Latest / Ridiculous History / New England versus Vampires, Part One: The Brutal, Terrifying Life of Early Colonists

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New England versus Vampires, Part One: The Brutal, Terrifying Life of Early Colonists · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:30
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
0:39
Speaker 1: and is going to send me some out of context
0:42
Speaker 1: photos at some point. Everybody get ready, I'll update you
0:45
Speaker 1: if they're safer. Work. Big shout out to our returning
0:49
Speaker 1: guest producer, the one and only Mr Lowell Brilliante, also
0:53
Speaker 1: the creator of the Prodigy podcast. Check it out as
0:57
Speaker 1: soon as you get a chance, but don't check it
1:00
Speaker 1: out just yet. Check it out after you listen to
1:03
Speaker 1: today's episode, where I am joined with a returning special
1:08
Speaker 1: guest for their third time on the show. Fellow Ridiculous Historians,
1:13
Speaker 1: you know him as the creator of the soundtrack of
1:16
Speaker 1: this show. You know him as the creator of Ephemeral,
1:20
Speaker 1: one of the best podcast out there, neck and neck
1:23
Speaker 1: with Prodigy in my opinion, Please join me and welcoming back.
1:27
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, you guys do the best. I mean, you
1:30
Speaker 1: do the best. Introductions. I was gonna say you guys,
1:32
Speaker 1: but Noel's not here. Noel is on Adventures separate adventures
1:36
Speaker 1: from Max. That's my writer or die co host Noel Brown.
1:39
Speaker 1: We are doing this with his blessing and uh adoration
1:43
Speaker 1: of you. At least he will be returning soon. But yeah,
1:47
Speaker 1: you're you're you are our draft pick. You're the You're
1:52
Speaker 1: the one person out of all twelve friends that Nolan
1:56
Speaker 1: I have and out of those twelve, out of the
2:00
Speaker 1: five that were available, you were the one who said, yes,
2:05
Speaker 1: you know, it's nice to be on a list of
2:07
Speaker 1: any size or kind, right, That's what the n s
2:10
Speaker 1: A is always delegated. Yeah, so, Alex, this is as
2:15
Speaker 1: you know we talked off air. This is one of
2:17
Speaker 1: my favorite times of the year because we are hurtling
2:21
Speaker 1: toward the end of the calendar and on the way
2:24
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,
2:31
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.
2:37
Speaker 1: I don't know if that, but you know, like trick
2:39
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
2:46
Speaker 1: is in October October four. I'm all fall all Halloween
2:51
Speaker 1: ever since I can remember. Still there. Yeah, yeah, all
2:55
Speaker 1: about it. Nice. So you are imminently qualified for this.
3:02
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
3:08
Speaker 1: we talked off air, you and Lowell and I about
3:12
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
3:43
Speaker 1: want vampire jokes. Ben, I don't know if I have
3:47
Speaker 1: a whole bunch prepared, it's gonna say something like, oh,
3:50
Speaker 1: Noel's not you know here because I you know, it
3:53
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.
4:01
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
4:06
Speaker 1: it would have totally like not smiled at you or
4:09
Speaker 1: talk to you until we got in here and we're
4:11
Speaker 1: just pro like harsh my frown shrow. That's fantastic. Yeah.
4:14
Speaker 1: I mean some people think vampire jokes are pain in
4:17
Speaker 1: the neck, but I dig them because my bar for
4:21
Speaker 1: comedy is like way low. I was thinking about vampires
4:25
Speaker 1: so much today, but I think literally any vampire punt
4:28
Speaker 1: is gonna get me fantastic. Okay, yes, uh, also tell
4:33
Speaker 1: me if we need to dial it back, because I
4:35
Speaker 1: got I got vampires on the mind as well. We're okay.
4:39
Speaker 1: So when we talked about vampires today, what do we
4:42
Speaker 1: usually think about, Alex, Like, what do you think is
4:44
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe? Eastern Europe? Okay, you know Olden times like
4:48
Speaker 1: medieval times, fangs, I think of lad then Paler. Yeah. Yeah,
4:54
Speaker 1: if we're gonna go like literal though, I and we
4:57
Speaker 1: could get into that if you want. I I it
4:59
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
5:18
Speaker 1: sort of pull off. What would you call an unnecessary cave?
5:22
Speaker 1: I mean, well, I you know, it's a necessary cape.
5:25
Speaker 1: A necessary cape is when it's cold out and you
5:30
Speaker 1: don't have other kinds of clothing, or I would say
5:34
Speaker 1: a necessary cape if you're a kid and you're playing superhero,
5:38
Speaker 1: you need you need a blanket like that to find
5:40
Speaker 1: your character. Capes often go on flying figures that fly.
5:46
Speaker 1: Superheroes and vampires fly. Sometimes sometimes the rules aren't clear.
