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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome

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Speaker 1: back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always

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Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Shout out to shout out

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Speaker 1: to our super producer Max Williams, who was on vacation

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Speaker 1: and is going to send me some out of context

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Speaker 1: photos at some point. Everybody get ready, I'll update you

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Speaker 1: if they're safer. Work. Big shout out to our returning

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Speaker 1: guest producer, the one and only Mr Lowell Brilliante, also

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Speaker 1: the creator of the Prodigy podcast. Check it out as

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Speaker 1: soon as you get a chance, but don't check it

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Speaker 1: out just yet. Check it out after you listen to

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Speaker 1: today's episode, where I am joined with a returning special

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Speaker 1: guest for their third time on the show. Fellow Ridiculous Historians,

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Speaker 1: you know him as the creator of the soundtrack of

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Speaker 1: this show. You know him as the creator of Ephemeral,

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Speaker 1: one of the best podcast out there, neck and neck

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Speaker 1: with Prodigy in my opinion, Please join me and welcoming back.

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Speaker 1: Alex Williams, you guys do the best. I mean, you

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Speaker 1: do the best. Introductions. I was gonna say you guys,

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Speaker 1: but Noel's not here. Noel is on Adventures separate adventures

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Speaker 1: from Max. That's my writer or die co host Noel Brown.

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Speaker 1: We are doing this with his blessing and uh adoration

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Speaker 1: of you. At least he will be returning soon. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: you're you're you are our draft pick. You're the You're

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Speaker 1: the one person out of all twelve friends that Nolan

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Speaker 1: I have and out of those twelve, out of the

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Speaker 1: five that were available, you were the one who said, yes,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's nice to be on a list of

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Speaker 1: any size or kind, right, That's what the n s

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Speaker 1: A is always delegated. Yeah, so, Alex, this is as

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Speaker 1: you know we talked off air. This is one of

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Speaker 1: my favorite times of the year because we are hurtling

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Speaker 1: toward the end of the calendar and on the way

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Speaker 1: we're going to hit Halloween. Were you ever a big

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Speaker 1: Halloween guy? You're you're also since your Max's older brother,

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Speaker 1: I have to ask, were you guys like Halloween kids?

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Speaker 1: Very much? So? I mean we grew up in the suburbs.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if that, but you know, like trick

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Speaker 1: or treating, you know, door to door sort of neighborhood

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Speaker 1: black party style, haunted houses in the neighborhood. My birthday

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Speaker 1: is in October October four. I'm all fall all Halloween

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Speaker 1: ever since I can remember. Still there. Yeah, yeah, all

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Speaker 1: about it. Nice. So you are imminently qualified for this.

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Speaker 1: That's imminently with an e M. Not like immediately about

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Speaker 1: to be qualified just because this is audio show. So

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Speaker 1: we talked off air, you and Lowell and I about

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Speaker 1: some some I don't want to say HALLOWEENI, but no,

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Speaker 1: keep it. Yeah, we can keep that. It's just like Halloween.

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Speaker 1: And I've sort of come around on that one. Okay.

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Speaker 1: So so some HALLOWEENI stories we wanted to explore. And

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Speaker 1: one of the ones that we one of the ones

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Speaker 1: that we're diving into this week on this episode is

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Speaker 1: about vampires. It's about New England, it's about panicking. Yes

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Speaker 1: it is, um sorry, I don't yes, And I just

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Speaker 1: want vampire jokes. Ben, I don't know if I have

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Speaker 1: a whole bunch prepared, it's gonna say something like, oh,

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Speaker 1: Noel's not you know here because I you know, it

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Speaker 1: was the word exanguinated. Yes, you know, bit into his

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Speaker 1: neck and exanguinated him to dream one of the blood Alex.

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Speaker 1: If I had really thought I had bro I would

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Speaker 1: have brought those little plastic vampire teeth iss me and

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Speaker 1: it would have totally like not smiled at you or

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Speaker 1: talk to you until we got in here and we're

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Speaker 1: just pro like harsh my frown shrow. That's fantastic. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean some people think vampire jokes are pain in

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Speaker 1: the neck, but I dig them because my bar for

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Speaker 1: comedy is like way low. I was thinking about vampires

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Speaker 1: so much today, but I think literally any vampire punt

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Speaker 1: is gonna get me fantastic. Okay, yes, uh, also tell

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Speaker 1: me if we need to dial it back, because I

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Speaker 1: got I got vampires on the mind as well. We're okay.

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Speaker 1: So when we talked about vampires today, what do we

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Speaker 1: usually think about, Alex, Like, what do you think is

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Speaker 1: Eastern Europe? Eastern Europe? Okay, you know Olden times like

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Speaker 1: medieval times, fangs, I think of lad then Paler. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: if we're gonna go like literal though, I and we

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Speaker 1: could get into that if you want. I I it

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Speaker 1: seems like the connection between Fled the Impaler and Tracula

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Speaker 1: and the whole vampire myth is maybe kind of overexaggerated

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Speaker 1: in in in popular consciousness. What else do you think of,

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Speaker 1: like castles, castles, yet unnecessary capes that they can still

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Speaker 1: sort of pull off. What would you call an unnecessary cave?

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Speaker 1: I mean, well, I you know, it's a necessary cape.

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Speaker 1: A necessary cape is when it's cold out and you

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Speaker 1: don't have other kinds of clothing, or I would say

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Speaker 1: a necessary cape if you're a kid and you're playing superhero,

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Speaker 1: you need you need a blanket like that to find

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Speaker 1: your character. Capes often go on flying figures that fly.

