Secrets of the Dead (2000–…): Season 15, Episode 1 - Vampire Legend - full transcript

Narrator: Coming up
on "Secrets of the Dead,"

archeologists make
gruesome discoveries

in medieval graveyards.

Man: One of the burials
had the head cut off

and placed between the feet.

Different man:
The myth of the vampire

really terrorized villages.

That was not entertainment.
That was real fear.

Narrator: Has the modern vampire
craze been hiding a dark past?

Man: The popular image
of Dracula is quite an obstacle

to understanding the medieval
beliefs in vampires.



Narrator: Vampire legend
on "Secrets of the Dead."

"Secrets of the Dead"
was made possible in part

by the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting

and by contributions
to your PBS station from...

In modern popular culture,
the vampire is a creature

that's both alluring
and terrifying in equal measure.

Dressed in evening wear,
he sinks his fangs

into the jugular
of unsuspecting victims,

luring them to their fate
using charm and charisma

perfected over centuries
of immortality...

Man, voice-over: Without
a doubt, Bram Stoker's created

the most recognizable
and potent monster of all time.

Narrator: but in the past,
vampires weren't seen

as fictional,
and belief in them



was driven by genuine fear.

[Bird squawks]

Man, voice-over: "They cut off
the men's heads and placed them

"in the graves
between their legs,

"tore out the hearts
from their corpses,

and covered the bodies
with earth again."

Narrator: Could it be that
the myth of the vampire

isn't a myth at all?

Medieval records and
disturbing archeological finds

are beginning to shed light
on shocking rituals

from our own past,

rituals that dated
from hundreds of years

before Bram Stoker
even imagined "Dracula."

Man: I had in front of me
the remains of a vampire.

Wow.

It looks like he's had
a messy meal of blood.

Narrator: This is a horror story
far more visceral

and far more frightening

than any fiction writer
could create.

[Hisses]

[Explosion]

Narrator: Ketton Quarry,
Rutland, England.

Archeologist Ian Meadows
is called to the site

after the chance discovery
of some bones.

Meadows: On excavation,
we found it was a complete

Anglo-Saxon chapel
with associated cemetery,

and these generally
don't survive

because they've been built over
by later medieval churches.

Around the church,
there were 73 burials in total

ranging from small children
through to mature adults.

This particular piece is about
where the Anglo-Saxon church

and associated cemetery were
before they were quarried away.

Narrator: At first glance,
they appear to be

unremarkable
Anglo-Saxon burials...

Meadows: Laid in graves,
sometimes in parallel lines,

and the bodies were all laid
with their feet to the east

and the head to the west.

Narrator: but then Ian
and his team

uncovered something
extraordinary.

Meadows: One of the bodies was
unlike anything I'd ever seen

in churchyards of this period,
and that was the burial

of a juvenile where the head
had been taken off

and placed on the legs
within the grave.

All the other bodies
were complete and undamaged,

but this one had obviously
been singled out

for a different treatment.

As an archeologist, you're used
to finding skeletons,

and you quite often finds bodies
in unusual positions,

but to find such a burial
within a Christian context

was a great surprise.

[Birds chirping]

Narrator: While Ian and his team
were digging up bones,

John Blair, professor
of medieval history

at Oxford University,
was studying a 12th-century text

known as "The Life and Miracles
of St. Modwenna."

Blair: In the 12th century,
an abbot of Burton on Trent

wrote a book about the miracles
that had been performed

by their own local saint--
Saint Modwenna.

Narrator: One section tells
the story of two peasants

who died and were buried

but then came back
to terrorize villagers.

Man, voice-over:
"They appeared at evening

"carrying on their shoulders
the wooden coffins

"in which they had been buried.

"The whole following night,
they walked through the paths

and fields of the village."

Blair, voice-over:
They spread disease.

People die, and so eventually,
the local people

ask the bishop to allow them
to dig the bodies up.

Man, voice-over:
"They found them intact,

but the linen cloths over their
faces were stained with blood."

Blair, voice-over: So they think
this is clear evidence

that these corpses aren't quiet.

Man, voice-over: "They cut off
the men's heads

"and placed them in the grave
between their legs,

"tore out the hearts
from their corpses,

"and covered the bodies
with earth again.

"They brought the hearts to
the place called Dodecrossefora

and there burned them
from morning till evening."

Narrator: The Saint Modwenna
text is one of several

medieval manuscripts recounting
events that took place

nearly a thousand years ago.

These folktales tell ghastly
stories of the walking dead.

Blair, voice-over: The walking
undead in medieval texts

did quite a lot of different
sorts of bad things.

Some of them come back
and attack

their own relatives and friends.

Some of them spread disease.

Some of them do suck blood
like--just like Dracula.

Some of them just spread fear.

People are in terror of them
until they have to do

something about it,
so it's the whole range

of disruptive, destructive,
frightening activity,

uh, caused by people
who have no business

to be walking around anymore.

Narrator: More than 500 years
after Saint Modwenna,

the English were again terrified
by the undead.

This vampire wasn't a peasant
returning from the grave,

but a count from Transylvania
named Dracula

who stalked the literary
imagination

of the Victorian era.

