In 1901 at the beginning of the twentieth century, the great African-American political theoretician and activist W.E.B. DuBois said in his The Souls of Black Folk, that the problem of the twentieth century will be the problem of the "color line." By that he meant that the problems that have to be worked out will be related to the effects of and eradication of racism in America. Indeed, he was in large part right. The history of America in the 20th century has indeed been that of the struggle for civil rights and equality. The great struggles that encompassed America after the depression were the confrontation with Nazism and Fascism abroad and racism at home. The struggle against racism has continued to the present day.
Like DuBois, commentators have speculated about what the future will bring. Most of them who have talked about life in the 21st century have concentrated on the coming wonders of technology. They have discussed the new and wonderful breakthroughs that await us in the biological and medical sciences - the coming cure for cancer, heart disease, and other physiological problems. They have talked about the new genetics in which the keys to life will be unlocked through the human genome project and humans can be made more perfect by eliminating faulty genes and improving upon others. This promises to give us longer, healthier lives. Astronomers have predicted that more planets will be found, our knowledge of the universe will increase and perhaps we will be able to unlock mysteries of the origin of the universe and life in it. The internet and other computer-driven areas of communication are fundamentally altering living habits and that promises to increase and change in directions that can only be guessed at.
All these speculations have an optimistic aura about them. The 20th century was the greatest century for human life ever. More people are living better and longer than ever before. There are now more democratic nations than ever before. There is less hunger than ever. But there is a long way to go. One commentator recently said that over 50% of the world's population has never made or received a phone call. Millions of people still live in grinding poverty. Famines and starvation are not uncommon. Will countries in poor and developing nations catch up to Western industrialized societies in the next 100 years? This is a questionable proposition. Many people live in societies that are not much changed for hundreds of years. With population expansion, the misuse of our national resources, and the spoilage of the environment, the problems that confront all Americans - and all humans - will be extremely difficult to solve. This, of course, says nothing about the human propensity for war and killing that has been a fundamental aspect of human society since its beginning and that has made the 20th century the bloodiest ever.
I tend to look at the future differently than most other people. While the problems that still face us our monumental, they are still human problems and they are amenable to human will. They are solvable, no matter how difficult. The world has been manipulated by humans for the benefit of humans and it is within their power to make things right. Other than natural disasters, virtually everything both good and bad that has happened in our world since humans have been on it has been due to humans. To paraphrase the gospel song, "We've Got the Whole World in our Hands." Our ability to use our ever-increasing powers for good is unquestioned. Our resolve to do so is more questionable.
Having said all this, I tend to look at the 21st century differently than most people. I see it through the prism of the UFO and abduction phenomenon. What I see does not give me confidence or optimism. In my research (described in The Threat) abductees have indicated to me that aliens and hybrids plan a possible integration or colonization of human society. I have come to agree with them. I arrived at this extreme view cautiously after spending over thirty-five years studying the subject - the last eighteen of which I spent concentrating almost exclusively on abductions. It is not a view of which I am very fond. I makes me seem as if my quality of mind is lacking and my judgment is severely impaired. It destroys my credibility in virtually all other areas of my intellectual life as a professor of history. Yet, I must adhere to it because I have found the evidence for it to be so compelling, even though I have struggled against believing the evidence for this strain of thought.
It is important to understand, however, that my ability to predict the future is spotty. At the end of 1969 I confidentially predicted to my friends in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin that the 1970s would be the decade of the "big breakthrough" - the UFO mystery would finally be solved. I thought that it was inevitable that we would break into the mysteries of UFOs and it would not take more than a decade. But, the 1970s came and went without the big breakthrough, without a solution to the mystery, and indeed, even without a substantial increase in our knowledge of the subject. Such is my predictive ability. However, I feel that a prediction is in order, one that I feel more confident in than in my youthful attempt. To paraphrase W.E.B. DuBois, I think that the problem of the 21st century will be the problem of the alien presence. This, above all, will define and drive human society and activity. I reported that abductees felt that the aliens will begin their integration program into the society within the next forty years. I still think that this is the case.
Recently I had a regression session with a fifty-one year old woman. She described undergoing a training exercise while on board a UFO. that the aliens required her to go through. In training (or "Testing") procedures (described in Secret Life and The Threat) aliens require abductees to perform certain tasks that appear to be for future alien-directed activity in human society. In this typical instance, she was told to make a small UFO hover while she envisioned a group of humans chasing an alien. The alien was on the ground running for the hovering UFO and she was to rescue him. She accomplished her task by working controls on a consul and then she was led to believe that she had been successful and the alien was "rescued." The beings whisked her away for other procedures.
I tell this story not for its particulars which, of course, are fascinating and thought provoking, but for the fact that she is fifty-one years old. I have investigated about twelve different people being trained for various future activities. Of these people, several are in their fifties. If the beings are training them for a role to play in the future, then it stands to reason that they would be used before they become too old for the activity. It seems unlikely that they were planning to use them forty years from now when they are in their nineties. More likely they planning to use them while they are alive and vigorous. If that is the case, then they would probably have to fulfill their functions within the next twenty years or so.
Of course, I could be very wrong and be completely misinterpreting the nature of alien intentions. The aliens could be planning something that uses human learning processes for activities that we cannot imagine. I have been wrong in the past and will be wrong in the future. Regardless, the alien program and alien presence continues into the another century. The evidence suggests that we have been involved with it for most of the twentieth century and it has become increasingly pervasive in the popular culture and intellectual life of the society. My guess is that it will not go away, regardless of our desires - especially of my desire to be wrong.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
wanted 4.wan.993 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Herb Mullin's trial began July 30, 1973, with the now predictable disruptions and objections by the defendant. The formal plea had been entered as "not guilty, and not guilty by reason of insanity." On the second day, the shackled Mullin interrupted the proceedings by hobbling over to the judge and handing him a "spacey" note, entitled "Observations of an Observer from a Point on the San Francisco Peninsula," a two-page rant claiming that someone had been going through his personal notebook.
