Villagers Died While Seeing Vampire at Their Bedsides | Arnold Paole & the Serbian Undead (Ep 315)

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his last thought was what the [ __ ] am I being eaten by a vampire yeah they were Pro cannibalism so this is not lore this is not Legend the story I'm going to tell you is actually documented in government records I am confused by this and maybe I am starting to believe in vampires very spooky hi hey this is two girls one

Meeting Kesha

ghost two girls one ghost and we are your ghostesses that is Karen hello I'm Sabrina and we have a story for you to sink your teeth intoo hell yeah can you guess what we're talking

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about spoiler alert to suck your blood to suck your blood you're a different person though cuz you went somewhere and you met a person that has been on your like Idol bucket list for years and then you called me and I was like oh my gosh I'll call you back later and then I was like I'm just going to wait two days I want you to tell me about it on the podcast I met my hero my idol and a woman who has been such an instrumental part of my life like when I posted the photo on my story people from middle school were messaging me like holy [ __ ] did you die because they know how big of a role she played in my life from a poster in your middle school childhood bedroom to meeting her in Austin Texas Sabrina met I met Kesha so wild and you have a photo it was like such a surreal moment so we were in Austin for South by Southwest and we were there for the iHeart podcast Awards P was presenting and was

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nominated it was one of these weird moments like it's a great place to network just generally but like the woman Andrea gunning who won best True Crime podcast for betrayal shout out to betrayal she's from like Pennsylvania area and I said I'm from New Jersey and she goes oh do you know PDS the high school I went to her cousin is someone I went to high school with like a year older than me that's wild like so small world but also that's so podcasting because even we were on a meeting the other day and I was like where's everyone from are you all in LA and they're like no I'm in San Francisco oh I'm in Indiana Oh I'm in Pennsylvania oh I'm in Texas like podcasting well I guess also just like remote work it's a global indry everywhere everywhere and nowhere all at once y haunting your ears wherever you listen to podcast I'm in the airport for the flight back to Boston MH and we're sitting at a bar like right next to our gate and I'm like oh I feel like we we should be boarding soon so I get up to go check and see if we're boarding and I'm walking back and I see this woman sitting at a table right next to where

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we were sitting and it just instantly I I will know that face anywhere and I walk over to pay and Mike like my heart was beating so fast and I go is that Kesha and then I like sat down at in my bar stool and I was just like I think that's Kesha Say It Ain't So oh my God and P's like you have to go say hi and I was like okay I just what if it wasn't well then that's a compliment to whoever it was but it was her so I gather myself as much as I possibly could and I just go over and I'm like hey I don't want to bother you but I just need you to know I'm such a big fan and then I mentioned some connections that we have and the guy that she was with I was like oh yeah we've been talking to your team so she knew who we were and then she starts asking me all these questions about paranormal investigating and she's like are you a Ghost Hunter and I was like I mean I wouldn't say professionally but we dabble we're hobbyists and then she starts telling me as if I didn't already know that she had a TV show called Conjuring kha and they went and did a bunch of things I was like no way oh my God that's you EXP

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I actually haven't watched it weirdly but she was like wow I like this is making me want to go do an investigation I was like come to Massachusetts we'll do one with you we have so many places to go and I was very much like anyway I don't really want to bother you I just wanted to introduce myself my name is Sabrina nice cool girl I was like nice to meet you meanwhile like dripping sweat under my sweatshirt and like my heart is still pounding and I go up to my campaign I'm like I need to go take a lap because I was like not okay and that's when I immediately called you and texted in all caps I just met Kesha and then I'm walking back and I see pay talking to her and he was like listen she probably didn't say this but she's like really big fan like you've made such an impact on her life and she was like oh my does she want a picture and then I see this and I'm so embarrassed like I feel like a little kid God yeah but I am really grateful I got a picture and because of pain she followed me on Instagram and messaged me and my last message to her was in 2018 when I was at her concert in LA and I was waiting for her to come out and I sent her a message I'm going to pee myself when you come

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onto stage that's so cute honestly Sabrina thank God it was just one message can you imagine if she went back and it was like from the time that Instagram first became a thing in like 2011 if you were just non-stop messaging her which 2011 was the peak of my obsession with her right I know yeah anyway it was a beautiful moment that I'm still not sure really ever happened but I would love if it turns into us actually doing an investigation with her that would be how cool I like can't even fathom it happening like it just feels so it feels like Untouchable I I'm still nervous thinking about it you're making me nervous I'm not even but I am also glad that the first time I met her is not when we're doing something with her because I got that out of the way you know yeah yeah anyway K if you're listening to this I love you and I would make out if you wanted we got to clip that put that on

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your personal Instagram make sure kha sees it oh man so yeah this is a paranormal

The Vampire lore

show but also sometimes it's paranormal when you meet people you love it feels otherworldly it does and it was Destiny calling and I feel like it's also a great reminder that the Paranormal touches everyone everyone experiences ghosts to some degree exactly whether you believe in the Paranormal itself or not and if you're extra unlucky you might experience something else well maybe you're lucky it depends what you want oh well I don't I'm not sure cuz I'm thinking about your topic today right so some people have like sexy dreams about vampires thanks to Twilight and some vampire smut things but today we are talking about a vampire a certain specific vampire from Serbia oh okay and similar to The Legend of vampires being Eternal Everlasting and surviving off of blood and never dying I have a gift for