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Speaker 1: Superheroes and vampires fly. Sometimes sometimes the rules aren't clear.

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Speaker 1: What is interesting is that the what you do, what

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Speaker 1: you describe perfectly like immortality, maybe some helio phobia. These

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Speaker 1: kinds of things all sort of coalesced in our idea

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Speaker 1: the modern vampire. But as as you know, if you

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Speaker 1: look back across the span of human civilization, different cultures

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Speaker 1: around the planet, you'll see something like a vampire exist

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Speaker 1: in folklore. And often I don't know, maybe I'm being

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Speaker 1: like a grass is Greener on the other side of

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Speaker 1: the grave guy, but I feel like a lot of

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Speaker 1: other cultures have more interesting ideas of vampires, or pre

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Speaker 1: Bram Stoker, there was a lot more variation in the idea.

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Speaker 1: But today you and I are going to talk about

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Speaker 1: when this folklore had some very real, quite grotesque consequences

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Speaker 1: for the people of early New England. You're talking about

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Speaker 1: when melt brooks Um went made with Leslie Nielsen Dracula

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Speaker 1: dead and loving it. Yes, yeah, which I count as

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Speaker 1: early New England. But what am I here with it? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: So when we think of New England, we often early

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Speaker 1: New England people often think of things like the Salem

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Speaker 1: Witch Trials. They think of Puritans, they think of the Crucible,

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Speaker 1: but they don't think of a vampire panic. If we

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Speaker 1: were to paint this scene of early life in let's

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Speaker 1: say the seventeen hundreds in New England, then we see

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Speaker 1: it's a pretty brutal life, right, there's not I mean,

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Speaker 1: people are it's not unusual for people as starved to

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Speaker 1: death the colonists or having conflicts with indigenous people. Uh.

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Speaker 1: People are struggling to grow food in an unfamiliar climate,

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Speaker 1: and there's disease like everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. I I was

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Speaker 1: lucky enough to work on a show called Unobscured, and

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Speaker 1: in its first season I still work on it. But

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Speaker 1: in its first season, we we was all about the

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Speaker 1: Salem Which Trials and we got to interview all these

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Speaker 1: the these greatest eminent historians, um that have done really

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Speaker 1: incredible work about and it's it's it's really interesting. It's

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Speaker 1: just like a few months in two But yeah, everything

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Speaker 1: you said, I mean, it was it was super hard

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Speaker 1: that the war is going on all the time between

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Speaker 1: native peoples and the colonists, and like, you know, I

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Speaker 1: think there's this idea that um, you know, at least

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Speaker 1: this is I feel like the idea that I walked

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Speaker 1: away from, like you know, maybe primary school with it.

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Speaker 1: Like it's like, oh, these sort of puritans, like you know,

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Speaker 1: these pilgrims fled the old world for like religious persecution

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Speaker 1: and they came here and they got to practice it

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Speaker 1: and it was super nice. But really people were had

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Speaker 1: very strong opinions here in very different opinions, and that

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Speaker 1: led a lot to sort of where people settled and

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Speaker 1: so like the differences between different towns, even within Massachusetts,

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Speaker 1: of the difference between Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. In the

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Speaker 1: different Vermont and Connecticut, it was often like very sort

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Speaker 1: of furtive ground for disagreements of all kinds. Y s. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: especially when you consider that for people in the secular world,

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Speaker 1: or even for people who consider themselves religious. In the

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Speaker 1: modern day, some of these doctrinal differences might seem relatively

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Speaker 1: like not not too crazy, can't we all just get along?

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Speaker 1: But for these folks, they were hard enough limits to

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Speaker 1: make visiting another another area or another community feel almost

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Speaker 1: as though when we're traveling to a foreign country and

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Speaker 1: culturally in some ways, you can see how people would

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Speaker 1: feel that way because these are these are folks immigrating

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Speaker 1: from various parts of Europe right over time. So you're right,

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Speaker 1: this was not as hunky dorry as many public schools

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Speaker 1: taught us. Uh, it's quite the opposite. Uh. This this

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Speaker 1: episode owes a lot to a retired state archaeologist in

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Speaker 1: Connecticut named Nicholas Bellantoni. He put some time into kind

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Speaker 1: of characterizing just how bad mortality rates were in New

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Speaker 1: England between seventeen eighty six and eighteen hundred six is

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Speaker 1: when health officials first started saying we should figure out

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Speaker 1: how many people are dying each year. I swear there

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Speaker 1: were more people at the last Christmas party, you know

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Speaker 1: they I know that sounds cool, but they when they

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Speaker 1: when they calculated this, they said that for tuberculosis alone,

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Speaker 1: two percent of New England's population went down because of that.

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Speaker 1: They died, and they didn't call it tuberculosis at this point.

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Speaker 1: They called it um consumption, consumption. I have not heard

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Speaker 1: or seen a reasonable explanation of why it was called consumption.

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Speaker 1: It's just not a term that I really used or

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Speaker 1: here today at all. Consumption in any kind text besides

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Speaker 1: like eating consuming something. I think that's that's what I

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Speaker 1: always That's why always assumed. I don't have a hard

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Speaker 1: and fast answer for that, but I always, I always

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Speaker 1: assumed it was cold consumption due to the weight loss

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Speaker 1: that a lot of people encounter during tuberculos, like the

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Speaker 1: disease that is consuming you. Yes, it was the way

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Speaker 1: that you mind that. That just clarified it for me,

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Speaker 1: which I noticedn't translate into audio. But okay, okay, I

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Speaker 1: get it. I get it. I get a consumption. Yes,

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Speaker 1: it's not so because I would think, you know, I would.