5:53
Speaker 1: What is interesting is that the what you do, what
5:56
Speaker 1: you describe perfectly like immortality, maybe some helio phobia. These
6:02
Speaker 1: kinds of things all sort of coalesced in our idea
6:05
Speaker 1: the modern vampire. But as as you know, if you
6:09
Speaker 1: look back across the span of human civilization, different cultures
6:13
Speaker 1: around the planet, you'll see something like a vampire exist
6:17
Speaker 1: in folklore. And often I don't know, maybe I'm being
6:21
Speaker 1: like a grass is Greener on the other side of
6:23
Speaker 1: the grave guy, but I feel like a lot of
6:26
Speaker 1: other cultures have more interesting ideas of vampires, or pre
6:31
Speaker 1: Bram Stoker, there was a lot more variation in the idea.
6:36
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
6:44
Speaker 1: for the people of early New England. You're talking about
6:49
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?
7:02
Speaker 1: So when we think of New England, we often early
7:05
Speaker 1: New England people often think of things like the Salem
7:08
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
7:18
Speaker 1: were to paint this scene of early life in let's
7:24
Speaker 1: say the seventeen hundreds in New England, then we see
7:28
Speaker 1: it's a pretty brutal life, right, there's not I mean,
7:31
Speaker 1: people are it's not unusual for people as starved to
7:35
Speaker 1: death the colonists or having conflicts with indigenous people. Uh.
7:41
Speaker 1: People are struggling to grow food in an unfamiliar climate,
7:45
Speaker 1: and there's disease like everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. I I was
7:51
Speaker 1: lucky enough to work on a show called Unobscured, and
7:54
Speaker 1: in its first season I still work on it. But
7:55
Speaker 1: in its first season, we we was all about the
7:58
Speaker 1: Salem Which Trials and we got to interview all these
8:00
Speaker 1: the these greatest eminent historians, um that have done really
8:03
Speaker 1: incredible work about and it's it's it's really interesting. It's
8:06
Speaker 1: just like a few months in two But yeah, everything
8:10
Speaker 1: you said, I mean, it was it was super hard
8:12
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
8:18
Speaker 1: think there's this idea that um, you know, at least
8:21
Speaker 1: this is I feel like the idea that I walked
8:23
Speaker 1: away from, like you know, maybe primary school with it.
8:25
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
8:32
Speaker 1: and they came here and they got to practice it
8:34
Speaker 1: and it was super nice. But really people were had
8:39
Speaker 1: very strong opinions here in very different opinions, and that
8:43
Speaker 1: led a lot to sort of where people settled and
8:45
Speaker 1: so like the differences between different towns, even within Massachusetts,
8:48
Speaker 1: of the difference between Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. In the
8:50
Speaker 1: different Vermont and Connecticut, it was often like very sort
8:55
Speaker 1: of furtive ground for disagreements of all kinds. Y s. Yeah,
9:00
Speaker 1: especially when you consider that for people in the secular world,
9:05
Speaker 1: or even for people who consider themselves religious. In the
9:08
Speaker 1: modern day, some of these doctrinal differences might seem relatively
9:13
Speaker 1: like not not too crazy, can't we all just get along?
9:17
Speaker 1: But for these folks, they were hard enough limits to
9:21
Speaker 1: make visiting another another area or another community feel almost
9:26
Speaker 1: as though when we're traveling to a foreign country and
9:29
Speaker 1: culturally in some ways, you can see how people would
9:31
Speaker 1: feel that way because these are these are folks immigrating
9:35
Speaker 1: from various parts of Europe right over time. So you're right,
9:39
Speaker 1: this was not as hunky dorry as many public schools
9:42
Speaker 1: taught us. Uh, it's quite the opposite. Uh. This this
9:47
Speaker 1: episode owes a lot to a retired state archaeologist in
9:51
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
10:02
Speaker 1: England between seventeen eighty six and eighteen hundred six is
10:09
Speaker 1: when health officials first started saying we should figure out
10:13
Speaker 1: how many people are dying each year. I swear there
10:16
Speaker 1: were more people at the last Christmas party, you know
10:20
Speaker 1: they I know that sounds cool, but they when they
10:23
Speaker 1: when they calculated this, they said that for tuberculosis alone,
10:28
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
10:50
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
11:05
Speaker 1: always That's why always assumed. I don't have a hard
11:07
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
11:14
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
11:21
Speaker 1: that you mind that. That just clarified it for me,
11:24
Speaker 1: which I noticedn't translate into audio. But okay, okay, I
11:28
Speaker 1: get it. I get it. I get a consumption. Yes,
11:30
Speaker 1: it's not so because I would think, you know, I would.
11:32
Speaker 1: I always hear that, you know, consumption is about it eating.
11:34
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
11:42
Speaker 1: the menu. Yeah, this is And later in Gosh two,
11:49
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
11:58
Speaker 1: to him. No, no, of course, who listens to doctors.
