The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

Lilith by Alan G. Hefner
22:35 Nov 22 2011
Times Read: 446

A female demon of the night who supposedly flies around searching for newborn children either to kidnap or strangle them. Also, she sleeps with men to seduce them into propagating demon sons. Legends told about Lilith are ancient. The rabbinical myths of Lilith being Adam's first wife seem to relate to the Sumero-Babylonian Goddess Belit-ili, or Belili. To the Canaanites, Lilith was Baalat, the "Divine Lady." On a tablet from Ur, ca. 2000 BCE, she was addressed as Lillake.



One story is that God created Adam and Lilith as twins joined together at the back. She demanded equality with Adam, failing to achieve it, she left him in anger. This is sometimes accompanied by a Muslim legend that after leaving Adam Lilith slept with Satan, thus creating the demonic Djinn.



In another version of the myth of Lilith, she was Adam's first wife before Eve. Adam married her because he became tired of coupling with animals, a common Middle-Eastern herdsmen practice, though the Old Testament declared it a sin (Deuteronomy 27:21). Adam tried to make Lilith lie beneath him during sexual intercourse. Lilith would not meet this demand of male dominance. She cursed Adam and hurried to her home by the Red Sea.



Adam complained to God who then sent three angels, Sanvi, Sansanvi and Semangelaf, to bring Lilith back to Eden. Lilith rebuffed the angels by cursing them. While by the Red Sea Lilith became a lover to demons and producing 100 babies a day. The angels said that God would take these demon children away from her unless she returned to Adam. When she did not return, she was punished accordingly. And, God also gave Adam the docile Eve.



According to some Lilith's fecundity and sexual preferences showed she was a Great Mother of settled agricultural tribes, who resisted the invasions of the nomadic herdsmen, represented by Adam. It is felt the early Hebrews disliked the Great Mother who drank the blood of Abel, the herdsman, after being slain by the elder god of agriculture and smithcraft, Cain (Genesis 4:11). Lilith's Red Sea is but another version of Kali Ma's Ocean of Blood, which gave birth to all things but needed periodic sacrificial replenishment.



Speculation is that perhaps there was a connection between Lilith and the Etruscan divinity Lenith, who possessed no face and waited at the gate of the underworld along with Eita and Persipnei (Hecate and Persephone) to receive the souls of the dead. The underworld gate was a yoni, and also a lily, which had "no face." Admission into the underworld was frequently mythologized as a sexual union. (see Tantrism) The lily or lilu (lotus) was the Great Mother's flower-yoni, whose title formed Lilith's name.



Even though the story of Lilith disappeared from the canonical Bible, her daughters the lilim haunted men for over a thousand years. It was well into that Middle Ages that Jews still manufactured amulets to keep away the lilim. Supposedly they were lusty she-demons who copulated with men in all their dreams, causing nocturnal emissions.



The Greeks adopted the belief of the lilim, calling them Lamiae, Empusae (Forcers-In), or Daughters of Hecate. Likewise the Christians adopted the belief, calling them harlots of hell, or succubi, the counterpart of the incubi. Celebrant monks attempted to fend them off by sleeping with their hands over their genitals, clutching a crucifix.



Even though most of the Lilith legend is derived from Jewish folklore, descriptions of the Lilith demon appear in Iranian, Babylonian, Mexican, Greek, Arab, English, German, Oriental and Native American legends. Also, she sometimes has been associated with legendary and mythological characters such as the Queen of Sheba and Helen of Troy. In medieval Europe she was proclaimed to be the wife, concubine or grandmother of Satan.



Men who experienced nocturnal emissions during their sleep believed they had been seduced by Lilith and said certain incantations to prevent the offspring from becoming demons. It was thought each time a pious Christian had a wet dream, Lilith laughed. It was believed that Lilith was assisted in her bloodthirsty nocturnal quests by succubi, who gathered with her near the "mountains of darkness" to frolic with her demon lover Samael, whole name means "poison of God" (sam-el). The Zohar, the principal work of the Kabbalah, describes Lilith's powers at their height during the waning of the moon.



According to legend Lilith's attraction for children comes from the belief that God took her demon children from her when she did not return to Adam. It was believed that she launched a reign of terror against women in childbirth and newborn infants, especially boys. However, it also was believed that the three angels who were sent to fetch her by the Red Sea forced her to swear that whenever she saw their names or images on amulets that she would leave the infants and mothers alone.



These beliefs continued for centuries. As late as the 18th century, it was a common practice in many cultures to protect new mothers and their infants with amulets against Lilith. Males were most vulnerable during the first week of life, girls during the first three weeks. Sometimes a magic circle was drawn around the lying-in-bed, with a charm inscribed with the names of the three angels, Adam and Eve and the words "barring Lilith" or "protect this newborn child from all harm." Frequently amulets were place in the four corners and throughout the bedchamber. If a child laughed while sleeping, it was taken as a sign that Lilith was present. Tapping the child on the nose, it was believed, made her go away.

Infamous Lady: The True Story of Countess Erzsébet Báthory
22:26 Nov 22 2011
Times Read: 448

EARLY YEARS (1560-1575)



Nyírbátor served as the Báthory family seat, an

administrative center, and family burial site. In fact, the

Báthory family owned the town from the time of its

Gutkeled ancestors in the late 1200's until the death of

Gábor Báthory, Voivod of Transylvania, in 1613.



Erzsébet's parents came from two separate branches of

the Báthory clan--György (c. 1522-1570) from the Ecsed

branch, and Anna (m. 1539 - c.1574) from the older

Somlyó side of the family. Erzsébet had an older brother,

István (1555-1605), a brother, Gábor (unfortunately, we

have no dates of birth or death for him, or whether he

was married or not--only his name, according to 19th

century genealogist, Alexander v. Simolin), and two

younger sisters, Zsofiá and Klara. Unfortunately, we do

not know very much about her younger sisters, except

that both Klara and Zsofiá married what might be called

"middle-class" noblemen. Klara married Mihály Várdai,

and Zsofiá married András Figedy and had at least two

children, István and Borbála.

From the top: woodcut of the Báthory

family estate at Ecsed; Erzsébet's uncle,

István Báthory, King of Poland

From the top: portrait of

Orsolya Kanizsai Nádasdy,

Erzsébet's mother-in-law;

belof Erzsébet's father-in-law,

Tamas Nádasdy,

THE FATE OF COUNTESS BÁTHORY (1611-1614)



Back at Castle Csejthe, still under house arrest, Countess Báthory embarked on a letter writing campaign

to free performance of her life: namely, testifying to her own innocence. György Thurzó repeatedly denied

her petitions to appear on her own behalf. She, in turn, accused him of not defending her honor.



At Thurzó's repeated urgings, the king finally conceded: Countess Báthory would not be brought to public

trial. Thurzó immediately brokered a clever deal: in light of the evidence, he recommended his original

sentence of perpetuis carceribus (life imprisonment) rather than the death penalty. By order of

Parliament, the name of Erzsébet Báthory would never again be spoken in polite society.



Stonemasons arrived shortly thereafter to carry out her final sentence: she was never to be let out of

confinement. On the night of Sunday, August 21, 1614, Countess Erzsébet Báthory was concerned about

her poor circulation. She told her bodyguard, "Look, how cold my hands are!" Her attendant told her that

it was nothing and that she should simply lie down. With that, she put her pillow under her legs.

Commentators say that she passed away at two hours after midnight, but a letter from Stanislav Thurzó

to his cousin, György, states that she was found dead in the morning.



According to a servant of her son, Pál Nádasdy, Erzsébet was buried at the church in Csejthe on

November 25, 1614. Her remains were supposedly taken back to the Báthory family estate in 1617.

Where she lies today, however, is something of a mystery: J. Branecky reported that on July 7, 1938, the

crypt at the Csejthe church was opened but that the Countess' grave was not found. It is also claimed

that in 1995, the Báthory family crypts at Nyírbátor were also opened. No remains of the Countess were

found at that site, either.

Vlad Tepes
22:06 Nov 22 2011
Times Read: 450






Introduction



Most authorities believe the character of Dracula in Bram Stoker’s novel was based upon the historical figure Vlad Tepes (pronounced tse-pesh), who intermittently ruled an area of the Balkans called Wallachia in the mid 15th century. He was also called by the names Vlad III, Vlad Dracula and Vlad the Impaler. The word Tepes stands for "impaler" and was so coined because of Vlad's propensity to punish victims by impaling them on stakes, then displaying them publicly to frighten his enemies and to warn would-be transgressors of his strict moral code. He is credited with killing between 40,000 to 100,000 people in this fashion.





Origin of the name "Dracula"

King Sigismund of Hungary, who became the Holy Roman Emperor in 1410, founded a secret fraternal order of knights called the Order of the Dragon to uphold Christianity and defend the Empire against the Ottoman Turks. Its emblem was a dragon, wings extended, hanging on a cross. Vlad III’s father (Vlad II) was admitted to the Order around 1431 because of his bravery in fighting the Turks. From 1431 onward Vlad II wore the emblem of the order and later, as ruler of Wallachia, his coinage bore the dragon symbol.



The word for dragon in Romanian is "drac" and "ul" is the definitive article. Vlad III's father thus came to be known as "Vlad Dracul," or "Vlad the dragon." In Romanian the ending "ulea" means "the son of". Under this interpretation, Vlad III thus became Vlad Dracula, or "the son of the dragon." (The word "drac" also means "devil" in Romanian. The sobriquet thus took on a double meaning for enemies of Vlad Tepes and his father.)



Historical Background

To appreciate the story of Vlad III it is essential to understand the social and political forces of the region during the 15th century. In broad terms this is a story of the struggle to obtain control of Wallachia, a region of the Balkans (in present-day southern Romania) which lay directly between the two powerful forces of Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.