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Speaker 1: I always hear that, you know, consumption is about it eating.

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Speaker 1: But I'm like, but if you're getting skinnier, if you're

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Speaker 1: wasting away, but you are being consumed. The disease itself

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Speaker 1: is the consumption toad to get you're the one on

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Speaker 1: the menu. Yeah, this is And later in Gosh two,

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Speaker 1: a doctor Robert Coke will announce that he has discovered

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Speaker 1: the bacteria that causes tuberculosis, and physically no one listens

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Speaker 1: to him. No, no, of course, who listens to doctors.

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Speaker 1: Term theory was not very popular, as I understand it.

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Speaker 1: When it came out. People like, what there is not

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Speaker 1: little entities living all over the place. It's magic, like

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Speaker 1: it's always been, it always has been. Yeah, And and

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Speaker 1: that reminds me the story of Samul weis the one

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Speaker 1: guy who said, hey, everybody, maybe we should wash our hands.

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Speaker 1: Since we're doctors, maybe we should just scrub our hands

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Speaker 1: a little. I didn't even have to be soaked, just

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Speaker 1: run some water over him before we stick him inside people.

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Speaker 1: And they were like, this guy is an ass. Lock

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Speaker 1: them up. They put him in an institution, right, you

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Speaker 1: know how I learned that. Uh no, it's not a spoiler.

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Speaker 1: They say it at Midnight Mass in one of these

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Speaker 1: long monologues at midnight Mass. Yeah, I love midnight Mass.

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Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it, and I thought,

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Speaker 1: it's the problems, but maybe we want to include me

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Speaker 1: saying that because I don't want to get flak from

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Speaker 1: Midnight Mass from fans of it. Oh no, no, I

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Speaker 1: think people would agree. But uh, speaking of speaking and problems,

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Speaker 1: can asumption, like the consumption is a problem. Here we've

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Speaker 1: got a quote from Belentoni who says this death toll

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Speaker 1: referring to New England is not only terrifying, it's also

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Speaker 1: a horrific way to die. Consumptives lost weight, they coughed

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Speaker 1: up blood, their skin turned ashen, and sometimes they died

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Speaker 1: a slow death, almost as if well, if we could

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Speaker 1: get a creepy sound cue here, someone was sucking the

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Speaker 1: life out of them. And like you, you set us

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Speaker 1: up perfectly here, Alex. This is before germ theory. Even

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Speaker 1: the learned men of the day, the physicians aren't sure

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Speaker 1: how to really explain how infectious diseases are spread. And

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Speaker 1: because no one had an explanation, people started thinking through

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Speaker 1: like their own ideas of what this could be. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know one other thing that I that I uh,

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Speaker 1: that's really kind of terrifying, um that I didn't realize

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Speaker 1: about tuberculosis or consumption. I mean, just just call it consumption.

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Speaker 1: It sounds class here, It's it's really creepy. It's a

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Speaker 1: really well named disease. Now that you've made it so

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Speaker 1: you've illustrated it so well for me. But one of

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Speaker 1: the things, one of the things that I learned, and

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Speaker 1: when you sort of read on this this subject, you

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Speaker 1: hear this name Michael Bell a lot, Michael Bell. It

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Speaker 1: seems to be is like the guy who really has

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Speaker 1: has connected tuberculosis that the awful I mean tuberculous being

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Speaker 1: the leading killer of people in New England at this time.

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Speaker 1: Uh and uh, this particular panic that we're talking about today.

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Speaker 1: But one of the things that that I learned from

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Speaker 1: him is that tuberculosis or consumption could be very slow acting.

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Speaker 1: It could come on and then it could go dormant,

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Speaker 1: and it could rest dormant in you for years and

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Speaker 1: then suddenly could come back. People and also you know,

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Speaker 1: it was sort of a selective hller. It seems like

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Speaker 1: like people in close quarters. You know, it would spread

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Speaker 1: like a wildfire from one family member to the next,

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Speaker 1: but then someone in the family might just not get it,

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Speaker 1: or maybe they carry it for a long time and

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Speaker 1: it wouldn't affect them till later. Has some eerie parallels

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Speaker 1: to coronavirus obviously, and just the way that you you like,

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Speaker 1: don't know when it's going to strike, but you know

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Speaker 1: it's sort of in your midst it's out there. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And that's an example of this would be perhaps the

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Speaker 1: life of Doc Holiday as played by Val Kilmer and

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Speaker 1: two so, which is not super accurate, but but he

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Speaker 1: has traveled as a consumptive to a different environment with

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Speaker 1: the hope being that a different climate will um will

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Speaker 1: help him survive to berculosis. A lot of people in

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Speaker 1: New England at this time they didn't have that option.

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Speaker 1: They couldn't say no, perha was summer in Greek, so whatever,

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Speaker 1: you know what I mean. They were like trying not

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Speaker 1: to cough blood on whatever they were growing, or you know,

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Speaker 1: the kids they're trying to feed. And you described something

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Speaker 1: that I think is incredibly important here, Alex, the the

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Speaker 1: paranoia this kind of thing can create because you are

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Speaker 1: probably living in close quarters with people. A lot of

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Speaker 1: folks the family is living in a in a small structure.