12:01
Speaker 1: Term theory was not very popular, as I understand it.
12:04
Speaker 1: When it came out. People like, what there is not
12:06
Speaker 1: little entities living all over the place. It's magic, like
12:11
Speaker 1: it's always been, it always has been. Yeah, And and
12:15
Speaker 1: that reminds me the story of Samul weis the one
12:17
Speaker 1: guy who said, hey, everybody, maybe we should wash our hands.
12:21
Speaker 1: Since we're doctors, maybe we should just scrub our hands
12:23
Speaker 1: a little. I didn't even have to be soaked, just
12:25
Speaker 1: run some water over him before we stick him inside people.
12:29
Speaker 1: And they were like, this guy is an ass. Lock
12:32
Speaker 1: them up. They put him in an institution, right, you
12:34
Speaker 1: know how I learned that. Uh no, it's not a spoiler.
12:37
Speaker 1: They say it at Midnight Mass in one of these
12:39
Speaker 1: long monologues at midnight Mass. Yeah, I love midnight Mass.
12:42
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it, and I thought,
12:46
Speaker 1: it's the problems, but maybe we want to include me
12:48
Speaker 1: saying that because I don't want to get flak from
12:51
Speaker 1: Midnight Mass from fans of it. Oh no, no, I
12:55
Speaker 1: think people would agree. But uh, speaking of speaking and problems,
12:59
Speaker 1: can asumption, like the consumption is a problem. Here we've
13:04
Speaker 1: got a quote from Belentoni who says this death toll
13:08
Speaker 1: referring to New England is not only terrifying, it's also
13:11
Speaker 1: a horrific way to die. Consumptives lost weight, they coughed
13:15
Speaker 1: up blood, their skin turned ashen, and sometimes they died
13:19
Speaker 1: a slow death, almost as if well, if we could
13:23
Speaker 1: get a creepy sound cue here, someone was sucking the
13:26
Speaker 1: life out of them. And like you, you set us
13:34
Speaker 1: up perfectly here, Alex. This is before germ theory. Even
13:38
Speaker 1: the learned men of the day, the physicians aren't sure
13:42
Speaker 1: how to really explain how infectious diseases are spread. And
13:47
Speaker 1: because no one had an explanation, people started thinking through
13:52
Speaker 1: like their own ideas of what this could be. Yeah,
13:57
Speaker 1: you know one other thing that I that I uh,
14:00
Speaker 1: that's really kind of terrifying, um that I didn't realize
14:03
Speaker 1: about tuberculosis or consumption. I mean, just just call it consumption.
14:06
Speaker 1: It sounds class here, It's it's really creepy. It's a
14:10
Speaker 1: really well named disease. Now that you've made it so
14:13
Speaker 1: you've illustrated it so well for me. But one of
14:16
Speaker 1: the things, one of the things that I learned, and
14:18
Speaker 1: when you sort of read on this this subject, you
14:20
Speaker 1: hear this name Michael Bell a lot, Michael Bell. It
14:24
Speaker 1: seems to be is like the guy who really has
14:26
Speaker 1: has connected tuberculosis that the awful I mean tuberculous being
14:32
Speaker 1: the leading killer of people in New England at this time.
14:35
Speaker 1: Uh and uh, this particular panic that we're talking about today.
14:39
Speaker 1: But one of the things that that I learned from
14:41
Speaker 1: him is that tuberculosis or consumption could be very slow acting.
14:46
Speaker 1: It could come on and then it could go dormant,
14:49
Speaker 1: and it could rest dormant in you for years and
14:53
Speaker 1: then suddenly could come back. People and also you know,
14:57
Speaker 1: it was sort of a selective hller. It seems like
15:00
Speaker 1: like people in close quarters. You know, it would spread
15:04
Speaker 1: like a wildfire from one family member to the next,
15:07
Speaker 1: but then someone in the family might just not get it,
15:10
Speaker 1: or maybe they carry it for a long time and
15:12
Speaker 1: it wouldn't affect them till later. Has some eerie parallels
15:15
Speaker 1: to coronavirus obviously, and just the way that you you like,
15:20
Speaker 1: don't know when it's going to strike, but you know
15:22
Speaker 1: it's sort of in your midst it's out there. Yeah,
15:25
Speaker 1: And that's an example of this would be perhaps the
15:30
Speaker 1: life of Doc Holiday as played by Val Kilmer and
15:34
Speaker 1: two so, which is not super accurate, but but he
15:38
Speaker 1: has traveled as a consumptive to a different environment with
15:43
Speaker 1: the hope being that a different climate will um will
15:49
Speaker 1: help him survive to berculosis. A lot of people in
15:53
Speaker 1: New England at this time they didn't have that option.
