Original subtitles

Creatures of the night.

They hide in the shadows.

Ready to drink the blood

and tear at the flesh

-of their human prey.

For centuries, mankind has told frightening tales

of bloodthirsty vampires and moon-crazed werewolves.

But what is it about these two very different monsters

that have made them such a large part of our nightmares?

Is it because they're also...

...part human?

Could it be that the same gruesome urges

they have reported to have also lurk deep inside ourselves?

Well, that is what we will try and find out.

The UnXplained S02 - EP07 Vampires and Werewolves

Subtitled by Diego Moraes

Vlad the Impaler.

Lycaon of Arcadia.

Nosferatu.

The Beast of G�vaudan.

These are the names of grotesque and terrifying monsters.

Unearthly creatures that, according to legend,

thrived on human blood and feasted on human flesh.

But could they actually be real?

Police arrive upon a gruesome scene.

A local prostitute lies bloody and battered on the street.

Her leg is shattered in three places.

Based on eyewitness accounts, it's believed

she intentionally leapt from a balcony 20 feet above.

She'd been with a wealthy man.

He'd been friendly, generous, funny, kind.

He'd made no advances, though he'd paid for her time.

But then he attacked her.

He moved upon her with unnatural swiftness

and wrapped his arms around her, pulled her head to the side

and began to, quote, "rip at her flesh."

Her attacker was a man

by the name of Jacques St. Germain,

an affluent, well-known fixture in the New Orleans upper class

who claimed to be a direct descendant

of French nobility.

Historical accounts described him

as a charming ladies' man,

celebrated throughout the French Quarter

for his tales of adventure and elaborately catered parties.

But curiously, his guests never see him partake

of so much as a morsel of the food he serves.

Instead, he reportedly got all of his sustenance

from bottles that were thought to be filled with red wine.

But when police went to question Jacques St. Germain

about the murder of the prostitute,

they found that his preferred wine

was of a very unusual vintage.

When they went to the house in the morning,

it was entirely empty no furniture,

everything was gone.

Jacques had completely disappeared.

However, on the second floor, according to the story,

they found bottles of wine mixed with human blood.

Bottles of wine

mixed with human blood?

Was Jacques St. Germain merely a demented killer

who preyed upon a vulnerable woman?

Or could his taste for blood

have had a more disturbing explanation?

Jacques St. Germain resided in New Orleans

in the early part of the 20th century.

And one must look back in history

at an eerily similar-looking figure named Count St. Germain,

who lived in Paris, France over a century earlier.

The similarities between the two gentlemen

are pretty striking.

Count St. Germain was known to the French court

in the 1700s.

He was a mysterious figure.

He was rumored to be an alchemist,

and he let the rumor slip that he had found the secret

to eternal life through his alchemy.

He would speak as if

he had lived in the 1500s,

and he never looked a day over 40 years old.

We have portraits of the original Count St. Germain

when he's 40 years old.

Jacques St. Germain was also 40 years old

when he disappeared, and some people commented

that he looked like the man in the portrait.

Early 40s,

maybe five foot, six inches tall,

140 pounds,

pale skin and high cheekbones, thin lips, hawk nose,

long, curling dark hair, large blue-gray eyes.

He's elegant, he's charming, he's French.

He spends money like it's water.

Many people say that Jacques St. Germain

and the Count St. Germain are the same person.

Jacques St. Germain and the Count de St. Germain:

one in the same?

If so, that would have made him almost 170 years old

at the time of his disappearance from New Orleans in 1903.

That is, if he ever really disappeared.

Even down to modern times,

there have been sightings of St. Germain

wandering our streets late at night.

People will say that they have encountered him,

-and now and then, one of them disappears.

This is actually an account from some people I know fairly well.

A few years ago, at Halloween,

they were in the middle of the crowd on Bourbon Street,

when the crowd just parted itself,

almost of its own accord...

...and there was a man standing by himself

in the middle of the crowd.

