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Speaker 1: Hello, it's Richard mc lean smith here, not the impostor

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Speaker 1: you've been listening to on the podcasts, the real one.

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Speaker 1: Join me for Unexplained TV at YouTube dot com Forward

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Speaker 1: Slash Unexplained pod. The following episode contains descriptions of violent torture.

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Speaker 1: Parental discretion is advised. The boy watched through a narrow

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Speaker 1: slit window from its vantage point high in the castle

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Speaker 1: as the prisoners walked by below. They'd been made to

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Speaker 1: walk through the streets of siggy Swaara, a small town

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Speaker 1: in the Tanava Maray Valley of Transylvania. They looked fearful, defeated,

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Speaker 1: hanging their heads, as if all hope had deserted them.

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Speaker 1: They were condemned prisoners on their way to the Great

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Speaker 1: Tower in the innermost keep of the castle, to be hanged.

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Speaker 1: The boy gazed out at the hapless criminals with morbid

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Speaker 1: interest as the prisoners trudged on, knowing only that these

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Speaker 1: would be their last moments on earth. The boy had

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Speaker 1: been born in the town in fourteen thirty one, one

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Speaker 1: of three sons of vlad the second Prince of Walachia,

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Speaker 1: a territory bounded by the Carpathian mountains on one side

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Speaker 1: and the Turkish Ottoman Empire on the other. Like his father,

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Speaker 1: being the first born, the boy was also called Flat.

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Speaker 1: The young Lad's upbringing was a combination of training in

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Speaker 1: courtly etiquette, fun and brutality. On some days, he and

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Speaker 1: his brothers would delight in puppet theaters and performances by acrobats,

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Speaker 1: play ball games, and hunt eagles with sling shots. On others,

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Speaker 1: they would spend long hours with accomplished men of war

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Speaker 1: outside in all weathers, being taught the ways of a

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Speaker 1: warrior and how to wield a sword. They were routinely

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Speaker 1: exposed to the elements on stormy days to help build

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Speaker 1: physical and moral character. Despite this tough regime, however, there

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Speaker 1: was little to suggest at the time that the green eyed,

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Speaker 1: dark haired ten year old would become one of the

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Speaker 1: most brutal and feared despots of his era. During the

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Speaker 1: year of Vlad Junior's birth, his father attended a ritual

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Speaker 1: at the Imperial Fortress in Nuremberg, Germany, organized by Sigmund,

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Speaker 1: King of Germany and Hungary. In the ceremony, Flat the

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Speaker 1: Elder was inducted into the Order of the Dragon, established

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Speaker 1: by the Holy Roman Emperor in thirteen eighty seven. It

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Speaker 1: was similar to the chu Tonic Order of Knights, a

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Speaker 1: chivalric society designed to fight the enemies of Christianity. The

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Speaker 1: name was likely chosen to sound fierce and deter the

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Speaker 1: ever present threat of marauding Turkish armies, and only a

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Speaker 1: select few were chosen for the honor. Returning to his

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Speaker 1: home country, Flat the Second assumed the title bestowed on him,

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Speaker 1: becoming Flat the Dragon, or as it was in his

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Speaker 1: mother tongue, Flat Tracool. Being the first born, His son

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Speaker 1: took on the diminutive form, becoming Flad Tracoola. But there

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Speaker 1: is another meaning to the word dracool. It also means devil.

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Speaker 1: You're listening to unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. Lakia

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Speaker 1: was a feudal society governed by a succession of warlords

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Speaker 1: or boy vodder. The position changed hands frequently and bloodily.

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Speaker 1: Flat the Second took the title in fourteen thirty six,

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Speaker 1: but much to his annoyance, he was soon forced to

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Speaker 1: take sites with the neighboring Ottoman Turks. The Ottoman Empire

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Speaker 1: at that time was vast, stretching across much of what

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Speaker 1: is modern day Turkey, Greece, Albania, Montenegro and Serbia, and

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Speaker 1: they had a formidable army. Over the next few years,

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Speaker 1: the Turkish powers became increasingly suspicious of Vlad's grudging support,

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Speaker 1: and in fourteen forty two, the then Sultan Murad the

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Speaker 1: second summoned him to the Ottoman capital, Adrianople. Flat the

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Speaker 1: Elder made the trip with two of his sons, his

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Speaker 1: eldest young Flat who was eleven, and his brother Radu,

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Speaker 1: aged seven. On arrival, all three were immediately taken prisoner.

