Vampire Panic: The Real Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, & Petar Blagojevich

diana: Welcome back, seekers, mystics, and creatures of the night to Beyond the Spiritual Nexus. I'm Xandra. And I'm Diana Rose. If you're smelling any extra garlic in the studio today, don't let it trouble you. It's just Xandra's attempt at studio protection. So we are continuing our All Hallows Eve celebration with part one of our Two part dive into the lore and history and shadow magic of the vampire, so I'm taking zero chances with undead entities in our sound booth, alright? You are the one who taught me to protect my space. Yes, I did. But I didn't mean making our entire podcast set up smell like an Italian kitchen. It's making me hungry. Well you're welcome. But anyway, today's episode is gonna be so rich. We are peeling back the pop culture layers, the capes, the glitter, the sexy brooding to look at where the vampire actually comes from. That's right. We're moving from ancient folkloric terror to historical warlords, and eventually into actual legal documentations of vampirism. So please do stay tuned for our cosmic currents segment covering the fiery intense astrological transits of september twenty eighth through october fourth, and that will be followed by Tian Taro. So, everyone, pour your favorite dark roast or crimson herbal blend. Light a candle, burn some copal or clove, and let's enter the Nexus. To start us off, when most people picture a vampire today, they think of an aristocratic, alluring figure who lives in a gothic castle, which honestly goals. But folklorically, you know, speaking within folklore terms, the original vampire was well disgusting. Absolutely. In original Slavic and Balkan folklore, a vampire wasn't a brooding anti hero. It was a swollen, reanimated peasant corpse, reeking of decay and bringing disease to its home village. As the academic Paul Barber highlights in his classic Yale study Vampire's Burial and Death. Original vampire panics were really just early humanity's attempt to explain natural decomposition. And you know I do love talking about decomposition, so when I know you do, Xandra. When a body I love the strange stuff. I do. I've always wanted to go to the to the Museum of Death here in town. But anyway, when a body decomposes, gases expand and that forces fluid and blood to the mouth while also bloating the corpse. So to a seventeenth century village dealing with a plague outbreak or some kind of other mysterious illness, opening a grave and seeing a bloated, bloody corpse made them think the dead person had been feeding. Precisely. So the scholar Eric Butler points out in Metamorphoses of the Vampire, that the creatures started as an unclean outcast body onto which community fear was projected. It wasn't until nineteenth century romantic literature that we transformed this gross symbol of disease into an icon of dangerous desire and forbidden knowledge and power, Xandra Well, yeah, it it's it's a shift from disease vector to erotic predator. We turned something that represented our fear of death and contagion into something that represents our repressed desires and fears of intimacy. Now, speaking of powerful aristocratic vampires, everyone instantly jumps to Count Dracula. And usually to Wallachian ruler Vlad the Impaler, Vlad Tepish. you chose Vlad today, right? For us to do our little Yeah. So it was a good place to start Yeah. Yeah. So how much of Vlad the Third is actual history and how much is just Brahm Stoker taking creative liberties? Who was the man behind the myth? Well dear, the connection is such a tangle of historical terror and marketing. Vlad the third prince of Wallachia ruled three separate times during the fifteenth century. That's a lot. He earned his infamous nickname Vlad the Impaler because of his military tactics against the Ottoman Empire and And the rival Boyer nobles. We're talking about a warlord who used mass impalement as calculated psychological warfare to hold on to power in a brutally unstable region. See, this is why I stay in the studio and talk about stars. so aren't there like specific historical stories written about him from that time? I like wasn't there a famous Tale like about a a forest, like of impaled bodies. I remember something from a documentary that I probably should not have been watching as a child. Yes, absolutely, my dear. The most infamous historical account comes from the Ottoman campaign of fourteen sixty two when Sultan Mehmed Mehmed the Second marched his army toward Vlad's capital on Turgovestia. He ran right into what the historians call the force of the impaled. In their study, in the search of