For nearly one thousand years Constantinople had stood as the protecting outpost of the Byzantine or East Roman Empire, and blocked Islam’s access to Europe. The Ottomans nonetheless succeeded in penetrating deep into the Balkans during this time. With the fall of Constantinople in 1453 under Sultan Mohammed the Conqueror, all of Christendom was suddenly threatened by the armed might of the Ottoman Turks. The Hungarian Kingdom to the north and west of Wallachia, which reached its zenith during this same time, assumed the ancient mantle as defender of Christendom.



The rulers of Wallachia were thus forced to appease these two empires to maintain their survival, often forging alliances with one or the other, depending upon what served their self-interest at the time. Vlad III is best known by the Romanian people for his success in standing up to the encroaching Ottoman Turks and establishing relative independence and sovereignty (albeit for a relatively brief time).



Another factor influencing political life was the means of succession to the Wallachian throne. The throne was hereditary, but not by the law of primogeniture. The boyars (wealthy land-owning nobles) had the right to elect the voivode (prince) from among various eligible members of the royal family. This allowed for succession to the throne through violent means. Assassinations and other violent overthrows of reigning parties were thus rampant. In fact, both Vlad III and his father assassinated competitors to attain the throne of Wallachia.



History of Wallachia Prior to Vlad III



Wallachia was founded in 1290 by Radu Negru (Rudolph the Black). It was dominated by Hungary until 1330, when it became independent. The first ruler of the new country was Prince Basarab the Great, an ancestor of Dracula. Dracula's grandfather, Prince Mircea the Old, reigned from 1386 to 1418. Eventually, the House of Basarab was split into two factions descendants, and the descendants of another prince named Dan (called the Danesti). Much of the struggles to assume the throne during Draculas time were between these two competing factions.



In 1431 King Sigismund made Vlad Dracul the military governor of Transylvania, a region directly northwest of Wallachia. (Vlad III was born during this time, in the latter part of 1431.) Vlad was not content to serve as mere governor, and so gathered supporters for his plan to seize Wallachia from its current occupant, Alexandru I, a Danesti prince. In 1436 he succeeded in his plan, killing Alexandru and becoming Vlad II. (Presumably there was an earlier prince also named Vlad.)



For six years Vlad Dracul attempted to follow a middle ground between his two powerful neighbors. The prince of Wallachia was officially a vassal of the King of Hungary and Vlad was still a member of the Order of the Dragon and sworn to fight the infidel. At the same time the power of the Ottomans seemed unstoppable. Vlad was forced to pay tribute to the Sultan, just as his father, Mircea the Old, had been forced to do.



In 1442 Vlad attempted to remain neutral when the Turks invaded Transylvania. The Turks were defeated, and the vengeful Hungarians under John Hunyadi—the White Knight of Hungary--forced Vlad Dracul and his family to flee Wallachia. In 1443 Vlad regained the Wallachian throne with Turkish support, but on the condition that Vlad send a yearly contingent of Wallachian boys to join the Sultans Janissaries. In 1444, to further assure to the Sultan his good faith, Vlad sent his two younger sons--Vlad III and Radu the Handsome--to Adrianople as hostages. Vlad III remained a hostage in Adrianople until 1448.



In 1444 Hungary broke the peace and launched the Varna Campaign, led by John Hunyadi, in an effort to drive the Turks out of Europe. Hunyadi demanded that Vlad Dracul fulfill his oath as a member of the Order of the Dragon and a vassal of Hungary and join the crusade against the Turks, yet the wily politician still attempted to steer a middle course. Rather than join the Christian forces himself, he sent his oldest son, Mircea. Perhaps he hoped the Sultan would spare his younger sons if he himself did not join the crusade.



The results of the Varna Crusade are well known. The Christian army was utterly destroyed in the Battle of Varna. John Hunyadi managed to escape the battle under inglorious conditions. From this moment forth John Hunyadi was bitterly hostile toward Vlad Dracul and his eldest son. In 1447 Vlad Dracul was assassinated along with his son Mircea. Mircea was apparently buried alive by the boyars and merchants of Tirgoviste. (Vlad III later exacted revenge upon these boyars and merchants.) Hunyadi placed his own candidate, a member of the Danesti clan, on the throne of Wallachia.



On receiving news of Vlad Dracula's death the Turks released Vlad III and supported him as their own candidate for the Wallachian throne. In 1448, at the age of seventeen, Vlad III managed to briefly seize the Wallachian throne. Yet within two months Hunyadi forced him to surrender the throne and flee to his cousin, the Prince of Moldavia. Vlad IIIs successor to the throne, however Vladislov II unexpectedly instituted a pro-Turkish policy, which Hunyadi found to be unacceptable. He then turned to Vlad III, the son of his old enemy, as a more reliable candidate for the throne, and forged an allegiance with him to retake the throne by force. Vlad III received the Transylvanian duchies formerly governed by his father and remained there, under the protection of Hunyadi, waitng for an opportunity to retake Wallachia from his rival.



In 1453, however, the Christian world was shocked by the final fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans. Hunyadi thus broadened the scope of his campaign against the insurgent Turks. In 1456 Hunyadi invaded Turkish Serbia while Vlad III simultaneously invaded Wallachia. In the Battle of Belgrade Hunyadi was killed and his army defeated. Meanwhile, Vlad III succeeded in killing Vladislav II and taking the Wallachian throne.



Vlad III then began his main reign of Wallachia, which stretched from 1456-1462. It was during this period that he instituted his strict policies, stood up against the Turks and began his reign of terror by impalement.



The Life of Vlad III (1431-1476)



Vlad III was born in November or December of 1431 in the Transylvanian city of Sighisoara. At the time his father, Vlad II (Vlad Dracul), was living in exile in Transylvania. The house where he was born is still standing. It was located in a prosperous neighborhood surrounded by the homes of Saxon and Magyar merchants and the townhouses of the nobility.





Little is known about the early years of Vlad IIIs life. He had an older brother, Mircea, and a younger brother, Radu the Handsome. His early education was left in the hands of his mother, a Transylvanian noblewoman, and her family. His real education began in 1436 after his father succeeded in claiming the Wallachian throne by killing his Danesti rival. His training was typical to that of the sons of nobility throughout Europe. His first tutor in his apprenticeship to knighthood was an elderly boyar who had fought against the Turks at the battle of Nicolopolis. Vlad learned all the skills of war and peace that were deemed necessary for a Christian knight.



In 1444, at the age of thirteen, young Vlad and his brother Radu were sent to Adrianople as hostages, to appease the Sultan. He remained there until 1448, at which time he was released by the Turks, who supported him as their candidate for the Wallachian throne. Vlad’s younger brother apparently chose to remain in Turkey, where he had grown up. (Radu is later supported by the Turks as a candidate for the Wallachian throne, in opposition to his own brother, Vlad.)



As previously noted, Vlad IIIs initial reign was quite short (two months), and it was not until 1456, under the support of Hunyadi and the Kingdom of Hungary that he returned to the throne. He established Tirgoviste as his capitol city, and began to build his castle some distance away in the mountains near the Arges River. Most of the atrocities associated with Vlad III took place during this time.

Atrocities of Vlad Tepes



More than anything else the historical Dracula is known for his inhuman cruelty. Impalement was Vlad III’s preferred method of torture and execution. Impalement was and is one of the most gruesome ways of dying imaginable, as it was typically slow and painful.





Vlad usually had a horse attached to each of the victim’s legs and a sharpened stake was gradually forced into the body. The end of the stake was usually oiled and care was taken that the stake not be too sharp, else the victim might die too rapidly from shock. Normally the stake was inserted into the body through the buttocks and was often forced through the body until it emerged from the mouth. However, there were many instances where victims were impaled through other body orifices or through the abdomen or chest. Infants were sometimes impaled on the stake forced through their mother’s chests. The records indicate that victims were sometimes impaled so that they hung upside down on the stake.



Vlad Tepes often had the stakes arranged in various geometric patterns. The most common pattern was a ring of concentric circles in the outskirts of a city that was his target. The height of the spear indicated the rank of the victim. The decaying corpses were often left up for months. It was once reported that an invading Turkish army turned back in fright when it encountered thousands of rotting corpses impaled on the banks of the Danube. In 1461 Mohammed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, a man not noted for his squeamishness, returned to Constantinople after being sickened by the sight of twenty thousand impaled Turkish prisoners outside of the city of Tirgoviste. This gruesome sight is remembered in history as "the Forest of the Impaled."



Thousands were often impaled at a single time. Ten thousand were impaled in the Transylvanian city of Sibiu in 1460. In 1459, on St. Bartholomew’s Day, Vlad III had thirty thousand of the merchants and boyars of the Transylvanian city of Brasov impaled. One of the most famous woodcuts of the period shows Vlad Dracula feasting amongst a forest of stakes and their grisly burdens outside Brasov while a nearby executioner cuts apart other victims.



Although impalement was Vlad Dracula’s favorite method of torture, it was by no means his only method. The list of tortures employed by this cruel prince reads like an inventory of hell’s tools: nails in heads, cutting off of limbs, blinding, strangulation, burning, cutting off of noses and ears, mutilation of sexual organs (especially in the case of women), scalping, skinning, exposure to the elements or to wild animals, and burning alive.



No one was immune to Vlad’s attentions. His victims included women and children, peasants and great lords, ambassadors from foreign powers and merchants. However, the vast majority of his victims came from the merchants and boyars of Transylvania and his own Wallachia.



Many have attempted to justify Vlad Dracula’s actions on the basis of nascent nationalism and political necessity. Many of the merchants in Transylvania and Wallachia were German Saxons who were seen as parasites, preying upon Romanian natives of Wallachia. The wealthy land owning boyars exerted their own often capricious and unfaithful influence over the reigning princes. Vlad’s own father and older brother were murdered by unfaithful boyars. However, many of Vlad Dracula’s victims were also Wallachians, and few deny that he derived a perverted pleasure from his actions.