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Speaker 1: They're not able to effectively fluorentine if if they practice

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Speaker 1: some concept like that. In many cases, just living in

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Speaker 1: the same home and these small structures was enough for

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Speaker 1: the disease to spread throughout the entire family. But Not

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Speaker 1: only would it maybe playball sometimes and then go dormant

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Speaker 1: and then go back on its game over years. Not

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Speaker 1: only would that occur, but people couldn't predict it. People

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Speaker 1: didn't know someone. You would think you were fine, and

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Speaker 1: then you would start wasting away, but it had been

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Speaker 1: several months after a relative had died. That's just when

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Speaker 1: you were tuberculosis for some reason went active. And that's

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Speaker 1: what they talk a lot about. Health experts and historians

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Speaker 1: talk a lot about tuberculosis in terms of latency and active,

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Speaker 1: like latent tuberculosis, dormant or active. And at some point

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Speaker 1: anywhere between seventy to nine of the population of the

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Speaker 1: US had either latent or active tuberculosis. Nowadays, as you know,

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Speaker 1: if you're listening, we figured out we the human species,

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Speaker 1: not Alex Lowell and I figured out that tuberculosis has

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Speaker 1: spread through the air. So just like with COVID. Remember

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Speaker 1: did you ever go out during the pandemic and accidentally

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Speaker 1: cough somewhere? Yeah, I feel like I. I I coughed

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Speaker 1: in the office today a few times, and I feel

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Speaker 1: like you're almost staring at me, even though there's there's

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Speaker 1: four of you here. Um like I could spread to

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Speaker 1: tuberculosis to you, I thought he's never going to call

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Speaker 1: an sumption consumption. I could consumpt you from here, Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: one could be consumpted, which I think we should use

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Speaker 1: instead of consumed. Well, yeah, clearly consumed is at the end.

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Speaker 1: You're consumpted at the beginning. Yeah, it's true. But because

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Speaker 1: people didn't have the benefit of germ theory, they weren't

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Speaker 1: sure how to what caused it, and they weren't sure,

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Speaker 1: more importantly, how to stop it. And in places like Lynn, Massachusetts,

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Speaker 1: this consumption, whatever it is, becomes the leading cause of death.

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Speaker 1: We mean, entire families are gone there, as the more

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Speaker 1: dramatic would put it, their bloodline has been erased, consumed,

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Speaker 1: and no one, no one could figure out what happened,

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Speaker 1: why people would suddenly get this incredibly unpleasant death sentence.

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Speaker 1: And if we go back to Michael Bell, who really

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Speaker 1: did write the book, he's the guy, he says, he

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Speaker 1: points out some differences between COVID nineteen and consumption. He says,

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Speaker 1: one of the primary differences is that it is, like

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Speaker 1: you pointed out, Alex, it's much slower to manifest and

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Speaker 1: it doesn't explode through a population and when when something

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Speaker 1: explodes through population, it will leave behind people who were

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Speaker 1: either lucky or had some kind of natural immunity. But

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Speaker 1: this instead goes in and out of of I don't

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Speaker 1: want to call it remission, but it goes in and

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Speaker 1: out of being active. No one knows. And this could

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Speaker 1: go for this could go on for decades before it

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Speaker 1: killed them anyhow, Because people were so terrified rightly of

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Speaker 1: dying or having their loved ones dying, they were trying

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Speaker 1: to find causes. I think it was eighteen ninety two

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Speaker 1: after discovering after the discovery of the bacteria, there was

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Speaker 1: one doctor who was still who was still insist on

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Speaker 1: things like to burcul loisis is caused by drunkenness and

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Speaker 1: want and povert. Yeah, they always blame the poor. It's

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Speaker 1: playing the poor. Just be less poor. That's what I

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Speaker 1: would do when you want to s're spending time with

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Speaker 1: the poor, weren't you? You know they mingled with the poor.

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Speaker 1: Do you know how I smingled with the poor? Jesus Christ,

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Speaker 1: I'm I'm a fan of the book. Yeah, he's famous

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Speaker 1: for that. He's famous hip for that, amongst many other

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Speaker 1: and people were praying. People were seeking spiritual protection in

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Speaker 1: the face of let's see not just not just to

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Speaker 1: brcular consumption, excuse me, but cholera, smallpox, yellow fever, measles, influenza,

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Speaker 1: and then just straight up plague. M There is a

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Speaker 1: I think kind of common misconception that I've also held

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Speaker 1: with New England of this time too, that when you

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Speaker 1: say spiritual protection, I think we all think kind of,

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Speaker 1: you know, standard Protestant Christian kind of practices and beliefs.

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Speaker 1: But there is also a whole lot of gray area

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Speaker 1: to that, and there's a whole lot of other sort

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Speaker 1: of traditions from the Old World and maybe some sort

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Speaker 1: of new New World traditions that get mixed into that.

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Speaker 1: And there's been folk magic. There's a lot of folk

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Speaker 1: magic practice. You see it in all the way back

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Speaker 1: in the six hundreds throughout the Salem witch trials and

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Speaker 1: again here in the in the vampire panic. Yeah, you do,

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Speaker 1: and there is It's strange because folklore is probably best

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Speaker 1: described as a conversation between cultures at these points, uh

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Speaker 1: or various points in history. And you can see it

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Speaker 1: in Appalachia later, you can really you can see it anywhere. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Some practice of what would be called folk magic. And

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Speaker 1: to be clear, we're not saying that in a dismissive way.