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Speaker 1: Glad the Second was then given the option to leave

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Speaker 1: on two conditions. He agreed to pay an annual monetary

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Speaker 1: tribute to the Ottomans and donate five hundred Wallachian boys

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Speaker 1: to their cause, including his two sons. Glad the Second

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Speaker 1: took the deal and promptly returned to Wallachia, reluctantly, leaving

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Speaker 1: his sons as so called guests of the Sultan. The

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Speaker 1: boys would never see their father again. For seven years.

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Speaker 1: They were kept as prisoners under the constant threat of assassination,

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Speaker 1: a threat which only increased when the boy's father eventually

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Speaker 1: gave up on his promise to the Ottoman leaders and

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Speaker 1: formed an alliance with Christian forces instead. Then there was

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Speaker 1: the brutal training. The brothers were taken to the Egrigod Citadel,

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Speaker 1: situated on a high cliff above a canyon amid the

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Speaker 1: harsh conditions of the arid Anatolian Plateau, located in the

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Speaker 1: modern day province of Katahya, Turkey. There they were scored

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Speaker 1: by Ottoman warriors so that when the time came for

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Speaker 1: them to rule while Akia, they would be effective defenders

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Speaker 1: of the Ottoman presence in the Carpathians. Over time, the

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Speaker 1: younger Radu grew to enjoy life in the Ottoman court,

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Speaker 1: becoming known as Radu the Handsome. In stark contrast, his

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Speaker 1: elder brother, flat Dracula, nurtured a deep and smoldering resentment

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Speaker 1: of his Turkish captors and was profoundly discussed by what

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Speaker 1: he took to be his brother's act of disloyalty, and

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Speaker 1: so he funneled his hatred into learning the art of combat.

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Speaker 1: Flad observed first hand how ruthless the Ottoman soldiers could

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Speaker 1: be in battle and the ferocious punishments they inflicted on

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Speaker 1: their enemies, punishments like in palement, in which a captive

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Speaker 1: would be laid on their belly with their hands tied

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Speaker 1: behind their back, their backside sliced open and a sharply

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Speaker 1: pointed stake thrust into the wound. The steak would then

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Speaker 1: be hammered all the way until finally it would rip

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Speaker 1: through the other side of the body at the head, shoulders,

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Speaker 1: or breastplate. Then, with the captive in many cases still alive,

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Speaker 1: the stake was hauled upright and driven into the ground,

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Speaker 1: with the victim left there impaled until death. After five

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Speaker 1: years in the Sultan's custody, the boys learned the harrowing

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Speaker 1: news that both their father and brother had been murdered

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Speaker 1: and their father's title usurped. For Vlad the younger, it

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Speaker 1: was just more fuel for his burgeoning rage. He promised

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Speaker 1: himself that after meeting out retribution for these atrocities, he

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Speaker 1: would turn his vengeful attention on the Ottomans. Two years later,

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Speaker 1: the boys, then eighteen and fourteen, were freed. Younger brother, Radu,

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Speaker 1: enamoured at the luxuries of the Ottoman court where he'd

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Speaker 1: lived half his life, chose to stay, but Vlat returned

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Speaker 1: immediately to Walakiir hell bent on revenge. He had grown

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Speaker 1: into a striking looking individual, said to be short in

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Speaker 1: the stature but with a strong torso, narrow reddish face,

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Speaker 1: a long, straight now with distended nostrils, and large green

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Speaker 1: eyes framed by startlingly bushy black eyebrows. After swiftly avenging

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Speaker 1: his father and brother's death in fourteen fifty six, Flad Dracula,

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Speaker 1: now Vlad the third, regained his father's title to become

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Speaker 1: Voivoda of his country. His first step was to build

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Speaker 1: a heavily fortified castle known today as po Nari Citadel,

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Speaker 1: which could only be accessed by climbing fifteen hundred steps.