Vlad Dracula began his reign of terror almost as soon as he came to power. His first significant act of cruelty may have been motivated by a desire for revenge as well as a need to solidify his power. Early in his main reign he gave a feast for his boyars and their families to celebrate Easter. Vlad was well aware that many of these same nobles were part of the conspiracy that led to his father’s assassination and the burying alive of his elder brother, Mircea. Many had also played a role in the overthrow of numerous Wallachian princes. During the feast Vlad asked his noble guests how many princes had ruled during their lifetimes. All of the nobles present had outlived several princes. None had seen less then seven reigns. Vlad immediately had all the assembled nobles arrested. The older boyars and their families were impaled on the spot. The younger and healthier nobles and their families were marched north from Tirgoviste to the ruins of his castle in the mountains above the Arges River. The enslaved boyars and their families were forced to labor for months rebuilding the old castle with materials from a nearby ruin. According to the reports they labored until the clothes fell off their bodies and then were forced to continue working naked. Very few survived this ordeal.



Throughout his reign Vlad continued to systematically eradicate the old boyar class of Wallachia. Apparently Vlad was determined that his own power be on a modern and thoroughly secure footing. In the place of the executed boyars Vlad promoted new men from among the free peasantry and middle class; men who would be loyal only to their prince.



Vlad Tepes atrocities against the people of Wallachia were usually attempts to enforce his own moral code upon his country. He appears to have been particularly concerned with female chastity. Maidens who lost their virginity, adulterous wives and unchaste widows were all targets of Vlads cruelty. Such women often had their sexual organs cut out or their breasts cut off, and were often impaled through the vagina on red-hot stakes. One report tells of the execution of an unfaithful wife. Vlad had the woman s breasts cut off, then she was skinned and impaled in a square in Tirgoviste with her skin lying on a nearby table. Vlad also insisted that his people be honest and hard working. Merchants who cheated their customers were likely to find themselves mounted on a stake beside common thieves.



The End of Vlad III



Although Vlad III experienced some success in fending off the Turks, his accomplishments were relatively short-lived. He received little support from his titular overlord, Matthius Corvinus, King of Hungary (son of John Hunyadi) and Wallachian resources were too limited to achieve any lasting success against the powerful Turks.



The Turks finally succeeded in forcing Vlad to flee to Transylvania in 1462. Reportedly, his first wife committed suicide by leaping from the towers of Vlad’s castle into the waters of the Arges River rather than surrender to the Turks. Vlad escaped through a secret passage and fled across the mountains into Transylvania and appealed to Matthias Corvinus for aid. The king immediately had Vlad arrested and imprisoned in a royal tower.



There is some debate as to the exact length of Vlad’s confinement. The Russian pamphlets indicate that he was a prisoner from 1462 until 1474. However, during this period he was able to gradually win his way back into the graces of Matthias Corvinus and ultimately met and married a member of the royal family (possibly the sister of Corvinus) and fathered two sons. It is unlikely that a prisoner would be allowed to marry a member of the royal family. As the eldest son was about 10 years old at the point Vlad regained the Wallachian throne in 1476, his release probably occurred around 1466.



Note: The Russian narrative, normally very favorable to Vlad, indicates that even in captivity he could not give up his favorite past-time; he often captured birds and mice and proceeded to torture and mutilate them. Some were beheaded or tarred-and-feathered and released. Most were impaled on tiny spears.



Another possible reason for Vlad’s rehabilitation was that the new successor to the Wallachian throne, Vlad’s own brother, Radu the Handsome, had instituted a very pro-Turkish policy. The Hungarian king may have viewed Dracula as a possible candidate to retake the throne. The fact that Vlad renounced the Orthodox faith and adopted Catholicism was also surely meant to appease his Hungarian captor.



In 1476 Vlad was again ready to make a bid for power. Vlad Dracula and Prince Stephen Bathory of Transylvania invaded Wallachia with a mixed contingent of forces. Vlad’s brother, Radu, had by then already died and was replaced by Basarab the Old, a member of the Danesti clan. At the approach of Vlad’s army Basarab and his cohorts fled. However, shortly after retaking the throne, Prince Bathory and most of Vlad’s forces returned to Transylvania, leaving Vlad in a vulnerable position. Before he was able to gather support, a large Turkish army entered Wallachia. Vlad was forced to march and meet the Turks with less than four thousand men.



Vlad Dracula was killed in battle against the Turks near the town of Bucharest in December of 1476. Some reports indicate that he was assassinated by disloyal Wallachian boyars just as he was about to sweep the Turks from the field. Other accounts have him falling in defeat, surrounded by the ranks of his loyal Moldavian bodyguard. Still other reports claim that Vlad, at the moment of victory, was accidentally struck down by one of his own men. The one undisputed fact is that ultimately his body was decapitated by the Turks and his head sent to Constantinople where the sultan had it displayed on a stake as proof that the horrible Impaler was finally dead. He was reportedly buried at Snagov, an island monastery located near Bucharest.



Historical Evidence



In evaluating the accounts of Vlad Dracula it is important to realize that much of the information comes from sources that may not be entirely accurate. With each of the three main sources there is reason to believe that the information provided may be influenced by local, mainly political, prejudices. The three main sources are as follows: (1) Pamphlets published in Germany shortly after Vlad’s death, (2) pamphlets published in Russia shortly after the German pamphlets, and (3) Romanian oral tradition.



German Pamphlets



At the time of Vlad Dracula’s death Matthias Corvinus of Hungary was seeking to bolster his own reputation in the Holy Roman Empire and may have intended the early pamphlets as justification of his less than vigorous support of his vassal. It must also be remembered that German merchants were often the victims of Vlad Dracula’s cruelty. The pamphlets thus painted Vlad Dracula as an inhuman monster who terrorized the land and butchered innocents with sadistic glee.



The pamphlets were also a form of mass entertainment in a society where the printing press was just coming into widespread use. The pamphlets were reprinted numerous times over the thirty or so years following Vlad’s death—strong proof of their popularity.

Russian Pamphlets



At the time of Vlad III the princes of Moscow were just beginning to build the basis of what would become the autocracy of the czars. Just like Vlad III, they were having considerable problems with the disloyal, often troublesome boyars. In Russia, Vlad Dracula was thus presented as a cruel but just prince whose actions were intended to benefit the greater good of his people.

Romanian Oral Tradition

Legends and tales concerning Vlad the Impaler have remained a part of folklore among the Romanian peasantry. These tales have been passed down from generation to generation for five hundred years. As one might imagine, through constant retelling they have become somewhat garbled and confused and are gradually being forgotten by the younger generations. However, they still provide valuable information about Vlad Dracula and his relationship with his people.



Vlad Dracula is remembered as a just prince who defended his people from foreigners, whether those foreigners were Turkish invaders or German merchants. He is also remembered as a champion of the common man against the oppression of the boyars. A central part of the verbal tradition is Vlad’s insistence on honesty in his effort to eliminate crime and immoral behavior from the region. However, despite the more positive interpretation of his life, Vlad Dracula is still remembered as an exceptionally cruel and often capricious ruler.



Despite the differences between these various sources, there are common strains that run among them. The German and Russian pamphlets, in particular, agree remarkably as to many specifics of Vlad Dracula’s deeds. This level of agreement has led many historians to conclude that much of the information must at least to some extent be true.



Anecdotes



There are about nine anecdotes that are almost universal in the Vlad Dracula literature. They include the following:



The Golden Cup



Vlad Dracula was known throughout his land for his fierce insistence on honesty and order. Thieves seldom dared practice their trade within his domain, for they knew that the stake awaited any who were caught. Vlad was so confident in the effectiveness of his law that he laced a golden cup on display in the central square of Tirgoviste. The cup was never stolen and remained entirely unmolested throughout Vlad Dracula’s reign.



The Burning of the Sick and Poor



Vlad Dracula was very concerned that all his subjects work and contribute to the common welfare. He once notice that the poor, vagrants, beggars and cripples had become very numerous in his land. Consequently, he issued an invitation to all the poor and sick in Wallachia to come to Tirgoviste for a great feast, claiming that no one should go hungry in his land. As the poor and crippled arrived in the city they were ushered into a great hall where a fabulous feast was prepared for them. The guests ate and drank late into the night. Vlad himself then made an appearance and asked them, "What else do you desire? Do you want to be without cares, lacking nothing in this world?" When they responded positively Vlad ordered the hall boarded up and set on fire. None escaped the flames. Vlad explained his action to the boyars by claiming that he did this "in order that they represent no further burden to other men, and that no one will be poor in my realm."



The Foreign Ambassadors



Although there are some discrepancies between the German and Russian pamphlets in the interpretation of this story, they agree to the following: Two ambassadors of a foreign power visited Vlad’s court at Tirgoviste. When in the presence of the prince, they refused to remove their hats. Vlad ordered that the hats be nailed to their heads, such that they should never have to remove them again.



Note: The nailing of hats to the heads of those who displeased a monarch was not an unknown act in eastern Europe and by the princes of Moscow.



The Foreign Merchant



A merchant from a foreign land visited Tirgoviste. Aware of the reputation of Vlad Dracula’s land for honesty, he left a treasure-laden cart unguarded in the street over night. Upon returning to his wagon in the morning, the merchant was shocked to find 160 golden ducats missing. Then the merchant complained of his loss to the prince, Vlad assured him that his money would be returned. Vlad Dracula then issued a proclamation to the city—find the thief and return the money or the city will be destroyed. During the night he ordered that 160 ducats plus one extra be taken from his own treasury and placed in the merchant’s cart. On returning to his cart the next morning and counting his money the merchant discovered the extra ducat. The merchant returned to Vlad and reported that his money had indeed been returned plus an extra ducat. Meanwhile the thief had been captured and turned over to the prince’s guards along with the stolen money. Vlad ordered the thief impaled and informed the merchant that if he had not reported the extra ducat he would have been impaled alongside the thief.