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Speaker 1: We're saying that these are practices, values, and belief systems

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Speaker 1: that maybe aren't treated with the same dogma of an

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Speaker 1: organized religion. Well, they don't come from an official source, right,

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Speaker 1: there's no one in the clergy that's telling you to

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Speaker 1: hang a horseshoe upside down above your door to keep

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Speaker 1: you know, ward off evil spirits or you know, leave

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Speaker 1: your boots faced up by the fire or did they

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Speaker 1: burn their boots. Well, it depends on what's going on.

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Speaker 1: It depends if there was there was a thing with

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Speaker 1: boots and the fireplace and keeping the devil away. You know,

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Speaker 1: I don't they're not gonna say that to you in church,

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Speaker 1: you know, during the sermon, but you know someone might

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Speaker 1: come up to you afterwards, like, you know, if you're

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Speaker 1: really having an in issue with the devil, maybe pop

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Speaker 1: those boots off tonight. Can it be anybody boots and

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Speaker 1: then go it's probably better if it's yours. I took

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Speaker 1: off my boots as soon as we get in the studio.

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Speaker 1: That's true. Are those boots? Yeah? Oh nice to these

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Speaker 1: Australian boots. If I say the name, do you think

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Speaker 1: they sponsor us? Maybe if it is just called blond stunts.

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Speaker 1: They're so I've had a lot of boots. Man, they're tough. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is not this is not planned as an ad,

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Speaker 1: but I do want to say an Alex's defense. We

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Speaker 1: were hanging out at our favorite local bar, which is

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Speaker 1: again longtime listeners, called the local, and I had asked

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Speaker 1: him about his boots and then we went like you

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Speaker 1: told me about them kind of in detail because I

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Speaker 1: was looking for a good pair of but I think

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Speaker 1: I put them on the table. You propped the foot up.

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Speaker 1: It did. My girlfriend turned me on him. She she

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Speaker 1: had a pair of these. We took him the petrified forest.

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Speaker 1: We accidentally went off trail and stepped in some cook

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Speaker 1: from the prehistoric age, you know, killed some burgeoning life forms. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's still stuck to those shoes. But man, they're they're

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Speaker 1: about as tough as you can get. That's awesome, blood Stone.

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Speaker 1: My name is Alex Wlams. I hope I would love

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Speaker 1: to get a sponsorship going on. Uh why also love

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Speaker 1: to be sponsored by not maybe early New England, but vampires.

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Speaker 1: If you're out there, if you're listening, to this show.

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Speaker 1: There are apparently, um there is and this doesn't really

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Speaker 1: all that surprising, is but there's a segment of the

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Speaker 1: population that, like in some capacity in surveys, responds that

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Speaker 1: they are vampires. Yes, different types of vampires to write

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Speaker 1: real vampires. Oh like I must I must drink blood.

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Speaker 1: I must drink blood. Not just people that effective vampire lifestyle,

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Speaker 1: but people that consider themselves to actually be vampires. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I've I've heard of this. I've seen there are a

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Speaker 1: couple of documentaries about people like this. On the more

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Speaker 1: extreme end, uh, there will be people who claim that

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Speaker 1: they also cannot eat conventional sustenance. They can't eat conventional

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Speaker 1: food or drink. You were drank blood before, Ben, Yes,

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Speaker 1: of course, how much like I stuck that, you know, like,

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Speaker 1: you know, I cut my you know, I gotta cut

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Speaker 1: or something on my you know, on my own body,

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Speaker 1: and and you know trained a little bit, you know, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: salty irony. I mean with the largest quantity of blood

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Speaker 1: you think you ever or if you've got something you're

401
00:25:23,359 --> 00:25:25,199
Speaker 1: you know, you got a tooth that gets messed up,

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Speaker 1: you get blood in your mouth, you lost one time? Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: right right right, Um, well I am not going to answer, uh,

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Speaker 1: any more questions about that experience. I guess it is

405
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Speaker 1: a pretty taboos subject, right, Like, if you were into that,

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Speaker 1: how many people do you think you could talk to

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Speaker 1: about it? Probably, you know what, maybe not everybody, but

408
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Speaker 1: the people you could talk to about it would be

409
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Speaker 1: a very passionate community. They would want to share those stories, right.

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Speaker 1: The X Files is a great episode with vampires, and

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Speaker 1: they have more than but there's more where it's like

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Speaker 1: three kind of young sexy vampires like living together and

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Speaker 1: they've got some kind of esque relationship heavily implied. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and they've got trauma. But I feel like there's the

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00:26:13,880 --> 00:26:16,360
Speaker 1: lead that kind of you know, has this also sort

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Speaker 1: of sexual energy going on with Molder is like describing

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Speaker 1: how save him fulfilling drinking blood is, Yeah, that's the

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Speaker 1: The idea of the seductive powers of a vampire is

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Speaker 1: I don't know how. It's definitely not as prevalent in

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Speaker 1: early New England as it is today, right Like today

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Speaker 1: you've got the Twilight Vampire. Today you've got you know,

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Speaker 1: the the seductive vampire. And it's funny because it goes

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Speaker 1: into another thing kind of unrelated. They're often often very

424
00:26:55,800 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 1: like sensual words are in print and in speech used

425
00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:04,159
Speaker 1: to describe two things sex and food, you know what

426
00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:09,520
Speaker 1: I mean, decadent, luscious, that kind of stuff. And it

427
00:27:09,600 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 1: makes sense that she's describing and this this character that

428
00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:18,119
Speaker 1: you're talking about X files is describing essentially was eating

429
00:27:18,119 --> 00:27:20,800
Speaker 1: in very centual terms. But that's not what the vampires

430
00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:24,680
Speaker 1: they're like in the in the vampire pandemic in New