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Speaker 1: Once installed in this impregnable fortress, it's believed that Flad

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Speaker 1: married perhaps two or three times, and started a family

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Speaker 1: of his own. As his family grew, so too did

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Speaker 1: Flad Dracula's brutality. He embarked on a rule of terror,

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Speaker 1: which he meted out to enemies of the state and

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Speaker 1: home grown criminals alike. He employed a battle of dreadful

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Speaker 1: methods of torture and execution. Those methods included ordering people

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Speaker 1: to be skinned, buried, or boiled, alive or decapitated, blinded, strangled, hanged, burned, roasted,

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Speaker 1: or hacked to death. He also liked to cut off

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Speaker 1: his enemy's noses, ears, tongues, and genitals, but there was

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Speaker 1: one method of execution witnessed during his time in captivity

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Speaker 1: that had left a lasting impression on him, impaling. It

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Speaker 1: was said that impaling was a unique art, since there

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Speaker 1: were only a couple of ways to secure a person

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Speaker 1: through their anus and upwards without damaging the victim's vital organs.

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Speaker 1: If done correctly, it resulted in the victim lying for

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Speaker 1: several days in extreme pain, writhing and twitching, before fire dying.

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Speaker 1: Flad proceeded to exact his revenge on the people who

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Speaker 1: killed his father and brother, a Wallachian noble family called

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Speaker 1: the Boyarts. He impaled over five hundred of them, along

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Speaker 1: with their entire families, and so Vlad Dracula also became

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Speaker 1: known as Vlad Tepez Flad the Impaler. Unsurprisingly, given his

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Speaker 1: proclivity for meting out such brutal punishment to even the

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Speaker 1: most petty of criminals, Flad Draculu's subjects remained, if not loyal,

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Speaker 1: certainly subdued. He ruled for six long and bloody years

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Speaker 1: until fourteen sixty two, when he finally overreached. It was

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Speaker 1: some time after midnight in June of that year, when

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Speaker 1: a man wearing Turkish robe and a turban slipped stealthily

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Speaker 1: through the dense Wallachian forest. Reaching the edge of the trees,

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Speaker 1: he took stock of the broad valley below him. Straining

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Speaker 1: his eyes in the faint starlight, he could just about

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Speaker 1: make out the Ottoman army encampment spread out on the

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Speaker 1: valley floor. The army had been steadily encroaching on Wallachian

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Speaker 1: territory for the past year. Approaching the edge of the camp,

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Speaker 1: the man called out in Turkish to the guards on watch.

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Speaker 1: They waved him through without a second glance. Passing the

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Speaker 1: glowing embers of campfires. Skirting around tents, tethered horses and camels,

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Speaker 1: he searched for the largest, most lavishly decorated tent. Having

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Speaker 1: found it and committed its location to memory. Like a wraith,

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Speaker 1: he slipped back into the darkness and navigated his way

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Speaker 1: back through the forest to his own camp. Was none

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Speaker 1: other than Flad Dracula. Back at his camp, he relayed

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Speaker 1: what he'd seen to his men. While Akir was on

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Speaker 1: the verge of being invaded by Ottoman forces. Throughout his reign,

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Speaker 1: Flad had refused to recognize the Ottoman leader, Sultan Mehmed

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Speaker 1: the Second, and the Sultan had had enough. Compared to

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Speaker 1: the Turkish army, who were equipped with horses, camels, metal armor,

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Speaker 1: and a fine array of weaponry, Flad's much smaller band

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Speaker 1: of guerrilla fighters were a motley crew with only donkeys

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Speaker 1: to ride and makeshift led the uniforms to wear. But

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Speaker 1: despite being vastly outnumbered and poorly equipped, the following night,

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Speaker 1: once the Turkish camp was mostly asleep, Flad's forces attacked.