Man, voice-over: "My very
feelings changed to repulsion

"and terror when I saw
the whole man slowly emerge

"from that window and began
to crawl down the castle wall

"face down with his cloak
spread out around him

like great wings."

Narrator: Bram Stoker's
great-grandnephew Dacre Stoker

has studied this creature
who refuses to lie down and die.

Stoker: Bram's not
a normal author.

He knew how to put together
like a master chef this vampire,

taking existing folklore
and putting it together

to create this ultimate
horrifying creature.

Narrator: Pop culture
has fixated on vampires,

thrilling audiences with the
horror of a deadly monster...

a nocturnal predator
from Eastern Europe

who rises from the grave to feed
off the blood of its victims,

but what if Dracula
and all the other vampires

that have captured
the public imagination

have a basis in reality?

A tantalizing clue lies
in the meticulous research

Bram Stoker undertook
as he shaped his character.

His great-grandnephew has a set
of notes in Stoker's own hand

which reveal his fictional count

wasn't simply the product
of his own imagination.

Stoker: So through his research
at the British Library,

he would actually go
and collect notes

on specific characteristics

that he wanted to place
into his vampire,

and--and, for instance,
if--if I may,

I'll actually read
from the notes themselves.

The first one is that
the vampire

"goes through fog by instinct"
and has "white teeth."

Well, we--we can see that that
actually has emerged in time

to anything you see
about a vampire has to do

with these very bright,
white teeth,

and he can also
sort of shape-shift

and blend into fog
and out of fog

as he just moves at will.

"Power of creating evil thoughts
or banishing good ones

in others present."

Mesmerism and ESP and hypnotism

was an emerging science
back in the late 1800s,

and here, Bram inserts it
into the novel

as a power that the vampire can
actually have over his victims.

"No looking glass
in count's house,

never can see him
reflected in one, no shadow."

Other ones--"enormous strength."

He can "see in the dark,"

and he has the "power
of getting small or large,"

which is something
that I believe has emerged

into his shape-shifting again
and makes him horrifying

because we never know
where the guy is.

We're actually starting
from the back side

and seeing what Bram used
to put together this character

that, to this day, has most all
of these as very famous tropes.

Narrator: The monster Stoker
created is still stalking us

more than a hundred years later
in movies and TV,

but could Dracula's popularity
have blinded us

to a chilling truth?

Could the vampire
have its true origins

not in fiction, but in fact?

Stoker: Bram's vampires
and all the others today

are for entertainment purposes,

but you've got to realize
where these came from.

The myth of the vampire
really terrorized villages.

People had no idea what was
going on in--in their towns

and accounted it on vampirism,

and that certainly
was not entertainment.

That was real fear.

Narrator: In England,
the medieval folk story...

Blair: They "tore out the hearts
from their corpses,

and covered the bodies
with earth again."

Narrator: and the skeleton
in the quarry

may have remained
forever unconnected

if not for chance.

In 2005, John Blair attended
a lecture in Oxford

given by archeologist
Ian Meadows

on his Ketton Quarry find.

Blair: One thing he said
made me jump,

which was that one
of the burials

had had the head cut off
and placed between the feet,

and, of course, that's exactly
what the Modwenna story

is describing.

Narrator:
Blair was so intrigued,

he set up a meeting to examine
the decapitated skeleton.

Meadows: This is burial 6,

the--the burial that you've--
you've heard about

and seen
the pictures,

but here--here is
the actual skeleton.

Blair: When you
see it like this,

you realize this is a--
a real person,

and then you start to ask,
"What was their story?"

It's not in a very
good state, is it?

Narrator: It's the skeleton
of a young girl.

One logical explanation
for her severed head

might be that she was executed,
but criminals weren't normally

buried in consecrated ground,
and this skeleton

was found within the church
boundaries at Ketton Quarry.

Where was this grave
in the churchyard?

Well, that's one of
the interesting things

about this one.

It was actually
within the churchyard

on the main approach
to the church itself,

so here is the area
that's been kept clear

almost certainly for the
entrance to the church,

and our burial is
on the front row.

So this is certainly
not an excluded

or marginal
burial, is it?

Certainly not.

It's--it's one
of the people

who is probably
in point position

within
the churchyard.

It would be one of
the very visible graves

as you were going
to worship.

I think that makes it
most unlikely

that this is
an execution.

This is somebody
who's been given

a proper
Christian burial.

Narrator:
Something else is strange.

If this little girl
was buried normally,

she must've been dug up later

and only then
had her head cut off,

but why?

Blair: To judge
from that churchyard,

it was not a very big
community, was it?

Meadows: Indeed. I mean,
with--with only 73 graves,

I would've thought the
community is probably

only 3 or 4 families.

With such a small
community,

it's very likely
that is was relatives

in some way,
and it could be

that it's this child's
own family.

Maybe they were
ashamed or worried

that their recently
deceased child

is thought to be
walking around and--

and behaving
in this fashion,

so they take
steps themselves

to make sure that
this person doesn't move,

and I think we have to
take this as definitive.

