Battling Vampires (and Tuberculosis) in the 19th Century

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This podcast covers mature, intense, morbid, and sometimes just scary stuff. Listen to discretion is advised. Did a deadly disease spark the legend of vampires, or were bloodthirsty creatures really lurking in the shadows? Sink your teeth into the truth, I'm 30 more bit minutes. This is the podcast where we talk about topics, people, places, and things of a morbid macabre, dark and downright grizzly nature. I'm Elise Williams. And I'm Jessica Vassalmi, vampires, Elise, do you love vampires? I know. I do. Salem's lot is probably my favorite Stephen King book. I was about to ask you. Yeah. I love him. I know you love him. I do, but probably for all the wrong reasons. Because I'm definitely like a, you know, I, one of my favorite shows of the vampire diaries, but I'm trying to remember the first time I ever watched like a vampire movie, which wouldn't, what, I think it was "Fright Night." I'm pretty sure. Oh, which is great. The new "Fright Night" is good, too. I haven't seen the new one, but I loved the original one. And it legit scared me. Lost boys, bram stokers Dracula. Yep. All, all really good. We do have a fascination with them, but the real question is, did they actually exist? You know, in past episodes, we've delved into the violent legacy of Vlad the Impaler. The brutal figure often linked to the legend of Dracula. But this time, we're going into the 19th century vampire panics where superstition collided with reality in the most gruesome of ways. It started in the late 18th century and early 19th century in rural villages in New England. TV, tuberculosis or consumption, as it was called on the streets back then, was a run in a wild. Look, we are good bedfellows on this podcast with TV, it is no stranger to us. It was a major talking point in our very first episode, the Victorian obsession with death and superstition. Feel free to check out our back catalog, all of our episodes are evergreen, you know. Yes, they are. And I'm pretty sure, actually, was it TB or was it when we did the radium girls where we talked about how like, it was like, I think it was TB for at one point, it was like super chic to have that look of like super, super thin with like, they, yeah, the consumptive beauty, consumptive chic. Like what? Yeah, which definitely plays into vampirism when we get into it in this episode. It does. Yes. But anyway, yes, it was called consumption back then. But we're going to go back and forth between TB and consumption. But yes, because the disease seemed to consume its victims, people with TB often experienced extreme weight loss fatigue, a gradual wasting away of the body as if the illness was literally devouring them from the inside out. Yeah, they usually had sunken eyes, pale skin, and in some cases, you'd see like a little blood trickle from their mouths as if they were coughing up blood as a symptom. I mean, I just think of Mulan Rouge, a whole kid man, she's got TB, she's coughing up blood. Mm-hmm. I remember, yeah, I think we brought that up in the first episode too. I always bring it up. I bring it up as often as I do. No, it is. It's because it's like, that's like, you know, how, when I think of TB, that's, that's what I think of, at least in these modern times of how I've seen it. Absolutely. Absolutely. But in that movie, it's like, she still looks beautiful and perfect. It's like a little. I know. You know? Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was a slow, wretched death, almost as if the life was gradually being drained out of them. And the term really captured the visible toll the disease took on those that afflicted, which made it very haunting and fit the description, but it also might remind you of something else, the way someone else looks and acts and something around blood. What could it be? What could it be? Mm-hmm. Oh. Vampires. Vampires, yes. A disease that instead, once it grasped a person, could go in and out of remission over a period of months or years or even decades, said folk, lures, and author Michael Bell. Awful. Oh, yeah. Back when TB was at its height, it was ravaging entire communities and families, leaving in its wake a trail of bodies. I mean, we talk about consumption pits, where there was too much death, thrown and fit. Yeah. And what made things worse was nobody knew how disease spread back then. All they knew was that consumption victims perished, their surviving family members would begin to fall ill, one by one, and then their neighbors, and then their entire community, and so on. Adding to the mystery of this damn disease, consumption appeared unpredictable in who it afflicted. Some families emerged unscathed, while others were completely devastated. So, yeah. As you can see, this is awful. People are scared, fearing for their lives, and the lives of their loved ones, and the collapse of their entire community. So what does any logical person do next