Dracula, historians Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu described nearly twenty thousand Sandra, that's twenty thousand impaled. prisoners that were left rotting under the sun. It was a sight that was so horrifying that it made the Sultan actually turn his eyes down. Xandra, you must realize twenty thousand impaled impaled meaning from the anus all the way through all the way through. All the way through ladies and gentlemen and esteemed guests, that is all the way Through hideous, totally hideous. Twenty thousand bodies like that, that's pure psychological warfare, like to a crazy degree. But that does make me wonder who those bodies were. So I have to ask, how did he treat his own people? Well, I'll tell you. Mm-hmm. German woodcuts and pamphlets that were printed shortly after his death. circulated with wildly terrifying accounts about him. Historian Matei Hazaku records tales of foreign envoys who refused to remove their turbans in Vlad's presence out of custom. So Vlad praised their devotion and had their turbans nailed directly to their skulls. could you imagine? Hell yeah. In another instance to eradicate poverty from his realm, he invited all the local beggars to a grand feast, locked the doors after they had eaten and were full, and then he continued to burn the hall down. my god. With them in it. So wow, that's just not neighborly behavior. It's just horrific. So Wow, that's horrible. So the historical Vlad was a nightmare in his own right. Right. But where did the name Dracula actually come from then? Did Stoker just invent that word because it sounded spooky? No, I'm glad you asked, Sandra. Actually not at all. Okay. It was actually Vlad's real family title. His father, Vlad the Second, was inducted into the Order of the Dragon. Draco in Latin. In Romanian Dracul came to mean both dragon and devil. So Vlad III embraced Dracula Dracula meaning son of the dragon or son of the devil. Well that's quite the resume. Son of the dragon, son of the devil, wow. But okay, this leads to the big question. What are the actual differences between Vlad and history and Stoker's fictional count Dracula? Because people blur them together all the time. They really do. But academically there are differences. Leading Dracula scholar, Professor Elizabeth Miller, she points out that while Vlad was a mortal political ruler fighting for Romanian sovereignty. Stoker's Dracula is a shapeshifting, blood drinking, supernatural creature of folklore. In Bram Stoker's Dracula, a reader's guide, Miller notes and this is her quote while Stoker borrowed the name Dracula because he liked its translation as devil, the literary Count Dracula. is an amalgam of Eastern European folklore, Victorian anxieties, and Gothic theatrical tradition, rather than a direct biographical mirror of Vlaud the Third. So Stoker literally just saw the word Dracula, Dracula, and read that it meant Devil. And then he went, Yep, that's my guy and built an entire gothic icon around it. Yep, exactly pretty much. Stoker used Vlad's name to give his fictional court count, sorry, instant authority and a blood soaked heritage. But the actual supernatural horrors, the fangs sleeping in soil, turning into bats, they were lifted straight from rural Eastern European folk beliefs. Wow. So Sandra, if Stoker pulled the name from Vlad, where do we look for the real life historical cases of vampirism? I know you spent all week, Sandra, buried in eighteenth century archives researching one specific case. I was. So set the scene for us. Sandra, who was Pi Peter Blogovich? Well This story actually is pretty unbelievable. So picture this. It's 1725 in Kisilovic, a tiny Serbian village. Peter Blagiovic was just a regular present who died and was buried. But what makes his case famous isn't just local gossip. It was documented in an official imperial report. sent directly to Vienna by an Austrian army surgeon named From Bald. Wait a minute, call it. So why on earth was an Austrian imperial surgeon investigating a Serbian peasant's grave? I mean what brought him out there in the first place? Well Serbia had just fallen under Austrian imperial control. Okay. So you had these modern Enlightenment area era Austrian officials suddenly governing rural Balkan villages steeped in ancient folklore. So they they had to investigate local concerns. Okay, that makes total sense to me now. Okay. So right after Peter died, within eight short days, nine other villagers suddenly fell ill and died after brief mysterious sicknesses. Nine people, Sandra in eight days. it gets wilder. So on their deathbeds every single one of those nine people claimed that Peter Blagovich had come into their bedrooms at night, pinned