Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00BBC Four Collections, specially chosen programmes from the BBC Archive.
00:30BBC Four Collections
01:00After an extraordinary voyage from the Black Sea, Count Dracula arrived in England at Whitby on the north-east coast.
01:13The local people were appalled when they examined the ship.
01:17The crew had disappeared, the captain dead, lashed to the wheel.
01:21And then they saw the form of an immense dog, which leapt ashore and bounded up the cliff towards the churchyard at the top.
01:28And, of course, this was Dracula.
01:31I wonder if Count Dracula found this churchyard as odd as I do.
01:36This is, or at least it all began, as an investigation into the weird obsession of my great-uncle.
01:43For he was the man who wrote Dracula, Bram Stoker, probably one of the least-known authors of one of the best-known books.
01:51And not only into his obsession, but apparently ours.
01:56For in creating the great vampire Dracula, he seems to have struck a chord that vibrates even more strongly today.
02:02It was in 1897 that Stoker wrote Dracula, but the name has leapt into the 20th century to become a household word.
02:20Today, the exploitation is even directed to children, with the temptation and delight of a Count Dracula ice lolly.
02:28Thank you very much.
02:29What does it exactly say on the lolly?
02:34Dracula's secret.
02:36Now, deadly than ever, with red, blood-red jelly.
02:41Do you know what his secret was?
02:43No.
02:44Any idea who Dracula was?
02:46Oh, yeah, he was that man in the, what did he do now?
02:50Oh, yeah, he used to get up at nightfall, and he used to crawl around and, you know, bite people in the neck to keep him alive, and he had to get back in his coffin.
02:59That's right.
03:00By, er, by daybreak.
03:02What would happen to the daybreak?
03:04Er, if he wasn't in his coffin, he'd, er, disintegrate.
03:07Ooh, unorthodox.
03:08On a more serious and literary level, there's the Dracula Society, which invited me to dinner at Perfleet, Dracula's English home.
03:22But who would want to belong to such a society?
03:25And we've got no advertising. It's all been word of mouth. We've just collected people.
03:28And how many members have we got now?
03:30Well, er, close on, er, close on 90 at the moment.
03:32And are they cramps?
03:33It's growing. No, by no means. We have, er, I suppose, by and large, a fair cross-section of ordinary humanity.
03:41We have, er, quite a lot of, er, actors, er, writers, people in the media.
03:46Er, we have a Catholic priest, and, er, you know, quite a good assortment of people.
03:51Haven't you got one, Craig?
03:53Well, we haven't got to know them well enough yet to be quite sure of that.
03:56We've managed to avoid it.
03:57I don't think so.
03:58We had a mildest gentleman who rang me up on the phone one day, and, er, one of those strange, sort of,
04:03Peter Lorre voices, you know, do you, er, do you, er, are you in the Dracula Society?
04:07I said, yes.
04:07And he said, er, do you, do you do ceremonies?
04:10So I said, well, you have to make that clear.
04:12What do you mean by ceremony?
04:13And I said, well, we have meetings.
04:14She said, I said, what do you mean by ceremony?
04:16He said, well, well, you know.
04:19The imagination boggles, of course.
04:21So, I mean, he may well have become a vampire.
04:24It's a happy thought.
04:25Well, we must check.
04:26So, would you say that there are such things?
04:28The motto of our society is credo, quia, impossibile.
04:31I believe because it is impossible.
04:34Er, there are people, of course, who have this delight in, in seeing blood flow and in tasting blood.
04:40And, er, these people sometimes identify themselves with vampires, and it's unusual.
04:44They identify themselves frequently with real life people, like Napoleon.
04:47But I think possibly, with the exception of Sherlock Holmes, which, which cases have been known,
04:51Dracula is the only other fictional character with whom lunatics have been known to identify.
04:55And there was a very interesting case only last year, recounted by, er, er, quite a, an experienced professional exorcist,
05:02who helped, er, doctors in Scandinavian, Scandinavian nursing home to treat one or two patients,
05:08one of whom was a young man, who firmly believed that he was of empire, although, of course, he was perfectly alive,
05:13and bit people in the throat, and he needed to drink their blood to live.
05:17And he even bit the exorcist before the exorcism was performed.
05:20Now, the strange thing about it was that this young man, although he lived in Norway,
05:24had a mother who came from Transylvania.
05:26And I think that here was a case of folk memory, the basis of, er, this belief being so strong
05:35amongst Transylvanian peoples, er, had lingered through the generation.
05:39With a stroke of brilliance, Bram Stoker opened Dracula here, in Transylvania.
05:45There is such a place.
05:46This part of northern Romania was, and is, the perfect setting.
06:05It was through this countryside that Jonathan Harker, a young solicitor, started his journey to Castle Dracula.
06:12He came to make arrangements for the Count's visit to England,
06:14and was startled, as he stepped into the coach, to see the peasants cross themselves
06:19when they heard of his destination.
06:22He is happily unaware, at this stage, that Count Dracula, who appears so real,
06:27is one of the living dead, a vampire.
06:31Dormant during the day, the vampire rises from his coffin at night
06:35to suck the blood of the living, who then become vampires themselves.
06:40Can any superstition be so unconvincing or absurd?
06:45Yet people have believed this since the beginning of time all over the world.
06:49Stoker discovered that legends of vampirism were especially rife in this part of Eastern Europe.
