The most infamous vampire of all time is undoubtedly Dracula (if you thought I was going to say Edward Cullen, then kindly remove yourself from this blog). Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel can be pinpointed as the origin of the modern vampire. Stoker took all the varied folklore on vampires from throughout history and compiled it into the iconic character of Count Dracula.

What you may not realize is that Dracula was a real person: not a vampire, but something perhaps even more terrifying.

His name? Vlad the Impaler.

AKA the World's Biggest Douche

Vlad III (1431-1476) was the Prince of Wallachia. Born in Transylvania, he was a member of the Order of the Dragon, which is where he got the nickname Dracula (dracul = dragon; ulea = the son of). His father, Vlad II, was “the dragon” in this scenario, making Vlad III the Son of the Dragon.

Vlad Tepes, as he was later called, was a terrifying ruler. He enjoyed torturing his enemies, and even his own countrymen, through a variety of methods, but his favorite, notoriously, was impalement.

Let me give you the low-down on what that entails: a blunt wooden pike is inserted into your nether regions so that it can slowly make its way up through your body without you dying immediately from shock. Eventually, the stake will emerge through your mouth, and you will die slowly, horribly, and painfully while suspended in the air amid your rotting companions.

To give you a hint about how gruesome this was, here’s a quote from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Paranormal by Nathan Robert Brown:

An invading Turkish army actually turned around and went home after they spotted the mass amounts of bodies impaled upon wooden stakes along the Danube River, and Mohammed II, the “Conqueror of Constantinople,” upon seeing a forest of 20,000 impaled victims, also brought his army back home and never again went near Wallachia.

Vlad the Impaler was such a horrifying human being that the freaking Conqueror of Constantinople turned around and went home after seeing the atrocities he had committed.

While Vlad may not have actually drunk blood, he did clearly get a perverse pleasure from these acts of torture, which to me is far creepier than a seductive vampire poking holes in your neck. Who wouldn’t be intrigued by the most terrifying person in history? Clearly, Stoker was. Though we don’t know how much Stoker actually knew about Vlad Dracula, there are definite parallels between him and the fictional vampire.

Here’s an excerpt from a paper I wrote called “Finding the Missing Link in Literature” about Victorian literature’s response to Darwin’s theory of evolution (i.e. our genetic connection to animals, and what that meant for a society centered on creationist religion):

Perhaps the most renowned literary response to Darwinism is Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which effectively engenders fear of the half-breed character while simultaneously promoting religion as the primary antidote to the worrisome implications of evolution. The religious themes within the novel itself can be traced back to the historical roots of vampire origins through the real-life figure of Vlad Tepes, known also as Vlad the Impaler and Vlad Dracula. Vlad Tepes was the Prince of Wallachia, a region of what is currently Romania, from 1456 to 1462 and enforced a bloody and brutal reign. At war with the Turks, he was notorious for impaling his enemies, as well as his own people, on sharp stakes and positioning the rotting corpses around the city as warnings to others. Therefore, driving a stake through the chest of a vampire in order to kill it correlates directly with Vlad’s preferred method of execution. Vlad’s nickname, Dracula, originated from the Romanian word “dracul,” which later came to be associated with the word “devil.” The ending “ulea” in Romanian means “the son of,” so Dracula is sometimes translated to “Son of the Devil”, a fitting moniker for someone whose infamy is centered around his merciless torture of thousands of people, and a hint at his position as a force of religious evil. During his life Vlad renounced the Orthodox Church; like Stoker’s Dracula, he was a force against the accepted religion.