"Stark raving mad"
"Make no mistake. Mr. Mullin hears voices, and the voices told him to kill," said defense attorney James. "These were not acts of murder, but acts of sacrifice." Jackson focused on Mullin's bizarre behavior before the murder spree. Mullin thought he was a Mexican laborer, columnist Herb Caen, and an eastern philosopher. Jackson then dramatically introduced his client's "Kill-joy sadism" conspiracy theory. Everyone in Mullin's life was out to destroy his chances for happiness, both in this life and the next. He had to kill them.
Herbert Mullin takes the stand. Courtroom sketch by Don Juhlin
Herbert Mullin takes the
stand. Courtroom sketch by
Don Juhlin
The courtroom fixated their attention on the scowling, dark-haired Mullin, as he rocked back and forth slowly in his chair. He showed little emotion through the course of the trial, staring straight ahead at the wall when witnesses testified. Mullin was annoyed that his defense was intent on proving insanity — he couldn't wait to get on the stand himself, and tell them the truth of why he killed.
The prosecution was brief. Bob Francis testified on Mullin's voracious consumption of LSD. Weirdly, Mullin nodded his head in agreement as Francis talked, as if it proved the necessity to kill Gianera. Joan Gianera's mother recalled finding the young married couple shot to death in the bathroom. Ballistics experts and medical examiners portrayed for the jury the extent of Mullin's violent overkill, while Mullin hunched over, taking extensive notes.
The "Die Song"
On August 4, psychiatrist Donald Lunde testified on behalf of the defense to Mullin's clinical diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, and played a cassette where Mullin described his philosophy:
You see, the thing is, people get together, say, in the White House. People like to sing the die song, you know, people like to sing the die song. If I am president of my class when I graduate from high school, I can tell two, possibly three young male Homo sapiens to die. I can sing that song to them and they'll have to kill themselves or be killed — an automobile accident, a knifing, a gunshot wound. You ask me why this is? And I say, well, they have to do that in order to protect the ground from an earthquake, because all of the other people in the community had been dying all year long, and my class, we have to chip in so to speak to the darkness, we have to die also. And people would rather sing the die song than murder.
I believe man has believed in reincarnation for maybe, consciously, verbally, for ten thousand years. And so they instituted this law . . . they used to do it back then, ten thousand years ago. . . . Well, they let a guy go kill crazy, you know, he'd go kill crazy maybe twenty or thirty people. Then they'd lynch him, you know, or they'd have another kill crazy person kill him. Because they don't want him to get too powerful in the next life, you know. . .
"He told me," Lunde later wrote in his book The Die Song, "that if I would prepare a chronology of the world's wars and famines and compare it with a list of major earthquakes throughout history, I would see that when the death rate goes up, the number of earthquakes goes down."
The Jonah theory
Mullin believed that the duty of sacrificing yourself or others (by murder) for the sake of the community was best demonstrated by his interpretation of Jonah. The thirteenth man must be a scapegoat and sacrifice himself for the others:
I mean . . . you read in the Bible about Jonah — there was twelve men in the boat — Jonah was in the boat, you know, it was just like Jesus you know, and Jonah stood up and said, 'God darn! If somebody doesn't die, you know all thirteen of us are going to die. And he jumped overboard, you know, and he was drowned, you know. And the sea . . . about in a half hour or so, it calmed down.
When Dr. Lunde said that Jonah was pushed, and didn't die after all because he was spit up by the whale, Mullin responded defensively, "I'm asking you to swallow this Jonah story and believe that a minor natural disaster will prevent a major natural disaster."
Earthquakes
Did Mullin come up with the "killing to stop earthquakes" theory before or after he was caught? Dr. Donald Lunde said that Mullin devised this theory years earlier, citing Mullin's letters written to the UN and other organizations, requesting statistics on yearly death tolls and natural disasters. Among his personal notes were disjointed theories on the phenomenon. Because Mullin was born on April 18th, the anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, he believed he had a privileged position among his generation to save it from future earthquakes. Einstein died on April 18th, which proved (to Mullin) that Einstein sacrificed himself so that Mullin would not have to be killed in Vietnam, but could save the coast from earthquakes instead. "It's grandiose," said Dr. Lunde.
Repressed sexuality
Another conspiracy, Mullin argued, was his family's attempt to hide "the healthiness of bisexuality" from him. He said that for most, homosexual behavior begins around the age of eight. But his parents maliciously hid this from him. Mullin speculated that everyone in his family practiced homosexuality. He wrote that his entire family, including his aunt and uncle, Bernice and Enos, were in on the plot to retard his sexuality:
When I was five years old I feel intuitively that Bernice and Enos Fouratt talked my parents into ignoring me. My parents actually did not tell me the necessary facts of life, sex and death rate, social conversation techniques, etc. Bernice and Enos did not have any children.
Why did Bernice and Enos convince my parents that I should be shunned? My guess is that my cousins and sister were having orgasms at age six. When I was five Bernice and Enos wanted to stop my mental and physical growth. They did not want me to mature.
Why?
. . . I think they were jealous and envious of the fun I and my parents were going to have when I started to grow up normal. I think they believe in reincarnation and that by confusing and retarding me they might improve themselves in the next life.
Lunde testified about details of Mullin's homosexuality, which at one point Mullin interrupted, in attorney-like fashion, and said, "I'll stipulate that I'm bisexual."