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you a gift that will never die I got excited for one second and then it immediately turned to fear oh no it's not fearful this is a gift for you oh my gosh these are rose forever mm oh my God Sabrina this is so nice this is for us cuz it can be in here for us they're like floating in this like really cool so cool anyway I got them did they smell how you smelled them yeah they do smell really nice they do smell like roses yeah I'll do what they do in perfumeries smell the lid first smells like nothing there's a scent a small we scent but they'll never die oh my gosh wow how cool aren't they really pretty these are really pretty rose forever New York I thought it was very appropriate for this story and for our podcast which we could keep these who there's a drawer storage we could put crystals in there send us knickknacks send us haunted objects to keep below our roses but thank you Sabrina that's very sweet you're welcome and also if anyone else wants to uh purchase Rose forever for yourself or for other people we do have a little

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promo code and it's linked down in the show notes but you can use two girls 20 twwo girls2 I feel like a little kid cuz I now I'm not going to be able to focus I want to like fidget and touch them I know they feel like real roses cuz they are but it's so Weir it's like this Wild Thing how how magic it is Magic it's spooky it is and I do think to to preserve them you should touch them a little less than K touching them sorry the oils on my finger don't make them last longer when there's things around you you just want to touch them yes touch it touch it anyway vampires something else that does not die or is difficult to kill Karen do you believe in Vampires because I feel like vampires are usually not the most believed in entity it feels very Dracula fantasy it text I feel like it's a hard thing for people to digest to hear me say that I truly wholeheartedly 100% believe in Bigfoot but then I might not

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believe in vampires and I also believe in mermaids and fairies but I might not believe in Vampires but I will say I don't believe in vampires with the caveat that I do specifically believe in New Orleans vampires interesting like I feel like vampires as a whole Global sort of you know it just exists doesn't exist but there's something weird going on in New Orleans and there's maybe just this weird mutation pocket of vamp that's the story the women who came in coffins right I don't know I don't know what to believe what do you believe who am I to say what is real and what is not I think anything is possible and I do think that if vampires exist they're not as sexy as I'd like them to be they're not going to like be like True Blood and twilight romance me the Vampire Diaries but who do you choose Stefan or Damen Daman for sure obviously obviously okay and then Daman if you want to make out

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with me you can who do you choose uh from the Cullen crew um Edward or is Jasper the really weird one yes I think Jasper I named my car after Jasper after the actor that played Jasper my high school car I named I love that Jackson so weird okay but who would you choose him obviously Jasper battle it out we have a lifetime of living as vampires you can have them for a century I'll take them for Cent we'll just swap we'll trade we'll swap okay perfect so this is we're both turning into vampires in this situation I guess yeah Okay cool so I feel like vampires are less believed in especially because the lore is that they are humans turned into vampires whereas Bigfoot is this otherworldly creature mhm that doesn't really crossbreed with humans unfortunately sorry for you um I never say never that's true they have not yet but it's still possibility and I feel like when we hear the word vampire we think of Dracula we think of no Fatu we

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think of True Blood Twilight we think of like horror and smut and then you know if you think more historical you probably think Vlad the Impaler who we talked about I can't remember what episode but we talked about his castle Yeah Vlad also inspired Dracula so also I'm realizing every time we've talked about vampires it's been you covering it cuz I really like I think they're so fascinating and like in doing the research for this episode I realized how many historical stories of vampires there are that we have I've never heard of it's like one of those confusing things where it's like is it because of the time in which they were created in these sort of like Gothic fairy tales or is it something coming out of Transylvania also I think we think of cannibalism or you probably think of cannibalism when you think of vampires yeah a little bit Yeah so the story I'm going to tell you is actually documented in government records so this is not lore this is not Legend This is not a story inspired by a story that

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created Dracula this is documented in government records you can read the English translated version of the record if you want to we'll link it in the show notes was this like government propaganda or is this like holy [ __ ] there's something going on we're documenting it it's holy [ __ ] something's going on we're documenting it wow we'll digest that in a little bit okay this is the monster of Mida mid it

Arnold's encounter

was early 1700s and young Arnold Powell or pole I always want to call him Arnold Palmer because it's like similar was a soldier from Serbia and he was on duty in Greece he was proud to fight for his country to defend what was controlled by Austria and even to die for his country he' imagined his death many times each imagining came with pride and a fight well fought Sweat Beads gripping his eyebrow each iteration he knew his last thought would be of his beloved wife who was back home in Serbia whether a bullet pierced his armor or a blade struck his

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entrails he knew or thought he knew his death would be honorable I have never seen or witnessed someone say the word entrails with love in their heart as they said it and a smile on their face yes yeah it's just part of a romantic love story that their entrails their guts and organs being skewered out but he thought of his wife the whole time yes but then the day came and he was attacked by file on duty but this attack was not like anything he had prepared for no skewering no being shot and instead of his last thought being of his wife his last thought was what the [ __ ] am I being eaten by a vampire in those words exactly the first documented use of [ __ ] yeah I'm just painting the picture you get the idea he's like what the [ __ ] is happening there's someone sucking my blood that is right Arnold Powell was being attacked by a vampire but he didn't die not immediately after the