 

Other details of Vlad’s life and death can also be seen in the characters and vampire lore used in Stoker’s Dracula. Vlad Tepes had three wives, which are represented in Stoker’s creation in the form of the three female vampires who live in his castle in Transylvania. At the end of his reign, the Turks forced Vlad to flee, after which he went to the king of Hungary for help and was imprisoned in a tower. Russian narratives, which usually depict Vlad Tepes in a more positive light, relate that during his captivity, he would capture and torture small animals such as birds and mice. There is a strong connection here with Renfield, who, while imprisoned in the mental institution, captures flies, spiders, and birds and eats them in order to gain eternal life like Dracula. When Vlad finally escaped his imprisonment, he was killed in a battle against the Turks in 1476. Details of his death are uncertain, but in the end he was decapitated and his head displayed on a pike in Constantinople. Just as his use of stakes for impalement was replicated in vampire lore, the details of his death likewise translated into a method for killing vampires, which must take a stake to the heart and be decapitated to be truly destroyed. All of these details tie Stoker’s novel into history by connecting the character of Dracula with Vlad Tepes. This generated even greater terror, as the connection to actual historical figures suggests the possibility that such horror can truly exist in our world.

Stoker’s Dracula is alluded to as an antichrist figure: baptising his victims in blood and being warded off by crucifixes. And it’s pretty safe to say that Vlad the Impaler was the fucking antichrist.

Abandon all hope, ye who try to get anywhere near this crazy son-of-a-bitch

I could go on and on (and on and on) but you probably get the gist of it. Vlad Dracula is a fascinating person, and for a few years now I’ve had the desire to write something about him but couldn’t figure out what. Historical fiction isn’t really my bag because of a constant worry of getting details wrong, so that was out. I recently came up with a solution and was struck with a pretty exciting idea: what if Vlad the Impaler actually had been a vampire? That means he would be immortal, and he would proceed to spend the next 500 years invading European countries and amassing more and more land for himself, until almost the entirety of Europe was under his reign of blood and terror. Thus the Wallachian Empire was born.

I’m working out all the details of this book idea and writing a short story to complement it. The whole thing came from a simple prompt at Dark Moon Digest involving alternate histories; if I can get the short story up to snuff, my fingers are crossed that it’ll be accepted there. But in the meantime, I’ve got plenty of stuff to play with in this new world I’ve created, including an alternate map of Europe and the inner workings of a medieval-punk society. (Also, please don’t steal my idea. I usually don’t tell people about my ideas until they are fully fleshed out into manuscripts, so I’m breaking my own rules by posting this, and trusting all my lovely readers).

Maybe someday you’ll be reading about an alternate universe in which the Blood Prince of Wallachia becomes the sadistic Emperor of Europe, but in the meantime, you’ll have to satiate yourselves with popping open Stoker’s Dracula and reveling in the cleverly nuanced horror within each of its brittle, yellowing pages.

If you’re reading this right now, you might notice that “Stop Censorship” banner in the upper right corner of the page, and if you popped over here on Wednesday, you might have noticed that Pandora’s Pen temporarily vanished into a paragraph about funny acronyms like SOPA and PIPA.

Sopapipa may sound like some kind of funky Spanish soup, but it’s actually potential legislation that would allow the government to censor the internet.

…Yeah, good luck with that.

The internet is huge, and if there’s one place where you can practice freedom of speech, it’s in the endless labyrinthhine URLs of forums, social media, and blogs. The internet is where it is acceptable to engage in political ramblings alongside pictures of cats with bad grammar. It is a wondrous wealth of information and poop jokes.

And as we move into an age where everything up to and including our entire lives is becoming digital, it’s fair to say that what books used to do exclusively, the internet now does for us.

Think about all those dystopian novels they made you read in high school: Fahrenheit 451 (burn all the books!). Brave New World (Shakespeare is for stupid people who want to feel). 1984 (Big Brother is watching). What do they all have in common? Government control and the destruction of creative intellectual property that doesn’t conform to said government (i.e., burning books).

And in this digital age, what is internet censorship but the 21st century’s version of burning books?

When the internet is censored, large websites like Wikipedia and YouTube are shut down because of the enormity of having to monitor the information posted by every user. The same would happen to WordPress, and blogs like this one might disappear. Personal expression, which has become such a wonderful commodity in an age where we can share our thoughts with the world (or our 2.5 dedicated readers), would suddenly be snatched away. And once our personal expression is gone, what is left of our humanity? Welcome to your dystopian future, because it is upon us.