This is an energetic,
deliberate, decisive measure

to keep this person
down in the grave

so they can never
walk around again.

Narrator: The deviant burial
at Ketton Quarry

and the Saint Modwenna text

might have simply been
an odd coincidence,

but 140 miles north of Ketton
in Yorkshire,

a dig in an Anglo-Saxon
graveyard has revealed

more cases of deviant burials.

Once again, this mirrors
a medieval folktale

set in a Yorkshire village.

Man, voice-over: "Two brothers
went to the cemetery

"and began to dig.

"After a short while,
they laid bare the corpse,

"which was grotesque
and distended

"with a swollen, reddened face.

"Undaunted,
driven by their anger,

"the young men struck
at the lifeless corpse

"from which such a continuous
flow of blood gushed

"and soaked the earth
that they realized

the creature must have been
a bloodsucker."

[Birds chirping]

Narrator: Could this bloody tale
from 900 years ago

be further proof of a link
between medieval folklore

and real-life vampire rituals?

Blair wants to find out
for himself.

At West Heslerton in Yorkshire,
archeologist Dominic Powlesland

has excavated more than 10
deviant burials

from another Anglo-Saxon
graveyard.

There were a series
that were buried face down

and some that were
buried in graves

that weren't big enough
for them.

This one here
is the best-preserved.

It's a female, but she
was buried face down,

so when we look
that the skull,

it really ought to
have been like this,

but it's been turned
right the way round and up,

which I think probably
would have broken

the, um, upper
vertebra, anyway.

Blair: Yes. I think
it's amazing

to see all these
here because I know

these very well from
the pictures of them,

but now I'm meeting them
in person, as it were,

and what's remarkable
about this group is that

you can see virtually
all the ways of keeping

a--a dead person
in their grave.

That one is very
interesting because

the legs have been
flexed and broken.

That'd never have
happened naturally,

so that's clearly,
a way of stopping

the person, literally
stopping them walking.

Yes. Uh, there's
absolutely no doubt

that you couldn't get
the body into that position

during normal burial.

You'd have to be
deliberately

bending
the body around

and probably breaking
quite a lot of parts.

Yes. Yes.

Narrator: These finds
are particularly startling

because they date
from a 200-year period

around the year 1000,

when the Catholic Church
had clear rules

about how a body
should be buried.

Archeologist Andrew Reynolds
is an expert

on Anglo-Saxon burials.

Reynolds, voice-over:
People are mainly buried

inside an enclosed churchyard
with the, uh--

buried east-west with the--
the head to the east,

arms well aside
or crossed over the body,

um, so in a very formulaic way,
so any burial that we find

which is different to that--
say, buried away

from a consecrated, uh, area

or the body's treated
in a different way--

we describe that
as a deviant burial.

Narrator: To medieval Britons,
the eternal life

was as important
as this earthly one.

A proper burial gave you
a greater chance on Judgment Day

of joining the ranks of those
entering the bliss of heaven

rather than being condemned
to the fires of hell.

A burial that didn't conform
to this standard

was something to be avoided
at all costs.

Despite this, Andrew Reynolds'
research has uncovered

deviant burials all over
Anglo-Saxon England.

Reynolds: We find corpses
in some cases with--

with the heads removed,
in other cases

with hands or perhaps
the feet chopped off.

In other examples, we find
people buried face down,

in some cases, with large rocks
or stones piled over the corpse,

and in the more extreme cases,
we find, uh, bodies

that have been staked down
to the ground.

Narrator: Archeological finds
showing evidence

of the brutal mutilation
of corpses,

medieval manuscripts which talk
about bloodsuckers,

people in Anglo-Saxon England

genuinely feared
the walking dead,

while today they are just
the stuff of scary movies,

or are they?

Could there be somewhere
in the world

where the terror of the vampire
still exists?

In 2004, 1,500 miles
from England,

a story makes headlines
in Romania.

A group of villagers
has performed

a vampire-slaying ritual
on a recently buried corpse.

The incident occurred
in the remote town

of Marotinu de Sus
when a 26-year-old woman

began complaining
of a mysterious illness.

[Woman speaking Romanian]

Narrator: The girl said
the decaying body of her uncle

Petre Toma, who died
3 month earlier,

was visiting her
during the night

and drinking blood
from her heart.

Her cousin speaks
of the family's fears.

[Man speaks Romanian]

[Speaking Romanian]

[Man speaks Romanian]

[Speaking Romanian]

Narrator: The villagers
understood what was going on.

This was the work of a vampire,

and they knew just what
to do about it.

6 men from the village,
including the victim's father

Gheorge Marinescu,
went to the man's grave.

[Speaking Romanian]

Narrator: The men chiseled open
the tomb and removed the body.

They say they found
the man's mouth

stained with blood
and his stomach swollen.

They cut open his chest,
impaled his heart,

and burned it
at the village crossroads.

Then they made a potion
from the ashes of his heart

and gave it to the girl
to drink.

This, they say, finally laid
the troubled soul

of Petre Toma to rest,
and the girl was cured.

Marina Andronikai
is the local journalist

who investigated the story
at the time.