them down, and choked them or sucked their blood. my goodness, could you imagine Dora in that village? Nine dead all pointing fingers at one fresh grave. How did the locals react? And how did Surgeon From Bald get dragged into it? Well the villagers villagers obviously completely panicked, Ma. They cornered Surgeon From Bald and apparently demanded he su supervise an immediate exhumation. From Bald tried to say no, but the villagers gave him an ultimatum. They reportedly said, Either you help us exhume Peter and deal with this vampire. Or we burn our houses down and abandon the village tonight. So basically they gave him no choice. Yeah. He had to dig up the body under official military authority. And what happened what happened when they actually opened Peter's casket? So from Bald's mind was totally blown. in his book Slayers and Their Vampires, historian Bruce McClelland. highlights from Bald's direct words from his official report, and he read that from Bald wrote, The body raised from the grave was found to be completely intact without any odor of decay. His mouth was stained with fresh blood, which according to the common belief, he had sucked from his victims. Wow. Seeing fresh blood on a corpse That showed zero signs of decay to an eighteenth century villager. Mm-hmm. Well, that was the ultimate smoking gun. And then what happened, Zandra? Well, and then they drove a stake right through his heart, a wooden stake, upon which blood gushed from his mouth and his ears, and then they burned his corpse to ashes right there in the cemetery. Wow, and that report didn't just sit In a dusty bureaucratic file in Vienna, I'm sure, did it, Sandra? No, ma'am. So that's actually where the media comes in. Now on July twenty-first, seventeen twenty five, the official Austrian newspaper, the I hope I'm gonna say this right. I'm not German. Okay. Wiener Dia Rio. That's Wiener Diaryum, published from Bald's report word for word, and it spreads the it Spreads through the continent like wildfire. So you had London papers like the Daily Post pick picking it up and running dramatic stories about dead bodies returning from their graves in Serbia. Period reports describe the panic in Eastern Europe actually by declaring: whole villages are thrown into concertation as if a plague of living corpses had descended upon the land, forcing the living to wage war. Against the buried. Wage war against the buried? Mm-hmm. Well, that's a peak eighteenth century tabloid energy if I ever heard one. So how did the rest of Europe react to reading this in their morning papers? So it kicked off the famous eighteenth century vampire epidemic, right? The Holy Roman Emperor ended up dispatching medical commissions to the Balkans, and famous Enlightenment philosophers like Voltaire. Voltaire. yes. He wrote whole essays complaining that the newspapers were treating vampires like proven scientific facts. Leave it to the media to turn rural forensic confusion into a continent-wide media circus. Even back then people. All right, so speaking of media circuses, mass hysteria and emotional chaos all brought on by the media. Peter Story has got it off from eighteenth century corpses straight into the cosmic fire overhead. Welcome everyone to cosmic currents for the week of september twenty eighth through october fourth. My favorite time of the episode where I get to tell our listeners that the sky is well this week it's essentially trying to fight them. look, if you've been feeling an overwhelming urge to go scorched Earth on your group chats or block your ex for the fourteenth time, don't worry. You're not crazy. The planetary transits this week are just profoundly hostile. That's putting it lightly. Profoundly hostile. But You're not wrong, Sandra. We kick off on September 30th when Mercury leaves Polite Diplomatic Libra and dives headfirst into Scorpio. So translation Civility is officially dead. Goodbye, Weather Smalltalk. Hello, asking people you just met about their childhood trauma over coffee. Mercury and Scorpio doesn't do polite chatter. It wants secrets, it wants motives, and it wants to know why you took three hours to text back Exactly It's psychic detective energy but with a stink and you know you can just think you can hide under a blanket and avoid it. But guess again, because on October 2nd and 3rd, the cosmic pressure cooker blows the lid. We have Mercury and Scorpio, squaring both Mars and Pluto, while Mars and Leo is directly opposing Pluto and Aquarius. Mars and Leo slams right into Pluto and Aquarius. More simply, it's an unstoppable force of main character syndrome meeting an immovable object of cold reality. Expect fights in grocery store