15:56
Speaker 1: They couldn't say no, perha was summer in Greek, so whatever,
16:00
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. They were like trying not
16:03
Speaker 1: to cough blood on whatever they were growing, or you know,
16:06
Speaker 1: the kids they're trying to feed. And you described something
16:10
Speaker 1: that I think is incredibly important here, Alex, the the
16:13
Speaker 1: paranoia this kind of thing can create because you are
16:19
Speaker 1: probably living in close quarters with people. A lot of
16:22
Speaker 1: folks the family is living in a in a small structure.
16:26
Speaker 1: They're not able to effectively fluorentine if if they practice
16:31
Speaker 1: some concept like that. In many cases, just living in
16:36
Speaker 1: the same home and these small structures was enough for
16:40
Speaker 1: the disease to spread throughout the entire family. But Not
16:42
Speaker 1: only would it maybe playball sometimes and then go dormant
16:47
Speaker 1: and then go back on its game over years. Not
16:51
Speaker 1: only would that occur, but people couldn't predict it. People
16:55
Speaker 1: didn't know someone. You would think you were fine, and
16:58
Speaker 1: then you would start wasting away, but it had been
17:01
Speaker 1: several months after a relative had died. That's just when
17:04
Speaker 1: you were tuberculosis for some reason went active. And that's
17:08
Speaker 1: what they talk a lot about. Health experts and historians
17:12
Speaker 1: talk a lot about tuberculosis in terms of latency and active,
17:17
Speaker 1: like latent tuberculosis, dormant or active. And at some point
17:21
Speaker 1: anywhere between seventy to nine of the population of the
17:26
Speaker 1: US had either latent or active tuberculosis. Nowadays, as you know,
17:32
Speaker 1: if you're listening, we figured out we the human species,
17:36
Speaker 1: not Alex Lowell and I figured out that tuberculosis has
17:39
Speaker 1: spread through the air. So just like with COVID. Remember
17:43
Speaker 1: did you ever go out during the pandemic and accidentally
17:46
Speaker 1: cough somewhere? Yeah, I feel like I. I I coughed
17:49
Speaker 1: in the office today a few times, and I feel
17:52
Speaker 1: like you're almost staring at me, even though there's there's
17:54
Speaker 1: four of you here. Um like I could spread to
17:57
Speaker 1: tuberculosis to you, I thought he's never going to call
17:59
Speaker 1: an sumption consumption. I could consumpt you from here, Yes, yes,
18:04
Speaker 1: one could be consumpted, which I think we should use
18:07
Speaker 1: instead of consumed. Well, yeah, clearly consumed is at the end.
18:12
Speaker 1: You're consumpted at the beginning. Yeah, it's true. But because
18:16
Speaker 1: people didn't have the benefit of germ theory, they weren't
18:22
Speaker 1: sure how to what caused it, and they weren't sure,
18:26
Speaker 1: more importantly, how to stop it. And in places like Lynn, Massachusetts,
18:30
Speaker 1: this consumption, whatever it is, becomes the leading cause of death.
18:35
Speaker 1: We mean, entire families are gone there, as the more
18:41
Speaker 1: dramatic would put it, their bloodline has been erased, consumed,
18:45
Speaker 1: and no one, no one could figure out what happened,
18:49
Speaker 1: why people would suddenly get this incredibly unpleasant death sentence.
18:55
Speaker 1: And if we go back to Michael Bell, who really
18:59
Speaker 1: did write the book, he's the guy, he says, he
19:05
Speaker 1: points out some differences between COVID nineteen and consumption. He says,
19:12
Speaker 1: one of the primary differences is that it is, like
19:15
Speaker 1: you pointed out, Alex, it's much slower to manifest and
19:20
Speaker 1: it doesn't explode through a population and when when something
19:24
Speaker 1: explodes through population, it will leave behind people who were
19:27
Speaker 1: either lucky or had some kind of natural immunity. But
19:32
Speaker 1: this instead goes in and out of of I don't
19:37
Speaker 1: want to call it remission, but it goes in and
19:39
Speaker 1: out of being active. No one knows. And this could
19:43
Speaker 1: go for this could go on for decades before it
19:46
Speaker 1: killed them anyhow, Because people were so terrified rightly of
19:54
Speaker 1: dying or having their loved ones dying, they were trying
19:56
Speaker 1: to find causes. I think it was eighteen ninety two
20:01
Speaker 1: after discovering after the discovery of the bacteria, there was
20:05
Speaker 1: one doctor who was still who was still insist on
20:08
Speaker 1: things like to burcul loisis is caused by drunkenness and
20:12
Speaker 1: want and povert. Yeah, they always blame the poor. It's
20:16
Speaker 1: playing the poor. Just be less poor. That's what I
20:22
Speaker 1: would do when you want to s're spending time with
20:25
Speaker 1: the poor, weren't you? You know they mingled with the poor.