"Stark raving mad"
"Make no mistake. Mr. Mullin hears voices, and the voices told him to kill," said defense attorney James. "These were not acts of murder, but acts of sacrifice." Jackson focused on Mullin's bizarre behavior before the murder spree. Mullin thought he was a Mexican laborer, columnist Herb Caen, and an eastern philosopher. Jackson then dramatically introduced his client's "Kill-joy sadism" conspiracy theory. Everyone in Mullin's life was out to destroy his chances for happiness, both in this life and the next. He had to kill them.
Herbert Mullin takes the stand. Courtroom sketch by Don Juhlin
Herbert Mullin takes the
stand. Courtroom sketch by
Don Juhlin
The courtroom fixated their attention on the scowling, dark-haired Mullin, as he rocked back and forth slowly in his chair. He showed little emotion through the course of the trial, staring straight ahead at the wall when witnesses testified. Mullin was annoyed that his defense was intent on proving insanity — he couldn't wait to get on the stand himself, and tell them the truth of why he killed.
The prosecution was brief. Bob Francis testified on Mullin's voracious consumption of LSD. Weirdly, Mullin nodded his head in agreement as Francis talked, as if it proved the necessity to kill Gianera. Joan Gianera's mother recalled finding the young married couple shot to death in the bathroom. Ballistics experts and medical examiners portrayed for the jury the extent of Mullin's violent overkill, while Mullin hunched over, taking extensive notes.
The "Die Song"
On August 4, psychiatrist Donald Lunde testified on behalf of the defense to Mullin's clinical diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, and played a cassette where Mullin described his philosophy:
You see, the thing is, people get together, say, in the White House. People like to sing the die song, you know, people like to sing the die song. If I am president of my class when I graduate from high school, I can tell two, possibly three young male Homo sapiens to die. I can sing that song to them and they'll have to kill themselves or be killed — an automobile accident, a knifing, a gunshot wound. You ask me why this is? And I say, well, they have to do that in order to protect the ground from an earthquake, because all of the other people in the community had been dying all year long, and my class, we have to chip in so to speak to the darkness, we have to die also. And people would rather sing the die song than murder.
I believe man has believed in reincarnation for maybe, consciously, verbally, for ten thousand years. And so they instituted this law . . . they used to do it back then, ten thousand years ago. . . . Well, they let a guy go kill crazy, you know, he'd go kill crazy maybe twenty or thirty people. Then they'd lynch him, you know, or they'd have another kill crazy person kill him. Because they don't want him to get too powerful in the next life, you know. . .
"He told me," Lunde later wrote in his book The Die Song, "that if I would prepare a chronology of the world's wars and famines and compare it with a list of major earthquakes throughout history, I would see that when the death rate goes up, the number of earthquakes goes down."
The Jonah theory
Mullin believed that the duty of sacrificing yourself or others (by murder) for the sake of the community was best demonstrated by his interpretation of Jonah. The thirteenth man must be a scapegoat and sacrifice himself for the others:
I mean . . . you read in the Bible about Jonah — there was twelve men in the boat — Jonah was in the boat, you know, it was just like Jesus you know, and Jonah stood up and said, 'God darn! If somebody doesn't die, you know all thirteen of us are going to die. And he jumped overboard, you know, and he was drowned, you know. And the sea . . . about in a half hour or so, it calmed down.
When Dr. Lunde said that Jonah was pushed, and didn't die after all because he was spit up by the whale, Mullin responded defensively, "I'm asking you to swallow this Jonah story and believe that a minor natural disaster will prevent a major natural disaster."
Earthquakes
Did Mullin come up with the "killing to stop earthquakes" theory before or after he was caught? Dr. Donald Lunde said that Mullin devised this theory years earlier, citing Mullin's letters written to the UN and other organizations, requesting statistics on yearly death tolls and natural disasters. Among his personal notes were disjointed theories on the phenomenon. Because Mullin was born on April 18th, the anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, he believed he had a privileged position among his generation to save it from future earthquakes. Einstein died on April 18th, which proved (to Mullin) that Einstein sacrificed himself so that Mullin would not have to be killed in Vietnam, but could save the coast from earthquakes instead. "It's grandiose," said Dr. Lunde.
Repressed sexuality
Another conspiracy, Mullin argued, was his family's attempt to hide "the healthiness of bisexuality" from him. He said that for most, homosexual behavior begins around the age of eight. But his parents maliciously hid this from him. Mullin speculated that everyone in his family practiced homosexuality. He wrote that his entire family, including his aunt and uncle, Bernice and Enos, were in on the plot to retard his sexuality:
When I was five years old I feel intuitively that Bernice and Enos Fouratt talked my parents into ignoring me. My parents actually did not tell me the necessary facts of life, sex and death rate, social conversation techniques, etc. Bernice and Enos did not have any children.
Why did Bernice and Enos convince my parents that I should be shunned? My guess is that my cousins and sister were having orgasms at age six. When I was five Bernice and Enos wanted to stop my mental and physical growth. They did not want me to mature.
Why?
. . . I think they were jealous and envious of the fun I and my parents were going to have when I started to grow up normal. I think they believe in reincarnation and that by confusing and retarding me they might improve themselves in the next life.
Lunde testified about details of Mullin's homosexuality, which at one point Mullin interrupted, in attorney-like fashion, and said, "I'll stipulate that I'm bisexual."
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
mexico 22.mex.0865 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
On April 24 police arrested cultist Jorge Montes, raiding his home three blocks from the site where the Calzada family was slaughtered in 1986. Like the others arrested before him, Montes spilled everything he knew about the cult, naming Constanzo as the mastermind and chief executioner in a string of grisly homicides.