aisles? Passive aggressive emails from your HR department and power trips galore. Sandra dear, you're making it sound so romantic. It is but seriously. A Mars Pluto opposition isn't just petty drama. It's explosive, shadowy power struggles. It's the universe holding up a mirror and asking, Why are you letting toxic dynamics bleed you completely dry? And right on cue, as if that weren't enough of a mess. On October third, Venus goes retrograde at eight degrees Scorpio. Because of course she does. Why wouldn't the planet of love go backward in the most suspicious possessive sign in the zodiac, right in the middle of a Mars Pluto standoff? Right? It's literally the ultimate X's digging themselves out of their graves energy. Forget Peter Blogovich. The real vampires resurfacing this week. are going to be in your DMs. my gosh. Hey stranger. Thinking of you. Please, please don't give don't give these people ideas. Listen, if an ex texts you under Venus retrograde in Scorpio while Mars opposes Pluto, don't reply. Leave it on red. And go perform an energetic exorcism. Stake your phone. Sage to notifications, people. But seriously, keep your boundaries rock solid this week, because Scorpio energy demands radical honesty. But with these squares, honesty without tact is just cruelty. Choose your battles and your words carefully, or the universe will choose them for you. Now, coming to our favorite grounding ritual, tea and tarot. Today we're sipping a dark roasted chicory and hibiscus. Very blood red. Mm. Very fitting for our vampire thing. And this dramatic astrological forecast. It really was dramatic, wasn't it? Yes, it was. There's a lot going on this week, man. Absolutely a lot going on. This week. So we've been trying to get to vampires for a while. Yeah, it's been on the list. I know we tried to get it in earlier this year. It just wasn't happening. you know, speaking of vampires, what's your favorite vampire movie? gosh, let's see. Interview with the Vampire. I'm gonna assume you mean the ninety-six movie with Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise and Kier Stewart. Of course. Yeah, I love the TV series. I know it's so many toddties. How could you go wrong? I you know, I was such a Lestat person when I was a child. What about you? Was Lestat your favorite or were you a Louis person? I was a Louis person, of course. I should have was Louis all the way. The tortured loving soul Louis. I loved Lestat's drama. But I actually have the book on my bookshelf. I really should get to it at some point. I would love to read it. Actually, mm-hmm. They all played their part so well. Did you know that Anne They were perfect. Did you know that Anne Rice took out like a full page in a I believe it was a newspaper She was so mad that Tom Cruise specifically got Lestat and she took out this whole painting. Yes, are you kidding? Yes. He was perfect. Well, obviously she ate crow at the end of when the movie came out and she loved him. But you know, yeah, he was really great. Perfect. Antonio was just fabulous. Armand. He was a great Armand. Had did you see Queen of the Damned? I did many years ago. Yeah, did you like it? I thought it was good at the time, yes. It's very two thousands new metal. Yes it is. I really liked Peter Townsend as Lestat actually. I know it's pretty controversial, but I feel like he kinda nailed that sort of brooding energy. You know he did. In the book Queen of the Damned, because I did read the book that one before I watched read interview with the vampire. Lestat hears rock and roll and gets out of his coffin for the first time in like decades. Which you know, I always wonder I can't remember if she specified who it was, but I always wonder who who would be like for you, if you were in a coffin for several decades just napping, what rock and roll song would get you? Well if I napped for several decades I definitely would probably look really good when I woke up. Beauty sleep, right? Yes. But what would get you to end your beauty sleep? Like what rock and roll song would get you I feel like for me it would probably be mm that's actually tough. Probably a Fleetwood Mac song. For me, maybe it might be something by the stones. The stones. That's a good choice. I'm sure it wasn't either of those. It was Lestat. I'm sure it was quite dramatic. I'm sure. my favorite vampire movie. Hmm, that's tricky actually. I like The Lost Boys. I loved that one. I also really like the lost voice. I showed you it many years ago, what we do in the shadows. yes, I love that. That was hilarious. You were the only one in the house. You and Dad are actually the ones who watched the TV series. I keep meaning to watch it, but