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attack he's still alive he's studying his body he sees bite marks he realizes his entire body has gone pale he looks pecked and Ill like he is sickly and going to die but he didn't want to die he was not going to die by a vampire bite no that is not what he imagined so he does everything he can he researches who attacked him who was this person and he finds out that the person who attacked him had been dead so then he's like okay okay for sure this is a vampire what is happening I have so many questions too about being buried cuz I I don't know I just kind of thought of vampires as being these like missing people instead of people that like literally had to claw their way out of the ground after a like false death yep and burial yep he goes to the burial site the grave of this man and decides to dig him up and I don't know where this came from I think there was probably and doing some research I think during this time there was a lot of

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study and conjecture about vampires so I think he probably had read or learned of how to proceed so he ate some of the dirt from the grave and then when he found the body he saw that it did not Decay it was not decaying like a normal body would it still seemed very Lively this is so confusing because it's like how do you get in and out of the Grave without disturbing being the land above you as a vampire if his if his body is still there I know that's what's confusing and there's going to be a lot of loose ends and unanswered questions but I think at the so at the end of this whole story we'll do a dissection and an analysis of that time or wait hold on please tell I have an idea okay okay because you know when what we do in the shadows they just kind of like poof into bats what if you can poof into anything they poofs into like a mole or a worm or something works his way up and then poofs back into his vampire body maybe

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that makes total sense to me I understand how he gets in now now no more questions continuing now you know what I'm just going to read from Arnold's words himself from his mouth this is later documented and written down Arnold stated that he had eaten from the earth of the vampire's grave and smeared himself with the vampire's blood in order to be free of the vexation he had suffered and it worked he survived wow and he turns back to his wife and his home of medvza Serbia just a little bit of context of this time this is 1725 now and in the early 1700s Austria had just taken control of Serbia and some other areas after like the Ottoman Empire and there was like an Austria ottoman fight War battle all those words and so basically a lot of this land was pretty devastated after the wars and Winters weather was really really harsh

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farming was pretty like agriculture was pretty desolate and so now in Austrian control there's like a lot of desire to Boom the economy and they decide to focus a lot of their energy into agriculture in this area okay but they're still recovering yeah feed the people and then rebuild exactly so they're still recovering and this area remained in Austrian control until 1739 and Austria kind of had this like benefit to people who lived in the area which is why Arnold found himself in Greece in the first place so they had in order to protect the borders that they had just won in the war they hired and recruited militia men known as haduk which is a word that you'll hear later on but they're basically military men protecting the Border MH and in exchange for doing this work they were promised a lot of land oh so here we are now 1725 Arnold is now back from Battle he

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returns to his homeland with his wife and he's ready to amass all of his land that he was promised wait can you remind me was it at home or was it in Greece that he encountered GRE the vampire yes okay a green vampire okay so now he's like trying to settle down he's with his wife in mza and he starts telling people of his encounter with death and of defeating the Grim Reaper and a vampire and so this is now pretty well known in the town and so he's like goodbye death you're no longer my worry no no longer my problem I'm not dreaming and thinking about how I'm going to die anymore because I just defeated death mhm unfortunately that same year 1725 uh death came for him and not in any way that Arnold had thought of he fell out of a hay wagon broke his neck and died oh my God sorry Arnold and this time there was no defeating death but also I have to say I'm a little bit

The monster returns

surprised that Arnold just accepted his

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resurrection and went home because maybe it's the like story teller side of me I truly thought that he was going to be like whoa I found a secret potion and he was going to start taking from the grave continuously like bits of dirt and selling them like I thought he was going to open like a dirt Apothecary oh to like combat vampires to cure people I think it was specifically if you were bit by a vampire you had to eat from that vampire's grave uh oh okay I thought there was just like some weird magical mineral spell composition of the dirt no and then it was just like a cure off or you get to prolong your life a little bit longer Unfortunately no all right Arthur I understand why you weren't trying to Arnold similar what's up a what up a so Arnold is buried and the town kind of moves on obviously there's some sadness but the town moves on until about 3 weeks later when something strange starts to happen in this town Arnold was

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reported to have been taunting and visiting people in their sleep throughout the town this man is dead how is he doing that he would appear Suddenly at the ends of their beds keeping them up at night terrifying them and after seeing this Visage of Arnold these people would suffer ailments and after about 3 weeks from the burial and death of Arnold four people in the town suddenly Dro Dead four as well as some sheep and livestock whoa which keep the sheep in mind for later okay this is also I do have one outstanding question and I'm not sure that this is something that will be answered because this feels like something we'd have to interview a vampire about okay is there any difference to the vampire themselves whether someone who you've just eaten from survives by taking from your grave or not it does it hurt them or harm them to have survivors I don't know it's a good question I think what this proves is that he didn't actually survive cuz