Thankfully, SOPA all but dissolved after the internet blackout caused supporters to drop left and right. But the fight is far from over. If you’ve ever looked at the world around you and wondered if we could be living in the prologue to a dystopian novel, then it’s time to start thinking about what freedom means to you.

Because there’s one thing dystopian novels usually have in common, and that, aside from horror and emotional bloodshed, is an unhappy ending.

Halloween is just one of those holidays we all celebrate without really knowing why. What’s with the whole trick-or-treating thing? Why do we carve pumpkins? Where did the all the creepy imagery come from? Well…

THE CELTIC FESTIVAL OF SAMHAIN

The earliest origins of Halloween date back about 2,000 years to the Celtic festival Samhain (pronounced sow-en because the Irish are funny like that), which translates to “summer’s end.” It celebrated the final harvest before the dark half of the year when the frost would come and the days would shorten.

Samhain lasted for three days—October 31 to November 2—and these days were known as “no time.” During the “no time,” chaos reigned and people were allowed to flout society’s order and play pranks, like moving someone’s livestock to another’s field or opening gates so that animals could run away. In the midst of this, the festival raged with bonfires, dancing, and mead.

But Samhain wasn’t all fun and games. During the festival, the Celts believed that the curtain between the worlds of the living and the dead were drawn back, allowing the spirits of the dead to walk the earth. Their presence played a part in divination rituals that took place during this time.

The pagans freely enjoyed their festival until the Christians came along and tried to take over, like always. Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome to honor Christian martyrs, establishing the feast of All Martyrs’ Day on May 13, 609 AD. But when they realized they needed to start converting the pagans by providing Christian alternatives to their holidays, Pope Gregory III expanded the holiday to include saints as well, moved it to November 1, and introduced All Saints’ Day. By 1000 AD, Christianity had blended with the pagan festival in honor of the dead for All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day on November 2.

The word Hallowe’en doesn’t appear until the 16th century as a contraction of All Hallows’ Even (evening), the night before All Hallows’ Day.

TRICK-OR-TREATING

The practice of trick-or-treating, known in the past by other names, dates back to the Middle Ages and a tradition called souling. Souling was when the poor folk would go door to door on November 1 (Hallowmas) and receive food and soul cakes in return for prayers for the dead on November 2 (All Souls’ Day).

Adding to the chaos of the three-day festival of pranks, children in Scotland took up guising: dressing in costume and going door to door for food or coins, and if they were not obliged, then the children would play a nasty trick on them.

The reason for the tradition of dressing up in disguise comes from the idea of the dead returning to earth, which meant that evil spirits could rise. To protect themselves, people masqueraded as demons by wearing masks and blackening their faces with soot.

BOBBING FOR APPLES

Apples’ presence during Halloween is inevitable, as that is when they are in season, but certain rituals formed from the importance of the apple harvest. A Roman festival near the time of Samhain honored Pomona, the goddess of fruit trees; she is often symbolized as an apple.

As part of the divination games held during the festival of Samhain, women tried to predict who they were going to marry (sort of like an ancient version of MASH). Single women would attempt to take a bite from an apple floating in water or suspended on a string, and the first person to succeed was believed to be the next to marry. The simple act of catching a bite promised good fortune.

JACK-O-LANTERNS

In Ireland and Scotland, the tradition of souling included carving turnips into lanterns in order to remember the souls held in purgatory. When immigrants came to America, they discovered the pumpkin, which was both readily available and much larger than a turnip, making it easier to carve.

Pumpkin carving became an American tradition in the 19th century, and while it was originally associated with harvest time, it soon became part of the Halloween itself.

The idea of the jack-o-lantern, whether it be pumpkin or turnip, comes from an Irish myth about a man called Stingy Jack who tricked the Devil. The legends vary from him trapping the Devil in an apple tree to stealing a free drink or two using the Devil’s coins, but it all boils down to the result, which is that the Devil is either unable or refuses to claim his soul.