Maybe five-foot-six, somewhat slight of build,

with a long, dark coat and sunglasses on at night.

He raised his head up like he's sniffing the air.

The crowd kept parting around him.

And then they said that he just vanished.

They swear that actually happened,

and in New Orleans, how can I not believe it?

What do we make of people

still seeing someone of this description

in the French Quarter in New Orleans today?

That's hard to say.

These stories speak to, uh, the idea that many people hold

that, walking among us, our neighbors even,

could actually be super creatures who never die.

In the French Quarter in New Orleans at night,

those stories don't seem as silly

as they might otherwise.

Whether he's called the Count or Jacques,

there are many who believe that the vampire

who haunted the streets of New Orleans for over a century

still walks the streets at night.

If true, could it mean that other

seemingly absurd tales of undead creatures

-living among us are also true?

Vampires are just part of the human imagination,

going back to time immemorial.

In folklore, there are so many different ways

to become a vampire or to destroy a vampire

or to avoid a vampire.

The idea of the wooden stake,

the recoiling from the crucifix,

the destruction by sunlight.

Vampires like the night, because they could skulk around

and cover their terrible deeds in the shadows.

In Eastern Europe, we think that vampire legends are very old.

In the Middle Ages and the early modern period,

vampires were seen as satanic figures

and enemies of the church.

We continually find graves

where people have put stakes through the corpses

and things like this, to make sure

that the dead stay dead.

But our idea of the vampire really comes from a moment

in the 1700s; and this was a time

when you had vampire panics going on in Eastern Europe,

where you would have entire towns

digging up their cemeteries hunting for vampires.

Even in China,

we have vampire-like legends.

Creatures known as the jiangshi,

or hopping vampires,

said to be very stiff-bodied with outstretched arms.

These stories come from the margins of the known,

and the lore tells us that the boundary

between the known and the unknown,

life and death itself, might be traversed.

Perhaps at great cost,

or perhaps there is a way to live forever.

In Romanian, the word for a vampire

includes the word "v�rcolac,"

which, uh, really means, uh, "werewolf."

So you have werewolf, v�rcolac, uh, vampyr,

uh, vampire; so, sometimes, I can see how people

can coalesce and come out with something that's a mixture.

Every culture on Earth

has stories of humans who can change into animals

and about the idea of supernatural beings

living among us.

And so, instead of seeing an enemy or a nemesis,

we see something of ourselves.

The werewolf and the vampire merge and morph

and inform each other.

When Bram Stoker wrote his novel,

Dracula had the power to become a wolf.

He was a werewolf.

He was a bloodsucking vampire as well.

And, uh, it was the kind of arbitrary grab bag

of characteristics that he chose

that we are still mostly playing with today.

But are vampires merely the figments of myth

and imagination?

Perhaps the answer to that question can be found

by investigating not those vampires

who hide in the shadows

but those who thrive by daylight

and who dwell right next door.

After a difficult and dysfunctional childhood,

15-year-old Rod Ferrell finds solace in death,

the occult and blood-drenched horror films.

At his local high school,

Rod discovers a group of kindred spirits,

among some outcasts who also enjoy

his favorite vampire role-playing games.

In the '90s, people stopped being afraid of vampires.

They started identifying with them, sometimes very intensely.

And I think it was the beginning of a world in which

the boundaries between imagination and reality

were going to become increasingly blurred.

And, uh, that can be a dangerous place to be.

Anne Rice resurrected what had become kind of a stale

popular culture clich�.

She brought back the romanticism,

the idea of the vampire as an antihero.

I think modern people, when they think of vampires,

think of Anne Rice's vampires.

They think of sexy, dark, aristocratic,

tragic characters who live forever

and have supernatural powers.

Vampires have become protectors

rather than just predators in fiction.

You have this very powerful creature

that desires you so much.

And they don't want you to die,

but they're willing to kill for you.

Rod Ferrell did not grow up with his father around much.

He has alleged that his grandfather sexually abused him.

Add to that that he was experimenting with LSD

and other kinds of psychedelic drugs,

and this is a recipe for extreme behavior.

He was part of this vampire coven,

over which he was sort of the elder, or master.

He knew about vampire lore through the game

Vampire: The Masquerade.

And he began to believe he was some sort of, uh, embodiment

of some vampire god.

Rod often told them that he was

a 400-year-old vampire named Vesago.

That he could help them cross over,

which means to become a vampire through rituals

that sometimes involved cutting each other

and drinking each other's blood.

Despite the red flags in her son's behavior,

Rod's mother, Sondra, appeared supportive

of his new group of friends.

Some even claim that she expressed a desire

to be initiated into her son's coven.

His mother was fascinated

by this vampire role that he had assumed

for himself and for, uh, his friends.

She wanted to play, too.

And in this case, instead of guiding her son,

there was this kind of game going on between them,

which ultimately became toxic.

In order to protect each other from a world

that didn't understand their obsessions,

Rod and his coven formed a sacred pact,

and then sealed it in blood.

To belong to a gang, there has to be

some kind of ritual that distinguishes you

from everybody else.

You're taking a vow

that from this point, forever, irreversible,

I'm a member of this gang.

And when we get to the vampire-type thinking,

there always has to be blood involved.

We're gonna cut my wrist.

The other member's gonna suck the blood

so that each one is consuming the blood of the other person,

so that now we're all one blooded family.

Over the course of the next year,

Rod would move with his mother to Eustis, Florida.

After forming a close friendship

with one of his new classmates, a girl named Heather Wendorf,

the pair spent their weekends at the local graveyard,

engaging in bloodletting rituals.

There are some people who adhere to a delusion.

A delusion is a belief, in psychiatry,

that you accept something in spite of facts to the contrary.

And therefore, they start to really believe

that they have these extraordinary powers.

Many people, for example, can easily,

in a form of autohypnotic suggestion,

transform themselves into an imaginary person,

animal, creature that accomplishes

what they cannot do in real life.

And they go with it.

During a series of tearful phone calls,

Rod listens as Heather describes a miserable home life,

culminating in alleged abuse at the hands of her father.

Enraged that his close friend has been mistreated,

Rod and three members of his clan rush to her aid.

When the group arrived at the home of Heather Wendorf

in Eustis, Florida,

Rod and one of his companions went inside.

They came in through the garage, where Rod found a crowbar,

which he took with him.

When he went inside, he found Heather's father

asleep on the couch.

And he beat him to death with the crowbar.

He also encountered Heather's mother,

who splashed, uh, coffee on him in self-defense,

and he beat her to death as well.

In the aftermath of the horrific killings,

Rod was convicted of first-degree murder.

Sociologists who study adolescent crime

have framed this as a kind of game that gets out of hand.

I think that Rod Ferrell and his friends had a kind of game

where they played the role of vampires

until they reached irrevocable consequences

when Rod Ferrell sort of got caught up in his role

and murdered the Wendorfs.

This is a little bit like putting on a Halloween mask

and then discovering that you can never take it off.

If you still don't believe that vampires really do exist,

then what would you say to someone who drinks human blood?

Not only because he has a strange desire to do so

but also because he claims he needs it

to stay alive.

My name is Belfazaar Ashantison.

Most of my friends call me Zaar.

Hi, Zaar. Whoo!

Hi, guys.

54 years old.

I've been drinking blood since I was 11.

And a sanguine vampire.

How you doing, brother?

-I'm good. How are you? -Good, good, good.

At 11 years old, things started changing for me.

I was short, round and always sickly.

And one of my uncles that was big and tall and strong

was picking on us me and my sister.

And something snapped, and I went charging.

And he was bigger and stronger,

and he pinned my arms down to my side.

And then I just kind of reared my head back and bit him.

He was wearing a coat.

I bit through the coat, through his shirt,

and into his flesh enough that I could actually taste blood.

Like, lots of blood.

Once that blood hit my tongue, it was like

I suddenly came alive.

I really need the blood.

I do.

And I've gone without

for lengths of time just to see what would happen.

I'm the kind of person that it physically shows on.

Hi!

My skin will get ashy.

My eyes will be dull and glazed.

It literally physically shows on me.

So, what are some of the common misconceptions?

How about: Holy water gets me wet.

Garlic tastes good on pizza.

Stick a stake through anything's heart,

and it will die.

I do not sleep in a coffin.

I have a king-size bed, thank you very much.

Unlike mythical vampires,

who can turn themselves into bats,

modern-day vampires admit to having to obey physical laws.

Because he can't exactly fly in

through someone's bedroom window for a quick bite,

Belfazaar has devised sanitary methods

to suck blood from his victims.

He finds victims... who are willing to feed him.

-Well, hello. -I'm here.

I like to think I have a pretty good grasp

on human vampirism after now ten years of doing field work.

But I realized very quickly that the only thing

that real vampires are more secretive about than themselves

are their donors.

They have to hide in the shadows

because almost no one ever believes them

when they say that they feel the need

to consume human blood.

I began to realize that if I want to get

some of my research done, it might just be

easier for me to sort of volunteer myself.

I'm gonna go grab my doctor's bag.

I'll be right back.

I use a clean technique.

I'll clean the area on the donor.

Honestly, alcohol swabs always leave

a funny taste afterwards.

I make sure that the blade is new every time.

-Ready? -Ready.

More often than not, I'll use the back side of the shoulders.

I poke a series of holes, and those holes actually

provide me enough.

There we go.

-You ready? -Yeah.

The lore tells us that vampires live forever.

At least, as long as they have a victim.

That, of course, is a great human desire.

So part of the power and fascination of the story is:

How do I live forever?

Is there some secret here?

Well, yes.

Drink the blood of others.

Steal the life force from others.

That's not bad.

Sweeter taste you've been getting fatty acids again.

Oh, that's good.

I can tell when people

are a little bit low

on their magnesium and potassium.

I can tell when they're not getting enough fatty acids.

And, because of the flow,

I can also tell if they're not drinking enough.

As a psychologist, I think we're talking

about people caught up in a story,

caught up in a kind of melodramatic ritual.

People will go into cosplay

and other, uh, dramas, because it's creative

and it makes them feel special and it is very imaginative.

So, the rewards are great,

even though the activity may be in a way meaningless,

that it-it isn't an actual transfer of energy

from one body to another, as in the old vampire stories.

In the Bible, in the book of Leviticus,

God tells the Israelites, "You may not drink blood,

because blood is the life."

And the assumption in the ancient Israelite religion

was probably that when things run out of blood, they're dead.

And so, there must be something important

and supernatural, uh, about blood.

It's a mysterious substance, and this is why

it would've been offered to the gods in animal sacrifices

in ancient cultures.

And, presumably, this is also why vampires

and similar creatures would want it,

because it has that power.

At any given time, I can drink from...

an ounce to six ounces, depending.

The whole process, start to finish,

usually takes...

maybe 20, 25 minutes,

depending on how much I need to feed.

-You good? -Yeah.

When Zaar was feeding on blood from me

it couldn't have been more than a couple of teaspoons

I suddenly felt incredibly weak.

Like I had gone from someone with stamina and energy

to someone who just had the life drained out of me.

All right.

I only usually feed

two to three times a week, and I have

four different donors, so I alternate.

I don't want to take too much from any one person.

-Thank you, thank you. -All right.

Belfazaar claims that drinking blood

helps him feel energized and alive.

Without regular feeding, he believes that he,

and those like him, would not be able to survive.

But is Belfazaar simply

the delusional product of some kind of Dracula fixation?

Or is there an actual physiological benefit

to his consumption of human blood?

There have been some

medical conditions that people have thought

or theorized maybe this is where we get human vampirism from.

Like people who have porphyria they are anemic,

or they need blood to sustain themselves, but they also have

this skin condition where they can't be out in the sun.

And that will cause some major defects.

In some of the studies

about why someone would seek blood,

the closest that we can see medically

is they have iron-deficiency anemia,

and so, theoretically,

if I could get some source of iron heme,

that I would feel stronger

instead of feeling without any energy.

That makes some kind of sense at some level.

The hunger never fully goes away.

The thirst, whatever you want to call it...

that hunger is always there.

Is it possible that folklore about vampires

originated because of misunderstood

or undiagnosed medical conditions?

Or is a vampire's insatiable appetite for blood

due to a supernatural hunger?

Perhaps the answer can be found not by examining vampires

but a different, and related,

type of human monster.

Werewolves.

Here, on 512 acres of rugged land,

lies a remote cattle ranch.

But according to local legend,

this desert landscape is also home

to a creature of unspeakable evil.

A creature known as...

the skinwalker.

There are whisperings by the local Ute tribe

that the region is essentially been cursed

by the Navajo people.

And that it is home to several skinwalkers,

the yee naaldlooshii.

They're typically witches or shaman

that use black magic and evil arts

in order to transform into the forms of various animals.

The Utes to this day are very respectful.

They're very mindful.

Matter of fact, they stand at an arm's length

from this ranch.

They firmly believe that this ground is cursed

and that this concentration of this phenomenon,

this host, is on the Skinwalker Ranch.

A skinwalker is a shape-shifter.

It can become many things a fox, a coyote, a wolf.

There are these recorded stories

of bipedal creatures that are walking around

with wolflike heads.

The locals on the reservation, they won't talk about it

because even mentioning the name of the skinwalker

invites these things in.

Skinwalkers.

Shape-shifting werewolves who dwell

not in remote forests of Eastern Europe

but in the remote desert regions of North America.

Experienced ranch hands Terry and Gwen Sherman

purchase the ranch and the surrounding area.

Almost immediately, they find themselves face-to-face

with something they would later describe

as pure evil.

One day, Terry had gone up

to check on his cattle and noticed this extremely large

what appeared to be a wolf walking around his property.

It grabbed one of the calves by the snout

and began to tear at it.

So he pulls out his .357 Magnum

and shoots point-blank,

and the wolf doesn't react.

It doesn't appear fazed at all.

So he grabs his deer hunting rifle

and shoots the wolf to knock it down.

A piece of fur and flesh flies off of the wolf.

And again, completely unfazed,

and at this point the wolf is kind of trotting off

into the distance, casually.

Leveling his rifle,

Terry cautiously followed the wolf's trail,

only to discover it had disappeared.

In the days and weeks that followed,

the Shermans began to wonder

if what they encountered was a normal wolf

or something more.

In the case of the bulletproof wolf, what's interesting

is that wolves are not native to the state of Utah

for, I think, the past hundred years or so.

The werewolf of legend

is described as looking very much

like a regular wolf, except much larger.

And, oftentimes, it is said to be

sort of bloodthirsty and cunning.

We have lots of interesting legends around the world.

For example, in Russia,

they're known as the v�rcolac or the bodark.

In France, you have the loup-garou;

in Scotland, the wolver;

and in South America, the lobizon.

And even in countries where you don't traditionally have wolves,

you have similar legends.

For example, in India, there are weretigers.

And in Africa, wereleopards and werehyenas.

And even in Mexico, werejaguars.

We have to acknowledge that the notion

of a shape-shifter, like a werewolf,

something that combines the elements of human

and animal together into one single body,

from a scientific perspective, is quite troubling.

But the fact that these legends are so widespread

is quite intriguing.

An enormous,

bloodthirsty, cunning wolf

that also happens to be bulletproof.

Is it possible that the Shermans encountered

one of the werewolves that may have been

haunting Skinwalker Ranch for centuries?

And if so, what physical evidence is there

to support such a fantastic notion?

There has been numerous reports of cattle mutilations

that occur not only on Skinwalker Ranch

but the entire Uinta Basin.

Many of the accounts

of animal mutilations from Skinwalker Ranch

describe animal carcasses that have

almost been surgically dissected.

Certain large cats can make very clean, precise wounds.

Things like mountain lions.

But it is notable that you have so many accounts

of weird livestock mutilations from Skinwalker Ranch.

It's very hard to explain in terms of the natural world.

With so many accounts of cattle mutilations

and sightings of unusually large and ferocious wolves,

it is difficult to escape the notion that something strange

is prowling the grounds of Skinwalker Ranch.

But, according to some scientists,

that doesn't necessarily mean

that people are seeing a werewolf.

One of the really fascinating theories

that relates to these monstrous wolves from Skinwalker Ranch

is that these could, in fact, be surviving representatives

of a species known as dire wolves, Canis dirus.

These were very robust wolves that lived

during the Pleistocene epoch up until about 11,500 years ago,

and they were very prevalent in North America.

They were certainly much larger and stockier than modern wolves.

So it's not beyond the realm of possibility

that a species from 11,000 years ago

may have survived in small pockets

in certain remote areas of North America.

Perhaps the most powerful story

I have personally experienced at the ranch:

I came out with another researcher.

We had gone out there for almost two weeks straight.

We found nothing each night.

And then we peeked over the ridgeline.

It's called Skinwalker Ridge.

There was these balls of light in the field.

They were glowing and shrinking down.

And suddenly a ball of light exploded.

And from the light, a very, very large wolf came towards us.

This thing is literally right in front of us.

It seemed very comfortable, almost as if it was studying us.

And then it casually turned around

and walked around this boulder and vanished.

It was gone.

This is an actual creature that haunts the property

and the surrounding area.

It's out there.

If the skinwalker does exist,

could it be just some kind of rare breed of canine

that simply hasn't been identified yet

by mainstream science?

Or could it be exactly

what those who've encountered one insist it is,

a shape-shifting werewolf?

Perhaps the answer can be found by examining a group of people

who are afflicted by a rare

and mysterious condition known as "werewolf syndrome."

After giving birth to five daughters,

Parvatibai Patidor

and her husband are overjoyed to find out

that she is once again pregnant,

this time with a boy.

But when their son, Lalit, is finally born,

the joy turns to shock

because Lalit is very different

from the couple's other children,

and it's not because he's the couple's first male child.

Lalit was born with a rare congenital condition

known as hypertrichosis,

a genetic mutation which causes excess hair growth

all over the body.

People have often referred to hypertrichosis by another name:

"werewolf syndrome."

In the case of hypertrichosis,

you can have a tremendous amount of hair either on your face

or on your arm or another part of the body

that almost looks like fur.

That is just a rare kind of mutation,

and people would right away jump to a conclusion,

this is a wolf.

Could the age-old tales about werewolves

simply be due to ancient ignorance

about genetic mutations?

Centuries ago, there were all types of monsters.

These were generally people that were born

with different genetic deformities

or congenital defects.

You have things such as atavisms.

An atavism is an ancient trait that surfaces randomly.

For example, there are humans that are born with tails.

It's very rare, but it does happen.

Some believe the reason we're so intensely fascinated

by such physical deformities is that they give a face

to our innermost fear.

I think it's human nature for people to fear

what they don't understand.

So, in that respect, when someone encounters

an individual with hypertrichosis,

it's very easy to sort of build that person into a monster.

In the 19th century, the sideshow, the freak show,

was a very big part of, uh, American popular culture.

P. T. Barnum exploited many of these people

that were born with different congenital defects.

When the first cases of werewolf syndrome showed up,

these people were immediately put on, um, display.

One of the most popular was named "JoJo the Dog-Faced Boy."

Certainly easy to understand

how people visiting these freak shows

may have been inspired to believe

that things like werewolves could exist.

We like things to be orderly,

and people that have unfortunate appearances...

Well, is that man, or is it a woman?

Is that a human, or is it a wolf?

That is a very distressing thing for many people,

and one of the things that comes out are stories.

Folklore comes out of this kind of thing

where we have a person that could shift back and forth

between being a wolf and being an ordinary shop clerk.

In terms of werewolf hysteria,

one truly has to wonder if some of these

could be monsters of the mind.

For example, you have something called "clinical lycanthropy,"

a very rare psychosis

whereby an individual feels like

they are actually transforming into an animal.

You're operating as if you're an animal.

Sexual instincts, sexual behaviors,

and so on, attacking.

It's a way of cooling down

the engine of aggression,

and it can be physical aggression,

it can be sexual aggression,

and it gets into contact with early, early primitive things

that maybe we are carrying with us

over many generations.

If it's true that monsters, like vampires and werewolves,

really are just projections of the mind,

what exactly is it about ourselves

that we're so afraid of?

Every human being has a primitive side.

There is a beast, there is a wolf,

there is a monster somewhere in all of our unconscious minds.

We think of ourselves as distant from the beasts,

but we're more beast than intelligence.

We are creatures, we are animals, we are beasts,

and the beast will come out.

We have to be in touch with the inner werewolf.

Is it possible that our morbid fascination

with vampires and werewolves

actually arises out of a fear that there's a monster

lurking inside each of us,

just waiting to break free at any moment?

Perhaps, but there are many who claim that our attraction

to these creatures isn't about fear at all

but about desire.

Bram Stoker's literary masterpiece Dracula

is published to critical acclaim.

It will go on to sell tens of millions of copies worldwide

and redefine both vampire and werewolf legends

for generations to come.

According to some scholars,

the reason it became so influential and successful

wasn't because it was just selling horror

but because it was selling...

...sex.

Human beings have always needed

fantasy constructs that can act out impulses

that we would like to do ourselves

but would rather just imagine ourselves doing.

And that fantasy of being released

from all constraints and strictures

is something vampires get to do, and we are envious.

I think there are many reasons

people want to identify as vampires.

Definitely the sexual aspect, the eternal life.

I mean, who wouldn't want that?

And also the power that comes with it.

It's a dangerous creature that's beautiful.

Originally, you became a vampire

if you did something like commit incest or witchcraft or suicide.

Vampires were horrible, evil outsiders.

But today, things have changed.

We all feel misunderstood.

We all feel like outsiders, just as the vampire is.

So instead of becoming a-a demonic figure,

it's become a tragic one

and, in some cases, even a glamorous figure.

We have a need, a desire,

for these sort of creatures of the night.

Blood drinking is viewed as kind of a bonding experience,

a way for people to interconnect.

There is a degree of intimacy there,

a sexuality in sharing one's vital life force, one's blood.

There's a particular bond that can be forged there

that is really beyond explanation.

The fantasy that a human

turns into a wolf and back again,

well, it illustrates one key mythological truth:

we are animals, we are beasts, and we're humans.

We're both at the same time, and we live in that tension.

People are always asking me,

"Why don't vampires reflect in mirrors?"

And there's a very good and direct answer to that.

If they did, we would see our own faces.

It shows that,

even if they are completely disproven,

I think vampires and werewolves will always be with us

because they're a part of who we are.

For hundreds of years,

they have been portrayed in literature and on film

as fiercely intelligent, sexually powerful

and immortal creatures.

They have prayed on our innermost fears

and haunted our darkest desires.

Vampires promise us a future of never-aging immortality.

That is, if we don't mind the taste of a little human blood.

Werewolves represent our collective desire

to break free of society's restrictions.

And together, they remind us of the aspects of our own nature

that we try to keep hidden and safely unexplained.

Subtitled by Diego Moraes www.oakisland.tk

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