Andronikai: It is a ritual, uh,
in which, uh, everybody

from Celaru from Dolj County,
uh, believe.

There are small communities,
and, uh, they pass the ritual

from generation to generation.

"This person of our family
is not, uh, feeling well.

What shall we do?"
and everybody say at this point,

"Oh, the dead man
from our family,

he will be a vampire, so we
have to perform the ritual."

Our first, um, image
of, uh, Marinescu,

uh, was very shocking
because he was so proud.

We can say he was proud.

[Speaking Romanian]

Andronikai, voice-over:
He recognized he was

a little afraid to perform
when he saw the body,

when he saw the--the blood
on, uh, the dead's, uh, mouth,

but he was convinced
he has to perform

and knew how to do it
despite his fear

just to save, uh, his daughter
and his family from the vampire.

Narrator: For most
of the villagers,

this vampire-slaying ritual
was welcomed.

It was a clearly defined
tradition

that had been passed down
through generations...

[Man speaks Romanian]

[Speaking Romanian]

[Man speaks Romanian]

[Speaking Romanian]

[Speaking Romanian]

Narrator: but this time,
the Romanian Orthodox Church

could no longer stand by...

[Man speaking Romanian]

Man: "This is a real problem
for our church.

"Yesterday, today,
and in the future,

"it will be a problem because
this kind of manifestation

"is opposite to the teachings
of the Church.

"The scriptures teach us
about the Resurrection.

It will be for all people,
bad or good."

Narrator: and the wife
of the so-called vampire

complained to the police.

[Woman speaking Romanian]

Narrator: The resulting
investigation and media storm

sent the man who actually
cut open Petre Toma's chest

into hiding.

This latter-day vampire slayer
is named Mircea Mitrica,

and his account of the ritual
has never been documented.

In 2015, Marina Andronikai
received a tip

that Mitrica
may have returned to the area.

Since the police investigation,
the villagers have closed ranks,

and Marina's previous attempts
to find out more

have been met with aggression
and threats of violence.

I'm very nervous about--

I don't know who we can find
and if they want to speak

and how do they--
they will react.

I don't know.

I'm very, uh, not panicked,
but, uh, I'm nervous.

Narrator: Rumors circulated
around the village

that Mircea Mitrica
had fled to the forest

and was living in hiding.

Marina has an address
where he may be living,

but she doesn't know
what she'll find there.

The woman says that Mitrica's
in the area

looking after a herd of sheep
two miles away,

so Marina heads
out of the village to find him.

Is this him?

Andronikai:
Yes. It's him.

Hide the camera.
All right.

[Man speaks Romanian]

Narrator: Here, told publicly
for the first time,

is Mircea Mitrica's account

of a modern-day
vampire-slaying ritual

which unfolded in Romania
one night in 2004.

[Speaking Romanian]

Man: "The girl was sick,
and she could barely stand,

"and everyone was in agreement.

"Let's go and dig up her uncle.
He's turned into a vampire."

"The dead man's wife said to us,
"Do whatever it takes

"to save the girl
to prevent her dying,"

"so 6 of us went to his grave.

"The men dug him up.

I took the lid off the coffin."

"I found him with his head
to one side.

"There was blood on him,
fresh blood,

"a puddle of fresh blood
which he'd taken from the girl,

so we knew he'd become
a vampire."

"When I opened him up,

"I cut him with a scythe
from top to bottom.

"I used a hammer
to open his rib cage,

and I took out his heart."

Woman:
"Weren't you afraid?"

Man: "No. No.
I took his heart.

"I took it to the crossroads
and set fire to it.

It has to be done
at the crossroads."

"Was the family
happy?"

"Of course
they were happy.

"The girl
had been saved.

"That's how you know
it's worked.

"You see the victim
coming back to life.

"It would've been
terrible for someone

"so young to die and
rot in the ground.

"She has two young
daughters.

I did a good thing,
not a bad thing."

"Weren't you afraid
the soul of Petre Toma

would come
and hurt you?"

"No. No, because
he can't.

"I wasn't afraid
because his blood

"isn't the same
as mine.

"A vampire
looks for his kin,

"and since I have
different blood,

"he won't come
for me.

"They go to
their own family.

"They choose to suck
the blood of the person

who loved them
the most."

"Aren't you afraid?"

"No. I'm absolutely
not afraid.

"I'm not afraid of
anybody except God

because He is
greater than us."

Narrator: Back in Oxford,
John Blair read about this case

in the newspapers of the time
and was struck

by how closely it resembled the
texts from Anglo-Saxon England.

Now, hearing
Mircea Mitrica's testimony

for the very first time,
the similarities

between them
are even more striking.

Well, amazing, amazing.

The whole story is
so extraordinarily like

the story of the vampire killing
at Burton on Trent

in "The Miracles
of St. Modwenna."

They opened the grave.

They found the body
hasn't decayed.

There's blood there.
They cut out the heart.

They take it to a central place
or a special place.

They burn it,

and after that,
the victims get better.