When Stingy Jack dies he cannot enter heaven because of his wrongdoings, and he cannot go to hell, so he is left to wander the darkness alone. The Devil gives him an ember from the fires of hell to help him see. Stingy Jack places the fire into a hollowed-out turnip and continues to roam, trapped between heaven and hell. He became known as “Jack of the Lantern,” or Jack-o’-Lantern.

TODAY

Today, Halloween is celebrated in many parts of the world, with a stronghold in Ireland and America, to which it is inextricably tied through the original Celtic customs of Samhain and the American addition of pumpkins (without which we’d all be carving turnips. You’re welcome, world). While it may seem a frivolous night of candy and goofy costumes, remember the ancient festival in which we all partake on the eve of All Hallows, when the dead return to roam the earth and darkness descends on the harvest season.

As someone who started taking Spanish classes in 2nd grade, I have a strong fascination with hispanic culture. Combine this with my love for Halloween, and what do you get? El Día de los Muertos!

It’s actually rather arrogant to call it Mexican Halloween: though it takes place around the same time as Halloween (Nov. 2) and has to do with the dead, it has very different connotations. Day of the Dead honors friends and family who have passed while celebrating life; it does not try to augment our fear of death, but rather shows us that death is merely another part of life. This is why so many of the decorations for Day of the Dead show skeletons engaging in fun, lively activities like playing musical instruments and getting married.

Day of the Dead is a very colorful and artistic holiday, so yesterday I went to the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago to see their 25th annual Día de los Muertos exhibit.

Skeletons and skulls abounded, as did bright, festive colors, floral imagery, and Trees of Life, which combine the ideas of life and death by having skeletons hanging out in the branches.

The sculpture on the left also depicts the holiday’s connection between life and death with the skeleton entangled in flowers, plantlife, and creatures.

Day of the Dead is celebrated by putting up decorations such as these, erecting altars in remembrance of the deceased, and having picnics in the cemetery.

Just as Halloween is traditionally the time of year when the dead can return, so too is Day of the Dead a time when those who have passed might come back to party with the living. That’s why the altars usually include the deceased’s favorite food, because being dead probably makes you hella hungry.

The traditional flower of Day of the Dead may seem counterintuitive: the Mexican marigold. This flor de muertos is bright yellow (as you can see in the altar above), which isn’t the color you might initially associate with death. These flowers and the food are the ofrendas, or offerings, to the dead, usually lit up by candles and surrounded by personal mementos that represent the deceased.

One specific type of food that is offered to the dead or eaten by the living is the pan de muertos, or bread of the dead. After my journey to the museum, my mom and I found a bakery and bought some: it’s a soft sweet bread that is usually covered by an orangey glaze and is shaped either as bones or a bun.

This one was kind of hard and not sweet aside from the sprinkles, which was disappointing, but at least it was in a fun shape.

Day of the Dead is certainly partial to sweet things, from the bread of the dead to what is probably the most iconic image of the holiday: sugar skulls! Traditionally, these calaveras de azúcar are made of sugar and meringue, molded into skulls, and decorated with colorful icing, sequins, tinfoil, etc. They’re edible, but I’m not sure who would want to eat a hunk of pure sugar. At the museum’s gift shop, my mom and I bought one for our house.

The calaveras also appear in non-edible form in artwork celebrating the Day of the Dead. There was a very cool calavera painting at the museum which was huge and glowed ethereally under a black light (picture below). The beauty of the sugar skull has become such a phenomenon that you can find calaveras on anything from clothing to jewelry to tattoos (often on people who aren’t even Mexican).

Even non-hispanics such as myself can enjoy el Día de los Muertos. While it has deep ties to Mexican culture, the holiday explores the universal themes of life and death and ends up being a big celebration of the former. I’m really glad I got the chance to go to the National Museum of Mexican Art and get a little taste of how other cultures celebrate the coming of All Souls’ Day on November 2nd.