The Lazy Woman



Vlad once noticed a man working in the fields while wearing a caftan (shirt) that he adjudged to be too short in length. The prince stopped and asked to see the man’s wife. When the woman was brought before him he asked her how she spent her days. The poor, frightened woman stated that she spent her days washing, baking and sewing. The prince pointed out her husband’s short caftan as evidence of her laziness and dishonesty and ordered her impaled, despite her husband’s protestations that he was well satisfied with his wife. Vlad then ordered another woman to marry the peasant but admonished her to work hard or she would suffer the same fate.



The Nobleman with the Keen Sense of Smell



On St. Bartholomew’s Day in 1459 Vlad Dracula caused thirty thousand of the merchants and nobles of the Transylvanian city of Brasov to be impaled. In order that he might better enjoy the results of his orders, the prince commanded that his table be set up and that his boyars join him for a feast amongst the forest of impaled corpses. While dining, Vlad noticed that one of his boyars was holding his nose in an effort to alleviate the terrible smell of clotting blood and emptied bowels. Vlad then ordered the sensitive nobleman impaled on a stake higher than all the rest so that he might be above the stench.



Vlad Dracula’s Mistress



Vlad Dracula once had a mistress that lived in a house in the back streets of Tirgoviste. This woman apparently loved the prince to distraction and was always anxious to please him. Vlad was often moody and depressed and the woman made every effort to lighten her lover’s burdens. Once, when he was particularly depressed, the woman dared tell him the lie that she was with child. Vlad had the woman examined by the bath matrons. When informed that the woman was lying, Vlad drew his knife and cut her open from the groin to her breast, leaving her to die in agony.



The Polish Nobleman



Benedict de Boithor, a Polish nobleman in the service of the King of Hungary, visited Vlad Dracula at Tirgoviste in September of 1458. At dinner one evening Vlad ordered a golden spear brought and set up directly in front of the royal envoy. Vlad then asked the envoy if he knew why this spear had been set up. Benedict replied that he imagined some boyar had offended the prince and that Vlad intended to honor him. Vlad responded that the spear had, in fact, been set up in honor of his noble, Polish guest. The Pole then responded that if he had done anything to deserve death that Vlad should do as he thought best. Vlad Dracula was greatly pleased by this answer, showered him with gifts, and declared that had he answered in any other manner he would have been immediately impaled.



The Two Monks

There is some discrepancy in the telling of this anecdote. The various sources agree, however, as to the basic story. Two monks from a foreign land came to visit Vlad Dracula in his palace at Tirgoviste. Curious to see the reaction of the churchmen, Vlad showed them rows of impaled corpses in the courtyard. When asked their opinions, the first monk responded, "You are appointed by God to punish evil-doers." The other monk had the moral courage to condemn the cruel prince. In the version of the story most common in the German pamphlets, Vlad rewarded the sycophantic monk and impaled the honest one. In the version found in Russian pamphlets and in Romanian verbal tradition Vlad rewarded the honest monk for his integrity and courage and impaled the sycophant for his dishonesty.



The Origins of the Vampire Myth



It is certainly no coincidence that Bram Stoker chose the Balkans as the home of his famous vampire. The Balkans were still basically medieval even in Stoker’s time. They had only recently shaken off the Turkish yoke when Stoker started working on his novel and the superstitions of the Dark Ages were still prevalent.



The legend of the vampire was and still is deeply rooted in the Balkan region. There have always been vampire-like creatures in the mythologies of many cultures. However, the vampire, as he became known in Europe and hence America, largely originated in the Slavic and Greek lands of Eastern Europe.



A veritable epidemic of vampirism swept through Eastern Europe beginning in the late seventeenth century and continuing through the eighteenth century. The number of reported cases rose dramatically in Hungary and the Balkans. From the Balkans the plague spread westward into Germany, Italy, France, England and Spain. Travelers returning from the Balkans brought with them tales of the undead, igniting an interest in the vampire that has continued to this day.



Philosophers in the West began to study the phenomenon. It was during this period that Dom Augustin Calmet wrote his famous treatise on vampirism in Hungary. It was also during this period that authors and playwrights first began to explore the vampire myth. Stoker’s novel was merely the culminating work of a long series of works that were inspired by the reports coming from the region.



Did Bram Stoker base his Dracula

upon the historical Dracula?



Although it is widely assumed, even among scholars, that Bram Stoker based his novel upon the historical figure of Vlad Tepes, there is at least one prominent scholar who challenges this assumption. Her name is Elizabeth Miller, a professor with the Department of English at Memorial University of Newfoundland. (http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~emiller/owner.htm) Her primary argument is that Bram Stoker kept meticulous notes of his references in creating Dracula, and none of the references contain specific information about the life and/or atrocities of Vlad Tepes.



There is fairly strong evidence the two Draculas are connected. Arguments in favor of this position include the following:



The fictional Dracula and the historical Dracula share the same name. There can be no doubt that Bram Stoker based his character upon some reference to Vlad Dracula.

Stoker researched various sources prior to writing the novel, including the Library at Whitby and literature from the British Museum. It is entirely possible that his readings on Balkan history would have included information about Vlad Tepes.

Stoker was the friend of a Hungarian professor from Budapest, named Arminius Vambery, who he met personally on several occasions and who may have given him information about the historical Dracula.

Some of the text of Stoker’s novel provides direct correlations between the fictional Dracula and Vlad Tepes (e.g., the fighting off of the Turks--also, the physical description of Dracula in the novel is very similar to the traditional image of Vlad Tepes.).

Other references in the novel may also be related to the historical Dracula. For example, the driving of a stake through the vampire’s heart may be related to Vlad’s use of impalement; Renfield’s fixation with insects and small animals may have found inspiration in Vlad’s penchant for torturing small animals during his period of imprisonment; and Dracula’s loathing of holy objects may relate to Vlad’s renunciation of the Orthodox Church.

The Inside Story of "Jack the Ripper" By Hereward Carrington Fate Magazine, May 1949
22:03 Nov 22 2011
Times Read: 451

Sixty years ago the most terrible killer ever to roam London's streets came to a chill end in the Thames - or so the world was told. But that report was a hoax, deliberately engineered by the London Police.



ALMOST sixty years have passed since the unsolved "Jack the Ripper" murders invoked the horror of people everywhere.



These atrocious crimes, over a period of months, were committed in the infamous East End of London . . . the heart of the most populous city on earth . . . in defiance of every conceivable precaution taken by the C.I.D. (Criminal Investigation Department) of Scotland Yard, and the assistance of special police and citizen patrols spread throughout the district.



It was in autumn of 1888 that the first of these murders was committed, and as others of a like nature soon followed without a clue as to the identity of the killer, it became apparent that a Master Criminal was at large. His victims were always poor, miserable women of the streets, friendless prostitutes, who were stabbed to death and then horribly ripped and mutilated by what appeared to be surgical knives of extreme sharpness.



After the second of these murders the public took alarm, and a dread of this mysterious Terror who killed swiftly and without warning by night, spread throughout London. Lonely women wayfarers, abroad when darkness came, hurried through the streets, terrified with the premonition that the notorious murderer was dogging their footsteps.



The newspapers fanned the fearful anxiety of the public with sensational headlines and minute details of the horrible and gruesome crimes. Popular resentment against the ineffectiveness of the police to deal with this killer ran high. The C.I.D. took particularly caustic criticism leveled at it from all quarters.



At the height of the controversy, the London Police Commissioner resigned his office, and the frenzied hunt for the murderer became totally disorganized. The killings ascribed to "Jack the Ripper" - so named from the signature of one of the bogus letters published by the police - continued without respite during 1888, but no arrests were made.



In blaming the detective police of this time, it must be remembered that as compared to forces in other countries, English authorities worked under the severe handicap of not being allowed to arrest on suspicion or question the man they suspected. They first needed to be in possession of the guilt of their man. And this evidence they were never able to acquire.



In only one instance did a policeman have sight of the fiendish criminal. A young officer, named Thompson, was patrolling Chambers Street one evening when a man came running out of Swallow Gardens toward him. Upon seeing the police uniform the man turned tail and headed off in the opposite direction.



An experienced officer would have pursued the suspect, but Thompson turned into Swallow Gardens . . . and almost stumbled over the mutilated body of Frances Coles.



The error of his judgment preyed on the young officer's mind. He seemed to consider it the first episode of an unfortunate career . . . and his forboding eventually came true. The first time he had gone on night duty he had discovered a murder by stabbing . . . and some years later he himself was stabbed to death by a man named Abrahams. The jury returned a verdict of manslaughter in his killing, and Abrahams died in prison.



There were many sensational sidelights during this period of fear and unrest on the part of the public. A practical joker, at midnight, in a secluded street in Whitechapel, accosted a woman and yelled, "I'm Jack the Ripper!" He was immediately set upon, and knocked about by indignant bystanders. Luckily two constables arrived at the scene to rescue him from death at the hands of the angry mob.



At another time a Liverpool mail-steamer was held up from sailing for several hours, while the police searched her from stem to stern for a sailor who had produced a huge knife in a low tavern at that seaport, and boasted that he was the notorious Jack the Ripper. The police were compelled to follow every clue, however seemingly ridiculous the "information" sifting into its intelligence headquarters . . . for they had so few known "facts" from the actual scene of the crimes to work from.