The other thing that struck me
about this story

is that we don't have a word
for the walking dead

in the English language
precisely because

these beliefs died out
so long ago,

so no word has come through,
but, of course, there is a word

in Eastern Europe,
a Slavic word--"vampire,"

and since the practices
and the beliefs

do seem to be so very similar,
I think it's fine

to talk about these
English walking dead

as England's vampires.

[Birds chirping]

Narrator: Medieval belief
in vampires helps explain

the discovery of deviant burials
with decapitated skeletons

and twisted limbs
found all over England.

BlairI do think that by making
these comparisons,

we can make sense of things

that otherwise seem to us
to be inexplicable.

Why on earth should people
behave in this way?

It seems bizarre.

It seems deviant,
abhorrent behavior.

What, I think, an example
like this shows is that

normal members of a community
can think it

perfectly sensible
to behave like this.

In other words, it makes
the medieval stories make sense.

Narrator: Today these English
villages, with their duck ponds

and village greens,
appear to be the epitome

of romantic, rural bliss,

but life in Anglo-Saxon England
was very different.

Archeologist Stuart Prior
has spent many years

excavating medieval graveyards
and has created a picture

of what life must have been like

in a community dominated
by superstition.

Prior, voice-over:
Imagine a period

where the only light source
that you have

is a burning branch,
a burning firebrand,

or a tallow candle, OK--
no headlights, no torches.

Once you go beyond the--
the hearth in the fireplace

or the fire pit that you've got
in your forest clearing,

you're out there into a world
of complete darkness.

Are you gonna be eaten?
Are you gonna be killed?

Are there enemy warriors
out there,

or are there even things
that are even worse

that have come from these
folktales and these--

these superstitions and stories
that you've been told

ever since you were a child?

You're living in this isolated,
medieval community,

and things start to go wrong
around you.

In other words, your crops fail.
Your cattle die. Your sheep die.

It's very, very difficult
in that period

to work out with their
limited knowledge of the world

what's--what's causing
these problems,

so when things
start to go wrong,

you start to look for things
to blame, reasons.

It's about self-preservation,
you know?

If your cattle are dying,

if your children
have become sick,

there's got to be a strong,
motivating force.

If you can't explain events
in the world around you

and you're blaming them on--
on somebody that's recently died

or somebody that's been dead
for a while

that's in living memory,
to actually go

and desecrate that grave,
it's a--

it's a dreadful thing to do,
but, at the same time,

it's an understandable
thing to do because

it's about the preservation
of the community.

They really feel that--
that actually going

and desecrating someone's grave
is gonna have an--an effect

on the world around them to--
that's gonna be beneficial.

Nothing's gonna stop them
from doing that.

Blair, voice-over: It does seem
as though there is

a basic willingness of people
to believe

in the walking, dangerous dead
in certain circumstances.

When people are afraid

and they're afraid of things
that are unknown,

very threatening
because they're unknown,

it's natural to look
for scapegoats.

It's like executing criminals,
except these criminals are dead,

and it's much easier to execute
people who are dead already

than to execute the living.

Narrator: Seen in this context,
it becomes clear

why ritual mutilations,
which today seem more gruesome

than the darkest horror story,
were performed on corpses.

To understand the root causes
of the medieval fears,

we must again look
at the folklore of the era.

At the heart of vampire stories
is the terror

of unknown sickness
and pestilence.

Blair, voice-over:
One of the great unknowns

that all premodern societies
have feared is disease.

Where does it come from?
Nobody knows?

How--how do you get rid of it?

Nobody knows.

Narrator: It's hard to imagine
just how terrifying

the arrival of disease
must have been

for an Anglo-Saxon community.

This was a world
of scientific ignorance.

Blaming the dead was as logical
as anything else.

There was no understanding
or germs or contagion,

no rational explanation
for why sickness struck,

and if death
was the great unknown,

then disease would be
the first step to death.

Lindsey Fitzharris
is a historian

of medicine
and medieval disease.

Fitzharris, voice-over:
The way that contagion works is,

it's a bit like a domino effect.

There's an incubation period
in which the virus

takes root inside the body,
and this could take a few days,

so let's say someone
dies of plague.

Maybe a few days later,
their family member dies.

A few days after that, another
family member catches it.

Maybe a villager catches it.

Someone who's actually taking
care of them catches it.

They're all looking
for an explanation,

and they turn
to the dead person.

Narrator: But were some
of the dead more likely

to have been singled out
for blame?

Lindsey believes that some
of the most disfiguring diseases

that struck medieval Europe
might have been triggers

for the belief in vampires.

Fitzharris: Diseases that were
much more likely to contribute

to fear of vampirism would be
things like leprosy,

which really manifests itself
in a very visible way.

It would've been very scary.

Uh, with leprosy,
there's facial deformities.

Uh, the hands and the feet
become very, very deformed.

Another disease that we're all
very familiar with

during this period is the
black death, or bubonic plague.

Now, bubonic plague, again,
is a very visible disease

and resulted in pustules
all over your skin.

They turned black.
They erupted with blood.

It was horrible.

Another disease
that was very prevalent

during this period
was tuberculosis,

again, a highly visible disease.