A squid invasion has laid siege on Southern California, with millions of ravenous squid slithering near the coast from San Diego to Santa Barbara. The squid in question are the Humboldt, also known as jumbo squid, which can grow up to 7 feet long and weigh 100 pounds. They also glow and change color.

If slimy cephalopods with tentacles freak you out, then don’t go check out these freaky beasts. They have “razor-sharp tentacle claws” and a “parrot-like beak.” Their behavior is equally awful: it seems they’re all manic and insane, viciously attacking divers and even turning into cannibals on each other.

The reporter Pete Thomas describes seeing these squid while scuba diving in the Sea of Cortez off Mexico:

“I encountered a small group of squid, pulsating in the blue water, at 60 feet. Several of them charged toward me looking like alien beings, with their tentacles clasped to an arrow-like point. They traveled through the water at a remarkable speed but veered off as they reached me, and vanished.”

Creepy. Sounds like the beginning of a good sea-creature story.

Read the full article here.

And once again, I’m back! This past trip was to Boston, Mass., where I toured around a bit and visited the historic Salem, home of the 1692 witch hunts. Before I hit up Salem, I got to see some of Boston, which has a startling number of super old cemeteries. The gravestones were from the 1600s and 1700s, much thinner than current ones, and crumbling in their age. They slanted from the ground, some sinking halfway into the soft dirt, depicting skeletons and old spellings like “Here lyes X…”

Anyway, Salem is where, in 1692, a group of girls (probably bored by their painfully dull Puritan lives of cooking, cleaning, and wearing bonnets) decided to start accusing the townsfolk of witchcraft. They had been spending time with Tituba, a servant who brought back stories and myths of things like voodoo from Africa. Whatever the cause, the girls started falling into trances and seizures, speaking in tongues, and they pointed fingers at various people in town who they didn’t like.

One of the accused was Rebecca Nurse, an elderly woman who was unable to defend herself. The girls claimed her spirit could leave her body to torment others, and she was thrown in jail. By the end of the ordeal, 19 people were condemned for witchcraft and hanged in a copse of trees, and one was pressed to death, which consists of larger and larger rocks being placed on one’s chest until it collapses. One of the ways they tested to see if someone was a witch was to throw them in a body of water. If they floated, they were a witch and would be hanged. If they sank, they weren’t a witch… but chances are, they drowned anyway. Pretty much a lose/lose situation. Clearly, this is because witches weigh the same as a duck, because ducks float on water (along with wood, very small rocks, and churches).

SHE'S A WIIIITCH!

Later, the girls admitted that they made up the whole witch thing for a bit of fun (because their idea of fun was clearly freaking out their overly-religious neighbors, causing a panic, and having almost 20 innocent people executed. Sounds like a party!). Nowadays, the tourism industry takes advantage of this dark history.

The first thing we saw in Salem was the witch house, a historic house. We didn’t end up going inside, but it was old and black, and looked pretty cool.

And that's about all I can say about it without consulting Google.

After that, we made our way to the Salem Witch Museum, which was probably really exciting in the 1960s, but at the very least is now still quite informative. If I could go back, I might check out one of the other museums instead, since this one, admittedly, could do with a bit of updating.

The main street, Essex, is a cobbled road not meant for cars, lined with plenty of occult shops (including psychics offering consultations) and people walking around in costume to promote them. We passed a haunted house too, but I tried to contain my horror geekery for the sake of my poor boyfriend, who had already indulged me by walking around the old cemeteries.

Finally, we went to see the place where all the alleged witches were hanged. They used to think it was at a place called Gallows Hill (now a skate park) but learned from the geography that it was actually in a little patch of woodland just behind a Walgreens parking lot. Terrifying.

Once a horrible execution site, now a convenient place to buy your snacks and toiletries!

Salem is a pretty cool place. It was chilly and rainy when I was there, so I might have liked to walk around more, but it was still a nice bit of history to check out. Unfortunately, any history you find there has pretty much been snatched up by the tourism industry and bulldozed by modern conveniences, but hey, apparently that Walgreens parking lot is kind of haunted.