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clearly he's coming back and he's haunting and hurting people yeah so it just took him actually dying to turn into a vampire a vampire so I think that's the problem cuz it's like oh [ __ ] he said he defeated it but did he right so now the town's people are like this is strange four people mysteriously dying and all of these people had reported seeing a Visage of Arnold Spirit Spirit prior to dying so the towns people start to put the story together and perhaps that tale that Arnold told of his time in Greece and the vampire attack was more than just a story perhaps it was true and perhaps Arnold had in fact become a vampire recalling the manner in which Arnold rid himself of the vampire the town's people decide to do the same so this is now 40 days postmortem they go and visit Arnold's grave and unearth his remains only they're not as they expected it to be his remains are not decaying at all in fact he is looking very spry very

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Lively and they also noticed that there is blood on his shirt as if he had feasted recently oh God not only that but the nails on his hands and feet and the hair on his head and his beard had grown yuck as they would if he was still alive for those 40 days alive so I mean you can probably imagine the gasp that was Gad in that moment the entire town like that's probably a residual haunting now at that cemetery and there are more gasps that were geod later on at this very same Cemetery so the villagers were like we got to do something about this vampire that is now plaguing our town and prevent it from rampaging and killing anymore also what what were his wife's thoughts like she's still alive right unfortunately the wife is not really mentioned in the story aside from my added element of him having her be his last thought that's not his words those are mine so they drove a wooden steak into Arnold's heart and apparently blood

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spewed and Arnold let out a shriek and so they were like oh he for sure was alive so he shrieks Blood starts oozing out of his chest and then he lets out a final groan as if dying but they were like this is not enough we need to be extra sure so they this is a little bit gruesome they cut chop his head off dismembering his head from his body and then they throw his head and his body into a fire until there is nothing but a left over they proceeded to do that same manner of disposal to the four victims that had died because they're like we don't want to take our chances they now become vampires let's just do the same for all of them actually I like that they're really thinking ahead here exactly as far as they know that puts an end to the vampire epidemic in mza or so they think 5 years later in

The plague spreads

1731 17 people fell ill and died is it the Sheep hold on to she the Sheep are

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going to come back in a way that you're not expecting okay I thought the Empire sheep were coming for the whole town now but again not from accidental causes they are just dropping dead and they varied from the age of 10 to 70 they all fell ill with stabbing Sensations in their sides chest pain and involuntary jerking of their limbs but they're like scrambling they're like why are so many people dying and there's this young woman named stosa who fell ill and woke up to a boy trying to strangle her and she was totally fine like she was fine but she's to sleep she wakes up to a boy trying to strangle her and she starts screaming obviously cuz she's like what the [ __ ] someone trying to kill me and the boy daggers backwards and she looks him in the eye and she realizes that is the boy who had died one week earlier so she starts screaming even more and the boy disappears immediately after that encounter she falls ill and just 3 days later she dies from this illness wow so now this time with the death tole climbing they are like there's another vampire something is a muuk and so this time they realized that they clearly had

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not succeeded in riding the town of the vampire the last time and so they call for help they report this to the Austrian military and the commander sends an infectious disease specialist Imperial contagion Medicus Glasser to mza Glasser comes to mza and he's examining the bodies and he's like this is not a vampire this is malnutrition but people in town are so certain that it is more than malnutrition they're like we are doing the best we've done with our crops like people are eating and they're so certain it's a vampire that people are packing up their bags and they're like we're going to leave and obviously to continue with economy and booming they don't want people relocating or leaving Serbia so this time Glazer's like okay you know what I will go look at the bodies with you and he thinks he's just going to prove to them that it's malnutrition mm but they go to the graves they dig up the bodies and a gasp was gasped a GAA was GAA

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because glaz the people were a gas they were a gasp but the people weren't just Glazer was because he realizes these bodies are not decaying the way that they should they are ripe and some of them look better than they did when they had been alive and one of them has like Blood Stained lips and so he is like oh my gosh they're not crazy they're is a vampire so Glazer reports this back to Supreme command and recommends that they send Mill military to execute the vampires as requested word reaches Vienna where the Austrian Emperor literally Rose from his throne and goes my goodness we must send some military officials and medical professionals to go examine and get rid of this problem so he sends multiple officers and Military surgeons to the town of mza to investigate the charge of this group is regimental field surgeon johans flucker I'm sorry if I said your name wrong but johans is the one who goes on I'm just

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thinking about the guy in Frozen that YooHoo big z a blowout I feel like that's how this guy would johans [ __ ] yeah yes but so johans is the one who goes on to write the official document that is the reason we have the government record of the story also I I just want to say I appreciate that the people this whole time I'm thinking about the witch trials and how it's like you know there's someone you see the image of someone like their spectral being is visiting you in the night or whatever but I think at least in this situation everyone is already dead exactly and that is the one difference between accusing pretty big difference the living or accusing the dead right which is why I think the vampire stories are less horrific and there are certain places where they do attack living people and this is just specifically a story in Serbia that they did not kill any living people so shortly after arriving two more people in the town die and the village is like

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we have to continue diser all the bodies and look at them and johans is there for the diser of and the digging up of these bodies they found similar results Lively