when faced with such tragedy? Well, naturally, you go out, and you hunt for vampires. Yeah! That's a really good idea. Yeah. Yeah, because it's got to be vampires. It's, obviously it is. The villagers seriously did think vampires were doing this. They believed that the first to die were vampires of sorts, and that they would awake at night, crawl out of their graves, and go after their families, and suck them dry. Yeah. I mean, for some people, they might be into that. You know? I mean, the vampires that I. What do you mean? What do you mean? Well, you mean the. What are you saying it like that? Well, you know, the vampires that I like, I mean, I wouldn't mind. That sounds good to me, it's like a special thing. Exactly. A horn dog. A horn dog. Yes. So we know that these communities, they really thought, I mean, again, this is archaic superstition. They had no idea. They didn't even know what germs were, okay? They thought it was vampires killing everyone, but before they were going to stop them, they needed to dig up the bodies and examine them first. Because what do you do? You gotta get the evidence. You gotta get the evidence, yes. So if the body looked less decayed from the outside, they would slice the body open, sift through the organs, and if they saw liquid blood, then they knew that the body was a vampire or possessed. And if the blood was more coagulated, then they knew that they were human and not possessed. The belief was that an evil spirit, evil vampire spirit, inhabited the corpse, draining life or blood from the living to sustain itself. In bloating and gas spilled up in corpses, we're misinterpreted as signs of an active undead state, like blood around the mouth, you know, as TB patients coughing it up, also reinforced these fears around vampirism. So to break this so-called supernatural connection, the villagers with their pitchforks, they performed a type of ritual of sorts. The spirit had to be destroyed, often by burning the affected organ, usually the liver or heart, decapitation, and/or turning the body upside down to, quote, "trap" the vampire spirit. Mm-hmm. And with these rituals, it wasn't like a step-by-step process. It was just kind of like, we know that we need to do these things in order to get rid of them, so whether whatever order, you know, they were like, this is the ritual, we have to do all of these things to make this happen. Yeah. It doesn't matter whether you're decapitate, well, maybe you'd want to, do you need to keep the head on to trap the spirit if you turn the body upside down? I don't know. That's a good question. But we get into it a little later about, like, kind of where these, where this all came from, too. Mm-hmm. And the most infamous cases of vampirism in the U.S. was Mercy Brown, and she was during the late 19th century. In the small town of Exeter Road Island, George Brown, a farmer and his family faced a string of devastating losses. His wife, Mary, was the first of the family to pass away in 1883 from an unknown illness at the time, unknown illness, what could it be? Six months later, tragedy struck again when his 20-year-old daughter Mary Olive fell ill and died. Next several years, his 19-year-old daughter, Mercy, lost her life. And then his teenage son Edwin, who was very strong and healthy, also began two-week and rapidly. The town's doctor attributed the family's misfortune to consumption, TB. But as we've just been discussing, the villagers had another explanation. March 1892, a group of men arrived at Chestnut Hills Cemetery, and they began digging up the remains of George Brown's wife and two daughters, convinced that one of them was rising from the grave at night, two drain the life from their surviving family members, and they believed that destroying the vampire was the only way to save Edwin. Although he wanted no part of the ritual, villagers eventually persuaded George Brown to let them exhume the bodies of his wife and daughters for examination. So they dug up the bodice. All that remained in those boxes was the bones of the Mary's, which seems like my band. It does. Which makes sense as they died almost ten years prior, so cross them off the list of vampire suspects. Yeah, but Mercy, who was the most recent to die just two months prior, was surprisingly intact. I see some issues here. She looked preserved even in life like it appeared that her hair and nails had grown too, which we all know that belief that hair and nails continue to grow up to death is an illusion, but not to them in eighteen, whatever. The villagers removed her heart and it still had blood in it likely because of the tuberculosis. So obviously everybody, Mercy was the vampire and she was responsible for the deaths of all of her family members and was making Edwin sick. What a twist. Okay, so let's re-examine this with our modern scientific and medical knowledge. We now know that tuberculosis can cause pulmonary hemorrhaging, allowing blood to pull in the lungs and other parts of the body