Voodoo Who Do

Magic, Monsters and Closets
By Arturo Ronzon

The closet has been around for many many years. We all know it as a convenient place for storage. Closets come in many shapes and sizes – ranging from the simple rectangular unit with just a clothes bar inside to the modern closet organization system. Closets have evolved from being just a simple storage unit to a complex multi-purpose fashionable storage system.

Even with the emergence of modern closets, the old antique closets will still live on for years to come. This is because the old antique closets not only come with storage space; it also comes with an aura of mystery and magic. These old antique closets are usually designed to be a huge storage space. There is more than meets the eye though. The old antique closets are built with multiple hidden pockets of storage as well. A concealed panel at the back of the closet opens up to a secret area, the bottom of the drawers gives way to more hidden pockets and sometimes only a certain combination of movements will open some other secret storage within the closet.

The look of an antique closet itself lends a lot towards magical myths and legends. Detailed sculpting of lions, dragons and gargoyles are often seen as are carvings of mystical symbols. Coupled with a big mirror in the front, most antique closets look like a gateway to another world.

A lot of children’s stories ride on the dimensional gateway look of the antique closet. Writers often scribe tales of wonderful worlds that exists on ‘the other side’ of the closet. Stories like the recent movie adaptation of Narnia takes the mystery of the antique closet and spins it into a tale of adventure for children. The closet in Narnia – termed as wardrobe – served as the gateway to another world with magical creatures such as centaurs and satyrs.

Another popular angle of the closet mystery used by authors lean towards scaring children. The popular monster in the closet tale has been spun many times over and has spawned many variations telling the tale of monsters that come out at night from the closet in a child’s bedroom. Disney added a humorous adventure twist in the movie Monsters Inc. where monsters from another world scare children as a profession to generate electricity for the monster world. The story ends with the closet monsters turning to comedians because laughter generated more energy.

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The Vampire Bat
By Mary Casey

Who is the vampire’s closest friend?

The vampire bat, of course!

Every time you see a vampire in the movies, he is surrounded by the little furry fellows escorting him on his nightly pillages. When a vampire needs to make a quick exit, he often turns himself into one of these creepy critters. But what is a vampire bat, and do they suck blood from unwilling hosts? Are they evil creatures, hiding in caves and dark castles? Surprisingly, as scientists study the little bat, they are finding its bloodthirsty habits may be helpful to humankind.

Picture a creature with a little head, bright black eyes, and a squashed up nose, looking almost like a pig’s snout. The animal has huge ears, rounded to a tip, and sharp, pointed incisor teeth in an overbite. It has a wingspan of eight inches, with a soft, brown furry body the size of a person’s thumb. It weighs about three ounces. It goes by the long name of Desmodonitidae rotundus, but prefers to be called by its everyday name, The Common Vampire Bat.

The Common Vampire Bat lives in Central and South America, along with its cousins, the White- Winged Vampire Bat and the Hairy- Legged Vampire Bat. The common vampire bat is the only one that loves to dine on mammals; the other two prefer birds. They have been around at least six to eight million years, with fossil records going back as far.

They like to live in caves, abandoned mines, tree hollows and sometimes abandoned buildings. Like most bats, they can see, but use echolocation to find their prey. Living nine years in the wild, they have one baby a year, and nest in large family groups, sleeping upside down.

Time to hunt! The little bats will swoop out of their cozy caves around dusk, looking for fat sleeping cattle or pigs in the near by countryside. The vampire bats consume only blood for nourishment. They drink about two tablespoons of blood a day, and need to drink at least every other day, or they starve to death.

Ah, a nice big sleeping cow. The vampire bat swoops down to the cow’s back, and quickly pierces the hide with the sharp incisor teeth, making two small holes (just like Dracula!). The bat then laps the blood into its mouth with its tongue, nothing as sloppy as sucking. Imagine your pet cat lapping at a bowl of milk.

Special anticoagulants, or chemicals that prevent blood from clotting, help the vampire bat drink enough blood before the animal’s blood dries up, similar to a mosquito. The bat also has a “numbing” agent, to keep its dinner from waking up and kicking it off!

Scientists are studying the anticoagulants in the vampire bat, and have made a drug called ‘Draculin’ to aid in anticoagulation for cardiac patients. Other scientists are using the compounds to help stroke victims limit the effects of blood clots in the brain.

Unfortunately, the vampire bat is considered a pest because the bat population has grown enormously since tropical forests were decimated to allow for more grazing area for livestock. With the addition of more livestock, came more bats. Ranchers are killing the bats in large numbers, along with insect eating bats.

Dracula’s best friend may be humankind’s good friend in helping scientists fight heart attacks and strokes. Hopefully people can be educated as to the true nature of the little bat, and not continue to kill off a helpful creature out of ignorance and superstition.

Here’s to the vampire bat, and all creatures who go bump in the night!

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Vampires of History and Legend
By John Retzer

Vampires stalk our collective imaginations. The stars of books, movies, and even role playing games, they are at once both dangerous and alluring. No Halloween celebration would be complete without wax teeth, fake blood and a black cape.

