Recap

Vampires and Werewolves

Paranormal expert and author Rosemary Ellen Guiley, Ph.D. shared an in-depth look at vampires, werewolves and other things that go bump in the night. She said vampires and werewolves belonged to a class of creatures called shapeshifters -- humans who can change into other forms.

She said folklore vampires rarely shapeshifted into bats (like in the movies), but instead changed into dogs, wolves and various farm animals. She noted that Hollywood has romanticized the vampire, replacing the ugly, demonic monster of folklore with the charismatic, tragic hero of movie screens. According to Guiley, a vampire is "any entity that wastes away life force." The nature of a vampire is to be destructive and to cause people harm, she explained. As an example, Guiley cited the "restless dead," a folklore vampire whose corpse remained in the grave while its spirit wandered the night, plaguing the living.

Guiley thinks many folklore beliefs have a basis in reality. She pointed out that "Skinwalker" stories, in which people take the shape of animals, can be found in numerous cultures all over the world. Guiley also referenced clinical Lycanthropy, a syndrome in which the inflicted person believes and acts like they have transformed into an animal. This coupled with the fact that the moon affects people psychologically and psychotically could have helped form the werewolf mythos, concluded Guiley.

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New England Vampires

During the 18th and 19th centuries there was a major vampire scare in New England. At least a dozen cases of alleged vampirism occurred throughout Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont, and rural New Englanders took gruesome steps deal with it.

Paul Sledzik, former curator of anatomical collections at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, analyzed several corpses from a cemetery in Griswold, CT and determined they had been subjected to ritual vampire slayings. According to Sledzik, after a family member had died from tuberculosis, living members exhumed the body to look for "vampire" signs. If the corpse proved suspicious, its heart was removed and burned to ashes.

And accounts of such activity persist to this day. In July, Romanian villagers claimed to have seen the corpse of a 76-year-old man sucking blood from his living family members. A group of men armed with wooden stakes opened his grave and removed his heart. Read more at bostonherald.com.