before death, which would have explained why Mercy had a higher than usual amount of blood in her heart. Blood can pull in the body posthumously to defy gravity too, much as Jess and I are known to defy gravity. Boy, do we. Yeah, so that, but then also Mercy died in the dead of winter and her body was stored in a crypt above ground, which acted like a natural refrigerator. Sometimes I put my groceries out in the cold if I'm like, "Yeah, my refrigerator is too stuffed during the winter." Mr. Freeze's wife and Batman and Robin. Yeah, so the cold slowed the decomposition process, preventing the breakdown of tissues in the usual draining or coagulation of blood, so I mean, yeah, which can also help explain why her blood seemed more, quote, "fresh." And then also, yes, and at the time people didn't understand the science behind decomposition, so seeing liquid blood and her heart led villagers to conclude, "Okay, she is a vampire, as they believed only an undead body would still contain life in this way." In reality, it was environmental factors misinterpreted as evidence of vampirism, and so these villagers, they went off, and maybe we talk about what they did after a quick break, Jess. Let's do it. I do not have any ideas for Christmas presents. Okay. Well, me neither. But the good thing is that uncommon goods makes holiday shopping genuinely fun, with thousands of one-of-a-kind gifts for everyone on your list, Jess, all in one place. And common goods really does have something for everybody, especially for, you know, some of your weird relatives, my weird uncle Steve, who literally has everything. Uncommon goods looks for products that are high quality, unique, and often handmade or made in the U.S. Many are crafted by independent artists and small businesses, making every gift feel meaningful and truly one-of-a-kind. What have you found for Uncle Steve on there, Jess? Well, this one is actually for a friend of mine who is a huge book nerd. This beautiful handmade in India, actually, book Christmas ornament, and she collects Christmas ornaments as well. So I'm like, this is the absolutely perfect gift for her, but it's beautifully made with beads. 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Blinds.com isn't a medication, but it can improve how you feel about your home. On Black Friday, all month long at Blinds.com, don't miss huge deals dropping every week. Get 20% off your first purchase at Viori.com/Halo20. Exclusion Supply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. Okay, so we're back. Yeah, these villagers, they did it. They removed her heart and liver, burned them to ash, and then they mixed them with water and had Edwin, the younger brother, drink this macabre potion of sorts. What the fuck? Oh my god. During this time, it's a weird time. It was believed that burning the vampires' heart and other organs would produce ashes that served as a cure to heal the sick. Hmm. Have you ever done something like this, Elise? No. I mean, I don't even really like to take ibuprofen if I almost absolutely need to, so probably not gonna drink it in an ash cocktail. No, no. I mean, me neither, but yeah, but they did feed them to Edwin. He didn't prove for a time, but he ultimately died two months later, so. I wonder if that was psychosomatic where they said, "Oh, we're going to drink this magical elixir of ashes," and then maybe he mentally was like, "Oh, I'm feeling better." Yeah. I mean, who knows? Or they did work for a little bit and then didn't, but I don't think they did. Or it was just that kind of thing, that confirmation bias of his family who were like, "No, no, no. He's doing better and going around telling people he's doing better, but he wasn't actually." Toshay. Yeah. Even in 1892, though, this incident made international headlines. The press were especially the ones dubbing Mercy Brown a vampire. Oh, yeah. And at the same time, a young brand stoker was traveling the US with a theater company while working on Dracula. It's also said that he had, like, newspaper clippings about this case and may have base the character of Lucy on Mercy. Yeah. The math adds up. The character of Lucy was a teenager with wasting disease and her corpse was later exhumed with a doctor present, so it's not hard to believe that this real-life story could have influenced Dracula, which was published five years later. Yeah. Definitely some parallels there. But Mercy Brown, she may not have been an actual vampire, but her story has made her immortal. We are still talking about her 130 years later. Oh, yeah. And to this day, you can visit her grave, at which people leave flowers, vampire teeth. That's a little bit tacky, in my opinion. It's like, "Here, your body was dug up from its rest and disturbed because they thought you were a vampire. Here were some vampire teeth." Yeah. But yeah, they leave her all kinds of other, maybe nicer offerings. And apparently, her ghost is rumored to haunt nearby bridge, where the fragrant smell of roses