Three days later, Constanzo and his four remaining cohorts settled into their last hideout, an apartment house on Rio Sena in Mexico City. Aldrete, fearing for her life, penned a note on May 2 and tossed it from a bedroom window to the street below. It read:
Please call the judicial police and tell them that in this building are those that they are seeking. Tell them that a woman is being held hostage. I beg for this, because what I want most is to talk—or they're going to kill the girl.
A passerby found the note moments later, read it, and kept it to himself, believing it was someone's lame attempt at humor. Upstairs, in the crowded flat, Constanzo began laying plans to flee Mexico with his hard-core disciples, perhaps starting fresh somewhere else. "They'll never take me," he assured his followers.
Three days later, Constanzo and his four remaining cohorts settled into their last hideout, an apartment house on Rio Sena in Mexico City. Aldrete, fearing for her life, penned a note on May 2 and tossed it from a bedroom window to the street below. It read:
Please call the judicial police and tell them that in this building are those that they are seeking. Tell them that a woman is being held hostage. I beg for this, because what I want most is to talk—or they're going to kill the girl.
A passerby found the note moments later, read it, and kept it to himself, believing it was someone's lame attempt at humor. Upstairs, in the crowded flat, Constanzo began laying plans to flee Mexico with his hard-core disciples, perhaps starting fresh somewhere else. "They'll never take me," he assured his followers.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
estranged 22.est.002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
"It's page one in the handbook," said Detective Mike Garvey, the first cop to speak with Carl Dorr. And the more they looked at Carl Dorr, the more he looked like their man. After all, hadn't he threatened his wife, saying he would abduct their daughter just three months before? Hadn't he and Dorothy been battling over the kid for years? Wasn't Carl the last to see her alive? They went right at him, asking him to take a polygraph the very next day. When the polygraph examiner, a local fire marshal, told them that Carl might know more about Michele's whereabouts than he was telling them, the cops thought they had their man.
"It was good cop, bad cop," Carl later said. "They were right in my face, telling me I had failed the polygraph exam and that it had been 24 hours and they knew she was dead. 'We're going to find her,' they said, 'When we do, we're coming to get you.'"
His estranged wife told the cops she thought he had done it too. She gave them an extra motive. Her estranged husband was trying to get out of paying her $400 a month in child support. Carl Dorr was caught inside a nightmare. When he told the police that he loved his daughter, they didn't believe him. He took a second lie detector test and passed easily. In an attempt to prove his innocence, he underwent hypnosis and took sodium pentothal, the so-called truth serum. None of this convinced the cops. But then Carl may have been his own worst enemy. He snapped, and in a psychotic episode told a psychiatrist that he had abducted and killed his daughter.
"I started hallucinating," he recalled. "I couldn't take the pressure. My brain was soup."
In his altered mental state he began to believe that people on television shows were talking about him. He looked behind the set and when he didn't see anything, he thought the police were altering his reception.
"It was good cop, bad cop," Carl later said. "They were right in my face, telling me I had failed the polygraph exam and that it had been 24 hours and they knew she was dead. 'We're going to find her,' they said, 'When we do, we're coming to get you.'"
His estranged wife told the cops she thought he had done it too. She gave them an extra motive. Her estranged husband was trying to get out of paying her $400 a month in child support. Carl Dorr was caught inside a nightmare. When he told the police that he loved his daughter, they didn't believe him. He took a second lie detector test and passed easily. In an attempt to prove his innocence, he underwent hypnosis and took sodium pentothal, the so-called truth serum. None of this convinced the cops. But then Carl may have been his own worst enemy. He snapped, and in a psychotic episode told a psychiatrist that he had abducted and killed his daughter.
"I started hallucinating," he recalled. "I couldn't take the pressure. My brain was soup."
In his altered mental state he began to believe that people on television shows were talking about him. He looked behind the set and when he didn't see anything, he thought the police were altering his reception.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
center 44.cen.8321 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Today, it is unlikely Harold Shipman would be allowed to handle drugs unsupervised, given his previous track record. Nonetheless, within two years, he was back in business as a general practitioner.
He was accepted into the Donneybrook Medical Center in Hyde in the north of England. How readily he was accepted demonstrates his absolute self-confidence — and his ability to convince his peers of his sincerity.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire of the Center explained "His approach was that I have had this problem, this conviction for abuse of pethidine. I have undergone treatment. I am now clean. All I can ask you to do is to trust me on that issue and to watch me."
Perhaps he was not watched carefully enough.
Again, he played the role of a dedicated, hardworking and community-minded doctor. He gained his patients' absolute trust and earned his colleagues' respect.
Some of those who worked under him have told of his sarcastic and abusive nature, but he was skilled at masking his patronizing attitude in front of those he chose to impress. As for any signs of addiction, there were no blackouts as before, and no indication of drug abuse.
In Hyde, Harold Shipman was home free — and free to kill.
He was accepted into the Donneybrook Medical Center in Hyde in the north of England. How readily he was accepted demonstrates his absolute self-confidence — and his ability to convince his peers of his sincerity.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire of the Center explained "His approach was that I have had this problem, this conviction for abuse of pethidine. I have undergone treatment. I am now clean. All I can ask you to do is to trust me on that issue and to watch me."
Perhaps he was not watched carefully enough.
Again, he played the role of a dedicated, hardworking and community-minded doctor. He gained his patients' absolute trust and earned his colleagues' respect.
Some of those who worked under him have told of his sarcastic and abusive nature, but he was skilled at masking his patronizing attitude in front of those he chose to impress. As for any signs of addiction, there were no blackouts as before, and no indication of drug abuse.