As we approach May 21, the supposed day of the Rapture when Zombie Jesus will rise up and do the Apocalyptic Boogaloo, even the Center for Disease Control is considering some End of Days possibilities. They want to make sure that everyone is prepared for all types of emergency situations: floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, outbreaks of epidemics or pandemics… the usual. On such occasions, one might be encouraged to plan ahead and make sure you have food, water, medicine, and a safe place.

All good things to consider, says the CDC… when preparing for the zombie apocalypse.

What?

Yes, the CDC implores us to be prepared for all possibilities: even the zombie apocalypse. After all, it’s just another situation in which you would take the same precautions, and the CDC would investigate it like any other emergency (unless, of course, everyone in the CDC has become hordes of the ravenous undead, at which point we probably won’t be seeing any results).

But, provided the CDC is not a rotting mess of walking corpses, their plans involve “consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine).” Sounds as if they are well-organized and prepared for such an outbreak. You know, like the soldiers from 28 Days Later. That ended well for them.

Well I, for one, am glad that I can put my trust and faith in the CDC to take care of me when the infected living dead come knocking at my door. But just in case, I might plan to keep a cricket bat handy. Remember, kids: remove the head or destroy the brain.

For more on the CDC’s take on the impending zombie apocalypse, read the full article here.

For some helpful guidelines for how to deal with the zombie apocalypse, see the film Zombieland. Some important rules this helpful documentary provides: Always wear a seatbelt, avoid bathrooms, and enjoy the little things.

What are your chances of surviving a zombie apocalypse?

The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never anymore the dead.
The verses in it say and say:
“The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay.”

-Robert Frost, “In a Disused Graveyard”

I can’t be the only one with a morbid fascination with cemeteries. For the same reason I find autumn and Halloween so aesthetically pleasing, I find cemeteries hauntingly beautiful places. Granted, when I took a bike ride through Crown Hill Cemetery, adjacent to Butler University (from which I just graduated… Summa Cum Laude, ahem), it was in the upper 80s and sunny, so I was a little too hot and sweaty to quite feel that eerie amosphere. Still, I took some pictures to share.

Crown Hill opened in 1864 and is the third largest cemetery in the United States. It houses over 185,000 graves and sits at the highest point in Indianapolis. The poet James Whitcomb Riley is buried at the highest point, and President Benjamin Harrison is around there somewhere too, but I didn’t find his final resting place. The inventor of Sudoku and bank robber John Dillinger (if you’ve seen Public Enemies with Johnny Depp) are buried there too. I should have gotten a map.

Any relation to Jason, I wonder?

“Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten  cities in Asia. The haunted wood and the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they linger around the sinister monoliths of uninhabited islands”

–H.P. Lovecraft, “The Picture in the House”

Hello, bloggerites! I’ve missed you. It was a long ten or so days in Europe, packed with sightseeing and concerts and a few too many instances of feeling like a complete tourist. Greece and Italy are not only gorgeous countries, but they’re jam-packed with crumbling ruins of ancient civilization, tombs, and the sort of ghostly echoes of the unfathomably long dead that only places with such long histories can boast. Here’s some pictures of ancient tombs in Greece:

Agamemnon's tomb in Mycenae

Last time I was in Athens, on a weekend trip when I was studying abroad in Spain in the fall of 2009, I visited Kerameikos, an ancient cemetery from around 1200 BC. Here’s a picture:

I’ve already shared the awesomely creepy pictures I took last time I was in Rome, when I went to the Cappuccini Crypt, in this post, so I guess I’ll leave it here. If you want to know more about my exciting travels around Europe from that semester I spent in Spain, I kept another blog then called Spain Adventures that always makes me horribly nostalgic for Europe.

Slightly more substantial and coherent posting shall resume later in the week, once I’ve sorted out my post-spring-break life.