20:29
Speaker 1: Do you know how I smingled with the poor? Jesus Christ,
20:33
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a fan of the book. Yeah, he's famous
20:36
Speaker 1: for that. He's famous hip for that, amongst many other
20:41
Speaker 1: and people were praying. People were seeking spiritual protection in
20:46
Speaker 1: the face of let's see not just not just to
20:49
Speaker 1: brcular consumption, excuse me, but cholera, smallpox, yellow fever, measles, influenza,
20:56
Speaker 1: and then just straight up plague. M There is a
21:07
Speaker 1: I think kind of common misconception that I've also held
21:10
Speaker 1: with New England of this time too, that when you
21:13
Speaker 1: say spiritual protection, I think we all think kind of,
21:16
Speaker 1: you know, standard Protestant Christian kind of practices and beliefs.
21:23
Speaker 1: But there is also a whole lot of gray area
21:26
Speaker 1: to that, and there's a whole lot of other sort
21:29
Speaker 1: of traditions from the Old World and maybe some sort
21:32
Speaker 1: of new New World traditions that get mixed into that.
21:35
Speaker 1: And there's been folk magic. There's a lot of folk
21:39
Speaker 1: magic practice. You see it in all the way back
21:41
Speaker 1: in the six hundreds throughout the Salem witch trials and
21:45
Speaker 1: again here in the in the vampire panic. Yeah, you do,
21:49
Speaker 1: and there is It's strange because folklore is probably best
21:53
Speaker 1: described as a conversation between cultures at these points, uh
21:57
Speaker 1: or various points in history. And you can see it
22:01
Speaker 1: in Appalachia later, you can really you can see it anywhere. Uh.
22:06
Speaker 1: Some practice of what would be called folk magic. And
22:09
Speaker 1: to be clear, we're not saying that in a dismissive way.
22:12
Speaker 1: We're saying that these are practices, values, and belief systems
22:17
Speaker 1: that maybe aren't treated with the same dogma of an
22:22
Speaker 1: organized religion. Well, they don't come from an official source, right,
22:26
Speaker 1: there's no one in the clergy that's telling you to
22:28
Speaker 1: hang a horseshoe upside down above your door to keep
22:31
Speaker 1: you know, ward off evil spirits or you know, leave
22:34
Speaker 1: your boots faced up by the fire or did they
22:37
Speaker 1: burn their boots. Well, it depends on what's going on.
22:39
Speaker 1: It depends if there was there was a thing with
22:41
Speaker 1: boots and the fireplace and keeping the devil away. You know,
22:45
Speaker 1: I don't they're not gonna say that to you in church,
22:49
Speaker 1: you know, during the sermon, but you know someone might
22:52
Speaker 1: come up to you afterwards, like, you know, if you're
22:54
Speaker 1: really having an in issue with the devil, maybe pop
22:57
Speaker 1: those boots off tonight. Can it be anybody boots and
23:00
Speaker 1: then go it's probably better if it's yours. I took
23:03
Speaker 1: off my boots as soon as we get in the studio.
23:05
Speaker 1: That's true. Are those boots? Yeah? Oh nice to these
23:08
Speaker 1: Australian boots. If I say the name, do you think
23:11
Speaker 1: they sponsor us? Maybe if it is just called blond stunts.
23:16
Speaker 1: They're so I've had a lot of boots. Man, they're tough. Yeah,
23:19
Speaker 1: this is not this is not planned as an ad,
23:22
Speaker 1: but I do want to say an Alex's defense. We
23:25
Speaker 1: were hanging out at our favorite local bar, which is
23:28
Speaker 1: again longtime listeners, called the local, and I had asked
23:32
Speaker 1: him about his boots and then we went like you
23:35
Speaker 1: told me about them kind of in detail because I
23:38
Speaker 1: was looking for a good pair of but I think
23:40
Speaker 1: I put them on the table. You propped the foot up.
23:43
Speaker 1: It did. My girlfriend turned me on him. She she
23:46
Speaker 1: had a pair of these. We took him the petrified forest.
23:50
Speaker 1: We accidentally went off trail and stepped in some cook
23:53
Speaker 1: from the prehistoric age, you know, killed some burgeoning life forms. Yeah,
23:58
Speaker 1: it's still stuck to those shoes. But man, they're they're
24:01
Speaker 1: about as tough as you can get. That's awesome, blood Stone.
24:03
Speaker 1: My name is Alex Wlams. I hope I would love
24:07
Speaker 1: to get a sponsorship going on. Uh why also love
24:11
Speaker 1: to be sponsored by not maybe early New England, but vampires.
24:16
Speaker 1: If you're out there, if you're listening, to this show.
24:18
Speaker 1: There are apparently, um there is and this doesn't really
24:22
Speaker 1: all that surprising, is but there's a segment of the
24:24
Speaker 1: population that, like in some capacity in surveys, responds that
24:30
Speaker 1: they are vampires. Yes, different types of vampires to write
24:34
Speaker 1: real vampires. Oh like I must I must drink blood.