You would be coughing blood.

You'd form pustules on the face,
um, on the hands,

and these kinds of diseases

were very prevalent
in the medieval period.

Narrator: Dacre Stoker has even
come across a revealing article

in Bram Stoker's note
for "Dracula"

that documents a genuine
vampire craze

in the not-so-distant past.

An outbreak of tuberculosis
in early-20th-century America

had folks fearing the undead.

Stoker: In Bram's notes
for "Dracula,"

we find an article telling us
that in New England

in the United States,

there was a serious
vampire scare

in the late 1800s, early 1900s,
and it was turned out

that this was simply
tuberculosis,

but people were believing that
this disease was vampirism,

and so they actually had
state forensics authorities

allowing exhumations
from the grave

and staking the hearts,
burning the hearts,

doing different
ceremonial practices

to rid these villages
of vampires,

and it was only TB.

Narrator: It's difficult
to know for certain

which illnesses were common
in Anglo-Saxon England,

but we do know that leprosy

came right at the beginning
of this period

and that tuberculosis
was endemic.

It's possible
the dead were scapegoats

for these horrifying illnesses.

Is there any evidence to suggest
that belief in vampires

was a way to explain disease?

To find out, we need to return
to Eastern Europe.

In 2014, Bulgarian professor
Nikolay Ovcharov

discovered the bones
of two bodies dating back

to a time when the plague
first hit Bulgaria.

[Ovcharov speaking Bulgarian]

Man: "Here we have
a middle-aged man,

"probably in his 30s.

"The grave dates back to the
first half of the 13th century.

"You can see that he was buried

"according to Christian
tradition,

"hands placed across his chest.

"What was shocking here was that
a blade from a plow

had been thrust into the neck."

[Ovcharov speaking Bulgarian]

Man: "This person had not yet
turned into a vampire.

"This was an ordinary person.

His parents performed
an anti-vampire ritual on him."

"Here is another skeleton buried
in the necropolis.

It has also undergone a ritual,
but it's different this time."

"On the left-hand side
of the skeleton,

we can see where a blade
has been driven into the chest."

"This skeleton had also
been dismembered.

The right leg has been severed
and left next to the body."

[Ovcharov speaking Bulgarian]

Man: "This was done
during the funeral.

It's an anti-vampire ritual,
a preventative measure."

Narrator: It would seem that
in 13th-century Bulgaria,

the fear of vampires
spreading disease was so great,

the bodies of potential vampires
were mutilated

before they even had a chance
to rise from their graves.

[Typing]

One archeological dig in Venice

reveals an even more
explicit link

between a time of disease and
evidence of a vampire ritual.

In 2006, Dr. Matteo Borrini,
a forensic anthropologist

examining a burial site
in Venice, found this--

the skeleton
of a 60-year-old woman

who had a large brick
forced into her mouth

buried in a pit for victims
of the plague.

It was strange to see
in the mass grave

in the cemetery built
for the plague in that period

this kind of angling of a body.

That was the only one skeleton
that showed us a manipulation,

a uncommon manipulation
of the remains

with this piece of brick
put inside the mouth,

so I decide to start
an investigation.

[Camera shutter clicks]

Books from the 16th
and 17th century would describe

exactly the ritual
that I found in--in Venice.

The ritual was linked
to a belief

of a specific kind of undead
called in some area nachzeher

that was responsible--
or, better, was believed

to be responsible--
to spread the plague.

This kind of undead,
or this kind of vampire,

could be killed only putting
inside his or her mouth

a piece of stone
or a piece of brick.

This mean that I had
in front of me

the remains of a vampire.

[Camera shutter clicks]

Narrator: In times of plagues,
gravediggers,

unable to keep up with the scale
of the losses,

dug huge pits for the dead,

returning daily
to deposit more bodies.

They saw corpses in advanced
states of decomposition

with apparently
blood-stained shrouds

and bloated stomachs.

To the 16th-century mind,

these were clear signs
of vampirism.

Borrini: The nachzeher,
or shroud eater,

were believed to be eating their
own shroud inside of the grave.

When they grow up enough,
they were able to go out

of their own graves and drink in
the blood of the people

like a traditional vampire,
basically.

[Camera shutter clicks]

Narrator: The Venetian
gravediggers' account

sounds eerily similar to the
medieval Anglo-Saxon texts...

Man, voice-over: "The linen
cloths over their faces

"were stained with blood.

"They laid bare the corpse,
which was grotesque

and distended
with a swollen, reddened face."

Narrator: and the same
as what was seen

at the grave of Petre Toma.

[Speaking Romanian]

Man: "A puddle of fresh blood
which he'd taken from the girl."

Narrator: The existence of what
looks like fresh blood

around the mouth of the corpse
is a theme

across centuries and countries,
and people saw it as proof

the dead were feeding on blood,

but perhaps science
can help us explain this.

Police rely on
Dr. Anna Williams' knowledge

of how the human body decays

to help them
with their investigations.

Working at the University
of Huddersfield in England,

she is an expert on what happens
to a corpse post-mortem.