431
00:27:24,680 --> 00:27:28,159
Speaker 1: England at all. They're much more honestly, they're much more

432
00:27:28,240 --> 00:27:35,959
Speaker 1: like zombies. Yeah, there's this idea that so the idea

433
00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:41,159
Speaker 1: of what we call the vampire first appears in Slavic

434
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:43,840
Speaker 1: Europe around the tenth century. There have been plenty of

435
00:27:43,840 --> 00:27:47,520
Speaker 1: other human like monsters drinking blood, but you know, good

436
00:27:47,520 --> 00:27:51,720
Speaker 1: old vamps started in Slavic Europe. And according to Bell,

437
00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:56,000
Speaker 1: who we mentioned earlier, his his argument is that Slavic

438
00:27:56,080 --> 00:28:02,240
Speaker 1: and Germanic immigrants brought those superstitions vampires with them in

439
00:28:02,280 --> 00:28:06,960
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds, maybe around the time a specific group

440
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:12,160
Speaker 1: from Germany was colonizing Pennsylvania or maybe Hessian mercenaries, right,

441
00:28:12,480 --> 00:28:16,760
Speaker 1: And he thinks that you can't pin it down to

442
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:21,239
Speaker 1: like one family coming through town and saying, WHOA I

443
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:25,000
Speaker 1: remember these from the old country. You've got vampires. He

444
00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:28,320
Speaker 1: argues that it probably came from more than one time,

445
00:28:28,359 --> 00:28:30,919
Speaker 1: through more than one source, which makes sense to me

446
00:28:31,040 --> 00:28:34,160
Speaker 1: because it feels like corroboration. Then right, you've got multiple

447
00:28:34,240 --> 00:28:40,000
Speaker 1: people who are seemingly confirming, oh yeah, vampires. That's way

448
00:28:40,040 --> 00:28:43,520
Speaker 1: different from one person going I think it's vampires because

449
00:28:43,520 --> 00:28:46,560
Speaker 1: somebody else in town walks up and goes, someone say vampires.

450
00:28:46,760 --> 00:28:49,800
Speaker 1: I agree, it's kind of I don't want to get

451
00:28:49,840 --> 00:28:51,720
Speaker 1: too far ahead of it, but it's it's even further

452
00:28:51,840 --> 00:28:57,560
Speaker 1: complicated by like whoa who was used in contemporaneously, Who

453
00:28:57,640 --> 00:29:01,120
Speaker 1: was using the term vampire? You know? Was it just

454
00:29:01,240 --> 00:29:04,160
Speaker 1: the media, which is what it seems like. It was

455
00:29:04,240 --> 00:29:07,000
Speaker 1: mostly a word that was used in media of the time,

456
00:29:07,080 --> 00:29:11,880
Speaker 1: but not maybe so much in uh, individual accounts. And

457
00:29:11,920 --> 00:29:17,520
Speaker 1: what were they thinking of when they said vampire? You know? Yeah,

458
00:29:17,600 --> 00:29:20,040
Speaker 1: that's the thing. It's what's in a word? What did

459
00:29:20,080 --> 00:29:23,960
Speaker 1: the word vampire mean to them versus to us today?

460
00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:26,760
Speaker 1: And I agree that it's much more like the modern

461
00:29:26,800 --> 00:29:30,200
Speaker 1: idea of a zombie. Uh. Look, if if I'm a yes,

462
00:29:30,600 --> 00:29:32,440
Speaker 1: if if I could explain it to you and you

463
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:35,200
Speaker 1: tell me if I've got it. Okay. We're in a family,

464
00:29:35,320 --> 00:29:41,040
Speaker 1: the Williams ben Bowland, little brilliante, ridiculous history family. Like

465
00:29:41,120 --> 00:29:44,720
Speaker 1: we are here in this little studio together, and Low,

466
00:29:44,880 --> 00:29:48,440
Speaker 1: great producer as he is, gets sick with consumption. We

467
00:29:48,520 --> 00:29:50,440
Speaker 1: do our best. We sent him to a sanitarium, We

468
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:53,280
Speaker 1: send him to Colorado Springs. He seems like he's gonna

469
00:29:53,320 --> 00:29:58,160
Speaker 1: get better. He doesn't. He gets all skinny and he's foaming,

470
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:01,400
Speaker 1: and he's got blood coming out, and he's he's not

471
00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:03,840
Speaker 1: doing well. He's staying up weird hours of the night.

472
00:30:03,840 --> 00:30:05,920
Speaker 1: We're like weirded out by them. And then one day

473
00:30:05,920 --> 00:30:14,520
Speaker 1: it's mercifully over. I swear it's allergies. Uh those were

474
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:20,640
Speaker 1: those were his last words, Oh, poor little And so

475
00:30:20,720 --> 00:30:24,680
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, the mid seventeen hundreds, late seventeen hundreds.

476
00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:27,680
Speaker 1: We want to bury him in the ground, having a

477
00:30:27,760 --> 00:30:31,360
Speaker 1: nice Christian funeral, but the ground is frozen. Right. We

478
00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:34,440
Speaker 1: stick this guy and above ground to him in a box.

479
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:37,240
Speaker 1: We have the pastor come, say a few nice words,

480
00:30:37,360 --> 00:30:40,280
Speaker 1: ashes to ash this dust to dust, and we go

481
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:43,520
Speaker 1: on with the rest of our lives, you know, missing

482
00:30:43,560 --> 00:30:49,120
Speaker 1: Low all the while. But then Ben gets sick. I do,

483
00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:54,480
Speaker 1: and the same symptoms are happening, the same weird stuff.