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Speaker 1: Flad made straight for the richly decorated tent he'd scouted

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Speaker 1: the previous night, but to his dismay, on entering, he

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Speaker 1: found it was occupied by the Sultan, as he'd hoped,

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Speaker 1: but merely some high ranking government officials. He killed them

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Speaker 1: anyway and devised a plan to welcome the Sultan. When

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Speaker 1: Sultan Mehmed and his army arrived at their camp soon

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Speaker 1: after and found it abandoned, they assumed the soldiers had

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Speaker 1: moved on to take Target Vista, the Wallachian capital, located

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Speaker 1: about fifty miles northwest. As they drew closer to the city,

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Speaker 1: something seemed off. The Sultan and his men sensed a

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Speaker 1: dreadful stillness in the air. The area outside the city

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Speaker 1: walls was ominously silent. From a distance, the Sultan and

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Speaker 1: his men could see what looked like a small, strange

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Speaker 1: forest on the horizon. Drawing closer, the men soon realized

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Speaker 1: that this was no forest of living trees. It was

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Speaker 1: in sea, dead, comprised of hundreds upon hundreds of vertical stakes,

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Speaker 1: with men, women and children impaled on them. Even Sultan

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Speaker 1: Mehmet and his most battle hardened warriors had never seen

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Speaker 1: anything so horrific on such a scale. In late fourteen

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Speaker 1: sixty two, vlad Dracula was captured and imprisoned by the

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Speaker 1: King of Hungary, who maintained a strict fealty to the

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Speaker 1: Ottoman Empire. It was the following year that the rumors began.

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Speaker 1: They first emerged in a poem titled Story of a

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Speaker 1: Bloodthirsty Madman called Dracula of Wallachia, written by the wandering

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Speaker 1: German poet Michel Beheim. Benheim was said to have conducted

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Speaker 1: extensive interviews with a monk familiar with flats atrocities. He

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Speaker 1: described how flad amused himself by torturing people and would

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Speaker 1: often enjoy meals while surrounded by the dead and dying,

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Speaker 1: who were either impaled or hanging from makeshift gallows all

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Speaker 1: around him. Beheim depicted flat sitting at a dining table

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Speaker 1: behind a bowl in which his victim's blood was collected.

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Speaker 1: According to the poem, it was Vlad's custom to put

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Speaker 1: his hands in the blood filled bowl, but on a

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Speaker 1: subsequent translation there was apparently an error. Instead of simply

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Speaker 1: dipping his hands into the bowl, it said that flad

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Speaker 1: Dracula dipped his bread into the blood of his victims.

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Speaker 1: The legend of flad Dracula as a blood drinker was

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Speaker 1: now ensconced in folklore. His subsequent death in fourteen seventy

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Speaker 1: six or seventy seven is shrouded in the Most popular

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Speaker 1: story is that he was killed by a servant, possibly

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Speaker 1: in the pay of the Sultan, in the Vlasier forest

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Speaker 1: near buch Arrest during another Ottoman invasion. Some say that

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Speaker 1: his head disappeared somewhat fittingly taken on a spike as

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Speaker 1: a gift to the Sultan, while his body is thought

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Speaker 1: to have been buried on an island in a lake

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Speaker 1: at the snag Off Monastery in what today is southern Romania.

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Speaker 1: No marker was ever placed there. However, in the nineteen thirties,

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Speaker 1: reports emerged that the body of a man buried in

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Speaker 1: sumptuous clothing with a crown but no head, was dug up.

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Speaker 1: There seems to be no record of what happened that body,

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Speaker 1: and so bringing modern forensic techniques to investigate the physical

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Speaker 1: reality of flat dracula seemed impossible. Until evening in May

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, A tusslehaired man and blond woman labor

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Speaker 1: in a laboratory long after normal working hours. Clad in

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Speaker 1: lab coats, nitral gloves, and visors, the pair of busy

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Speaker 1: pipetting samples into vials as a centrifuge, hums and words,

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Speaker 1: spinning precious microscopic biological samples. As they work, the couple

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Speaker 1: hear the rain pounding at the windows, lightning flashes, followed

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Speaker 1: closely by heavy rumbles of thunder. At times, they think

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Speaker 1: they can hear dogs howling on the streets outside. Gleb

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Speaker 1: and Svetlana Silberstein call themselves historical chemists, although in the

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Speaker 1: media they are often dubbed the protein detectives. Originally from Kazakhstan,

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Speaker 1: the Zilbersteins have worked for over twenty five years at

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Speaker 1: a facility in Tel Aviv, Israel, where together with Professor

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Speaker 1: Pierre Georgia Righetti of the Polytechnic University of Milan, they

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Speaker 1: developed the biochemical analysis used to extract proteins from items

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Speaker 1: touched or worn by people who have been long dead.