Military investigation

looking corpses some even had fresh blood in their organs and looking more youthful than they did in their life upon seeing this johans reported that the bodies were do vampir in vampiric condition and that is filed in the official report what further solidified the belief that this was in fact a vampire epidemic is that they learned that the first few people who died in 1731 had one thing in common Arnold Powell so remember the sheep that died in 1725 along with the four people well in 1725 crops and Agriculture and food was not a plenty and they were like we can't let these go to waste so some people ate the Sheep oh my God one woman her name was Stana and Stana was the first to die

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in 1731 so normally you could just assume like a diseased sheep but if I don't know this is okay but it's five years later right this is what it says in the English translation of the document if people want to look it up it is down below but it is called vilam and rerum which translates to seen and discovered so you can read that but this is verbatim and I'm going to read a couple excerpts from it but this is about Stana a Woman by the name of Stana 20 years old who had died in child birth 2 months ago after a 3-day illness and who had herself said before her death that she had painted herself with the blood of a vampire who for both she and her child which had died right after birth and because of a careless burial this is really morbid had half been eaten by dogs must also become vampires she was quite complete and undecayed after opening the body there was found in the

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cavitat pectoris a quantity of fresh extravascular blood the vessels of the arteries and veins were not as is usual filled with coagulated blood and the whole visera that is the lung liver stomach spleen and intestines were quite fresh as they would be in a healthy person the uterus was however quite enlarged and very inflamed externally for the placenta had remained in place wherefore the same was incomplete utrine the skin on her hands and feet along with the nails fell away on their own but on the other hand completely new nails were evident along with fresh and Vivid skin so basically when she had died before they buried her she was decaying and then when they dug her up like her nails had grown again her skin had kind of refreshed itself which is so weird that there could be this dormy with certain victims but then not others but then that also makes me question whether okay so we're believing that it's the Sheep here that could be the

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connection sure but here's another pitch that I have what if sometimes vampires Feast on Fresh corpses that are already in the ground so you would you would see the initial Decay because there's some sort of like incubation period before it hits like so you're saying like a vampire could Feast on a dead body and bring the dead body back to life almost yeah or like to turn it postmortem into a vampire yeah who are we to say we don't don't make the rules way I don't know why it would be decaying and then not decaying so right it doesn't make sense I do believe that there's probably an incubation period that after death it takes some time to actually turn into because with Arnold's case it took three weeks oh that's true but with the boy it only took one the little boy but he has a smaller body maybe perhaps a course F his metabolism is faster his vampire metabolism okay so field surgeon johanes flucking Jer goes I don't need any other evidence he is now certain that the town is being impacted by vampires so he

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orders all of the recently deceased to be dug up This is 40 bodies in total 17 of those were seemingly preserved and believed to be vampires and I'm just going to read a couple of reports so they they look at all 40 bodies and in the report it does talk about some that do look decayed so that they are not vampires but there are a couple and there's a lot of talk of I mean this is the 1700s a lot of children and women died during child birth and so there's a lot of young children who died I'm just going to read a couple but this one is a Woman by the name of Melissa 60 years old who had died after 3 month sickness and had been buried 90 some days earlier than when they were dug up there was in the chest much liquid blood found and like those mentioned before the organs were in good condition during her dissection all of the militia men haduk who were standing around marveled greatly at her plumpness and her perfect body because apparently through life she

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was very lean and dried up so they emphasized that it was such a surprise that now she was so plump despite being dead and in the grave for 90 days so yes this woman who was otherwise to the men examining her body uh frail and skinny in life was now plump and sexy in death so that to them was another sign that this was a vampire and this is also another person who had eaten the Sheep so again connected to Arnold this is one of those times too where I wish I knew more about the like postmortem sort of reactions that bodies can have because I know that they can bloat yeah bloat but like for how long and I know bacteria as they eat can also contribute to that but like again for how long and also you would think that they're reporting a terrible stench and I don't think that they at least it's not documented H so in contradiction there were two bodies

The village extermination

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again of a mother and a young child who died during childbirth that while dying around the same time and having been buried in the exact same soil just next to the grave of a woman who they determined to be a vampire both bodies were decomposed so it's like okay of the 40 bodies all buried in the same soil same land seemingly dying of the same illnesses like being struck by something and dying although some of them child birth it's different are decaying differently right so 17 of the 40 are determined to not have decayed so you can't blame basically like the way that we view bog bodies where it's like there's a certain set of conditions that keep these bodies from decaying normally but that can't be true if these if all the conditions are the same and they're quite literally feet apart from each other right there was a girl of no less than 10 years of age who had died two months previously found herself in the above mentioned condition quite complete

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and undecayed and had much fresh blood in her chest but then there was a haduk named raid who was 21 years old who had died after a three-month long illness and after a 5-we burial was found completely decomposed so it's like even though these people both died of like a three-week long illness and buried similar times one's decomposed one is not so it's like even though we're not scientists and we don't have extreme know of the burial process or how bodies decompose there's no consistency right and like you could say oh like there's a soil or water or whatever but why wouldn't both be the same yeah of these 40 bodies 17 were determined to have been vampires and they disposed of them I know there's a lot so they were all staked in the hearts beheaded and burned just like Arnold Powell was the rest of the bodies were returned to the graves and the sudden deaths just stopped just like that granted not just like that cuz it took a lot of effort but right after