But the murderer, who operated alone, at night, in lonely places, escaped detection. His very boldness and familiarity with the district in which he "operated", thoroughly outwitted his would-be captors. The mystery of his identity was intensified when it became known at the coroner's inquests that medical experts had certified that the perpetrator of these murders had considerable anatomical knowledge and skill, and more than likely was either "a butcher, an advanced medical student, or a doctor."



Many pathetic scenes were enacted in the dim Police Court where the inquests were held. Of one woman victim it was said that she was repulsed by the custodian of a doss house because she had not the necessary fee for a bed. "All right, dearie, I'll soon get it ! Look at my new bonnet, ain't it a beauty. I'll soon be back." She was discovered an hour later, stabbed and mutilated, in a nearby alley.



In a newspaper controversy by criminologists and others, it was claimed that Jack the Ripper was either a homicidal or religious maniac . or that his impelling urge was one of revenge.



After the last of these murders, the police had brought their investigation to the point of suspecting one or another of three homicidal lunatics. One was a Polish Nationalist reported by Police Constable Thompson, the only officer who had caught sight of the murderer.



The second was an insane Russian doctor who had been a convict both in England and in Siberia. This man was reported to be in the habit of carrying surgical knives in his pockets. At the time of the outrages. he was in hiding; at any rate he could not be found,



The third suspect was also a doctor, of prominent and impeccable reputation, living on the West Side of London, whose mind was "cracking up" and on the borderland of insanity. It is with this individual, the real Jack the Ripper murderer, that our story deals.



According to the files of Scotland Yard, after the last of the Jack the Ripper murders in Miller's Court on November 9th, 1888, this man disappeared . . . and seven weeks later his body was found floating in the Thames. The medical evidence was that it had been in the water for a month, With his death, the mutilation-murders, ceased as abruptly as they started, and as far as generally known, the criminal responsible for these bizarre slayings was never apprehended. But the crime was solved, and by the police !



The "inside story" of how this notorious murderer was "clairvoyantly" traced and finally arrested was first published by the "London Daily Express," and later incorporated into a book edited by Charles Neil, entitled "World's Greatest Mysteries." The remarkable information this volume contained has never been refuted, incredible as it may appear.



In his book Neil states that "a dozen London physicians, who sat as a court of medical inquiry, or a commission in lunacy, definitely proved that the dreaded Jack the Ripper was no less a person than a physician of high standing, living in the West End of London. When it was absolutely proved that the physician in question was the murderer, and his insanity fully established by the commission, all parties having a knowledge of the facts were sworn to secrecy."



The document, disclosing the details of the case, was placed in the hands of the "London Daily Express" soon after the death of the "clairvoyant," Dr. R. J. Lees, who led the police to a solution of the crimes. Dr. Lees dictated the document in question, and issued instructions that its contents should not be revealed until after his death.



The circumstances which led to the detection of this inhuman monster are incredible to the extreme . . . and altogether unparalleled in the history of crime. It is only proper that credit be given (even though posthumously) to Dr. Robert James Lees, author of "Through the Mists," as the man who (according to this report) put the London police on the track of the killer. He himself had religiously observed his promise not to divulge the identity of the Ripper.



The document states that Dr. Lees developed an extraordinary faculty for "second sight" early in life, and that it enabled him to have an "in-sight" into the nature of things hidden from the perceptions of ordinary men who have to depend entirely upon their "out-sights" for seeing things. At the age of 19, he was summoned before Queen Victoria, where he gave evidence of his unusual clairvoyant gift, "exciting her utmost wonderment."



At the time of the first three murders, Dr. Lees was at the height of his powers as a "seer". One day, while writing in his study, he suddenly became apprehensive, and in translating his feelings, he became convinced that the Ripper was about to commit another murder. He tried to shake off this premonition, but it remained with him, increasing in intensity until, as it were, an "inner eye" opened, and a scene flashed itself before his vision.



He seemed to see two persons, a man and a woman, walking down a dimly-lit side street. Following them in his mind's eye, he saw them enter a narrow court. He read the name of the court. There was a gin palace near the court, and this was ablaze with light. Inside a rowdy crowd of East Enders, the scum of London, shouted in boisterous and indecent merriment. The hands of the clock above the bar pointed to 12:40 . . . the hour at which the public houses close for the night.



As he looked, the crowd melted from the tavern. He was drawn toward the man and woman who had entered the court. The woman was half-drunk; the man perfectly sober, and intent upon an errand. In a dark corner of the court the woman leaned against a building to support her reeling senses. Suddenly the man, dressed in a dark suit of Scotch Tweed and carrying a light overcoat over his arm, hastened forward.



He put a hand over her mouth and drew her to him. She struggled feebly, but was too much under the influence of liquor to offer effective resistance. Then her days on earth were over . . . her throat slit from ear to ear. The blood spurted from her neck and onto the man's shirtfront. He held her by the waist and mouth and dropped her limp form to the ground.



With his knife already dripping with blood, he inflicted deep gashes in various parts of her body, slitting her skin and flesh with the finesse of an accomplished butcher. Then he deliberately wiped his knife clean on his victim's clothes, and sheathed it. Calmly he put on his light overcoat, buttoning it up to hide his shirtfront, and casually walked away. These are things Dr. Lees saw in "clairvoyance." He went at once to Scotland Yard to inform them of his vision.



The sergeant on duty faithfully recorded Dr. Lees' account of the murder . . . but only by way of humoring one whom he considered a harmless lunatic. It was quite a fad these days - giving one's self up as Jack the Ripper - and the psychopathic hospitals were full of would-be murderers. Also alarmists were besieging the offices of Scotland Yard with phoney information and threats of new murders.



So, in Dr. Lees' instance, the sergeant did not take the information seriously. He was half-way tempted to lock him up. But decided that he'd best take the story down, and let the man go his way thinking he had "helped the authorities" in this famous case. At any rate, the sergeant noted the hands of the imaginary tavern's clock at 12:40 when the Ripper met his victim in the court, and promptly forgot the whole affair - until the next day.



At 12:30 on the following night, a woman entered the public house near the court in question. She was quite under the influence of drink, and the bar-keeper refused to serve her. She was seen by another witness to enter the court again at 12:40 in the company of a man dressed in a dark suit and carrying a light overcoat. This was the evidence given before the deputy coroner who held an inquest on the body of a woman found "with her throat cut, and horribly mutilated," to quote from the coroner's records.



Dr. Lees was shocked when he read of the murder in the court, in the newspapers next day. To use his own language: "My whole nervous system was seriously shaken and under the advice of a physician I removed with my family to the Continent." While he was away, Jack the Ripper continued his butchering of women of low repute . . . adding four more murders to his list. It then became necessary for Dr. Lees to return to London.



One day, while riding on a bus with his wife, a man entered the vehicle. When he saw him, "every nerve in my body tingled with excitement." The stranger was dressed in a suit of dark Scotch tweed and carried a light overcoat; but he was no stranger. Leaning over to his wife, Dr. Lees whispered tensely, "That man is Jack the Ripper!"



When the bus turned into Oxford Street, the man got off. Dr. Lees was determined to follow him. About half-way up the block, he met a constable, to whom he pointed out the man, and informed him that he was the dreaded Ripper murderer. But when he asked the officer to make an arrest, the constable only looked at him and laughed. Instead he began questioning Dr. Lees, retaining him long enough for the suspect to escape.



That night Dr. Lees again received premonitions that the Ripper was on the prowl, and about to commit another murder. The scene of this outrage was not as distinct as in the former instance, but the face of the woman victim was clearly defined, A peculiarity of the mutilation was that one ear was completely severed from the face, and that the other remained hanging by a mere thread of skin.



As soon as he had recovered from his trance, Dr. Lees hastened to Scotland Yard, and insisted upon an immediate audience with the Head Inspector of Police. That official listened with a smile of incredulity to the first portion of the visitor's story. The smile, however, died away as Dr. Lees reached that portion of his narrative where he described the severed ears of the victim.



With sober deliberation the Police Inspector reached into a drawer of his desk and took out a post card. He laid it in front of Dr. Lees for his perusal. It was an ordinary post card written in red ink. But it had two finger marks traced in blood in one corner, and included the message:



"Tomorrow night I shall take my revenge from a class of women who have made themselves most obnoxious to me, my ninth victim.



Jack the Ripper.



"P.S.-: To prove that I am really Jack the Ripper, I will cut off the ears of this ninth victim."



The Inspector had at his command a force of nearly 15,000 constables. By dusk of next day no fewer than 3,000 of these, in addition to 1500 detectives, were patrolling the courts and alleys of Whitechapel. Notwithstanding all these precautions, Jack the Ripper, with infinite cunning, penetrated the cordon, slew his victim, and disappeared.



The murdered woman was found slaughtered "with one ear completely severed and the other hanging by a mere shread of flesh." At this news the Inspector turned deathly pale, and confided in Dr. Lees that he was "up a tree" in his investigations. The solution of the murders was no nearer now than at the beginning of the case, and the Inspector asked Dr. Lees to assist him.



Unfortunately the clairvoyant had business on the Continent and was not able to do so at the time. But he promised that he would come to see him upon his return. While he was abroad, the Ripper continued his evil ways and murdered his sixteenth victim . . . coolly informing the Scotland Yard authorities that he intended to kill twenty, and then stop.



Shortly after this Dr. Lees returned to England and made the acquaintance of two Americans visiting London, Roland B. Shaw and Fred C. Backwith. One evening these three gentlemen were having dinner in the Criterion when Dr. Lees suddenly turned to his companions and exclaimed: "Great God! `Jack the Ripper' has just committed another murder!"



His companions were amazed at this disclosure, and looked at Dr. Lees in askance. The "visionary" then had to tell his friends the whole story of his apparent "sensitiveness" to the Ripper while in London. Mr. Shaw checked his watch. It was 11 minutes to 8. At 10 minutes to 8 a policeman discovered the body of a woman in Crown Court, in the Whitechapel district, with her throat cut and her body bearing the cutmarks of the Ripper.