In Hyde, Harold Shipman was home free — and free to kill.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
theories 33.the.0003 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Although the two-year investigation ended without an arrest, the knowledge gained and some of the samples collected formed the of the basis for the work of the squad.
''We tried a hundred thousand theories," now retired Lt. Al Stewart said. "We checked house numbers, the victims' length of residency, the phases of the moon, we read books, looking for arcane connections to mythology, witchcraft and demonology."
On Oct. 31, 1987, the body of 15-year-old Shannon Olson was found dumped in a pond in an industrial area, partially disrobed and stabbed numerous times. Her hands and feet were bound. The murder sparked off an outbreak of letters to the police and media suggesting the BTK Strangler committed the crime.
On Dec. 31, 1987, Mary Fager, the married mother of two daughters, returned to her Wichita home after spending 2 1/2 days out of town. Upon entering her house, she discovered her husband, Phillip Fager, dead; he had been shot twice in the back. Her two daughters, 16-year-old Kelli and 10-year-old Sherri, were both found strangled in the hot tub situated in the basement of the home. Sherri's hands and feet were bound with black electrical tape, which later washed loose. Kelli Fager was nude.
''We tried a hundred thousand theories," now retired Lt. Al Stewart said. "We checked house numbers, the victims' length of residency, the phases of the moon, we read books, looking for arcane connections to mythology, witchcraft and demonology."
On Oct. 31, 1987, the body of 15-year-old Shannon Olson was found dumped in a pond in an industrial area, partially disrobed and stabbed numerous times. Her hands and feet were bound. The murder sparked off an outbreak of letters to the police and media suggesting the BTK Strangler committed the crime.
On Dec. 31, 1987, Mary Fager, the married mother of two daughters, returned to her Wichita home after spending 2 1/2 days out of town. Upon entering her house, she discovered her husband, Phillip Fager, dead; he had been shot twice in the back. Her two daughters, 16-year-old Kelli and 10-year-old Sherri, were both found strangled in the hot tub situated in the basement of the home. Sherri's hands and feet were bound with black electrical tape, which later washed loose. Kelli Fager was nude.
Monday, November 16, 2009
stories 0.sto.01 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Author Bram Stoker, while in the throes of outlining what would become his famous horror story about an insidious Transylvanian count, planned to call his villain (and the novel) Wampyr. It doesn't take too long to figure out that wampyr is a Balkanesque word for vampire. But, as mentioned earlier in this report, Stoker stumbled onto the legends of Prince Dracula, and a name Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire that has been unspoken in most parts of the world for centuries was resurrected to human consciousness - in a landmark way.
If anything about the true-life Dracula stirred Stoker's blood, and chilled it at the same time, it was no doubt the stories he read of the man's cruelty toward his fellow Romamians. Even if the Gothic writer had not been searching for a particular prototype, how could he resist fashioning his nosferatu after he whom history books called the Impaler? Stoker couldn't use a lightweight to serve as his model of evil, and Dracula, in no way a lightweight, must have stretched Stoker's already illimitable senses.
He changed the name of his character and his novel to...Dracula.
Klaus Kinski played Dracula in the film Nosferatu the Vampyre
Klaus Kinski played Dracula in the film
Nosferatu the Vampyre
*****
Prince Dracula's "reign of terror," as even contemporary texts called it, lasted from 1456 to 1462. No one was safe from the voivode's deadly decrees. By today's standards, he would be called a mass murderer. Most of his killings were politically targeted - against domestic and foreign enemies - but sometimes he killed merely because he was bored. He hanged his victims, stretched them on the rack, burned them at the stake, boiled them alive, but mostly impaled them.
Estimated numbers of victims vary between 30,000 and more than 100,000. These figures are largely based on translations of Romanian, Hungarian, German and Russian manuscripts written within a century after Dracula's death. Records from his native Romania, which has tended to overlook his atrocities and uplift his military victories, give the lowest figures. Because Dracula hated the Saxon-German entrepreneurs whom he considered interlopers in his country's business affairs, and therefore provided fresh meat for the impaling stick, German sums are the highest.
The total of 100,000 is probably the most accurate, however. The majority of transcripts agree that at one sitting Dracula was capable of impaling an entire village or eradicating an entire brigade of Turkish Muslims.
Impalement wasn't a Dracula creation; if you remember, he learned about it while a boy in Adrianople. The French employed it before the guillotine. Spaniards and Hungarians used it. But, according to Ray Porter's account, "The Historical Dracula," impalement became an art form in Dracula's hands. "Dracula usually had a horse attached to each of the victim's legs and a sharpened stake was gradually forced into the body," he explains. "The end of the stake was usually oiled and care was taken that the stake was not too sharp; else the victim might die too rapidly from shock."
Studying the chronology of Dracula's crimes makes it easy to understand why his reign, though horrific, managed to go unchallenged by his own people or by other governments for six long years. For one thing, because he slew so many Turks in recognized time of conflict he was able to sustain the crusader image; foreign dignitaries who heard of the vast impaling applauded him for saving Romania. The domestics, who knew better, who knew that they too were objects of his mania, remained silent by intimidation.
Following are a few examples, anecdote-style, of Dracula's barbarism:
St. Bartholomew's Day
During an outdoor festival of St. Bartholomew at Sibiu, Dracula had 20,000 citizens arrested and spiked in one afternoon. Claiming that they were either treacherous bourgeoisie, or supporters of that element, he had them - men, women and infants - impaled on the outskirts of a neighboring forest. As was his custom, he had his servants draw up a solitary dining table of fine food and wine so that he might enjoy his lunch by watching the tortures at close range. He occasionally had a servant dip his bread in the blood of the dying souls so that he could savor the taste of life. (Is it a wonder that Stoker was inspired?)