fills the air, assign that Mercy's spirit may be still lingers. That's sweet. But also, that's so shitty, though, to be like, "Hey, I died, and even though it was by a shitty disease, but then it's like, in your death, a bunch of weird and sane people come and dig up your body, burn your heart, and you're like, "Uh, yeah, cool, thanks, like what?" I don't know. It's like, yeah, it is a wild thing to be remembered for. Yeah. Actually, Mercy Brown wasn't the only one affected by these rituals. There were quite a few more who fell victim to vampirism. Another notable case affected the Rae family in Connecticut in 1850, many years before Mercy Brown. Mm-hmm. It was many years. In over the several years, multiple members of the Rae family died of tuberculosis, mirroring the same kind of pattern seen with the Brown family. The first to die was the 24-year-old son, Lemuel, which is like, "Okay, didn't go full Samuel on that one. Lemuel." I have a hard time pronouncing that name because it fucks with my head because it's not Samuel. So I'm like, "What the fuck, Lemuel?" Sorry, Lemuel, all the Lemuel listeners. It's a cool name. In 1845, less than four years later, family patriarch Henry B. Rae also fell ill and died of TB. He was followed to the grave in the same manner by another son, 26-year-old Alisha two years after. Three short years later, in 1854, the eldest son, Henry, became shriken with now, all two familiar symptoms. And this is when the true panic set in. Gosh. And because you mentioned earlier, Jess, it was indiscriminatory. People didn't know, "Okay, well, how come this family is getting hit, but no one in my family is?" Or, "I'm here." You know, I always think about, like, they really didn't know the communicable nature of a disease like this to know, like, "Okay, can I even be near somebody with this?" Yeah, we don't know. It kind of reminds me of like the COVID days when we were just like, "Wait, how do we do this?" So like, "Can I touch the surface of this coffee table?" That. And also, when they found out, it's just like, "Okay, so like, yes, spit." and like airborne stuff. I remember when I would walk outside and I'd go like a walk, 'cause you know, God, we were all walking. We were all just trying to get outside as often as possible and just like, I don't know, I don't know about you, but I was walking out of park every fucking day just to like get out of the house. But I would not wear, well, it depends. It depends on the time. But when I was outside, I wouldn't wear a mask because I wasn't around a lot of people. But if I happen to come across somebody, I remember the sound so silly now. I would hold my breath when I passed them. Did you? I did that too. Oh, God. I don't just walk in my dog and somebody is close to me on the sidewalk. I'm like, I'm just not gonna breathe. (laughing) It's like medicine for dummies. If you and I wrote one of those four dummies books. Yes. Our chapter would be like, how to avoid communicable diseases. Hold your breath. (laughing) God, so I mean, yes, these people, like now we look at them, knowing we have the signs of evidence and everything. Now, this was kind of crazy. But I also am like, I get it. You know? Yeah. I get it. Meanwhile, there's Ryan Haley, who's paying a woman $5 to spin to his mouth at the gathering of the jugalos. Oh, my God. Oh, Ryan, that man. Oh boy. He talked about it. He's talked about it publicly, of course. Great. Of course, he loves that story. Great. (laughing) Yeah, good times. But yeah, so things are spiraling out of control here. Everybody's getting TB and they were convinced that they were dealing with something well beyond normal disease. So the family decided that their untimely demises were being caused by their dead relatives rising from the grave during the night and returning to feast on the blood of the living. 'Cause, yeah, that's the only reasonable explanation. Yeah. And newspapers at the time reported that Lemule and Elijah's bodies were dug up and burned right away, all with the intent of protecting the living and their other family members as well. But what's interesting is in the 1990s, evident surface suggesting there were other suspected vampires beyond the Ray family. Mm-hmm. Just two miles from their farm and nearby Hopeville, archeologists uncovered 29 graves and an unmarked Walton family cemetery dating back to the early 18th century. One body ravaged by consumption had clearly been assumed after the burial and its head was removed. The skeleton was turned face down and the femur bones were crossed over the chest. The ritual. Yes, yes. Several other Walton family members had also reportedly died from consumption. So this all made sense, vampirism. Mm-hmm. And while Mercy Brown's case gained the fame partly because of its timing, 'cause of Bramstoker and all that, and it's widespread press coverage, the Ray family's case represents like a broader community wide belief in vampires. It was, you know, before Mercy's and it serves as one of the clearest examples of how these rituals were deeply rooted in local culture and traditions. Unfortunately, we have no record of how many people the ritual was performed on, but I say to say there are definitely many more than just the Brown and Ray families. Yeah, and I mean, like they found in like the early 1990s, I mean, how do we know? Are we gonna go up, are we, today's age gonna go dig up some graves and be like, hmm, so which of these bodies were checked for vampires? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. How do we know? Like, yeah, who knows? Yeah, you'd have to exhume entire cemeteries. I mean, I guess you might, if maybe you found a journal or something that indicated someone writing about that, you might be like, okay, well, I have a clue, but. Yes, yeah. Yeah. But there are other people, one, there's two of no, but Rachel Burton of Connecticut and the early 1800s was suspected of empire. Several members of her family died of tuberculosis. Locals believe that she was responsible for draining their life force and so her body was exhumed and ritualized to stop the vampire attacks. Then there's Frederick Ransom of Vermont, who was a Dartmouth college student in succumbed TB. His family, fearful that he was a vampire spreading further illness, exhumed his body and burned his heart to prevent him from rising again. Just do you think your, your family would be like, let's, let's stop her? I feel like my, I feel like my parents would be like, let's just let her do it. Like, we don't, they don't wanna go down this trouble. Oh my God, geez. If I, I'm trying to think, I'm like, if there was something that happened to you, I feel like because you're a morbid little sick fuck that like you'd kinda want me to do it to you. You'd be like, yeah, dig, dig up my, my body, like burn my heart, just do it. Well, wait, but I'm not a vampire and I'm not going to be a vampire. But, but just for the, the, I don't know, the thrill of it and the morbidity of it all, I don't know, I think you'd be down for some weird shit after you died and your body was put into the earth. Well, wait, no, you don't wanna be put into the earth. Don't you wanna be cremated? Yeah. All right, so, okay, this is the narrative. (laughing) This is the narrative of you going like, what if I wanna be buried and you're like, nah, she told me she wanted to be cremated? You, you try to get power of attorney. (laughing) It's funny because Devon, my husband, he told his friend a long time ago about like what he wants his funeral arrangements to be and how he wants his funeral to be. But he's never told me then because he's like, only one person knows and they're gonna be the ones to do it. But they unfortunately don't have a friendship anymore due to many different things. But I'm like, so who knows your funeral arrangements now? I was like, I have to be the one. He's like, I guess. And then he gave me the whole download of what his funeral arrangements should be. It's like, great, okay, thanks. Being written down somewhere? No, it's just an oral tradition passed down from Devon to one of his bullets. Yeah, it's just in my brain and let's hope I remember it correctly. And if I don't, oh well. So, what if you and what if you die first, God forbid? See, I don't, remember I don't have anything. I don't have a will. I don't have any sort of plans. You die first, the lore of Devon's funeral dies with you. Yeah, yeah, true, true. So the no one will know. Unless we do practice, continue to practice the tradition of like speaking it down to, I don't know who he would tell. He'd probably tell my niece who's a baby and five months old. Ask her to remember it. He can tell me, he can trust me. I'll do it to the letter. Okay, okay, I will see. Should we trade wills whenever we do finally? We've talked about this so many times in this damn podcast about our within like, have you done it? I still haven't done shit. We need to do an episode where we write each other's wills. Oh, like I write what you're leaving. See, see, it would just, if we did that, it would just be me fucking with James the entire time. I would just be fucking with him. Oh, God. Oh, gosh, so yeah, getting back to the episode, they were doing some crazy shit. Yeah, it's dead bodies. I know, probably years after the end of the ground. Yeah, and you know, these vampire attacks, they were a wild mix of fear and superstition and people just trying to make sense of death and disease in a time when science just was not there yet. Yeah, in these close knit rural communities, folklore was a means of coping with widespread loss and disease. The inability to explain consumption spread led to people blaming the dead for draining the life of the living. Like the, I feel like when you're dealing with such tragedy, you, you're like, I need an answer. Oh, yeah. I need an answer. So a lot of people turn to religion too, but it is important to note that these vampire-related practices were deeply rooted in cultural