Williams, voice-over:
In the UK at the moment,

it's almost impossible
to use human bodies

for this kind of research.

The pig carcass that we're using
has died of natural causes.

We choose a pig because,
actually,

there are quite a lot
of similarities

between, um, human bodies
and--and pig bodies,

so, for example, they have quite
similar fat-to-muscle ratios.

They have quite similar
physiology.

Um, their skin is very similar,
so that helps us

extrapolate data
from pig research to humans,

so we're using this pig
as a model

for, um, a human burial.

Um, we're wrapping it
in a shroud similar

to what they would do
in medieval times,

and we are monitoring
its decomposition

over a period of weeks.

Narrator: After 4 weeks,

Anna's joined
by Dr. Matteo Borrini,

who found the remains
of what medieval Venetians

believed to be a vampire.

So you're--
yeah.

So this is the box.
We're gonna open it.

Good.

Wow. The first thing
that hits you

is the smell,
isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah.
Yep. OK.

So that's caused
by all the bacteria.

Let's see what it
looks like underneath.

Its belly is about
two or 3 times

the size
that it was.

Yes. It's really bloated.
It seems like he eat.

He's been eating
quite a lot. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

We can see that
there's some staining

around the nose
and mouth area.

This brownish,
reddish stain.

Yes. It looks a bit
like dried blood.

What happened, especially
during the medieval period,

that people saw also,
uh, holes, in the--

in the area of the mouth
like the shroud was eated,

and, uh, so they
probably imagined

that the undead was
eating, uh, the shroud.

You can easily see
how people

could have come
to that conclusion.

It looks like he's had
a messy meal of blood

and--and his belly
is full,

but we now know
that it's the result

of bacterial activity
or possibly maggots,

um, around the mouth.

And in, uh...

Narrator: The bloody mouth
and distended belly

are specifically referred to
in both the medieval texts

and the modern Romanian account
as proof that corpses

were rising from their graves,
but today science can explain

what the Anglo-Saxons
and Romanians were seeing.

Even though medieval
Anglo-Saxons

didn't have
this scientific knowledge,

their beliefs
in the walking dead

seemed to fade away
by about the year 1200.

Belief in the supernatural,
witches or demons, continued

as a way to explain the unknown,
but belief in vampires did not.

Blair: Why do beliefs
in the undead start,

and why do they stop?

That's a really difficult
question.

One reason may be that England
after about 1200

was quite settled politically,
religiously

with a very strong
church culture,

quite a high level of education.

Maybe these are all factors
that help to explain

the disappearance
of these beliefs.

Narrator: These early vampire
rituals and beliefs

died out centuries ago
in England.

They have remained unknown
and unacknowledged

until only recently,
but they've also been obscured

by a far more recent vampire--

the vampire of novels and films.

Blair, voice-over: I think
Dracula and the popular image

of him is quite an obstacle
to understanding

the medieval beliefs
in vampires.

I mean, when you talk
about vampires--

especially, um,
to other archeologists, maybe,

who have excavated
some of these burials--

they tend to react
against the idea

because they immediately think
of horror films and--

and aristocrats
in black cloaks or whatever

and think,
"Well, this is fantasy.

It's not something people could
really have believed in,"

but what the--the Romanian story
is showing us

is that there,
it's real to people.

They do believe in it.
It's a threat to the community.

It's got to be responded to
accordingly, and I'm quite sure

that the medieval communities
whose actions we can see

in the excavated burials
and in these narratives

thought them just as real.

It's mainstream.

It's something that is
a genuine threat,

and it's got to be dealt with.

Narrator: Dracula, with
his charm and sophistication,

is the vampire who's captured
our attention

for more than a century.

Unlike his peasant ancestors,
the image of the urbane count

was cemented by the first
theatrical staging

of Bram Stoker's story,

as his great-grandnephew
has discovered.

On the stage, "Dracula"
is performed,

and for the first time,
we actually see

this creature that Bram created,
but we see him in a--in a way

that's much more acceptable
and much more scary.

The early vampire was much more
like this ruddy peasant

that has just come
out of the grave.

When Bram describes his Dracula,

he's got hairy palms
and this foul breath.

On the stage, he's demonic,
but he's also very attractive.

He suits the audiences because
he's suave, Eastern European.

He's very charming-looking,
but the scary thing is,

he'll also suck your blood
and kill you at the same time.

People have read
the book "Dracula,"

haven't actually seen
the creature,

and now on stage, you get this--
this strong visual

and the suggestion of both sexy
and suave and debonair

but also supernatural
and deadly.

The cape obviously makes Dracula
look like a bat,

so he connects the natural world
with this decoration,

but also it's a stage prop.

The high collar that we've
gotten to know

as every Halloween costume
was actually a way

to get Dracula off stage.

Two wires were attached to the
collar that went above the head,

and so when Dracula turned
away from the audience,

he could disappear
out the trapdoor,

and the audience
wouldn't see him disappear.

Narrator: The suspended cloak
hid his departure

before it dropped
to the floor empty,

demonstrating
his supernatural abilities

before the audience's very eyes.