Dr. Lees and his companions went at once to Scotland Yard. The Inspector had not yet received the news of the murder, but while Dr. Lees was relating his story, a message arrived with the details of the outrage. The Inspector, taking with him two men in plain clothes, together with Dr. Lees and his two friends, drove at once to Crown Court. As they entered Dr. Lees said: "Look in the angle of the wall. There is something written there."



The Inspector, by this time, as anyone can readily imagine, was himself in a state bordering on insanity. Never in his long career as a criminal investigator had such a baffling series of murders been committed, without any clues to work from in the detection of the culprit, except the claims of a "seer" who says he has "visions" (and verifiable visions!) of the murders before they take place. Enough to drive any man mad, Especially an ordinary police officer, who likes his work "routine" and "conventional !"



It must be borne in mind here that Jack the Ripper had eluded the resourcefulness of the greatest police force in the world; that, rendered desperate at last, the authorities had summoned to their assistance the most experienced detectives of France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain and America. They had lavished immense sums of money in an endeavor to trace the fiend, and there was a standing aggregate reward of £30,000, together with a pension of £1500 per annum . . all to go to the man who should first deliver to justice the terrible Ripper.



The Inspector, having abandoned every known scientific means to trace the criminal, turned as a last desperate hope to Dr. Lees. It was fantastic . . . but possible (at this stage anything was possible!) . . . that this man's unusual "clairvoyant" faculty might do the incredible and discover the identity of the killer, It was evident that there did exist some subtle "magnetic" connection between the medium and the fugitive.



All that night Dr. Lees turned his mind inward to its impalpable sensitivity to Jack the Ripper, and wandered through the streets of London "like a bloodhound following hot upon a scene!" The Inspector and his aides followed a few feet behind him.



At last, at 4 o'clock in the morning, with face pale and eyes bloodshot with effort, Dr. Lees halted at the gates of a West End mansion. Gasping through cracked and swollen lips, he pointed to an upper chamber where a faint light was visible. "In that room you will find the murderer you seek!" he said.



The Inspector was visibly shaken. "Impossible," he said. "That is the residence of one of the most celebrated physicians in the West End."



It could not be. Yet the "visions" and "impressions" of this clairvoyant had been astonishingly accurate. Perhaps a test of his powers would prove or disprove the validity of his extravagant statement.



"If you will describe to me the interior of the doctor's hall," the Inspector remarked, "I will arrest him at the risk of my position."



"The hall has a rough porter's chair of black oak, on the right hand, as you enter. A stained-glass window is at the extreme end. And a large mastiff is, at this moment, asleep at the foot of the stairs," offered Dr. Lees, after a moment of deep insight.



The Inspector was reluctant to arouse the household at that ungodly hour of the morning on such flimsy evidence. So the party waited until 7 A.M., when the servants in the fashionable residence began to stir. Then they entered the house and learned that the doctor was still in bed. They requested to be allowed to see his wife.



The servant left them standing in the hall, and the Inspector called Dr. Lees' attention to the fact that there was no mastiff visible, as he had described, although, in all other respects the description tallied exactly. Upon questioning the servant as to the whereabouts of the dog, she informed the men that it generally slept at the foot of the stairs at night, and was let out into the garden in the morning. When the Inspector heard this, he exclaimed: "It is the Hand of Providence!"



In a few minutes the doctor's wife made her appearance, and after a half-hour's searching inquiry into her husband's activities, it was ascertained that the wife doubted the doctor's sanity during the past few months. There had been moments when he had reversed his usual mild and pleasant disposition, and terrorized both herself and her children at the slightest provocation. The wife also noted, with deep forboding (though she would not permit herself to reveal these suspicions to the authorities) that whenever a Whitechapel murder would occur, her husband would be absent from the house.



An hour later the Inspector had summoned to the house a group of the greatest experts on insanity in the city of London. The doctor was awakened and confronted with the accusation that he was responsible for the Ripper murders. At first the noted doctor recoiled in shock and horror at the bold statement that he was a brutal murderer. Then he shook his head in bewilderment, and his shoulders slumped in puzzlement and weariness. He admitted that his mind had acted strangely for several months, and that there were lapses of time for which he could not account . . . hours during which he was unable to recall doing anything.



That he was guilty of the Whitechapel killings, however, filled the doctor with awe and repugnance. But he would not deny the possibility of its being true. He told the physicians that occasionally he would find himself sitting in his room as if aroused from a long stupor . . without being able to remember the passing of evening. In one instance he had found blood on his shirtfront, which he couldn't account for; blood which he had finally attributed to a bloody nose during one of his "lapses" of memory.



Upon the confession of mental inaptitude, the Inspector made a thorough search of the house, and found ample proof that the famous physician was indeed Jack the Ripper. A dark Scotch tweed suit, together with a light overcoat, was found in a closet.



An exhaustive inquiry before a commission in lunacy developed the fact that the doctor was a sufferer from schizophrenia (split personality) with paranoid tendencies . . . and while, in one mind, he was a prominent and respected doctor of medicine, in the other, he was an inhuman beast, with an insatiable urge to slit the throats and mutilate the bodies of women who prostitute themselves for a price.



The new turn of events put the police in an incredible dilemma. The climax of one of the greatest manhunts in the history of Scotland Yard had culminated . . . in an anticlimax !



Circumstantial evidence all pointed to the guilt of one of London's most eminent physicians as the murderer Jack the Ripper. This doctor was adjudged insane by a committee of psychiatrists, and it was more than likely that the facts on the murders would never be clearly established.



If the accused was brought to trial for his actions, his guilt would have to be proved . . . and no one, not even the doctor himself, knew positively that he was the murderer, Then, the issue would arise whether a man could be adjudged guilty of a crime he committed while in a state of "somnambulism," or, to put it more exactly, when a "secondary personality" had possession of his body.



It would have been interesting to follow the course of reasoning presented by the opposing counsel in such a psychological case. But the trial was not to be. For the physician was removed to a private asylum where he became the most cunning and dangerous madman confined in that institution.



In order to account for the disappearance of the doctor, a sham death by drowning in the Thames, and burial were gone through, and an empty coffin (supposed to contain the mortal remains of a great West End physician whose untimely death all London mourned) was deposited in the family vault.



Back in the private mental sanitarium, none of the keepers ever knew that the desperate and violent maniac who threw himself from side to side in his padded cell, and made long night vigils at the window facing outside, emitting piercing cries of frustration, was the famous Jack the Ripper ! To them, he was simply known as "No. 124."

MOTHMAN AND THE ENIGMA OF POINT PLEASANT
09:30 Nov 20 2011
Times Read: 463

“Mothman”, as the strange creature came to be called, is perhaps one of the strangest creatures to ever grace the annals of weirdness in America. Even though this mysterious and unsolved case has nothing to do with ghosts, it would be remiss of me to not include it in a section of the website about the unexplained.





The weird events connected to the Mothman began on November 12, 1966 near Clendenin, West Virginia. Five men were in the local cemetery that day, preparing a grave for a burial, when something that looked like a “brown human being” lifted off from some nearby trees and flew over their heads. The men were baffled. It did not appear to be a bird, but more like a man with wings. A few days later, more sightings would take place, electrifying the entire region.



Late in the evening of November 15, two young married couples had a very strange encounter as they drove past an abandoned TNT plant near Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The couples spotted two large eyes that were attached to something that was "shaped like a man, but bigger, maybe six or seven feet tall. And it had big wings folded against its back".



When the creature moved toward the plant door, the couples panicked and sped away. Moments later, they saw the same creature on a hillside near the road. It spread its wings and rose into the air, following with their car, which by now was traveling at over 100 miles per hour. "That bird kept right up with us," said one of the group. They told Deputy Sheriff Millard Halstead that it followed them down Highway 62 and right to the Point Pleasant city limits. And they would not be the only ones to report the creature that night. Another group of four witnesses claimed to see the “bird” three different times!



Mothman

(Artist - Cathy Wilkins)





Another sighting had more bizarre results. At about 10:30 on that same evening, Newell Partridge, a local building contractor who lived in Salem (about 90 miles from Point Pleasant), was watching television when the screen suddenly went dark. He stated that a weird pattern filled the screen and then he heard a loud, whining sounds from outside that raised in pitch and then ceased. “It sounded like a generator winding up” he later stated. Partridge’s dog, Bandit, began to howl out on the front porch and Newell went out to see what was going on.



When he walked outside, he saw Bandit facing the hay barn, about 150 yards from the house. Puzzled, Partridge turned a flashlight in that direction and spotted two red circles that looked like eyes or “bicycle reflectors”. They moving red orbs were certainly not animal’s eyes, he believed, and the sight of them frightened him. Bandit, an experienced hunting dog and protective of his territory, shot off across the yard in pursuit of the glowing eyes. Partridge called for him to stop, but the animal paid no attention. His owner turned and went back into the house for his gun, but then was too scared to go back outside again. He slept that night with his gun propped up next to the bed. The next morning, he realized that Bandit had disappeared. The dog had still not shown up two days later when Partridge read in the newspaper about the sightings in Point Pleasant that night.



The Silver Bridge







One statement that he read in the newspaper chilled him to the bone. Roger Scarberry, one member of the group who spotted the strange “bird” at the TNT plant, said that as they entered the city limits of Point Pleasant, they saw the body of a large dog lying on the side of the road. A few minutes later, on the way back out of town, the dog was gone. They even stopped to look for the body, knowing they had passed it just a few minutes before. Newell Partridge immediately thought of Bandit, who was never seen again.