484
00:30:56,600 --> 00:31:00,760
Speaker 1: His cheeks are getting flushed, he's getting just like eyes

485
00:31:00,800 --> 00:31:06,160
Speaker 1: are sunken in even more than usual. He's like coughing

486
00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:09,160
Speaker 1: and he's starting to cough blood feel I've lost my

487
00:31:09,240 --> 00:31:12,200
Speaker 1: epic diete. And we sent him to the Adirondacks, to

488
00:31:12,280 --> 00:31:14,040
Speaker 1: upstate New York because we've got all the money to

489
00:31:14,320 --> 00:31:17,160
Speaker 1: send people to all this an I go along to

490
00:31:17,360 --> 00:31:21,880
Speaker 1: bring the blood stones, break them in. But Ben's not

491
00:31:21,920 --> 00:31:23,840
Speaker 1: getting better. Everything we try, we take one of the

492
00:31:23,840 --> 00:31:26,440
Speaker 1: best doctors who do like leeches and blood lighting and whatever.

493
00:31:26,520 --> 00:31:28,680
Speaker 1: We're taken with all the best doctors, and it's not working.

494
00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:32,800
Speaker 1: And I've tried everything. I want so badly to save

495
00:31:32,920 --> 00:31:36,080
Speaker 1: my guest co host. So I don't know. I I guess

496
00:31:36,120 --> 00:31:38,800
Speaker 1: I guess I'm your guest co host. But whatever. Uh,

497
00:31:38,880 --> 00:31:41,400
Speaker 1: And you know, people in town start saying to me,

498
00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:45,880
Speaker 1: you know what it is, right, I mean, you know

499
00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:49,400
Speaker 1: what you can't It's because low over there in the

500
00:31:49,440 --> 00:31:54,200
Speaker 1: ground is exercising his will from beyond the grave on Ben.

501
00:31:54,600 --> 00:31:59,000
Speaker 1: He's literally getting out of the corps, is getting out

502
00:31:59,000 --> 00:32:02,680
Speaker 1: of the grave or out of the tomb at night,

503
00:32:02,720 --> 00:32:06,120
Speaker 1: probably when no one's looking and coming and praying upon you.

504
00:32:07,280 --> 00:32:10,880
Speaker 1: Or is it more of a psychic kind of spiritual

505
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:14,080
Speaker 1: way that it's you know, like he like he's somehow

506
00:32:14,120 --> 00:32:18,520
Speaker 1: projecting himself onto you. And so it's is it is it?

507
00:32:18,560 --> 00:32:22,880
Speaker 1: Is it physical? Is it? Is it spiritual? Spectral? So

508
00:32:23,440 --> 00:32:26,560
Speaker 1: this part, this is interesting because this is where we

509
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:31,880
Speaker 1: get to the first off, excellent rendition tentet I've got

510
00:32:32,040 --> 00:32:34,720
Speaker 1: that's more or less the the idea, that is exactly

511
00:32:34,800 --> 00:32:38,880
Speaker 1: the idea. And people back then, we're just as intelligent

512
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:42,080
Speaker 1: as people are now. They didn't have access to the

513
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:47,040
Speaker 1: same um level of research or the same like knowledge

514
00:32:47,040 --> 00:32:50,040
Speaker 1: of medicine that modern folks have, but they weren't knuckleheads.

515
00:32:50,440 --> 00:32:53,800
Speaker 1: You know. There were plenty of skeptical people who would say,

516
00:32:53,920 --> 00:32:56,920
Speaker 1: all right, well that's malarkey. But then there were also

517
00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:02,120
Speaker 1: people who would say, mmm, maybe I believe in an afterlife,

518
00:33:02,120 --> 00:33:04,160
Speaker 1: so maybe this is another part of it that I

519
00:33:04,200 --> 00:33:06,760
Speaker 1: am not aware of. And there were people who believe

520
00:33:06,840 --> 00:33:11,440
Speaker 1: that they were physics, they were mentally u and through

521
00:33:11,480 --> 00:33:15,560
Speaker 1: some in comporeal form, they were traveling to their victims,

522
00:33:15,680 --> 00:33:18,240
Speaker 1: drawn by their life force, and they're the fact that

523
00:33:18,280 --> 00:33:22,280
Speaker 1: they had known one another in the waking world, or like,

524
00:33:22,360 --> 00:33:26,000
Speaker 1: the big question if you're a skeptical at all, is

525
00:33:26,560 --> 00:33:29,200
Speaker 1: if someone is physically rising from the grave, why is

526
00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:32,040
Speaker 1: the grave not disturbed? Right? That was one of the

527
00:33:32,080 --> 00:33:36,720
Speaker 1: big questions. And we see, um, we see accusations of

528
00:33:36,800 --> 00:33:40,120
Speaker 1: vampirism in other parts of history when someone had been

529
00:33:40,160 --> 00:33:45,240
Speaker 1: prematurely buried, which was becomes a huge conserve, I think

530
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:48,960
Speaker 1: in in Victorian times especially, just check out the inventions

531
00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:52,360
Speaker 1: people made with a little I'm not dead bells, that's

532
00:33:52,360 --> 00:33:55,040
Speaker 1: what I call them. But uh, but I think he

533
00:33:55,120 --> 00:33:58,200
Speaker 1: nailed it because even if you're more skeptical at this point,

534
00:33:58,240 --> 00:34:02,680
Speaker 1: if you're surrounded by you've lost multiple people in your community,

535
00:34:03,040 --> 00:34:05,600
Speaker 1: you've lost more than one family member, and you think

536
00:34:05,720 --> 00:34:08,120
Speaker 1: more might be on the way, maybe your maybe your

537
00:34:08,200 --> 00:34:11,359
Speaker 1: last healthy kid isn't looking so healthy. Then you start

538
00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:16,400
Speaker 1: to say, ah, I don't know, maybe I'll try anything.