24:39
Speaker 1: I must drink blood. Not just people that effective vampire lifestyle,
24:43
Speaker 1: but people that consider themselves to actually be vampires. Yeah,
24:46
Speaker 1: I've I've heard of this. I've seen there are a
24:49
Speaker 1: couple of documentaries about people like this. On the more
24:52
Speaker 1: extreme end, uh, there will be people who claim that
24:56
Speaker 1: they also cannot eat conventional sustenance. They can't eat conventional
25:01
Speaker 1: food or drink. You were drank blood before, Ben, Yes,
25:04
Speaker 1: of course, how much like I stuck that, you know, like,
25:08
Speaker 1: you know, I cut my you know, I gotta cut
25:10
Speaker 1: or something on my you know, on my own body,
25:14
Speaker 1: and and you know trained a little bit, you know, Yeah,
25:17
Speaker 1: salty irony. I mean with the largest quantity of blood
25:21
Speaker 1: you think you ever or if you've got something you're
25:23
Speaker 1: you know, you got a tooth that gets messed up,
25:25
Speaker 1: you get blood in your mouth, you lost one time? Yeah, yeah,
25:29
Speaker 1: right right right, Um, well I am not going to answer, uh,
25:36
Speaker 1: any more questions about that experience. I guess it is
25:40
Speaker 1: a pretty taboos subject, right, Like, if you were into that,
25:42
Speaker 1: how many people do you think you could talk to
25:44
Speaker 1: about it? Probably, you know what, maybe not everybody, but
25:49
Speaker 1: the people you could talk to about it would be
25:51
Speaker 1: a very passionate community. They would want to share those stories, right.
25:56
Speaker 1: The X Files is a great episode with vampires, and
25:59
Speaker 1: they have more than but there's more where it's like
26:01
Speaker 1: three kind of young sexy vampires like living together and
26:05
Speaker 1: they've got some kind of esque relationship heavily implied. Yeah,
26:10
Speaker 1: and they've got trauma. But I feel like there's the
26:13
Speaker 1: lead that kind of you know, has this also sort
26:16
Speaker 1: of sexual energy going on with Molder is like describing
26:21
Speaker 1: how save him fulfilling drinking blood is, Yeah, that's the
26:27
Speaker 1: The idea of the seductive powers of a vampire is
26:35
Speaker 1: I don't know how. It's definitely not as prevalent in
26:39
Speaker 1: early New England as it is today, right Like today
26:43
Speaker 1: you've got the Twilight Vampire. Today you've got you know,
26:47
Speaker 1: the the seductive vampire. And it's funny because it goes
26:51
Speaker 1: into another thing kind of unrelated. They're often often very
26:55
Speaker 1: like sensual words are in print and in speech used
27:00
Speaker 1: to describe two things sex and food, you know what
27:04
Speaker 1: I mean, decadent, luscious, that kind of stuff. And it
27:09
Speaker 1: makes sense that she's describing and this this character that
27:13
Speaker 1: you're talking about X files is describing essentially was eating
27:18
Speaker 1: in very centual terms. But that's not what the vampires
27:20
Speaker 1: they're like in the in the vampire pandemic in New
27:24
Speaker 1: England at all. They're much more honestly, they're much more
27:28
Speaker 1: like zombies. Yeah, there's this idea that so the idea
27:36
Speaker 1: of what we call the vampire first appears in Slavic
27:41
Speaker 1: Europe around the tenth century. There have been plenty of
27:43
Speaker 1: other human like monsters drinking blood, but you know, good
27:47
Speaker 1: old vamps started in Slavic Europe. And according to Bell,
27:52
Speaker 1: who we mentioned earlier, his his argument is that Slavic
27:56
Speaker 1: and Germanic immigrants brought those superstitions vampires with them in
28:02
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds, maybe around the time a specific group
28:07
Speaker 1: from Germany was colonizing Pennsylvania or maybe Hessian mercenaries, right,
28:12
Speaker 1: And he thinks that you can't pin it down to
28:16
Speaker 1: like one family coming through town and saying, WHOA I
28:21
Speaker 1: remember these from the old country. You've got vampires. He
28:25
Speaker 1: argues that it probably came from more than one time,
28:28
Speaker 1: through more than one source, which makes sense to me
28:31
Speaker 1: because it feels like corroboration. Then right, you've got multiple
28:34
Speaker 1: people who are seemingly confirming, oh yeah, vampires. That's way
28:40
Speaker 1: different from one person going I think it's vampires because
28:43
Speaker 1: somebody else in town walks up and goes, someone say vampires.