On November 16, a press conference was held in the county courthouse and the couples from the TNT plant sighting repeated their story. Deputy Halstead, who had known the couples all of their lives, took them very seriously. “They’ve never been in any trouble,” he told investigators and had no reason to doubt their stories. Many of the reporters who were present for the weird recounting felt the same way. The news of the strange sightings spread around the world. The press dubbed the odd flying creature “Mothman”, after a character from the popular Batman television series of the day.



The remote and abandoned TNT plant became the lair of the Mothman in the months ahead and it could not have picked a better place to hide in. The area was made up of several hundred acres of woods and large concrete domes where high explosives were stored during World War II. A network of tunnels honeycombed the area and made it possible for the creature to move about without being seen. In addition to the manmade labyrinth, the area was also comprised of the McClintic Wildlife Station, a heavily forested animal preserve filled with woods, artificial ponds and steep ridges and hills. Much of the property was almost inaccessible and without a doubt, Mothman could have hid for weeks or months and remained totally unseen. The only people who ever wandered there were hunters and fishermen and the local teenagers, who used the rutted dirt roads of the preserve as “lover’s lanes”.



Very few homes could be found in the region, but one dwelling belonged to the Ralph Thomas family. One November 16, they spotted a “funny red light” in the sky that moved and hovered above the TNT plant. “It wasn’t an airplane”, Mrs. Marcella Bennett (a friend of the Thomas family) said, “but we couldn’t figure out what it was.” Mrs. Bennett drove to the Thomas house a few minutes later and got out of the car with her baby. Suddenly, a figure stirred near the automobile. “It seemed as though it had been lying down,” she later recalled. “It rose up slowly from the ground. A big gray thing. Bigger than a man with terrible glowing eyes.”



Mrs. Bennett was so horrified that she dropped her little girl! She quickly recovered, picked up her child and ran to the house. The family locked everyone inside but hysteria gripped them as the creature shuffled onto the porch and peered into the windows. The police were summoned, but the Mothman had vanished by the time the authorities had arrived.



Mrs. Bennett would not recover from the incident for months and was in fact so distraught that she sought medical attention to deal with her anxieties. She was tormented by frightening dreams and later told investigators that she believed the creature had visited her own home too. She said that she could often hear a keening sounds (like a woman screaming) near her isolated home on the edge of Point Pleasant.



Many would come to believe that the sightings of Mothman, as well as UFO sightings and encounters with “men in black” in the area, were all related. For nearly a year, strange happenings continued in the area. Researchers, investigators and “monster hunters” descended on the area but none so famous as author John Keel, who has written extensively about Mothman and other unexplained anomalies. He has written for many years about UFO’s but dismisses the standard “extraterrestrial” theories of the mainstream UFO movement. For this reason, he has been a controversial figure for decades. According to Keel, man has had a long history of interaction with the supernatural. He believes that the intervention of mysterious strangers in the lives of historic personages like Thomas Jefferson and Malcolm X provides evidence of the continuing presence of the “gods of old”. The manifestation of these elder gods comes in the form of UFO’s and aliens, monsters, demons, angels and even ghosts. He has remained a colorful character to many and yet remains respected in the field for his research and fascinating writings.



Keel became the major chronicler of the Mothman case and wrote that at least 100 people personally witnessed the creature between November 1966 and November 1967. According to their reports, the creature stood between five and seven feet tall, was wider than a man and shuffled on human-like legs. Its eyes were set near the top of the shoulders and had bat-like wings that glided, rather than flapped, when it flew. Strangely though, it was able to ascend straight up “like a helicopter”. Witnesses also described its murky skin as being either gray or brown and it emitted a humming sound when it flew. The Mothman was apparently incapable of speech and gave off a screeching sound. Mrs. Bennett stated that it sounded like a “woman screaming”.



John Keel arrived in Point Pleasant in December 1966 and immediately began collecting reports of Mothman sightings and even UFO reports from before the creature was seen. He also compiled evidence that suggested a problem with televisions and phones that began in the fall of 1966. Lights had been seen in the skies, particularly around the TNT plant, and cars that passed along the nearby road sometimes stalled without explanation. He and his fellow researchers also uncovered a number of short-lived poltergeist cases in the Ohio Valley area. Locked doors opened and closed by themselves, strange thumps were heard inside and outside of homes and often, inexplicable voices were heard. The James Lilley family, who lived just south of the TNT plant, were so bothered by the bizarre events that they finally sold their home and moved to another neighborhood. Keel was convinced that the intense period of activity was all connected.



And stranger things still took place..... A reporter named Mary Hyre, who was the Point Pleasant correspondent for the Athens, Ohio newspaper the Messenger, also wrote extensively about the local sightings. In fact, after one very active weekend, she was deluged with over 500 phone calls from people who saw strange lights in the skies. One night in January 1967, she was working late in her office in the county courthouse and a man walked in the door. He was very short and had strange eyes that were covered with thick glasses. He also had long, black hair that was cut squarely “like a bowl haircut”. Hyre said that he spoke in a low, halting voice and he asked for directions to Welsh, West Virginia. She thought that he had some sort of speech impediment and for some reason, he terrified her. “He kept getting closer and closer to me, “ she said, “ and his funny eyes were staring at me almost hypnotically.”



Alarmed, she summoned the newspaper’s circulation manager to her office and together, they spoke to the strange little man. She said that at one point in the discussion, she answered the telephone when it rang and she noticed the little man pick up a pen from her desk. He looked at it in amazement, “as if he had never seen a pen before.” Then, he grabbed the pen, laughed loudly and ran out of the building.



Several weeks later, Hyre was crossing the street near her office and saw the same man on the street. He appeared to be startled when he realized that she was watching him, turned away quickly and ran for a large black car that suddenly came around the corner. The little man climbed in and it quickly drove away.



By this time, most of the sightings had come to an end and Mothman had faded away into the strange “twilight zone” from which he had come... but the story of Point Pleasant had not yet ended. At around 5:00 in the evening on December 15, 1967, the 700-foot bridge linking Point Pleasant to Ohio suddenly collapsed while filled with rush hour traffic. Dozens of vehicles plunged into the dark waters of the Ohio River and 46 people were killed. Two of those were never found and the other 44 are buried together in the town cemetery of Gallipolis, Ohio.



On that same tragic night, the James Lilley family (who still lived near the TNT plant at that time) counted more than 12 eerie lights that flashed above their home and vanished into the forest.



The collapse of the Silver Bridge made headlines all over the country and Mary Hyre went days without sleep as reporters and television crews from everywhere descended on the town. The local citizens were stunned with horror and disbelief and the tragedy is still being felt today.



During Christmas week, a short, dark-skinned man entered the office of Mary Hyre. He was dressed in a black suit, with a black tie, and she said that he looked vaguely Oriental. He had high cheekbones, narrow eyes and an unidentified accent. He was not interested in the bridge disaster, she said, but wanted to know about local UFO sightings. Hyre was too busy to talk with him and she handed her a file of related press clipping instead. He was not interested in them and insisted on speaking with her. She finally dismissed him from her office.



That same night, an identically described man visited the homes of several witnesses in the area who had reported seeing the lights in the sky. He made all of them very uneasy and uncomfortable and while he claimed to be a reporter from Cambridge, Ohio, he inadvertently admitted that he did not know where Columbus, Ohio was even though the two towns are just a few miles apart.



So who was Mothman and what was behind the strange events in Point Pleasant?



Whatever the creature may have been, it seems clear that Mothman was no hoax. There were simply too many credible witnesses who saw “something”. It was suggested at the time that the creature may have been a sandhill crane, which while they are not native to the area, could have migrated south from Canada. That was one explanation anyway, although it was one that was rejected by Mothman witnesses, who stated that what they saw looked nothing like a crane.



But there could have been a logical explanation for some of the sightings. Even John Keel (who believed the creature was genuine) suspected that a few of the cases involved people who were spooked by recent reports and saw owls flying along deserted roads at night. Even so, Mothman remains hard to easily dismiss. The case is filled with an impressive number of multiple-witness sightings by individuals that were deemed reliable, even by law enforcement officials.



But if Mothman was real... and he truly was some unidentified creature that cannot be explained, what was behind the UFO sightings, the poltergeist reports, the strange lights, sounds, the “men in black” and most horrifying, the collapse of the Silver Bridge?



John Keel believes that Point Pleasant was a “window” area, a place that was marked by long periods of strange sightings, monster reports and the coming and going of unusual persons. He states that it may be wrong to blame the collapse of the bridge on the local UFO sightings, but the intense activity in the area at the time does suggest some sort of connection. Others have pointed to another supernatural link to the strange happenings, blaming the events on the legendary Cornstalk Curse that was placed on Point Pleasant in the 1770's. (Click Here to Discover the details about the Cornstalk Curse)



And if such things can happen in West Virginia, then why not elsewhere in the country? Can these “window” areas explain other phantom attackers, mysterious creatures, mad gassers and more that have been reported all over America? Perhaps they can, but to consider this, we have to consider an even more chilling question... where will the next “window” area be? It might be of benefit to study your local sightings and weird events a little more carefully in the future!

The Cornstalk Curse
23:26 Nov 19 2011
Times Read: 474

Almost two centuries before the shadow of the Mothman reared its head in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, the land around the Ohio River ran red with blood. As the inhabitants of the American colonies began to push their way to the west, and later fought for their independence from Britain, they entered into deadly combat with the Native American inhabitants of the land. Perhaps their greatest foe in these early Indian wars was Chief Cornstalk, who later became a friend to the Americans. But treachery, deception and murder would bring an end to the chief’s life and a curse that he placed on Point Pleasant would linger for 200 years, bringing tragedy, death and disaster....