But were there ever any real Vampires? Probably not, although there are any number of historical figures whose bloodthirstiness may have provided a basis for the legend.

Countess Elizabeth Bathory certainly stands as a prime example.

Born in Hungary in 1560, Bathory was married at age 15 to a warlord who apparently spent much of his time away fighting the Turks. Left at home, Bathory satisfied her own bloodlust by torturing and killing young girls.

Her victims at first were peasants, but as her sadistic urges grew, Bathory expanded her prey to include the daughters of minor gentry.

It was this that proved to be her undoing. Missing peasant girls is one thing, but the gentry were wealthy and educated. Local priests brought their suspicions to Emperor Matthias II, and an investigation was launched.

George Thurzo, the Palatine of Hungary, led the inquest, and on December 29, 1610, caught Bathory in the act. The Countess and four suspected accomplices were arrested.

Over the next three years, more than 300 people were interviewed and a chilling story emerged. Always a harsh mistress, Bathory apparently came to truly enjoy the pain she inflicted on her servants. Her cruelty was regrettable, but certainly not unheard of.

One day, a servant pulled Bathory's hair while brushing it. The Countess raked the girl's cheeks with her long nails, spilling blood on her wrinkled hand. Bathory imagined that the drops of blood smoothed away her wrinkes, and concluded that the blood of young girls could restore the beauty of her youth.

That's when the horror really began. Bathory began to kill young girls to bathe in, and drink their blood. Evidence at the trial put the body count at more than 600.

Following the trial, Bathory's accomplices were burned alive. Because she was nobility, Bathory escaped execution, and was instead walled up in a room in her own castle, where she died three years later.

But horrible as it is, Bathory's story is usually overshadowed by that of another Eastern European noble.

Vlad III was a Romanian nobleman who lived from 1431 to 1476. Held hostage by the Turks as a child, Vlad later came to rule his father's kingdom, which has variously been identified as Transylvania and Wallachia. He was also known as the Son of the Dragon (Dracula) in reference to his father's position as a Knight of the Order of the Dragon.

Because his kingdom served as a buffer zone between Moslem Turkey and Christian Europe, Vlad's life was one of constant warfare. Leading frequent raids into Turkish territory, he burned crops, pillaged, and poisoned wells. Legend has it that one of these excursions resulted in the deaths of 20,000 Turks.

Both home and abroad, Vlad gained a reputation for cruelty and ruthlessness. His father was murdered in a political intrigue, and Vlad apparently was determined not to suffer the same fate.

In one story, he is said to have invited his political enemies to a meeting at his castle. Vlad then locked the doors and burned it to the ground.

Another story tells of the visit of an Ottoman ambassador. When the ambassador refused to remove his turban as a sign of respect, Vlad had it nailed to the poor man's head. That surely did not do anything to improve relations between his Kingdom and the Turks.

But the cruelty for which Vlad is best known also gave him his nickname: Tepes, which means "impaler."

To serve as a warning to his enemies, Vlad would impale his prisoners on long poles, leaving them to twitch and rot in the sun. It is said that the roads to his kingdom were lined with these poor unfortunates.

So much of Vlad's history is mixed with legend that it is imposible to know how many of these stories are true. But contemporary reports seem to verify many of them.

Accounts vary as to the circumstances of Vlad's death. Tradition holds that he died in battle with the Turks and that his head was sent as a gift to the Sultan of Turkey. Another version claims that he was killed by the Hungarians. It's also possible that he was killed accidentally by his own troops.

Strange as it may seem, Vlad Tepes is seen as a folk hero to many in that part of the world.

Vlad may have been lost to history, except for the research of a writer named Bram Stoker. Planning a novel on vampires, Stoker rediscovered Vlad and made him the central figure in the novel that bears his name: Dracula.

In more modern times, several serial killers have been dubbed "vampires" by the press.

Fritz Haarmann committed at least 24 murders in Germany between 1919 and 1924. He killed his victims by biting their necks. During his trial, which became a media circus, Haarmann was variously called a werewolf and a vampire. He was beheaded in 1925.

Haarman wasn't the only "vampire" in Germany at that time. Peter Kurten, a serial killer who was beheaded in 1932, was known as the "Vampire of Dusseldorf." He was charged with nine murders and a variety of other offenses, including sexual assaults.

It is said that Fritz Lang's movie "M" was based on the Haarmann and Kurten stories.

In England, John George Haigh, the infamous "Acid Bath Murderer," also was known as the "Vampire of London." Haigh, who was hanged in 1949, claimed to have drunk the blood of his victims before destroying their bodies in a vat of sulfuric acid.

Are there real vampires?

Again, probably not. But there are those whose monstrous crimes make us wonder about the terrible creatures of night and legend.

More on the haunted history of Halloween can be found at Top Halloween Links at www.thingsinthebasement.com .

This article is derived from his lectures on the haunted history of Halloween.

Dracula Essay
By Aaron Schwartz

Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula is one of the most popular literature pieces of the Victorian age, which gives a picture of changing social values in the mixed plot of reality and mystics, where good and evil are found not in personal traits of the characters but have real personifications. The story which tells personal tragedy of an evil embodiment count Dracula starts in the Carpethian mountains of Transilvania (in Romania) and later the actions move to London of Victorian age. Originally, Stoker’s “Dracula” is a tale of love. It is a story of love, where love is high above the mortality and death.