It was at this function that he espied one of his knights holding his nose at the repugnant smell of death permeating the air. When he asked the soldier if he was making fun of the situation, the fellow stammered, "No, my lord, my stomach churns, but -" and he quickly added, "I am not of the stout heart that my prince be."
"But, why would I want in my service a man who cannot look at death without regurgitating? Death is a soldier's livelihood!" And with that, he called to his bodyguards to impale the feeble fellow. "Let him join these others, but because he had been loyal until today, hoist him higher than the rest that he does not have to smell his company!"
A Night With The Paupers
A perfect example of the dichotomy that was Dracula is woven into an old Nuremburg legend. It tells us of his sympathy for the downtrodden of his land - the poor, the invalid, the cripple, the infirm. But, this "sympathy" extended to a morbid result. One evening, he invited hundreds of paupers to his dining hall at his castle, treating them to something they had not had in years: a filling meal. After the desserts were served, Dracula and his staff slowly meandered out, leaving only the ragged guests alone in the hall of stone. This is when Dracula's skilled archers shot arrows of fire through the hall's tall windows from outside, igniting the treated tapestries, curtains, carpets and dinner linens into a blaze that erupted into an inferno. While the peasants banged helplessly against the bolted doors for egress, Dracula in a room beyond replied, "The poor unloved creatures, it is best that they leave this world now, on a full stomach."
Is Honesty the Best Policy?
In an episode that reminds us of Pilate's utterance, "What is truth?" as he simultaneously ordered the crucifixion of Christ, Dracula asked two visiting monks what they thought of his hard discipline - then killed the one who answered honestly.
After leading them through the rows and rows of recently impaled citizens one morning, he demanded that, as holy men, they appraise his bloody justice. One monk, no doubt in fear, answered, "You are the prince of all Wallachia! Who am I to question your decisions?" The other, unable to control his feelings, blurted condemnation: "What have these unfortunates done to deserve such fate? There is no excuse for mortal man playing God!" One can guess what friar went home alive that morning.
Another report of Draculean justice, with a different twist, is the story of the traveling merchant whose moneybox had been broken into while passing through Tirgoviste. Dracula heard of the man's loss and summoned him to his palace. "My city is the most crime-free of any in Europe, and incidences such as the robbery on your wagon are not tolerated," said Dracula. "The perpetrator will be apprehended."
As proof of the capital city's forthrightness, its prince ordered the merchant to leave his cart outside his hotel that night, exposed and unlocked. "No more florins will be missing," he promised. "In fact, when you awake in the morning, the stolen money will have been restored to your trove."
As promised, when the journeyer checked into his chest at sunrise, all the florins were replaced. In fact, there was one coin extra. Rushing to the court, the jubilant fellow expressed his thanks to Dracula: "Not only was my account replenished," he rejoiced, "but your guards added an extra florin, which I now return to you."
Dracula smiled, told the man to keep the florin, and added, "You are an upright being. Had you not confessed to the surplus, you would now be joining the thief whose body dangles on a spike in my patio."
As a sidenote, Dracula was not incorrect in assuming that his capital, Tirgoviste, really was an honest city. His reign of terror had so frightened miscreants that it was virtually the safest metropolis on the continent. A website called Castle of Spirits explains, "(Dracula) was so confident that no thief would dare challenge him (that) he placed a golden cup on display in the central square...The cup was never stolen and remained where it was, untouched, throughout (his) reign."
The "Lazy" Wife
Dracula viewed women as, in a word, inferiors. They brought pleasure in the bedroom and they were good for the menial work in life that men shouldn't handle.
Once, when traveling with his entourage through the countryside, Dracula spotted a planter wearing a caftan (apron) shorter than the traditional one worn during harvest. When he asked why his garment seemed incomplete, the man told the prince that his wife couldn't finish making it as she was of ailing health and was forced from her spinning wheel to her bed.
"Excuses!" Dracula barked. "We shall have no sloven women in my kingdom; her duty to you comes before her health!" Despite the husband's protestations, Dracula's men pulled the wife from her sickbed and impaled her outside her cottage. Then, riding to a neighboring farm, Dracula selected a comely, unwed girl whom he ordered to marry the sudden widower. "You are hale and young and are capable of making this poor farmer happy," he expressed. "You will marry this very afternoon, and I will check back in a month to see that your husband is properly clothed and fed."
Whether he returned as promised is not known. But, chances are the new wife proved to be the model of domesticity.
Never Lie to Dracula
Among the brood of Dracula's mistresses there was fervent hope that he would eventually choose one of them as his princess. They competitively fawned over him. One zealous young damsel, finding no other course to nab her prince, told him that she was pregnant.
The voivode, whose complex psychoses cannot be fully explained, went into a dither, fretting that his reputation would be ruined among the devout of his kingdom if he sired an illegitimate child! He called for wedding plans to be effected immediately. In this instance, the woman seems to have known Dracula better than he knew himself.
Not.
While the banns were being prepared, the would- be groom called for his lady to be examined by the royal physicians. When they announced to him that she was without child, he flew to her in a rage. She admitted her lie, but told him it was the only way she knew how to win him. "I love you and I want to conceive on our wedding night to give you a splendid child. Forgive me!" she pleaded.
His answer to her: "A man who lies is one thing, but a woman who deceives is a devil. Well, you shall not use your wiles to trap another man!"
While guards held her down, Dracula stripped her naked. With a dirk, he slashed her body open in a T-shaped formation, from her vagina to her chest and across her breasts. All this while she was conscious. He then commanded that her ravaged form be exhibited for all to see "the evil that a woman can wrought".