There is no denying that the southeastern corner of Ohio, and the surrounding area of West Virginia, is considered by many to be one of the most haunted areas of the country. West Virginia has long been thought of as one of the strangest parts of the country in regards to ghosts, legends and strange happenings. This part of the country, which was originally a part of Virginia, was regarded by the Native Americans as a “haunted” spot, plagued with ghost lights, phantoms and strange creatures. The town of Parkersburg, just north on the river from Point Pleasant, has more than its share of ghosts and nearby is Athens County, Ohio, home to the most haunted city in the entire state.



But how did this region gain such a reputation? Why are many people not surprised to find stories of the Mothman, phantom inhabitants and mysterious creatures roaming this part of the country? There have been a number of theories to explain the large number of haunted happenings here, including that this area may be some sort of “window” between dimensions. This would, according to the theories, allow paranormal phenomenon to come and go and vanish at will, just as the Mothman did after 13 months of appearing around Point Pleasant.



Those researchers with a historical bent have offered their own solutions though. They have traced the supernatural roots of the region back to a bloody event from the days of the American Revolution.. and a great curse.



As the American frontiersmen began to move west in the 1770’s, seven nations of Indians (the Shawnee, Delaware, Wyandot, Mingo, Miami, Ottawa and Illinois) formed a powerful confederacy to keep the white men from infringing on their territory. The Shawnee were the most powerful of the tribes and were led by a feared and respected chieftain called “Keigh-tugh-gua”, which translates to mean “Cornstalk”. In 1774, when the white settlers were moving down into the Kanawha and Ohio River valleys, the Indian Confederacy prepared to protect their lands by any means necessary. The nations began to mass in a rough line across the point from the Ohio River to the Kanawha River, numbering about 1200 warriors. They began to make preparations to attack the white settlers near an area called Point Pleasant on the Virginia side of the Ohio River. As word reached the colonial military leaders of the impending attack, troops were sent in and faced off against the Indians. While the numbers of fighters were fairly even on both sides, the Native Americans were no match for the muskets of the white soldiers. The battle ended with about 140 colonials killed and more than twice that number of Indians. The tribes retreated westward into the wilds of what is now Ohio and in order to keep them from returning, a fort was constructed at the junction of the Kanawha and Ohio Rivers.



As time passed, the Shawnee leader, Cornstalk, made peace with the white men. He would carry word to his new friends in 1777 when the British began coaxing the Indians into attacking the rebellious colonies. Soon, the tribes again began massing along the Ohio River, intent on attacking the fort. Cornstalk and Red Hawk, a Delaware chief, had no taste for war with the Americans and they went to the fort on November 7 to try and negotiate a peace before fighting began. Cornstalk told Captain Arbuckle, who commanded the garrison, that he was opposed to war with the colonists but that only he and his tribe were holding back from joining on the side of the British. He was afraid that he would be forced to go along by the rest of the Confederacy.



When he admitted to Arbuckle that he would allow his men to fight if the other tribes did, Cornstalk, Red Hawk and another Indian were taken as hostages. The Americans believed that they could use him to keep the other tribes from attacking. They forced the Native Americans into a standoff for none of them wanted to risk the life of their leader. Cornstalk’s name not only stuck fear into hearts of the white settlers up and down the frontier, but it also garnered respect from the other Indian tribes. He was gifted with great oratory skills, fighting ability and military genius. In fact, it was said that when his fighting tactics were adopted by the Americans, they were able to defeat the British in a number of battles where they had been both outnumbered and outgunned.



Although taken as hostage, Cornstalk and the other Indians were treated well and were given comfortable quarters, leading many to wonder if the chief’s hostage status may have been voluntary in the beginning. Cornstalk even assisted his captors in plotting maps of the Ohio River Valley during his imprisonment. On November 9, Cornstalk’s son, Ellinipisco, came to the fort to see his father and he was also detained.



The following day, gunfire was heard from outside the walls of the fort, coming from the direction of the Kanawha River. When men went out to investigate, they discovered that two soldiers who had left the stockade to hunt deer had been ambushed by Indians. One of them had escaped but the other man had been killed.



When his bloody corpse was returned to the fort, the soldiers in the garrison were enraged. Acting against orders, they broke into the quarters were Cornstalk and the other Indians were being held. Even though the men had nothing to do with the crime, they decided to execute the prisoners as revenge. As the soldiers burst through the doorway, Cornstalk rose to meet them. It was said that he stood facing the soldiers with such bravery that they paused momentarily in their attack. It wasn’t enough though and the soldiers opened fire with their muskets. Red Hawk tried to escape up through the chimney but was pulled back down and slaughtered. Ellinipisico was shot where he had been sitting on a stool and the other unknown Indian was strangled to death. As for Cornstalk, he was shot eight times before he fell to the floor.



And as he lay their dying in the smoke-filled room, he was said to have pronounced his now legendary curse. The stories say that he looked upon his assassins and spoke to them: “I was the border man’s friend. Many times I have saved him and his people from harm. I never warred with you, but only to protect our wigwams and lands. I refused to join your paleface enemies with the red coats. I came to the fort as your friend and you murdered me. You have murdered by my side, my young son.... For this, may the curse of the Great Spirit rest upon this land. May it be blighted by nature. May it even be blighted in its hopes. May the strength of its peoples be paralyzed by the stain of our blood.”



He spoke these words, so says the legend, and then he died. The bodies of the other Indians were then taken and dumped into the Kanawha River but Cornstalk’s corpse was buried near the fort on Point Pleasant, overlooking the junction of the Kanawha and Ohio Rivers. Here he remained in many years, but he would not rest in peace.



In 1794, the town of Point Pleasant was established near the site of the old fort. For many years after, the Indian’s grave lay undisturbed but in 1840 his bones were removed to the grounds of the Mason County Court House where, in 1899, a monument was erected in Cornstalk’s memory. In the late 1950’s, a new court house was built in Point Pleasant and the chief’s remains (which now consisted of three teeth and about 15 pieces of bone) were placed in an aluminum box and reinterred in a corner of the town’s Tu-Endie-Wei Park, next to the grave of a Virginia frontiersman that Cornstalk once fought and later befriended. A twelve foot monument was then erected in his honor.



And this is not the only monument dedicated to the period in Point Pleasant. Another stands 86-feet tall and was dedicated in August 1909, one month behind schedule. Originally, the dedication ceremony had been set for July 22 but on the night before the event, the clear overhead sky erupted with lightning and struck the upper part of a crane that was supposed to put the monument into place. The machine was badly damaged and it took nearly a month to repair it. The monument was finally dedicated and stood for years, until July 4, 1921. On that day, another bolt of lightning struck the monument, damaging the capstone and some granite blocks. They were replaced and the monument still stands today. But what is this bedeviled obelisk that seems to attract inexplicable lightning on otherwise clear evenings? It is a monument to the men who died in the 1774 Battle of Point Pleasant, when Cornstalk and his allies were defeated.



Could the freak lightning strikes have been acts of vengeance tied to Cornstalk’s fabled curse? Many believed so and for years, residents of the triangular area made up of western West Virginia, southwest Pennsylvania and southeastern Ohio spoke of strange happenings, river tragedies and fires as part of the curse. Of course, many laughed and said that the curse was nothing more than overactive imaginations, ignoring the death toll and eerie coincidences that seemed to plague the region for 200 years after the death of Chief Cornstalk.



Many tragedies and disasters were blamed on the curse:



1907: The worst coal mine disaster in American history took place in Monongah, West Virginia on December 6, when 310 miners were killed.



1944: In June of this year, 150 people were killed when a tornado ripped through the tri-state triangular area.



1967: The devastating Silver Bridge disaster (detailed in our section about the Mothman) sent 46 people hurtling to their death in the Ohio River on December 15. Many have also connected this tragedy to the eerie sightings of the Mothman, strange lights in the sky and odd paranormal happenings.



1968: A Piedmont Airlines plane crashed in August near the Kanawha Airport, killing 35 people on board.



1970: On November 14, a Southern Airways DC-10 crashed into a mountain near Huntington, West Virginia, killing 75 people on board.



1976: In March of that year, the town of Point Pleasant was rocked in the middle of the night be an explosion at the Mason County Jail. Housed in the jail was a woman named Harriet Sisk, who had been arrested for the murder of her infant daughter. On March 2, her husband came to the jail with a suitcase full of explosives to kill himself and his wife and to destroy the building. Both of the Sisk’s were killed, along with three law enforcement officers.



1978: In January, a freight train derailed at Point Pleasant and dumped thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals. The chemicals contaminated the town’s water supply and the wells had to be abandoned.



1978: In April of that same year, the town of St. Mary’s (north of Point Pleasant) was struck with tragedy when 51 men who were working on the Willow Island power plant were killed when their construction scaffolding collapsed.



And there have been many other strange occurrences, fires and floods. Most would say however that floods are a natural part of living on the river, although Point Pleasant was almost obliterated in 1913 and 1937. It might be hard to tie such natural occurrences into a curse, but what about the barge explosion that killed six men from town just before Christmas 1953? Or the fire that destroyed an entire downtown city block in the late 1880’s? Some have even gone as far as to blame the curse for the death of Point Pleasant’s local economy, an event linked to the passing of river travel and commerce.



So how real is the “curse”? Is it simply a string of bloody and tragic coincidences, culled from two centuries of sadness in the region? Can it be used to explain why the area seems to attract strange happenings and eerie tales? Or is the area somehow “blighted”, separate from any curse, and attractive to the strangeness that seems to lurk in the shadowy corners of America?



The reader is asked to judge the validity of such curses for himself. For the most part, the deaths and tragedies seem to have waned over the years, perhaps dying out at the bicentennial of Chief Cornstalk’s death. Largely, the curse has been forgotten over time and today, Point Pleasant is better known for its connection to otherworldly visitors like Mothman than for Indian curses and bloody frontier battles.



Fact or coincidence? Who can say... but I know that I hope, for the sake of the people of the Ohio River valley, that Chief Cornstalk will finally rest in peace!