28:46
Speaker 1: I agree, it's kind of I don't want to get
28:49
Speaker 1: too far ahead of it, but it's it's even further
28:51
Speaker 1: complicated by like whoa who was used in contemporaneously, Who
28:57
Speaker 1: was using the term vampire? You know? Was it just
29:01
Speaker 1: the media, which is what it seems like. It was
29:04
Speaker 1: mostly a word that was used in media of the time,
29:07
Speaker 1: but not maybe so much in uh, individual accounts. And
29:11
Speaker 1: what were they thinking of when they said vampire? You know? Yeah,
29:17
Speaker 1: that's the thing. It's what's in a word? What did
29:20
Speaker 1: the word vampire mean to them versus to us today?
29:24
Speaker 1: And I agree that it's much more like the modern
29:26
Speaker 1: idea of a zombie. Uh. Look, if if I'm a yes,
29:30
Speaker 1: if if I could explain it to you and you
29:32
Speaker 1: tell me if I've got it. Okay. We're in a family,
29:35
Speaker 1: the Williams ben Bowland, little brilliante, ridiculous history family. Like
29:41
Speaker 1: we are here in this little studio together, and Low,
29:44
Speaker 1: great producer as he is, gets sick with consumption. We
29:48
Speaker 1: do our best. We sent him to a sanitarium, We
29:50
Speaker 1: send him to Colorado Springs. He seems like he's gonna
29:53
Speaker 1: get better. He doesn't. He gets all skinny and he's foaming,
29:58
Speaker 1: and he's got blood coming out, and he's he's not
30:01
Speaker 1: doing well. He's staying up weird hours of the night.
30:03
Speaker 1: We're like weirded out by them. And then one day
30:05
Speaker 1: it's mercifully over. I swear it's allergies. Uh those were
30:14
Speaker 1: those were his last words, Oh, poor little And so
30:20
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, the mid seventeen hundreds, late seventeen hundreds.
30:25
Speaker 1: We want to bury him in the ground, having a
30:27
Speaker 1: nice Christian funeral, but the ground is frozen. Right. We
30:31
Speaker 1: stick this guy and above ground to him in a box.
30:34
Speaker 1: We have the pastor come, say a few nice words,
30:37
Speaker 1: ashes to ash this dust to dust, and we go
30:40
Speaker 1: on with the rest of our lives, you know, missing
30:43
Speaker 1: Low all the while. But then Ben gets sick. I do,
30:49
Speaker 1: and the same symptoms are happening, the same weird stuff.
30:56
Speaker 1: His cheeks are getting flushed, he's getting just like eyes
31:00
Speaker 1: are sunken in even more than usual. He's like coughing
31:06
Speaker 1: and he's starting to cough blood feel I've lost my
31:09
Speaker 1: epic diete. And we sent him to the Adirondacks, to
31:12
Speaker 1: upstate New York because we've got all the money to
31:14
Speaker 1: send people to all this an I go along to
31:17
Speaker 1: bring the blood stones, break them in. But Ben's not
31:21
Speaker 1: getting better. Everything we try, we take one of the
31:23
Speaker 1: best doctors who do like leeches and blood lighting and whatever.
31:26
Speaker 1: We're taken with all the best doctors, and it's not working.
31:30
Speaker 1: And I've tried everything. I want so badly to save
31:32
Speaker 1: my guest co host. So I don't know. I I guess
31:36
Speaker 1: I guess I'm your guest co host. But whatever. Uh,
31:38
Speaker 1: And you know, people in town start saying to me,
31:42
Speaker 1: you know what it is, right, I mean, you know
31:45
Speaker 1: what you can't It's because low over there in the
31:49
Speaker 1: ground is exercising his will from beyond the grave on Ben.
31:54
Speaker 1: He's literally getting out of the corps, is getting out
31:59
Speaker 1: of the grave or out of the tomb at night,
32:02
Speaker 1: probably when no one's looking and coming and praying upon you.
32:07
Speaker 1: Or is it more of a psychic kind of spiritual
32:11
Speaker 1: way that it's you know, like he like he's somehow
32:14
Speaker 1: projecting himself onto you. And so it's is it is it?
32:18
Speaker 1: Is it physical? Is it? Is it spiritual? Spectral? So
32:23
Speaker 1: this part, this is interesting because this is where we
32:26
Speaker 1: get to the first off, excellent rendition tentet I've got
32:32
Speaker 1: that's more or less the the idea, that is exactly
32:34
Speaker 1: the idea. And people back then, we're just as intelligent
32:38
Speaker 1: as people are now. They didn't have access to the
32:42
Speaker 1: same um level of research or the same like knowledge
32:47
Speaker 1: of medicine that modern folks have, but they weren't knuckleheads.