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disposing of these 17 bodies it stopped wow field surgeon Johan's flucker put all of his findings into an official report which at the time was very difficult to Discount as it was signed by no less than five officers in the army of Charles I 6 the Austrian Emperor three of them were doctors all very familiar with corpses the accounts of everything that occurred with Arnold Powell are recorded secondhand in the report but the rest of the report that was written in 1931 was written firsthand by those who witness and observe what they could only describe as a vampire attack the report became quite popular and Traverse Nations and towns eventually Landing in the hands of the Catholic Church who was taken back by the mutilation and digging up of these Catholic bodies who in their eyes would no longer be able to reach heaven so there's controversy starring here then there's more controversy when a French Benedictine monk who had dedicated his life studying apparitions of and vampires concluded that these people who

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had been called vampires were not actually vampires but instead were being animated by demonic forces the Catholic Church argued that no the people who burned and accused these people of being vampires were being controlled by demonic forces a really big true controversy started Brewing between

Historical analysis

Scholars of all types of pedigree until Empress Maria Teresa of Austria who is Marie Antoinette's mother sent her personal physician to get involved and Gerard van swen who's her personal physician is like there are no such thing as vampires they don't exist which is all the empress needed and so she passed laws that prohibited opening Graves or desecrating bodies so some people are like well she working with the Catholic Church to prevent this from happening but if we want to do a little bit of conspiracy put her tin foil hats was she working with the vampires trying to let them keep turning other people into vampires right it was an inside job it was an inside job the vampires all

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over the world thinked her anyway that is the story of Arnold Powell and the monster of mza but if it was not a vampire what was it how do we dissect this story so I wanted to like briefly look at the history of and the origin of vampires and I'm just going to say right now this is like an little like fingernail scratch of the folklore origins of vampires but just helps us understand the term vampire actually didn't exist in until this time in Serbia where like all the vampire epidemic or hysteria as they call it happened but there are many ancient beliefs of something otherworldly and Supernatural that consumed blood or the Flesh of the living the Persians were one of the first civilizations to have stories of blood drinking demons ancient Babylonia had the mythical lutu similar to Lilith who was a demon that survived off of the blood of babies mhm then there's Vlad the Impaler who is said to have inspired Dracula who lived and died in 1476 Dracula was

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not released until 1897 so we're like what is happening in 1725 in Serbia to stir up this conversation of vampires or is it just vampires I don't think it's just vampires it's so weird it's like I have so many questions because part of me is like how many other places was this happening because the way that it works at least in this story it makes me think that this would happen in many other towns and Pockets but then I'm also like well did it go more un because those were more populated places that that was happening in and this was more of like a I don't know anything about this town or like where it is but I picturing it as like this hard to get to well so there's a lot happening in this time there's like the Age of Enlightenment there's Christianity Catholicism coming in and like taking over there's Wars there's diseases that are running rampage that like people didn't have the medical knowledge that we do now so I think we've seen in a lot of different stories it's easier to blame it on like demons

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or something Supernatural because they didn't have the knowledge right but this feels like it goes beyond blame because there's effort in digging up bodies and medical examiners and third parties brought in to observe and report on what's being seen so I am confused by this and maybe I am starting to believe in Vampires it's so complicated because when you I was trying to like string together the origins and like where did the stories of vampires begin and how did it travel and it does kind of travel from Greece to Serbia and The Story begins in Greece where Arnold was attacked by a vampire so it's like did he were they trading stories on the front lines and got caught up in it is this all really a story of psychosis in a way right so Christianity definitely had a large role during the medieval period a lot of vampire myths arose with the arrival of Christianity in Greece and other parts of Europe in 1672 there was a panic among the locals of a region called istria now part of modern Croatia

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where a man became a vampire after dying drinking blood from his victims and also sexually harassing his widow the offender's body was staked and beheaded then starting in 1679 so now like a good 50 years before Arnold and his encounter multiple people are writing essays on the subject the below or if you're watching is a photo of one of those written in 1734 so it's like 167 9 people start writing essays on it and it's continuing through the 1700s the title translates to the treaties on chewing and smacking of the Dead in Graves which I imagine is a really bad translation but it was written by Michael Ram chewing and snacking yeah of bodies and Graves which I guess is kind that kind of makes sense it's like you don't chew and smack unless you're alive it's an interesting choice it's a 1700s there and it's a different language so then there was a vampire Panic SL Mass hysteria that spread throughout much of Europe in the 18th century in tandem with the Age of Enlightenment so Arnold

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Powell is not the only vampire case in 1725 in Serbia there's another very Infamous case of vampirism not too far away so now there's this pattern arising when you look at the history there are multiple cases of vampires in Serbia in the 18th century but again why why is this happening what's happening in that time is Austria's getting control of Northern Serbia and this trend of locals hunting and killing vampires is growing this hysteria last a generation until the Austrian Empress passes that law that people are not allowed to dig up or desecrate bodies and then it kind of Fizzles out so it's like oh interesting maybe it's this like because people are digging up bodies and looking at bodies when they're recently buried that we hadn't done before that it's bringing up all these questions and instead of studying the way bodies decompose