I'm very lazy. my gosh, you'll love it. You'll need to tune in. You'll love it. I do. I do. I'm very I I'm so busy all the time. Just getting the hour to record the podcast is very difficult sometimes, but I should. Yeah, you need to check it out. Well shuffling our cards. Okay, let's get back into the actual podcast straight. So I'm shuffling our deck with a very specific intention of finding out how to survive this week without ending up on the news. And here we go. the card is the five of swords. Of course it is. The universe really has no chill. The ultimate hollow victory card, Sandra. In the minor arcana, the five of swords shows a smug figure smirking while gathering swords, while everyone else walks away defeated into the ocean. Understormy Cloud. Yeah, it's this card's basically saying, Congratulations! You won the argument, but now everybody hates you. And you're standing alone in the rain. Yes, exactly. With Mercury and Scorpio squaring Pluto and Mars, you will be tempted to unleash the ultimate soul-crushing comeback in an argument this week. You may have the exact Write sharp words to completely destroy someone. But the Five of Swords is asking, is winning worth burning the whole bridge to ash? You know, Xandra, that goes back to don't burn all your bridges, people. Yeah. It's literal spiritual vampirism. So think about how vampires function in cinema and folklore. They take, they consume. And feed off someone else's life force to sustain their own illusion of power, leaving a hollow shell behind. That's a good parallel, Sandra. Thank you. Not all vampires wear fangs. True. Sometimes they just drain your emotional energy through petty conflicts and power plays. You feed your ego by dominating someone else, only to realize you're stranded in a wasteland. Sometimes we refer to these people as energy vampires. If you feel the urge to get the last word this week or feed off someone else's emotional chaos, maybe just eat a piece of garlic. Purge the inner vampire. Or maybe just stream your favorite vampire movie and then go back to bed instead. Welp, that's all the time we have tonight, folks. Look at us, lady. Vampirism, tarot, and astrology, the dream combo. Well, we hit every single one of my favorite topics tonight. Hmm. Remember everyone, protect your energy. Literally, emotionally, and astrologically this week. Well, speaking of boundary work, huh? If an impossibly attractive stranger in a velvet cloak asks you to cross your threshold tonight, do not let them in. I don't care how great their jawline is. Honestly, Sandra. Like that emotional vampires I do are exhausting enough without adding actual blood suckers to the mix. But if tonight's episode gave you goosebumps. Or got you thinking a little differently about the mysteries around us. Do us a quick favor. Rate, review, and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast fix. Make sure to share this episode with a friend who appreciates a little bit of history and a little bit of magic. And hey Drop us a five-star review, if you promise to keep the vampires away with a braid of garlic. Anyway, our favorite part of Cosmic Monday is building a community. Yes. A literal nexus, if you will. And that means bringing your voices onto the show. Yes. So if you've ever seen something unexplainable lurking in the shadows, whether it's a vampire or something else. Or maybe you had a premonition that gave you chills. Or maybe you have questions about tarot, energy work, spirits, dreams, things that go bump in the night. Or you just want to hear more about our opinions on Interview with the Vampire. Send them all our way. So drop your stories, questions, or voice notes in an email to hello at spiritualnex podcast dot com. You can also hang out with us on Instagram at the Spiritual Nexus. That's at the Spiritual Nexus. Or just pop over to Spiritual Nexus Podcast.com to check out our full archive. Everyone, mark your calendars for next Cosmic Monday. As our all Hallows Eve countdown continues, we're sinking our cheat into part two of Vampire Special. Crossing the Atlantic to explore vampires in America, focusing entirely on the dark, seductive folklore of New Orleans. We're talking casket girls, Jacques Saint Germain, mysterious French court or lore, and how the Crescent City became the modern capital of vampire mythos, and maybe Lestat again. So everyone, stock up on your wooden stakes. Keep your garlic close, your exes blocked. And your exes your eyes on the skies And try not to get turned into an eternal creature of the night or do. I probably would try, honestly. wait, yeah. And take good care of each other. See you next Monday. Stay spooky, y'all. Peace out.