32:50
Speaker 1: You know. There were plenty of skeptical people who would say,
32:53
Speaker 1: all right, well that's malarkey. But then there were also
32:57
Speaker 1: people who would say, mmm, maybe I believe in an afterlife,
33:02
Speaker 1: so maybe this is another part of it that I
33:04
Speaker 1: am not aware of. And there were people who believe
33:06
Speaker 1: that they were physics, they were mentally u and through
33:11
Speaker 1: some in comporeal form, they were traveling to their victims,
33:15
Speaker 1: drawn by their life force, and they're the fact that
33:18
Speaker 1: they had known one another in the waking world, or like,
33:22
Speaker 1: the big question if you're a skeptical at all, is
33:26
Speaker 1: if someone is physically rising from the grave, why is
33:29
Speaker 1: the grave not disturbed? Right? That was one of the
33:32
Speaker 1: big questions. And we see, um, we see accusations of
33:36
Speaker 1: vampirism in other parts of history when someone had been
33:40
Speaker 1: prematurely buried, which was becomes a huge conserve, I think
33:45
Speaker 1: in in Victorian times especially, just check out the inventions
33:49
Speaker 1: people made with a little I'm not dead bells, that's
33:52
Speaker 1: what I call them. But uh, but I think he
33:55
Speaker 1: nailed it because even if you're more skeptical at this point,
33:58
Speaker 1: if you're surrounded by you've lost multiple people in your community,
34:03
Speaker 1: you've lost more than one family member, and you think
34:05
Speaker 1: more might be on the way, maybe your maybe your
34:08
Speaker 1: last healthy kid isn't looking so healthy. Then you start
34:11
Speaker 1: to say, ah, I don't know, maybe I'll try anything.
34:16
Speaker 1: And if you it's a really good point that people
34:20
Speaker 1: people aren't haven't been all that different at any point
34:23
Speaker 1: in time, right. You know, it's a it's a crazy
34:26
Speaker 1: it's a crazy story, a crazy collection of stories. But
34:29
Speaker 1: you go and you try to look at it empathetically.
34:33
Speaker 1: And this comes from Bell too, but I mean, you know,
34:35
Speaker 1: imagine the father who has tried everything for his last
34:39
Speaker 1: alien kid, and it's like, I guess I'll try this
34:43
Speaker 1: crazy thing. I'll dig up my dead wife and this
34:46
Speaker 1: is where we get to the grizzly strange. All two
34:51
Speaker 1: real stories. We're actually going to make this a two
34:55
Speaker 1: parter because Alex Lowell and I really want to. Well
35:00
Speaker 1: again too, the grave of it sounds insensitive, Well we do.
35:04
Speaker 1: We do want to We do want to give some
35:07
Speaker 1: real examples, and we want to spend some time here.
35:10
Speaker 1: So we're going to pause and we'll be back very
35:13
Speaker 1: soon with part two of the New England Vampire Panic.
35:17
Speaker 1: In the meantime, I I don't think I've ever done
35:20
Speaker 1: this before, but thank you to Alex Williams, Thank you
35:24
Speaker 1: to Lotle, brilliante. Alex, you are going to come back
35:28
Speaker 1: for the second part of this right fun too, very much,
35:35
Speaker 1: very much? Clothes? Yeah? Not bad? Uh a little? Are you?
35:40
Speaker 1: Are you on board to come back? I think you
35:41
Speaker 1: nailed it with that allergies line? Yeah, let's do it
35:44
Speaker 1: all right, So hey, let me see if you can
35:48
Speaker 1: guess this one. We'll go out because we promised some
35:50
Speaker 1: bad jokes. Hey, Alex, why does Dracula always read the
35:55
Speaker 1: most popular newspapers always read the most person I don't know, then,
36:00
Speaker 1: why does it because he likes the ones with good circulation? Alright, alright, well,
36:06
Speaker 1: we hope that you've weathered that one in YouTube, and
36:08
Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed this ridiculous historians. We hope you
36:11
Speaker 1: tune into part two of this big big thanks to
36:14
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, Big big thanks to Little Brilliante, big thanks
36:17
Speaker 1: to Max Williams, big thanks to my rider Die co
36:21
Speaker 1: host Noel Brown who will be returning soon, and big
36:25
Speaker 1: thanks to Gabe Lousier. Alex. Where can people find Ephemeral?
36:31
Speaker 1: Unlike all of the social media's, it's at Ephemeral dot
36:35
Speaker 1: Show on Instagram. I think some of them don't have
36:37
Speaker 1: the dot. And then our website is www dot Ephemeral
36:41
Speaker 1: Dot Show. All right, and a little where can people
36:44
Speaker 1: find Prodigy? Uh? Whenever they listen to their favorite shows?
36:48
Speaker 1: All right? Well, with no spoilers, then please do check
36:52
Speaker 1: out both Prodigy and Ephemeral. Stay safe, folks, we will
36:56
Speaker 1: talk very soon. In the meantime, let us know what
36:59
Speaker 1: you or Halloween ideas are. I can't wait to hear
37:02
Speaker 1: from you. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
37:12
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
37:14
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. H