Scientific theories

they're now thinking there's a discrepancy meaning someone's a vampire we might actually gain answers soon

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because I have an episode that I'm GNA do based on the book stiff which I haven't read yet but it's been on my list forever which is all about like what happens to bodies postmortem so maybe we'll learn about different stages of decomposition right that's why I think body Farms are so interesting because bodies do decompose and again we're not experts but from the bare minimum knowledge that we have bodies do decompose differently based on environment based on how they die like what what the disease does to your body afterwards things bloating decaying at different rates yeah also this is before the time where they're doing um what's it called where they're like taking all the organs out before burying it and like draining the body of blood and stuff oh I don't remember the term they're like burying fresh dead bodies back then so they're not doing the postmortem practices that we do now anyway it's not clear what really caused the hysteria but most people do think it is and has to do with a combination of things like new power Christianity

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coming in people dying from things that they don't understand and new diseases traveling but it's very similar to The Witch hysteria where it's spreading throughout places and traveling so it's like one person travels with the story and it comes up it pops up somewhere else it's likely that these beliefs were easier to understand than the spread of unknown diseases I mean the movie no Fatu the original was made to personify the spread of dis disease and how it arrives and can decimate a village and there are two possible diseases that could be responsible for all of this in Serbia in 1725 paga and rabies paga is a disease caused by the imbalance of B3 and tropen which causes a variety of symptoms including sensitivity to sunlight is a big thing in vampires vampires yeah foul breath and anemia which are other traits of vampires like they are very white and looking anemic and this disease and entered the region in the time of the 18th century when

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corn was introduced to the diets M so a new disease could have really confuse people and been like what the heck and then there's also several hundred cases of rabies recorded spread initially by rabid wolves and then people which this makes sense too because some of the examiners were like oh this is malnutrition and they're like well we have so much food but when you have a rabies one of the late stage symptoms is like you are hydrophobic you won consume food or water you basically yeah you become malnourished despite the resources that you have available to to not be and since a lot of wolves were the ones who are spreading rabies wolves are another symbol of vampires so another connection there and then rabies is spread through biting a lot of victims do avoid sunlight and are repelled by strong odors like garlic so again being bit to get the disease and garlic repelling them to more connections with vampires

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that we now believe yeah which is interesting because one of the diseases says that they have stinky breath but garlic also gives you stinky breath depends on if you like the smell of garlic or not which I do but so these two are diseases that people are like well maybe it was these two things M and this hysteria actually started to spread into the rest of Europe led to the word vampir from Serbia first entering Germany around 17 26 as dur vamper and later into English as vampire by 1734 at the latest so this is the time where the term vampire is now becoming a part of our vocabulary and this vampire epidemic lasted about 8 years from 1725 until roughly 1755 so it's like the Arnold Powell story is in the heart of that yeah and I guess this would make sense why like one Village would see so much of it MH and then also why it's not you know like just because there's a disease doesn't mean

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everyone's going to get it but a good chunk like it was almost 50% of the people who died in this one town looked like they died yeah and became vampires right but if there's this new disease that came in does that disease cause a different type of Decay to the body or does rabies cause a body to Decay differently right and they also reported having like convulsions of their body that they couldn't control so they does sound like rabies I don't know anything really about the other disease but yeah rabies is still very much a thing and if you look at vampire stories and hysterias that travel even though they're different pockets and different times like there's a New England vampire epidemic that happened in the 18th century as well but it was like with the rise of tuberculosis and diseases like that and then came the weird Medical Practice of ingesting your recently deceased loved ones like body parts to help prevent you from like Contracting what they had which actually made you get it right ew yeah God so cannibalism

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yep they were Pro cannibalism vaccines are you like do give yourself a part of not all vaccines but some vaccines are made with a part of the illness to help build immunity against it right exactly and this is making me think of when I went to I almost said the Body Farm I've never been to the Body Farm I was so I was to be like I'm jealous yeah oh I went last week sorry you didn't invite me um when I went to the cannibalism exhibit that was in San Diego there was that whole like at the very end it was like do you consider this to be cannibalism or not and one of them was like a practice that they used to have where they would like grind up human brains or something like that into like a powder to ingest what was that for I don't remember I mean listen people like consume placenta right so yeah but yeah is that considered cannibalism what about colostrum like those things are all really good for you and yeah but I guess colostrum is like produced by you and

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like regenerates it's not placenta is like kind of like alive yeah no it's it's an organ yeah did you but again it's like something that comes no My Placenta is in the in the deep freezer downstairs is it really yeah can we go look at it I haven't looked you've never looked at it no it's buried beneath many many frozen breast milk pouches I want to see what it looks like well I'll invite you over in the spring I want to plant a tree oh on top of the placenta that's so witchy of you I think a lot of people do it I love that idea doesn't everyone take the placenta and do something with it I support that idea more than eating it yeah no I have no interest in eating My Placenta but I'm going to that's not to like at anyone