At the same time it is a novel about the struggle of treachery and sacrifice in the name of love. Count Dracula is ready to do anything to return the love he lost, any remedy is normal for him. The reader observes him as a personification of a complete and absolute “evil”. Count Dracula is guided by the power of love, which is considered to be a “supreme” virtue. He is lead by the intention to love, originally, a good intention, but he is ready to destroy anything with his army of vampires on his way. Stroker wrote more than a story of horror, as Dracula is a story about good and evil, love and hatred. Stroker reveals the world as a strong intercoupling of the evil and the good and their constant fight against each other. He writes a story about a “creature-person” who is full of pain and loneliness and who has no chance to change the way of living. It becomes a story of an “ever bleeding soul”.

This understanding is very close to the very essence of the book, but still contains subjective opinions. But on the hand with describing personal experiences and problems Dracula gives a more wider picture on the Victorian society in general: its morals, ethics, values and norms. The relations of the characters in Dracula reveal the nature and the manner of relations of representatives of the upper classes on the hand with relations of men and women.

The novel “Dracula” also reveals the psychological nature of Victorian age society: the transformation of traditional values which referred to sexual relations, marriage, love and motherhood to the more liberal relations dictated by the need of time. Even though that Victorian England was considered to be one of the most open and liberal societies in 19th century Europe, there existed a number of contradictions of new gains of democratic freedoms with conservative tradition in social relations. The role of women in upper classes and in middle class remained to be pretty much similar to earlier times, there existed a taboo on sexual relations before marriage, and the behavior of women was pretty much regulated. The norms of Victorian society had strict regulations for women: woman had to personify virtues. Woman could be either a virgin who embodied purity and innocence or a wife and mother, loyal to her husband and attentive to children. There was no any other option and if the woman didn’t belong to any of these two she was regarded as a whore, and was blamed by society.

But as we observe in the story these values were not stationary and there existed a shift towards the sexual liberation and more freedom in sexual relations.

The topic of sexuality is the central one in the fight of good with evil in Stoker’s Dracula, as we see how the magic of Dracula influences the behavior of women, turning them into those who seek sexual desire and intimacy with men. Dracula uses the conservative morals of Victorian age in fulfilling his dirty plans of turning people into embodiment of evils and vampires. Sexual relations with unknown women were regarded to be banned in the Victorian age and any sort of sexual desires and experiments mainly existed in the thoughts of people and in the fantasies. The human sexuality which was restricted by social norms made people vulnerable to the evil of Dracula and vampires as most of them couldn’t control their behavior in the situation when women suggested them sexual affairs. These are the words Harker describes one of the three Dracula vampires:

“I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck, she actually licked her lips like an animal ”(p.39) Obviously, we see that according to the description of the vamp women, they embodied the most wild fantasies and desires of Victorian men as they were voluptuous and aggressive, their beauty and inner freedom of course created the promise of the possible sexual course. But at the same time sexual beauty of such women was dangerous for the Victorian age men as they were likely to lose control and stop reasoning logically under the charms of the vampires.

Of the brightest episodes of the success of Dracula’s magic is his ability to turn Victorian pure women into vampires. Both Lucy and Mina have nothing similar to any human evils but under the magic of Dracula they, in past pure and chaste women who are devoted to their men, turn into sexual pleasure seeking vampires. Bram Stoker marks such voluptuous behavior as immoral. The behavior of Lucy stands for that: “She still advanced, however, and with a languorous, voluptuous grace, said:—“Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry or you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!” (p.212)

After Lucy was transformed into vampire, the man of Van Helsing start guarding another woman named Mina, protecting her purity and Victorian womanhood. Mina is: “one of God’s women, fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth. So true, so sweet, so noble. . . ”(p.188) Unlike, Lucy, Mina Murray remains to be pure woman before and after her marriage, her beauty and her self-control make us to admire this woman. Perhaps, Bram Mina may be regarded as the image of the new woman in English society: she is beautiful, self-restrained and intelligent. But nevertheless Bram Stoker makes us to know that even Mina was far from the ideal woman, in fact she was embodiment of Victorian ideal of womanhood and that’s why was very vulnerable for Dracula, who was looking for such woman purity.

Making a conclusion it’s important to outline that the social attitudes towards women in Victorian England defined the realization of Dracula’s plan to gain control over people. Restrained and suppressed sexual desires of men made them uncontrolled under the sexual charms of vampire-women and pointed Dracula’s access to the souls of people. Dualism of Victorian society, the reality with strict morals and the world of sexual fantasies was ruining peoples’ inner world and was suppressing their personality. Strict morals did not often corresponded to the realities as a number of women wanted joyful life and wanted to get pleasure from life rather than have an ascetic way of life, keeping their purity. The words of Lucy: “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?” (p. 60) show that a lot of women were ready for the social changes and more personal freedoms then those which were assigned by the conservative tradition.

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