539
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:19,760
Speaker 1: And if you it's a really good point that people

540
00:34:20,440 --> 00:34:23,680
Speaker 1: people aren't haven't been all that different at any point

541
00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:26,480
Speaker 1: in time, right. You know, it's a it's a crazy

542
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:28,759
Speaker 1: it's a crazy story, a crazy collection of stories. But

543
00:34:29,560 --> 00:34:32,360
Speaker 1: you go and you try to look at it empathetically.

544
00:34:33,120 --> 00:34:35,120
Speaker 1: And this comes from Bell too, but I mean, you know,

545
00:34:35,239 --> 00:34:39,320
Speaker 1: imagine the father who has tried everything for his last

546
00:34:39,360 --> 00:34:43,640
Speaker 1: alien kid, and it's like, I guess I'll try this

547
00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:46,440
Speaker 1: crazy thing. I'll dig up my dead wife and this

548
00:34:46,520 --> 00:34:51,600
Speaker 1: is where we get to the grizzly strange. All two

549
00:34:51,800 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 1: real stories. We're actually going to make this a two

550
00:34:55,080 --> 00:34:59,839
Speaker 1: parter because Alex Lowell and I really want to. Well

551
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:04,239
Speaker 1: again too, the grave of it sounds insensitive, Well we do.

552
00:35:04,440 --> 00:35:07,120
Speaker 1: We do want to We do want to give some

553
00:35:07,239 --> 00:35:10,040
Speaker 1: real examples, and we want to spend some time here.

554
00:35:10,120 --> 00:35:13,200
Speaker 1: So we're going to pause and we'll be back very

555
00:35:13,239 --> 00:35:16,560
Speaker 1: soon with part two of the New England Vampire Panic.

556
00:35:17,040 --> 00:35:20,239
Speaker 1: In the meantime, I I don't think I've ever done

557
00:35:20,239 --> 00:35:24,239
Speaker 1: this before, but thank you to Alex Williams, Thank you

558
00:35:24,280 --> 00:35:27,960
Speaker 1: to Lotle, brilliante. Alex, you are going to come back

559
00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:34,080
Speaker 1: for the second part of this right fun too, very much,

560
00:35:35,239 --> 00:35:40,080
Speaker 1: very much? Clothes? Yeah? Not bad? Uh a little? Are you?

561
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:41,719
Speaker 1: Are you on board to come back? I think you

562
00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:44,239
Speaker 1: nailed it with that allergies line? Yeah, let's do it

563
00:35:44,400 --> 00:35:48,480
Speaker 1: all right, So hey, let me see if you can

564
00:35:48,480 --> 00:35:50,600
Speaker 1: guess this one. We'll go out because we promised some

565
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:55,799
Speaker 1: bad jokes. Hey, Alex, why does Dracula always read the

566
00:35:55,800 --> 00:36:00,719
Speaker 1: most popular newspapers always read the most person I don't know, then,

567
00:36:00,760 --> 00:36:06,200
Speaker 1: why does it because he likes the ones with good circulation? Alright, alright, well,

568
00:36:06,239 --> 00:36:08,480
Speaker 1: we hope that you've weathered that one in YouTube, and

569
00:36:08,520 --> 00:36:11,160
Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed this ridiculous historians. We hope you

570
00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:14,120
Speaker 1: tune into part two of this big big thanks to

571
00:36:14,120 --> 00:36:17,800
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, Big big thanks to Little Brilliante, big thanks

572
00:36:17,840 --> 00:36:21,440
Speaker 1: to Max Williams, big thanks to my rider Die co

573
00:36:21,680 --> 00:36:25,680
Speaker 1: host Noel Brown who will be returning soon, and big

574
00:36:25,719 --> 00:36:30,400
Speaker 1: thanks to Gabe Lousier. Alex. Where can people find Ephemeral?

575
00:36:31,080 --> 00:36:35,600
Speaker 1: Unlike all of the social media's, it's at Ephemeral dot

576
00:36:35,640 --> 00:36:37,799
Speaker 1: Show on Instagram. I think some of them don't have

577
00:36:37,880 --> 00:36:41,040
Speaker 1: the dot. And then our website is www dot Ephemeral

578
00:36:41,239 --> 00:36:44,560
Speaker 1: Dot Show. All right, and a little where can people

579
00:36:44,600 --> 00:36:47,840
Speaker 1: find Prodigy? Uh? Whenever they listen to their favorite shows?

580
00:36:48,520 --> 00:36:52,239
Speaker 1: All right? Well, with no spoilers, then please do check

581
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:56,240
Speaker 1: out both Prodigy and Ephemeral. Stay safe, folks, we will

582
00:36:56,280 --> 00:36:59,759
Speaker 1: talk very soon. In the meantime, let us know what

583
00:36:59,800 --> 00:37:02,799
Speaker 1: you or Halloween ideas are. I can't wait to hear

584
00:37:02,840 --> 00:37:12,000
Speaker 1: from you. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit

585
00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:14,640
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you

586
00:37:14,719 --> 00:37:21,080
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. H