One Russian narrative that has survived through time talks about Dracula's view of womanhood in general. They were meant to be without sin, but once they sinned, deserved no dignity.
"If any wife had an affair outside of marriage, Dracula had her sexual organs cut out," the account reads. "She was then skinned alive and exposed in a public square, her skin hanging separately from a pole...The same punishment was applied to maidens who did not keep their virginity, and also to unchaste widows."
Stories like these are but a handful passed down from Dracula's time. Eventually he was to overexert his influence, especially since he began to practice his horrors across the Wallachian Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire border in Transylvania. His justification for this imposition was that he needed to discourage his political rivals there who, he claimed, were planning his demise.
The worst Transylvanian atrocity was his taking of the city of Brasov in the Carpathian Mountains. He torched the city and rounded up its inhabitants on the crest of Timpa Hill. Those who weren't impaled, he had them chopped up like hides of beef before him, limb at a time. While the city burned below, and as the agonies of Hades were played out before him, he ate an extravagant dinner, fit for a prince.
Legend claims that in the background, far off, the wolves bayed at the moon. It was their symphony of terror that they could not help feeling this night. It was in the air.
"The children of the night," Count Dracula called them in the novel. "Oh, what music they make!"
Was he reminiscing?
If anything about the true-life Dracula stirred Stoker's blood, and chilled it at the same time, it was no doubt the stories he read of the man's cruelty toward his fellow Romamians. Even if the Gothic writer had not been searching for a particular prototype, how could he resist fashioning his nosferatu after he whom history books called the Impaler? Stoker couldn't use a lightweight to serve as his model of evil, and Dracula, in no way a lightweight, must have stretched Stoker's already illimitable senses.
He changed the name of his character and his novel to...Dracula.
Klaus Kinski played Dracula in the film Nosferatu the Vampyre
Klaus Kinski played Dracula in the film
Nosferatu the Vampyre
*****
Prince Dracula's "reign of terror," as even contemporary texts called it, lasted from 1456 to 1462. No one was safe from the voivode's deadly decrees. By today's standards, he would be called a mass murderer. Most of his killings were politically targeted - against domestic and foreign enemies - but sometimes he killed merely because he was bored. He hanged his victims, stretched them on the rack, burned them at the stake, boiled them alive, but mostly impaled them.
Estimated numbers of victims vary between 30,000 and more than 100,000. These figures are largely based on translations of Romanian, Hungarian, German and Russian manuscripts written within a century after Dracula's death. Records from his native Romania, which has tended to overlook his atrocities and uplift his military victories, give the lowest figures. Because Dracula hated the Saxon-German entrepreneurs whom he considered interlopers in his country's business affairs, and therefore provided fresh meat for the impaling stick, German sums are the highest.
The total of 100,000 is probably the most accurate, however. The majority of transcripts agree that at one sitting Dracula was capable of impaling an entire village or eradicating an entire brigade of Turkish Muslims.
Impalement wasn't a Dracula creation; if you remember, he learned about it while a boy in Adrianople. The French employed it before the guillotine. Spaniards and Hungarians used it. But, according to Ray Porter's account, "The Historical Dracula," impalement became an art form in Dracula's hands. "Dracula usually had a horse attached to each of the victim's legs and a sharpened stake was gradually forced into the body," he explains. "The end of the stake was usually oiled and care was taken that the stake was not too sharp; else the victim might die too rapidly from shock."
Studying the chronology of Dracula's crimes makes it easy to understand why his reign, though horrific, managed to go unchallenged by his own people or by other governments for six long years. For one thing, because he slew so many Turks in recognized time of conflict he was able to sustain the crusader image; foreign dignitaries who heard of the vast impaling applauded him for saving Romania. The domestics, who knew better, who knew that they too were objects of his mania, remained silent by intimidation.
Following are a few examples, anecdote-style, of Dracula's barbarism:
St. Bartholomew's Day
During an outdoor festival of St. Bartholomew at Sibiu, Dracula had 20,000 citizens arrested and spiked in one afternoon. Claiming that they were either treacherous bourgeoisie, or supporters of that element, he had them - men, women and infants - impaled on the outskirts of a neighboring forest. As was his custom, he had his servants draw up a solitary dining table of fine food and wine so that he might enjoy his lunch by watching the tortures at close range. He occasionally had a servant dip his bread in the blood of the dying souls so that he could savor the taste of life. (Is it a wonder that Stoker was inspired?)
It was at this function that he espied one of his knights holding his nose at the repugnant smell of death permeating the air. When he asked the soldier if he was making fun of the situation, the fellow stammered, "No, my lord, my stomach churns, but -" and he quickly added, "I am not of the stout heart that my prince be."
"But, why would I want in my service a man who cannot look at death without regurgitating? Death is a soldier's livelihood!" And with that, he called to his bodyguards to impale the feeble fellow. "Let him join these others, but because he had been loyal until today, hoist him higher than the rest that he does not have to smell his company!"
A Night With The Paupers
A perfect example of the dichotomy that was Dracula is woven into an old Nuremburg legend. It tells us of his sympathy for the downtrodden of his land - the poor, the invalid, the cripple, the infirm. But, this "sympathy" extended to a morbid result. One evening, he invited hundreds of paupers to his dining hall at his castle, treating them to something they had not had in years: a filling meal. After the desserts were served, Dracula and his staff slowly meandered out, leaving only the ragged guests alone in the hall of stone. This is when Dracula's skilled archers shot arrows of fire through the hall's tall windows from outside, igniting the treated tapestries, curtains, carpets and dinner linens into a blaze that erupted into an inferno. While the peasants banged helplessly against the bolted doors for egress, Dracula in a room beyond replied, "The poor unloved creatures, it is best that they leave this world now, on a full stomach."