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Speaker 1: Known by the acronym EVA, the method uses a plastic

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Speaker 1: film made from ethylene vinyl acetate studded with strongly charged

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Speaker 1: ions which exchange with the ancient molecules in samples. It

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Speaker 1: is brought into contact with Those molecules are then characterised

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Speaker 1: based on their weight and electric charge in a highly

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Speaker 1: sensitive version of an instrument known as a mass spectrometer.

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Speaker 1: The so called protein detectives first used the method on

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Speaker 1: the original manuscript of The Master and marg Rita by

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Speaker 1: the Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgarkov, on which they found traces

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Speaker 1: of morphine and kidney proteins, showing that the author very

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Speaker 1: likely wrote the manuscript while under the influence of drugs

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Speaker 1: he was using to relieve acute kidney pain. In spring

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, the protein detectives were on a new

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Speaker 1: quest to decipher traces left by Flad the Impaler. They

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Speaker 1: made their way to Sibiu in Romania to investigate three letters,

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Speaker 1: made of rag paper and apparently written by a man

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Speaker 1: who signed himself as Vladislav Trakoul. Two were written in

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Speaker 1: fourteen seventy five and a third in fourteen fifty seven.

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Speaker 1: The scientists were able to extract biomolecules from sweat, fingerprints,

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Speaker 1: and sliva, which they believed Flad had deposited on the

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Speaker 1: letters as he wrote them. Their aim was to determine

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Speaker 1: the composition and age of the molecules. Such proteins are

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Speaker 1: more stable over time than DNA, so the researchers hoped

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Speaker 1: they would provide a molecular snapshot of Flad's health, what

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Speaker 1: he ate, and the environmental conditions around him at the

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Speaker 1: time when he wrote the letters. As they worked, the

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Speaker 1: inclement weather outside made for a menacing atmosphere. The Silbersteins

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Speaker 1: later said that as the analysis proceeded, it felt to

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Speaker 1: them as if the gusting winds, lashing rain, lightning, and

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Speaker 1: howling dogs were somehow signaling flat Dracula's release. From the

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Speaker 1: ancient pages from Dracula's letters, the Zilbersteins characterized about a

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Speaker 1: hundred ancient peptides of human origin and two thousand from bacteria, viruses, fungi, insects,

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Speaker 1: and plants, representing the surrounding environment of the time. The

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Speaker 1: most prominent plant proteins were from Brassicus or the cabbage family,

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Speaker 1: rice and wheat, suggesting the components of the meal flat

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Speaker 1: Dracula might have dined on at its desk. Most strikingly

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Speaker 1: were the results from the proteins of human origin. Many

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Speaker 1: were from skin, as well as from the respiratory tract,

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Speaker 1: tear ducts, blood, and sweat glands. The researchers admit that

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Speaker 1: they cannot rule out the possibility that some of these

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Speaker 1: proteins could have come from other medieval people who may

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Speaker 1: have touched these documents, but they think it likely that

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Speaker 1: the most prominent ancient proteins they found are very possibly

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Speaker 1: directly related to Prince Vlad the Impaler, who wrote and

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Speaker 1: signed the letters. Those results suggest strongly that by fourteen

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Speaker 1: seventy five, Dracula was not a well man. The Silbersteins

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Speaker 1: concluded that he likely suffered from a condition known as hemolacria.

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Speaker 1: The disease causes the sufferer to cry tears of blood.

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Speaker 1: The investigators also found bacterial peptides from human gut flora,

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Speaker 1: which could cause one to cough up blood. There was

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Speaker 1: nothing to point to vlad Dracula as being a blood drinker,

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Speaker 1: but indications perhaps that he may have at least appeared

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Speaker 1: to be one. In the ensuing centuries, the dreadful exploits

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Speaker 1: of Flad the Impaler faded, and in time it became

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Speaker 1: lost to history, destined to be all but forgotten about.