Listener ghost story

who does to each their own personally I'd rather I want to eat things that are grown from the nutrients of the placenta I'm on board with that so I don't know what I'm going to grow yet but some sort of tree I like that I'll in fite you over we'll have a placenta party and then we'll dance around we'll bury the placenta at night you wake up and

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there's a new tree Suddenly It's Growing 5et it's like Practical Magic yeah um you teased me that the story that you have to read for this episode is exciting so oh it's good it's short but it's so good Hey sisters from another Mis can we know the subject line sure I mean it just says laundry room vampire bite and Yahoo messenger okay my name is sin or kin and my now estranged hubby we will call him a and then my messenger friend we'll call him big tea for big teeth big titties big titties I said big teeth I know and I said big titties that's what we call you oh my God me and a so this was a strange hubby a MM went to go wash our clothes we lived in an apartment and we had to walk down half a block to get to where we would wash our laundry so while we were in the laundry area we were folding our clothes and after they were done washing I'm very OCD so I have a very particular way about how I want to fold my blankets and my towels and to wash clothes sounds

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like you it does it's like I offered to do laundry for you way back when and I was like I know she's not going to accept it because she has her way of doing it so I was taking my time we were there for a little while but then when the laundry room is done my hubby and I head back to our home and my hubby suddenly gets a stiff neck and he has to sort of walk with his head tilted as he pulls our clothing cart behind him and then all of the sudden he screams ouch [ __ ] what was that we were almost home at this point so I said I'll look when we go inside so we get inside we go up to the bathroom and I'm looking at his neck and his head to figure out what is going on and I find two puncture holes in his neck my first instinct was to pour rubbing alcohol onto the wounds so I literally poured them into the holes and then I covered up with this big bandage and so we get into our room and I get on my computer and I start texting Big T and at this point in time I looked at the time that I sent a message to Big T it was 3:01 p.m. and I don't know how

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soon after that we either knocked out or we both fell asleep both of them yeah just like middle of the afternoon I looked at the time on my computer when we woke up and it was 3:34 we do not recall the 33 minutes of time going by from when I first messaged Big T to when I came too me and my hubby then go back into the bathroom to look at his neck and the puncture wounds are now gone I don't know what happened I don't know if this was a glitch in The Matrix type thing vampirism anyway keep up the great work I've been binge listening since 2024 early in the year I'll send more stories soon but I wanted to send this one because I'm curious what your opinion is on it love peace and no hair grease love peace and no hair grease sin or kin I don't know how to pronounce it well I'm really curious because they both were knocked out like did they both get bit cuz they were so focused on a

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mhm because a had like the feeling mhm did they look at sin kin's neck at all right I know and was this more of like a sleeping like it almost makes me think like they were injected with something rather than their blood being sucked well and I also felt this one was the reason I was so excited to read this one too was because I feel like often times like in the story that you told it was like you see the VIS of a of a person like they appear in Ash form or their physical body before you and you have like the actual body of a vampire but this one it was like completely invisible maybe they were bit by a spider and next Emil we'll get they turned into Spider-Man cuz he also gets really tired after being bit and falls asleep and then wakes up and he's got muscles and can do push-ups and this is the Toby McGuire version and he no longer needs his glasses cuz if if there's one thing spider bites do it's fix your vision yes but it's weird that they both fell asleep like right after a certain period

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of time like it' be one thing if he did and he was just knocked out he was really but both of them yeah and it was midc conversation with Big T with a friend like you're messaging messaging like oh something weird is going on like let me tell you this story my dear friend and then boom all of a sudden you're knocked out and they're assuming here's the other thing they're assuming they fell asleep because they don't have any recollection of time they just suddenly came to again and at the same time yeah whereas like usually if you nap like you're aware of oh I'm really tired I'm going to nap or someone falls asleep and then you're like well I guess I might nap too like they both get knocked out at the same time brought back at the same time and brought back which yeah I I don't know weird vampire at the laundromat or aliens or Spider-Man only one of those three what do you think what's your take wow okay is scary you could be bit by a vampire that you don't even see at 3 in the afternoon broad daylight Wheeling your laundry car back back to your home that's so wild all right well what do you think do you believe in Vampires

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after this story or are they just a way of dealing with unknown diseases I still don't know me neither but I would be open to the idea I'm more open than when we began I think also humans are so obsessed with this idea of like living forever yeah and not dying not me personally but is that also part of the vampire low and Legend we're also just such weird creatures like I obviously believe in evolution but if we didn't have evidence of evolving I very quickly could be like we are aliens like we don't it feels so weird that we're here it feels technically aliens are called aliens because they're like an unidentified species yeah we don't understand what we're saying so we are alien in a sense we don't understand ourselves basically yeah learning a lot here at two girlsman ghost if you have any vampire stories or ghost stories or crypted stories or anything odd and paranormal please email them to us at two girl mongos podcast

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gmail.com and if you want episodes ad free one week early plus bonus episodes plus campfire stories every Tuesday join us on patreon you can follow us on social media you can tell everyone about our podcast you can write and review all the things that help keep this podcast alive and thank you for coming back every week thank you to our editor and producer Jamie Ryan and everyone go tell Kesha to be on two girls one ghost podcast we will love you and and we will see you on the other side very spooky