Is Honesty the Best Policy?
In an episode that reminds us of Pilate's utterance, "What is truth?" as he simultaneously ordered the crucifixion of Christ, Dracula asked two visiting monks what they thought of his hard discipline - then killed the one who answered honestly.
After leading them through the rows and rows of recently impaled citizens one morning, he demanded that, as holy men, they appraise his bloody justice. One monk, no doubt in fear, answered, "You are the prince of all Wallachia! Who am I to question your decisions?" The other, unable to control his feelings, blurted condemnation: "What have these unfortunates done to deserve such fate? There is no excuse for mortal man playing God!" One can guess what friar went home alive that morning.
Another report of Draculean justice, with a different twist, is the story of the traveling merchant whose moneybox had been broken into while passing through Tirgoviste. Dracula heard of the man's loss and summoned him to his palace. "My city is the most crime-free of any in Europe, and incidences such as the robbery on your wagon are not tolerated," said Dracula. "The perpetrator will be apprehended."
As proof of the capital city's forthrightness, its prince ordered the merchant to leave his cart outside his hotel that night, exposed and unlocked. "No more florins will be missing," he promised. "In fact, when you awake in the morning, the stolen money will have been restored to your trove."
As promised, when the journeyer checked into his chest at sunrise, all the florins were replaced. In fact, there was one coin extra. Rushing to the court, the jubilant fellow expressed his thanks to Dracula: "Not only was my account replenished," he rejoiced, "but your guards added an extra florin, which I now return to you."
Dracula smiled, told the man to keep the florin, and added, "You are an upright being. Had you not confessed to the surplus, you would now be joining the thief whose body dangles on a spike in my patio."
As a sidenote, Dracula was not incorrect in assuming that his capital, Tirgoviste, really was an honest city. His reign of terror had so frightened miscreants that it was virtually the safest metropolis on the continent. A website called Castle of Spirits explains, "(Dracula) was so confident that no thief would dare challenge him (that) he placed a golden cup on display in the central square...The cup was never stolen and remained where it was, untouched, throughout (his) reign."
The "Lazy" Wife
Dracula viewed women as, in a word, inferiors. They brought pleasure in the bedroom and they were good for the menial work in life that men shouldn't handle.
Once, when traveling with his entourage through the countryside, Dracula spotted a planter wearing a caftan (apron) shorter than the traditional one worn during harvest. When he asked why his garment seemed incomplete, the man told the prince that his wife couldn't finish making it as she was of ailing health and was forced from her spinning wheel to her bed.
"Excuses!" Dracula barked. "We shall have no sloven women in my kingdom; her duty to you comes before her health!" Despite the husband's protestations, Dracula's men pulled the wife from her sickbed and impaled her outside her cottage. Then, riding to a neighboring farm, Dracula selected a comely, unwed girl whom he ordered to marry the sudden widower. "You are hale and young and are capable of making this poor farmer happy," he expressed. "You will marry this very afternoon, and I will check back in a month to see that your husband is properly clothed and fed."
Whether he returned as promised is not known. But, chances are the new wife proved to be the model of domesticity.
Never Lie to Dracula
Among the brood of Dracula's mistresses there was fervent hope that he would eventually choose one of them as his princess. They competitively fawned over him. One zealous young damsel, finding no other course to nab her prince, told him that she was pregnant.
The voivode, whose complex psychoses cannot be fully explained, went into a dither, fretting that his reputation would be ruined among the devout of his kingdom if he sired an illegitimate child! He called for wedding plans to be effected immediately. In this instance, the woman seems to have known Dracula better than he knew himself.
Not.
While the banns were being prepared, the would- be groom called for his lady to be examined by the royal physicians. When they announced to him that she was without child, he flew to her in a rage. She admitted her lie, but told him it was the only way she knew how to win him. "I love you and I want to conceive on our wedding night to give you a splendid child. Forgive me!" she pleaded.
His answer to her: "A man who lies is one thing, but a woman who deceives is a devil. Well, you shall not use your wiles to trap another man!"
While guards held her down, Dracula stripped her naked. With a dirk, he slashed her body open in a T-shaped formation, from her vagina to her chest and across her breasts. All this while she was conscious. He then commanded that her ravaged form be exhibited for all to see "the evil that a woman can wrought".
One Russian narrative that has survived through time talks about Dracula's view of womanhood in general. They were meant to be without sin, but once they sinned, deserved no dignity.
"If any wife had an affair outside of marriage, Dracula had her sexual organs cut out," the account reads. "She was then skinned alive and exposed in a public square, her skin hanging separately from a pole...The same punishment was applied to maidens who did not keep their virginity, and also to unchaste widows."
Stories like these are but a handful passed down from Dracula's time. Eventually he was to overexert his influence, especially since he began to practice his horrors across the Wallachian Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire border in Transylvania. His justification for this imposition was that he needed to discourage his political rivals there who, he claimed, were planning his demise.
The worst Transylvanian atrocity was his taking of the city of Brasov in the Carpathian Mountains. He torched the city and rounded up its inhabitants on the crest of Timpa Hill. Those who weren't impaled, he had them chopped up like hides of beef before him, limb at a time. While the city burned below, and as the agonies of Hades were played out before him, he ate an extravagant dinner, fit for a prince.
Legend claims that in the background, far off, the wolves bayed at the moon. It was their symphony of terror that they could not help feeling this night. It was in the air.
"The children of the night," Count Dracula called them in the novel. "Oh, what music they make!"
Was he reminiscing?
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