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Speaker 1: In the late eighteenth century, a man named Abraham or

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Speaker 1: Bram Stoker worked for the owner of the Lyceum Theater

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Speaker 1: in London's West End, an actor named Sir Henry Irving,

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Speaker 1: as his personal agent and business manager. But to make

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Speaker 1: extra money in his spare time, Stoker wrote sensational tales

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Speaker 1: that were serialized in newspapers, just like Sir Arthur Conan

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Speaker 1: Doyle stories of his fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. In July

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Speaker 1: eighteen ninety, Stoker arrived by steam train in the small

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Speaker 1: seaside town of Whitby on England's northeast coast. He was

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Speaker 1: in search of new inspiration for a fledgling story he

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Speaker 1: was developing set in Austria, about a blood sucking creature

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Speaker 1: with the working title Count Vampire. Whitby attracted Bram Stoker's

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Speaker 1: attention because of its association with death. It was a

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Speaker 1: place where a local black stone known as jet was

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Speaker 1: quarried and made into Victorian morning jewelry, an essential accessory

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Speaker 1: in the so called cult of death that swept the

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Speaker 1: country after Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, had died at

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Speaker 1: an early age. Stoker disembarked the steam train and strode

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Speaker 1: around exploring. He ascended the cliff above the town where

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Speaker 1: the ruins of Whitby Abbey lay. Next, he called in

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Speaker 1: at the town's small local library in search of a

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Speaker 1: book which a friend had told him might be a

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Speaker 1: helpful backstory for his novel. It was a somewhat obscure

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Speaker 1: travel guide with the title An Account of the Principalities

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Speaker 1: of Walachia and Moldavia, written by British diplomat William Wilkinson

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Speaker 1: some fifty years previously. Stoker scanned the densely printed pages

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Speaker 1: somewhat distractedly, but then he caught sight of a footnote

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Speaker 1: at the bottom of one page which almost made him

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Speaker 1: fall off his chair. It described a Wallachian warlort from

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Speaker 1: the fifteenth century by the name of flad Dracula, a

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Speaker 1: name the text explained which also meant devil who had

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Speaker 1: a reputation for dining on the blood of the living.

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Speaker 1: Stoker knew instantly that he'd found the inspiration for his novel,

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Speaker 1: which he of course renamed Dracula. He rushed back to

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Speaker 1: his lodgings and set to work. He relocated the action

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Speaker 1: from Austria to Transylvania and transformed the novel's central character

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Speaker 1: from a bloodthirsty, brutish ruler of history to a blood sucking,

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Speaker 1: a risk decratic count. The rest, as they say, is

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Speaker 1: literary history. Published in eighteen ninety seven, the novel Dracula

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Speaker 1: became an instant sensation. Stoker's book found its foundation in

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Speaker 1: the folklore surrounding vampires in the Carpathians. But is there

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Speaker 1: a reality to those tales? What might a human vampire

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Speaker 1: look like exactly? And do they actually exist in the

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Speaker 1: real world living around us today? Find out next week

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Speaker 1: on Friday the thirteenth, on the second and final part

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Speaker 1: of Unexplained Season eight, episode twelve, The Dark Banquet. Thank

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Speaker 1: you as ever for listening to the show. Please subscribe

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Speaker 1: and rate it if you haven't already done. So you

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00:27:57,200 --> 00:27:59,960
Speaker 1: can also now find us on TikTok at TikTok Doc,

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00:28:00,400 --> 00:28:04,800
Speaker 1: Forward Slash at Unexplained Podcast. This episode was written by

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00:28:04,880 --> 00:28:10,360
Speaker 1: Diane Hope and produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Diane

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00:28:10,359 --> 00:28:13,360
Speaker 1: is an audio producer and sound recordist in her own right,

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00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:15,880
Speaker 1: and you can find out more about her work at

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00:28:15,960 --> 00:28:20,639
Speaker 1: Dianehope dot com and on Instagram at in the sound Field.

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Speaker 1: Unexplained is an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard

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00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:30,320
Speaker 1: McClain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music,

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Speaker 1: are also produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The

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Speaker 1: book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You

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Speaker 1: can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and other bookstores.

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Speaker 1: Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get

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Speaker 1: any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on

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Speaker 1: the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own

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Speaker 1: you'd like to share. You can find out more at

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Speaker 1: un Explained podcast dot com and reach us online through

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Speaker 1: Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast at