Original subtitles

We're not supposed to be here.

You ever have those moments when you step back and you wonder,

Who convinced you that this was going to be a good time?

Well, in this case, it was me.

I convinced myself that we should go to romania and

Look at the curse of vlad the impaler.

I thought it could be hilarious,

You know, booze it up in bucharest,

You know, hit the clubs, have a few laughs,

Hear a scary story, but then.

You end up freezing in an ancient transylvanian forest

And no, I didn't get a groupon for a romania folk dance experience.

These are real witches,

Wielding black magic in the

Same place vlad the impaler,

Supposedly, had his head chopped off.

That's cool, it's all good.

I'm sure everything will be just fine.

As a writer and explorer, as a citizen of the world,

I've seen things that defy understanding and sometimes,

When there's no good explanation,

We blame the supernatural, but the truth is,

I believe in science.

Taking off.

So, what happens if you bring the full light of

Modern science onto ancient curses?

You wind up at a seance in the woods with romanian witches

And follow a vampire hunter to his place of business.

That's what happens.

They said, "please, help us."

So he's not afraid of.

No, he's not.

Good luck.

You're gonna need it.

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Transylvania, the name conjures it all,

Dense pine, impassable craggy cliffs,

Thick ground fog.

This is the mythic forest of your childhood nightmare.

Bran castle, billed as the last standing relic of

A man some call, dracula.

The story goes that romania's bottomless well of tyranny,

Catastrophe and overall human misery,

Can all be traced back to one terrifying ruler and

His supernatural evil.

Ah. Okay.

So, have you ever heard of the curse of vlad tepes?

Yeah.

He lost his wife, he lost his dynasty,

He lost his family and he signed a document in order to

Bring a curse down against his enemy,

And he promised that he will return,

That was his curse and I will take revenge against those

That they betrayed me.

He was killed and his body was buried in the monastery nearby bucharest.

Later on, when they opened the coffin,

They never found his body, which is quite creepy.

Yeah, right.

You do start to wonder what if he's coming back again?

So you'd be worried if you were his enemy?

You might be a little nervous.

- Oh yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah.

Vlad spent much of his life constructing a fearsome persona.

In some ways, his reputation was so extreme that it haunts

The entire world.

Gross.

Oh my god, three days?

Yeah. Yeah.

What are some of the other ways he would do it?

Wow.

He sounds like a really nice guy.

Yeah, fascists always say that.

Once he took power in 1448, vlad began a lifelong battle

To protect his country from invaders,

From all sides; hungarians, rival nobles but,

Most of all, the ever expanding,

Ruthless ottoman empire, vlad's mortal enemy.

The other kings and rulers of his time had surrendered and

They all paid tribute, but vlad fought on,

With a sheer hatred that defies description.

Perhaps because the ottoman's had kidnapped as a child and,

By the time his father and brother were killed,

His hatred had grown so virulent that we still make

Tv shows about him, 600 years later.

Vlad, himself, he was right here.

Yeah, right here.

Amazing.

Wow.

You know, 600 years ago, there was a real person in here.

Vlad the impaler, looked out his little window,

Thought about revenge.

Now this little beauty here can be yours for $7.

No one ever lets a curse stand in the way of profit.

There you go.

But the truth is, we're all here because vlad's fearsome

Reputation so inflamed imaginations,

Including an irish writer named, bram stoker.

Bram never even visited romania,

But he used vlad's name and legend as the basis for one of

The most potent horror symbols of all time.

There's no escaping the vampire in pop culture,

But the question I have is pretty simple,

Is the curse of vlad real?

Tell me about this letter from vlad tepes.

Kind of a cool way of punctuating requests, you know,

"hey man, give me a beer, or I'm gonna lay your kingdom to waste and

Your kids are gonna rot in hell for eternity."

There you go.

Do you think vlad's curse has affected bucharest?

Caradja's plague, that was the prince who came

After vlad tepes, was killed.

Yes.

Bucharest is already on edge after the mythic

Vlad the impaler has cursed them for all eternity.

And then, after years of devastating fires,

Earthquakes, wars, a ruler appointed by his sworn enemy,

The ottoman empire, assumes power.

And, guess what happens next?

The palace and the center of bucharest burns to the ground.

That could be a coincidence, or,

More likely a parting gift from the outgoing administration.

But then people start getting sick.

450 years after the black death,

Bucharest plunges into an outbreak that must have felt

Like the zombie apocalypse.

What did they think caused the plague?

God was punishing them, kind of like a curse.

During the plague, where did they put the bodies?

Can we visit those mass graves now?

Can you go see where those bodies are buried?

Is there a memorial or anything to look at?

It's totally normal.

There's absolutely nothing strange or symbolic about

Building your parliament on top of a mass grave,

But seriously, we should go down there, right?

You know, just wanted to see for myself these tunnels

That were stuffed with bodies during the plague outbreak.

Yeah, we're not supposed to be here.

Vlad the impaler put a written curse on his land.

Years after his death, when an ottoman appointed prince

Showed up to claim the throne, all hell broke loose,

And it must have felt like the ultimate confirmation of the curse.

With coronavirus, people around the world have gotten a

Glimpse of what a scary outbreak can be like,

But statistically, the majority of patients who

Contract the coronavirus survive.

Caradja's plague was totally different,

The death rate was more than 50%.

It's got to have felt like the world is ending.

The psychic wound, you know,

On a city, on a people, on a nation.

It's something that you would never get over and you would

Pass that fear along to your children.

It's almost like the sheer terror of living through that

Particular plague left a scar that's been passed down.

Many modern romanians see this outbreak as proof of vlad's curse,

But I wonder, can we find a point where

Myth and science intersect?

Was there something truly anomalous about caradja's plague?

This is the mathematical model. Okay.

That's widely used in disease ecology.

So, we took historical data from the black death,

The bubonic plague.

Sure.

- Would you like to see? - Yeah, please, by all means.

These are spatial representations of people

Dying all across the city.

Wow.

And then, it, it burns itself out,

As epidemics do, and it starts to plateau.

Okay.

So, my husband and I have been working on your

Mathematical model of caradja's plague,

This was a really terrifying plague.

Wow.

Much more aggressive epidemic,

Once it happens it just,

You know, wipes through the city super quickly.

Wow.

But something else is going wrong too.

Okay.

Some people have looked at these epidemic curves and said,

"okay, well there must be, what we call, pneumonic plagues."

And that's when the disease is deep in your lungs,

Can spread it directly, person to person.

Wow.

Then quarantine is established,

So, you're walking around the city where they had

Piles of human bodies.

There's stories about them raping, stealing,

Even killing plague victims;

Complete societal breakdown.

So all these things may have combined to make this

Into just a complete hellish nightmare.

It's a hellish, sort of, end of days...

Scenario. Scenario.

- Right. - It killed half the city,

Maybe more, but there hadn't been a plague epidemic

Anywhere else.

As an ecologist you say, "how could that be?"

"what was it?"

Wow. Yeah.

It's hard to imagine what a family losing nearly

50% of its members would feel like.

Imagine your own family and pick half,

The scare that would leave on a generation.

That's something you would never get over.

Caradja's plague could've given the curse a literal

Grounding and an emphasis that burned in into the minds of bucharest,

But that was hundreds of years ago.

Are there any lingering effects today?

In the deep dark woods outside of bucharest,

There's a place called, the witches pond.

A place where the legacy of the curse shows surprising life.

The business of witchcraft in romania is booming and

Mihaela minka is the reigning queen.

She's a witch and there are thousands of others just like her.

How did I find her?

Well, I tied a note to a raven's foot with an eye of newt

And the tongue of a bat.

No I'm kidding, I hit her up on instagram,

I slid into her dm's.

I might add that to contacts.

Why is this a special place?

- He was killed? - Yeah.

- They cut his head off. - Yeah.

If I wanted to curse someone,

Or to do black magic, could I pay,

And you could do a bad spell to them?

Yes, her grandmother killed much people with black magic.

- Oh yeah? - Yeah, because.

I understand, yeah.

Mihaela and the other black magic practitioners

Offer their services online.

$100 and an internet connection

And you can dole out a curse.

Just as easily, you could be the subject of one.

But the romanians spend millions of dollars a year on

Health charms and hexes and love potions.

It got to the point where the romanian government attempted

To tax the black market of black magic.

They're not the type of people you want to upset.

Now a group of angry witches in romania is taking

On the government with a unique tax protest.

The witches responded with curses,

They threw poisonous mandrake into the danube,

I'm not gonna say it's proof about who believes what,

But we did see a marked change in the behavior of the highest

Levels of the romanian government.

They not only backed down, but also wore purple clothing,

As purple is the color that protects from curses.

In this case, black magic proved pretty effective.

So that was, that was pretty intense.

I'll say this, if, if mihaela cursed you,

I think you'd wonder.

Her conviction was so compelling.

I think you'd think about it in your dark moments.

Just in case.

A curse works when people believe it works and the

Prevalence of witchcraft means that a lot of folks are,

At least, open to the idea.

But, how deep does it go?

How dark can it get?

Is there a big difference between the western attitudes

About witchcraft or the supernatural,

And the attitudes of multi-generational romanians?

Ovijo

Yeah hi.

Hi, how are you, sam.

Ovijo, nice to meet you.

- Yeah, ovijo nice to meet you. - Yeah, thanks.

A local journalist has offered to help me get access to a

Small village called marotinu de sus,

Where there is a man who fights the ghosts

Of romanian superstition.

But this is something no one in town wants exposed because

There was an avalanche of blow back before.

So, our source is understandably wary.

We found out about this guy,

Mircea mitrica, is his name.

He doesn't want us to go at his house. Right.

He doesn't wanna be seen by the neighbors.

We're gonna go with him at his goat fold,

You know, where he keeps the goats.

Sounds great.

I love a good goat fold.

And, uh, he's gonna talk to us there.

Well, we'll be very low profile.

You gotta be careful how, how you approach,

It's a total different situation in the countryside.

Is he okay doing camera work?

He's okay to be filmed?

So it seems.

So, we've gotta be a little careful about how we do this.

This guy's gonna be real squirrelies

And I don't wanna spook him, so keep the cameras down and,

And just, you know, low profile,

Incognito, you know, real slick.

That's what I want you to do. Got it, yeah, yeah.

Is that him? Yeah.

Okay.

Sam.

You come with us?

Yeah. Okay.

,

Sam.

You come with us?

Believing in giving money to witches is one thing,

Even in the us we give two billion dollars a year to

Psychics and everyone reads their horoscope,

Mostly because the stakes are low.

You still have to go to work when saturn is an ascendance,

Or the moon is in retrograde, right?

But it feels like there's something darker and more

Profound at work here, in romania.

Vlad the impaler's curse drove its hooks into the

National psyche six centuries ago.

How dark does it get?

What is a moroi?

Depends on which village you live in.

To some, it's a simple ghost.

In other places, it's much more like the familiar vampire,

Feeding on the blood of the living.

In mircea's village, the moroi is still a member of the genus

And species undead supernaturalist,

But here, the moroi is an invisible phantom who leaves

The grave and infests the body of a living relative.

How did you know it was a moroi?

Yeah, they told him, it's because of the moroi.

They said, please help us, you know.

Right.

Does that kill the moroi?

Wow, so just two days and she's cured.

How did you first learn about moroi?

When I was five, I slept with a night light.

'cause he's not afraid of.

- No, he's not. - Yeah, I can tell.

What's amazing is the elders were doing this and mircea

As five-year-old and was brave enough to go witness and

Be part of it.

Just hard to imagine my kid going into graves and exhume

The body and get the heart, but if you grew up out here,

You'd have a much different understanding of death.

There's no question that romania is still steeped in

Mysticism and myth.

Add the curse of a vengeful vlad to the mix and you've got

Yourself an all you can eat buffet of supernatural belief

Sweeping the countryside.

But what about here, in bucharest?

On the surface, a modern-day metropolis,

Bright lights, cafes, people's noses buried in virtual

Realities on a five-inch screen.

Thank you.

This isn't the hang out spot for vampire hunters,

There's no witches' cauldrons boiling in the kitchen.

This is an entire generation of post-communist romanians.

They grew up with search engines in their pockets.

Do they believe they're destined for darkness?

I go what is this?

Adrian?

- Hi. - How you doing, man?

I'm good, here with my friends.

Hi, I'm maria, nice to meet you.

- Hello, andrew. - Andrew, nice to meet you.

We're having the beer, would you like one?

Yeah, I'll have a beer,

Sure, thank you.

There you go.

Adrian and his friends were born after the fall of

Ceausescu's totalitarian regime.

It was one of the most oppressive in the entire

Soviet union, so what do the kids these days think about a

600 year old legend?

Is romania cursed?

Well, if you look at the,

Like, last 500 years...

Yeah.

The wars, the plagues, fires that destroyed cities, the floods.

Yeah, it's, it was something there and it's,

Sort of, still affecting.

You believe it?

If you asked me, yeah, we're cursed.

People say this is in our blood.

You don't hear that every day.

Unless, you live in romania.

So could the blood of modern-day romanians hold

Evidence of a curse?

Could there be some sort of profound truth in a toothless cliché?

Could centuries of upheaval and trauma leave effects we

Could measure in the blood?

Remember 25 minutes ago when I told you I was going to map

The intersection of science and myth?

Yeah, well, here comes the science part.

The name, the reputation,

So fearsome we still talk about it,

600 years later.

He was the ultimate medieval fearmonger and he fought to

Protect his country from enemies,

Domestic and foreign, by skewering tens of thousands

Of humans at a time.

Before his death, he issued a written curse and,

In the six centuries since, one horrible tragedy after the

Next has been blamed on vlad's infamous letter.

So I wonder, could a curse, somehow manifest in the people?

What I mean is, could it be hiding in their dna?

This idea that you're talking about is a

Psychological theory referred to as trans-generational trauma.

Trans-generational trauma,

Right. Trauma.

And it's basically the idea that the generation that

Experiences the trauma can pass it onto future generations.

There would be some kind of long-term effect.

Right, so, so just massive trauma can change your genes?

Right, and the effects can be multi-generational.

Trans-generational trauma has been documented in

Children of holocaust survivors,

Or, the descendants of slaves and in the native americans,

Survivors of famine.

Their offspring, many years later,

Were shown to have increased obesity,

Schizophrenia, diabetes, showing that there was a

Trans-generational trauma, altered by epigenetics.

Right, wow.

Epigenetics is basically,

The study of how genes are turned on or off.

It involves chemical modifications to dna and the

Proteins associated with dna and it responds to both

Internal stimuli and external stimuli.

So you're saying, like, environmental factors can

Change your dna?

Yeah, but there has to be some pretty,

You know, long lasting trauma that would have enough time

For the body to reprogram itself.

So, for decades, we thought we were stuck with the

Genes we were born with and now you're telling me that

Genes can change due to stress?

Sounds like we're gonna have to change some textbooks.

So, I was in romania and I started to wonder if

An area had a history of, like, terrible trauma,

It went back into the middle ages,

Just horrible thing after horrible thing,

Living in constant fear.

Could there be something you'd see in the present-day people.

Yes, and it couldn't be positive, right?

So far, we're only talking about negative... Right.

Predisposition but maybe you have a good predisposition.

So this theory of mine, this idea that a country

That's had hundreds of years of trauma,

The people who live there would be more

Resilient to trauma, is feasible?

Right and that could be an epigenetic alteration of stress genes.

There's no question what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

That's how I live my life.

For an epigenetic alteration to occur in their stress genes,

Romanians would have to be subject to

Continuous trauma throughout their history,

But have they?

Look at the map, romania is consistently caught in the

Vice between rival powers, between europe and the mongols,

Between the ottoman turks and the christian nation,

All the way up to nazi germany and the soviet union

And the fall of the iron curtain.

So, is there any evidence that romania's past has led to some

Kind of resilience, or survival advantage.

What do the locals think?

I was 13 when we had the so-called revolution.

It was not easy to get food, we had to manage, but...

It's in your blood.

Exactly.

It's just one disaster after the next.

But I think it makes us stronger.

A ferry disaster in 1989 is just one of the horrible

Events often attributed to vlad the impaler's curse,

But this one has something pretty strange about it.

We've got a survivor of that accident and I'm fascinated to

Talk to him because foreign tourists died.

There were 31 survivors and they were all romanian.

Only the romanians survived, should be interesting.

Tragedy happens every day, all over the world.

It hides around every corner, reminding us that our lives

Are more precarious than we'd like to admit.

But as I've looked into the long history of

Romanian tragedies, sometimes attributed to

Vlad the impaler's curse, I start to wonder.

People say this is in our blood.

That could be an epigenetic alteration of

The stress genes.

Could some romanians have inherited a unique gift?

The ability to process stress and fear better than the rest of us.

So, we're here at the danube where there was a

Catastrophic ferry accident in '89 and we've got a survivor of

That accident, teodor, and I'm fascinated to talk to him

Because foreign tourists died.

There were 31 survivors and they were all romanian.

Only the romanians survived, should be interesting.

You could see the boat coming and you knew

What was gonna happen.

What went through your mind, what were you thinking about

During those moments?

Under the hull.

Tell me about your mind,

What was going through your mind?

Were you, were you very scared?

Crazy man, wow.

Did you know anybody that didn't make it?

Did you know them?

Wow.

And they didn't make it?

Teodor felt no fear, he just did what he had to do

To keep himself alive.

But is this just a bad ass anecdote of a romanian with

Ice cold blood in his veins?

Could his incredible survival instincts be the results of epigenetics?

Now, one anecdote doesn't make a pattern,

But if you keep looking, maybe you surprise yourself.

Are we there?

Yeah, it should be here, actually.

Are you ready? Let's go find it.

Yeah, sure. Okay.

Don't get hit.

We got the address for a woman named,

Aurelia grigore.

She lives in an old communist housing block.

Ceausescu's reign of terror wasn't the only thing she survived.

She's a flight attendant and she apparently shares teodor's

Knack for survival against all odds.

There you go.

Pretty sure that's a good omen.

Yeah, it should be this way.

Alright.

It's here.

Aurelia, hi, sam.

Hi.

We've heard about you and we wanted to maybe just hear

Some stories about the things you've been through.

Is it okay?

We can come in?

I finally track down this woman who has one of the most

Amazing stories I've ever heard and it's gonna blow your mind.

Seriously.

In romania, people feel tragedy is in their blood and,

Throughout their history, they've nearly drowned in it.

Ever since the reign of vlad tepes when he was boiling

People alive and building forests out of men impaled on wooden spikes,

Romania just can't seem to catch a break.

But could this have caused an inadvertent strength,

A unique ability to handle tragedy and trauma and survive disaster?

I hope it's okay?

That's great.

I was flying from bucharest to nouadhibou.

It was a long flight, and I was pregnant with my boy.

Ah.

After a lot of hours, I don't remember how many hours,

I looked out the window, I saw no light, nothing.

- Just darkness. - Only, only the waves.

And I thought, it's water, we are in water.

You crash.

Yes.

I saw the plane was broken.

Broken, oh my god.

I thought, I have to choose the easiest of these death.

The first one, because of the sharks,

All the sharks.

No. Yes, yes.

There were sharks everywhere?

Yes, yes...

The other one, together with the plane,

The engine is going, the maybe exploding, yes.

I chose to stay with the plane.

- Were you very scared? - No.

Not even a little bit scared?

No, no. Why not?

I don't know.

Much like teodor on the ferry,

Aurelia describes having an almost eerie calm,

When most people would panic themselves into making a bad decision.

But if you're a flight attendant in a cursed land,

Plane crashes can come in bunches.

The second one in 1986,

At the landing, it was too steep.

Too steep, you were smashing down.

Yes, and then, yes, yes.

Did you think, "I can't believe it's happening again?"

I thought I was a black cat.

If I am onboard, something is going to be wrong,

This was very difficult for me because my colleagues died.

And I'm okay.

What happened?

What I think is so interesting is you were never afraid.

You have to survive, you know?

And you have no time to ride that,

No, no, you had no time.

It's crazy.

When you go into a stressful situation,

Your body floods with chemicals,

The amygdala is this little almond shaped organ and

Releases these stress hormones.

It's fight or flight, it's adrenaline dumps,

We've all heard about it and, you know,

Some people don't handle it well at all.

I had a friend, he got mugged, and he was trying to dial 911

And he dialed 411, over and over and over again,

But we've seen that there's a romanian strength,

There's a romanian ability to metabolize stress hormones and

Maybe there's more to it.

Maybe it has a genetic component.

It's sort of mind blowing to think the trauma we

Experience in our lives today could have genetic

Implications on our grandchildren's grandchildren,

But new science says that it's possible,

That epigenetics allows future generations to develop

Coping mechanisms for trauma they've never even been through.

Some romanians have been both

Cursed and given a gift from the past and they row against

The tide of history into the future.

So cortisol is a hormone and it's,

It's released essentially, by your adrenal glands.

Right.

Once that cortisol is elevated that's what we try to

Measure in looking at the stress response.

Right.

And it's all about coping and some people cope really well.

They're able to keep going.

So they've just gotten better at coping with the cortisol,

With the stress.

Absolutely, they've gotten better at it.

So that would kind of go to my pet theory that the romanians,

Who've had this history of living under

Incredible stress with all these terrible dictatorships.

Mhm.

Would have coping mechanisms, possibly.

Possibly, with the human brain,

We have this remarkable ability to be able to adjust and adapt to situations,

So if you think of it in that context,

I think you're really onto something.

A medieval prince's desperate attempts to keep

Control of his kingdom led him to commit such atrocities that

His reputation and name have inflamed imaginations for 600 years.

A cursed country, a myth of dracula,

Plagues and fires and tyranny and a centuries-long chain

Of human misery.

Romania is cursed, not by a vampire,

But by geography and history, by a fearsome ruler but

Romanians survive and flourish in the face of catastrophe and

Emerging science shows how coping with trauma can be

Passed down in the form of epigenetics.

Could there be a connection?

I can't say for sure.

From where I'm sitting, vlad the impaler did curse

Romania and the proof is written in blood.

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