Stoker: I've got a set
of stage directions and script

of Hamilton Deane's "Dracula,"

and I'm gonna read you
some of these directions.

It's fantastic.

"Dracula enters
from a trick panel,

"stands with arms outstretched

"to form bat wings
with his cloak,

"green spotlight on him.

"Mina screams.

Exit Dracula
by trick panel rapidly."

Well, the stage
really was a springboard

for this--for this visual
to enter into popular culture.

It ran for a number of years,

and then, of course,
you've got to realize,

it got turned into opera.

It got turned
into musicals.

It got turned into comedy,
then, of course,

the--the wonderful film legacy,
the television legacy,

and all the figures,
the Halloween costumes,

the role-playing,
the tours to Romania.

I mean, this was
the genesis point,

this jumping-off point for this
whole franchise of Dracula

that just really took
the world by storm.

Narrator: "Dracula's"
responsible for not only

throwing us off the scent
of the historical evidence,

but the medical evidence, too.

The fictional vampire became
so ingrained that people

began associating diseases
with vampire qualities.

Fitzharris:
So, for instance, porphyria

was actually known
as the vampire disease,

and it creates
sensitivity to light.

If the skin is exposed
to the sunlight,

it creates this
very distinct rash.

Uh, the patient is very pale

because they can't go out
into the sunlight.

Also what happens is that the
skin around the mouth tightens,

and the incisors
become very prominent,

and this, again, reminds us
of the vampire look

in the popular literature.

The other thing that happens
is that you start to crave iron,

and so a lot of people
who have porphyria

start to eat a lot
of bloody meats

and, again, associated
with that blood-drinking image

we have of the vampire.

The other disease that may have
fueled the imagination

was a disease called pellagra,
and this, too, creates

a sensitivity to light,
a very distinct rash.

It's a wasting disease,
so there's a lot of dehydration.

You actually start to look
like a walking corpse, in a way.

Narrator: These interpretations
may be as misguided

as the medieval belief
in shroud eaters,

but whether folkloric
or literary,

from medieval England to today,
there seems to be

an insatiable appetite
for vampire stories.

Blair: I think there's
a natural human fascination

with monsters.

One could see that
in literature, really,

of all periods and countries.

Maybe there's a spectrum
between what's essentially

the modern vampire craze,
which is just recreational.

It's nice to be frightened in--
in that sort of way.

It's not serious, but
the further you go back in time

or go back into other societies
where these beliefs have--

have been--have been general,
it becomes real.

Narrator: For the medieval
Anglo-Saxons,

the walking dead embodied the
fears and taboos of their era,

but they were also real.

Blair, voice-over: The people
who were believed to be undead

fall into some
fairly clear groups.

They're mostly nasty people.

They're either criminals,
or they're untruthful.

They're unfaithful.
They're suspicious.

They're disliked
by their neighbors.

They may be loners in some way.

Uh, they're people, also,
who died bad deaths.

Their lives are cut short,
and I think the sense we get

is that their lives, therefore,
haven't really ended properly.

They haven't moved on to
the next world as they should.

They're still hanging around.

Narrator: The human remains
at Ketton Quarry

were those of a young girl.

It's unlikely
she was a criminal,

but any child's death,
a life cut short,

is deeply unsettling.

Reynolds: People were
genuinely scared of people

who'd died a bad death
in the Middle Ages,

uh, and we can show
that this was a case

through archeological
discoveries of people

staked down, buried face down,

buried with the head cut off,
and so on.

Blair: It's a response
to a threat, and the threat

is that the dead person
has not moved on,

and what these people are doing
is making sure they go on,

they move on along that road
and complete it,

so it's not a hostile act.

It may seem to us to be
a violent act,

but actually, it's completing
a rite of passage,

which is a pretty
physical thing, anyway.

Narrator: But have we moved on
from our medieval ancestors?

Could our modern vampire craze
exist in part

because it resonates
with our deepest primal fears?

Prior, voice-over: Human beings
have always had a reverence

and a respect for the deceased,
you know.

The--the body of a fellow
human being

does something to us
as--as a person.

All of us have
a--a natural reaction,

a natural instinct
to shy away from it,

to feel sick, to sweat,

to feel uncomfortable
around a corpse,

so actually, to go and disturb
the dead in their resting place

is--is contrary to human nature.

Narrator: In the past,
people overcame this revulsion

to the dead in order
to protect themselves

from the unknown,
the inexplicable.

Perhaps now, when science
can explain so much,

we actually seek out fear
and, through fiction,

look into the last
great unknown--

death itself.

In some small pockets
of the world,

the visceral fear of vampires
lives on,

even as modern thinking
takes hold.

[Speaking Romanian]

Man: "We used to dig them up at
night and take their hearts out.

"That's how it was done
in the old days,

"but that's really
old-fashioned.

"People are smarter now.

"Now we have new medicine.

Now we pierce the heart during
the funeral, and that's that."

Narrator: But is this enough?

As we've discovered
in one form or another,

vampires have a habit
of coming back.

cer: "Secrets of the Dead"
was made possible in part

by the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting

and by contributions
to your PBS station

from viewers like you.

Thank you.

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