and religious traditions, serving as protective measures against the unknown as they investigated. Yeah, you've got oral folklore from Slavic, Mesotanian and Greek traditions. And then those were all strengthened by this communal superstition, which we could do a whole other episode on. Yeah, because when you think about it, you know, even in today's time with things that we still don't understand, we will also look to the supernatural superstition and things that we don't get. It's still prevalent today, as I'm saying. Oh, yeah, yeah. But yeah, but these panics, they weren't really about vampires, you know? And we knew that, but they were about communities desperately trying to regain some sort of control. When faced with something as terrifying as TB, wiping out your entire family and community. At least they weren't pointing fingers at each other. It sounds like, at least they're pointing fingers at corpses rather than saying, oh, my neighbor is a vampire. We should burn them at the stake or do something, you know, for what it's worth. But yeah, a folklore superstition myth have all long served as tools for societies to cope with grief, fear, and the unexplainable when there weren't better answers, looking at you too, religion. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, but thank God for a germ theory. Thank God for the person whose name I can't remember. I know. We talk about all the time who, again, for being called an absolute lunatic said, no, I think this germ theory has a point. I think there are germs, these microscopic little bugs that are all over us. Yep. And they cause us to get sick. Which speaking of mercy brown was the last recorded vampire panic in New England. But it might surprise you to learn that it came a full decade after Koch's discovery of mysobacterium tuberculosis as the cause of TB, scientific evidence that TB is caused by a micro-organism, not supernatural forces. However, it took a, you know, they didn't have social media and TVs and all that. It took a time, it took a lot of time for a scientific understanding to filter down to the rural communities where folklore and superstition still held very strong. Increased literacy, newspaper reporting, and the further spread of medical knowledge did help replace vampire folklore. with scientific explanations for TB. Thank God the science did come because God, dude, if tuberculosis, it's such a, to me in my brain, such an ancient thing, but God, if that was around today, I don't know, is that our version of, well, no, I wouldn't say that's our version of cancer because cancer is just an awful thing. - We had COVID, which I guess was our respiratory disease, SARS COVID and yeah. But I also just think, when it comes to scientific discovery and the evolution of medical theory, we're gonna look at something a hundred years from now and think, wow, I can't believe we thought X caused Y. - Yeah, yeah. - And it's not gonna be because we thought vampires or ghosts caused it, but it just, oh, we thought that this process in your brain was actually this one, it was actually this. - Yeah, yeah. - I started watching that documentary. We talked about him on the podcast. His name escapes me, but I think it was maybe in our morbid theory of time episode, but the billionaire who's trying to reverse his aging. - Yes, that guy. I see his face, but I don't remember his name. I can, very, yes, I very vividly see his face 'cause he's also like kind of pale and like just, yeah, anyway. - But, and he's kind of doing this wild thing, but he may also be on the precipice of uncovering some new medical knowledge and doing it. - And I'm glad that he's doing it on himself, you know, and not like others. - That's when James and I were watching it, that's exactly what he said to me. He said at least he's doing all this shit to himself. - Which, you know. - Thanks, and thanks for doing it. - Thanks, bud. - That yes, thanks for doing it on yourself, and also thanks for like, you know, granted, I'm sure that he wants to live longer too, but it will also benefit the rest of us if he can figure his shit out. (laughing) - So, he takes, he takes, oh my God, I wish I could remember. Like, maybe like a hundred pills a day or something. - See, you know, that's, I haven't seen the documentary, but I'm always so curious. I'm like, that's cool that you're taking these hundred pills. Are they really all getting thoroughly absorbed into your body? - No, he's peeing them all out. And he's gotta be, and let me tell you too, I was, there's a bit of a, there's a news panel discussion that they show clip from during the doc, and it's a bunch of these pundits and they're saying, well, yeah, he's doing all these things to prolong his end of life. But is he really living life when he's just obsessively, he's not like out there traveling, he's in his gym for however many hours a day, and he's focused on his, getting his tests done every day. Like, he's not living in the moment. - Yeah, and that, and