it feel andrew he's an orc absolutely great thank you

also to christy love day christy falls in love every day every single day and it's with someone new really that's a kind of is that a blessing or is that a curse a bit of a curse yeah i mean it's a blessing for her because every day she's like oh my gosh that swimming pool attendant is an angel and she's just you know talking to him flirting maybe they have a date that night and then the next morning she's like oh my gosh that gardener i can see from the window is an angel pool guy's gone she's moved on to another person so she's having a bet she's having the best time ever i guess if i hadn't any advice christy pool attendant is not a bad catch you you know? Keep you safe when you swim. Athletic. Got a whistle. Job security.

There's always water to guard. Thank you to John Knight. John, the royal majestic knight. Get the hell off my film set, you mortal man. You're not wanted here. I want a filthy orc on top of the horse. Not a noble king like yourself you're like 10 years too late for that mickey mouse feature that peter the ass jackson made thank you also to mitali panjanti mitali is literally the happiest person on earth yeah they could be

walking down the street with a subway meatball marinara sandwich and they're like oh my god this is the best a seagull comes down smacks it out of their hand they're like that was awesome that seagull just flew right down you know they pick it up it's covered in like ants and dirt and they're like that is crazy extra protein and mother nature's salt metallica different standards yeah thank you to elizabeth reese elizabeth reese's geese is uh usually the superstore where you can get geeses of any size and variety but uh i did hear tragically uh they only opened up shop recently but geese are pretty rebellious and they didn't like being

bought and sold they got that orc mentality for sure they could have a place in the movie there are parallels thank you also to Alex Hilson Alex Hilson you gotta chill son alright you just got to the paranormal commune and you're already asking

you know why do I have to pay tax every other day? Where's all the eggs gone? There was like 50 eggs yesterday. Look, you gotta chill son. It's your first day here. Talk to one of the commune RAs and they'll, you know,

filter the message up to us. And, you know, we'll handle it. We always handle it. But you gotta chill son. Can't he just say it to you? You're right there. You're already talking to him. There is a method in place for delivering information complaints up to the hires,

and I would very much appreciate it if everyone used it. Thank you also to Darren Curtis. Darren Curtis, show us where the hurt is, you know, in you. You know know we know you're out there hurting and listen i know a lot of people think we don't care about the mental well-being of everyone who is in the commune because sure we do torture you guys mentally with with unbearable absolutely

back-breaking tax no no they're called endurance tests so it's not torture it's meant to build and like make people stronger mentally you will be happier yeah the end of it all so do tell us where the hurt is by letting one of the commune ras know about the hurt and then they'll pass that information on to us don't tell us directly don't even don't even look me in the eyes, actually. Thank you, lastly but not leastly, to Trevor Swartzlander. Trevor, do you feel that tremor? That's thousands and thousands of hammering orc feet as they stomp through the valleys of Mordor.

And if they find you, Trevor, a human on their film set, they're going to go buck wild. So I'd hightail it out of this film set immediately but also thank you obviously for your support on patreon if you have any problems we don't want to know about it let's just tell tell tell anyone else anyone else thank you to thank you to trevor it's our community management right there tell a fictional man about it and he'll pass it on thank you so much to everyone who has supported us on patreon if you're still waiting on your

shout out don't worry we are working our way through them and of course we will be back next week once um uh principal photography has wrapped obviously on the orc trilogy to investigate a brand new paranormal tale. Bye-bye. Ciao.