I'm a big believer of like living and in the moment really does have a, an effect on your health and longevity and stuff. So, I'm curious to see, I mean, he's just coming at it from a purely scientific point of view, is what you're saying? Again, I haven't seen the doc. - So, I mean, I'm sure also when he has that much money, he's not worrying about the essentials of life, he's not, there are certain stresses that are not on his plate. - Yeah, yeah, you know. - God. - 'Cause God's stress is such an energy trainer, it's such a health trainer. - Is he funding this himself, or do you say he have investors? - I think he's just funding it himself. - Okay. - 'Cause he's, he's real rich. - Okay, he's our money bags over here. - He's one of our best RRs, real rich. (laughing) - Richie's a richie rich. - They'll just keep here and about all these rich people this week. Anyway, this was good, vampires. You know, I'm hoping that one of these episodes, someday in the future, we're gonna have an episode where it's like, all right, vampires are real, and we found them. - Okay guys, just, you said that about vampires, you said that about aliens. (laughing) - Jimmy Hock is body. - God, I just can't wait for the day where we do do it episode where like, this is all real, and isn't it great? (laughing) - I mean, I guess that would be the plot of the movie "Daybreakers," where vampires become the prevalent species on our planet. You've seen daybreakers, right? - I don't think I have. - Treat yourself with a haunted hawk, and it's not like the best movie, but it's just interesting, conceptually, in Willem Dafoe basically plays his character from No Sriratu in it. - Okay, I remember when this movie came out. - The "Kate Bush" song running up that hill. - Oh, you know I do. - Well, my first introduction to that song was because placebo did a cover of it for the daybreakers soundtrack. - Okay, so that comes from daybreakers, because I heard placebo, that's when I first heard the song, but it was from vampire diaries, and I'm not kidding. - Oh my God, so please, I'm not kidding. - I haven't had vampire properties. - Yes, I'm pretty, I thought it was for the, 'cause I'm pretty sure the music video had. - Daybreakers. - Yeah, I would need to do like visuals from the movie with the song, I think it was. - That's so funny that we both heard that song for the first time, the placebo cover, and it was related to a vampire IP, but different vampire IP, fantastic. - Placebos just hand in the mat out to like vampire movies. - Hey, there's a common thread here, so it works really well for them. - Yeah, I mean, I remember this specific scene, I think it was in one of the first episodes of vampire diaries where he's like putting his diary back and that song hits, and it's, yeah, yeah. - Okay, I guess, I don't know anything about vampire diaries, he's just got a diary. - Well, he's an old vampire, I forgot how old he is, but he's hundreds of years old, and so he keeps diaries, who he has diaries on his bookshelf from like the beginning, I don't know. - Okay, it's 1700s to the neck. - Isn't that a little too close to interview with the vampire? Because yeah, he's the one writing, it's just the difference of who's writing it down. - Sure, and I mean, to talk about vampires even further, where is the main area or thing of where we get all of our typical vampire rules and laws from? Do you know what I mean? - I guess Dracula? - I would assume Dracula. - And Slavic folklore. - Yes, that's me. - Yup, yup, the cutting off the head is a big thing, and then yeah, the burning of the heart was a lot of the like old time folklore type stuff. - I love the new interview with the vampire series. - It's so funny, you say that because, A, I haven't seen it, and two, my friend who worked on it, keeps telling me to watch it. He's like, "You little vampires, why don't you watch it?" I'm like, "It's because you worked on it." So it doesn't seem real to me. The opposite happened to me where my friend who worked on it, at the time said, "You've got to watch this." Anything I've ever worked on, this is my favorite thing. - That's funny, we both have two friends that worked on it, okay? - So was it good? - I would run to watch it. I think you would wrap it. - Oh my God. - And look at the end of it, you will start off by saying, like, "Oh, I love Louis," and then by the end of it, you'll be like, "God damn listot." - Oh God. - And then the next season seems like it's gonna be so good. - Okay. - I can't wait to watch this. - Mm-hmm. - I gotta get through season two of Severance, though. Have you guys already finished it? Or watched it? - Well, it's week to week, I think. - Okay, so I haven't started it yet. - Making to be with the vampire group binge. - All right, cool. - Well, please. - I'm just gonna go back to my group. - With this time with the group group. - Now we record this at like 9 a.m. So it's not time to go to bed yet. Not yet. 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