06:58Ignorance, sheer remoteness, belief in undead spirits,
07:03all helped to explain why vampirism seized the imagination.
07:07Yet, as Stoker learned from his research,
07:10many of the reports of vampirism were documented by local officials.
07:14This was not simply a peasant belief.
07:24Even today, visiting the painted monasteries in northern Romania,
07:28one can sense the strength of ancient superstition
07:31so deeply interwoven with Christian faith.
07:33The nun is using this curious ritual as a form of prayer,
07:41perhaps, as the frescoes on the wall suggest,
07:43to keep the devil at bay.
07:45Interesting.
07:46Such revival as the
07:46Lenape.
07:47Such revival as the
07:53These peasants are still deeply religious.
08:20On Sundays their churches are crowded.
08:22They take their faith seriously.
08:25The idea of excommunication has always been a threat, with the souls of those who have
08:30offended, cast into limbo and denied the freedom of death.
08:35Such fear would enhance any belief in the undead.
08:38When religion is strong, so is the determination to protect yourself against the devil.
08:49It is easy to understand their agitation when an epidemic of vampirism swept across Eastern
09:00Europe in the middle of the 18th century.
09:02An historian of the time recorded,
09:05we are told that dead men return from their tombs, are heard to speak, to walk about,
09:11to injure both men and animals whose blood they drain, finally causing their death.
09:16Nor can men deliver themselves unless they drive a sharp stake through these bodies, cut
09:22off the heads, tear out the hearts.
09:25He concluded it seems impossible not to subscribe to the belief that these apparitions do actually
09:31come forth from their graves.
09:45When I watched this funeral in Romania, I was startled to see that the corpse was carried
09:49outside by the family with a body exposed, for the villagers to pay their last respects.
09:52If by some chance the body should have appeared to be asleep with blood, how easy to believe that the man was an undead.
09:59But such beliefs belonged to the distant past, or so I thought, until I spoke to one of the funeral singers, a woman called Tinkerbell.
10:06Who's own father was suspected of being a vampire.
10:36in her village, when her father died, why did the family think something was wrong?
10:43When you were small, in the village, from there you learned how to sing.
10:53When he died, we went there to see how he died and told us, look, he died.
10:59As a village, when he wanted to dress her father, his corpse was soft.
11:07It was not stiff, yes.
11:09And observed this, and she said the villagers put the stake in the heart.
11:17The stake in the heart?
11:18The stake in the heart.
11:19The villagers were afraid that he might become a vampire.
11:22Yes, this is true.
11:25It is pretty startling to hear at first hand of a man being staked as a vampire.
11:31But to my mind, it is obvious that Tinka's father must have been still alive.
11:37Curiously, it's extremely difficult to certify death.
11:40Only a few months ago in Birmingham, a corpse was being dissected for a kidney transplant
11:45when it was discovered that the corpse was in fact alive.
11:48If we can make such mistakes today, with all our medical knowledge,
11:52just imagine the confusion a hundred years ago, when people were mystified by states of trance,
11:58and catalepsy and epilepsy.
12:01And if the coffins of these people were broken into by grave robbers or body snatchers,
12:06it would be noticed that the bodies had moved.
12:08And sometimes there would be blood around the mouth where they had bitten themselves in anguish.
12:13And it was claimed that parts of the shroud, or even the bodies themselves,
12:18had been bitten in the last desperate attempt to stay alive.
12:22Of course, they could equally have been mauled by rats or devoured by insects.
12:26On a more cheerful note, premature burial was so common that it gave rise to this limerick.
12:32There was a young man of Nunhead, who awoke in his coffin of lead.
12:37It's cosy enough, he remarked in a huff, but I wasn't aware I was dead.
12:42Premature burial was rife in times of plague, which is understandable,
12:47because people were terrified by the risk of infection,
12:51and anxious to dispose of the bodies as quickly as possible.
12:54Of course, this meant that a number of people who might have recovered,
12:58who were perhaps only in a drunken stupor,
13:01were thrust into the earth and woke to find themselves incarcerated in the darkness.
13:06If they got out and were noticed, this again could have led to rumours of vampires,
13:11which would have spread like a form of mass hysteria.
13:15Graham Stoker knew about the plague.
13:18His mother Charlotte was a young girl in County Sligo
13:22when the cholera epidemic swept across Europe to Western Ireland.
13:26My grandmother, Enid Stoker, told me a horrifying family story
13:32of how when the cholera epidemic was at its peak,
13:35and the house barricaded against looters and the last survivors in the village,
13:40Charlotte saw a hand creeping through the skylight, took an axe and cut it off.
13:45And my grandmother was not a fanciful woman.
13:48Maybe hearing such stories when he was a child, this gave Graham his first taste for horror.
13:55He was a strange mixture, outwardly a genial red-bearded giant,
14:01but this bluff facade concealed a man who found a release in horror and the occult.
14:06Ironically, he never enjoyed fame or fortune himself,
14:10but his book has never been out of print,
14:12and countless books have been written since by other authors
14:15on the theme of Dracula and vampirism.
14:18Somewhere throughout the world at this moment, Dracula is being produced on stage.
14:23And as for films, there have been so many, the books are now being written about them.
14:28Here at the Lorimer Press in London, they are publishing the latest work on vampire films.
14:33This seems to me a pretty strong candidate.
14:36It's got nice contrast of colours too.
14:39It also sums up a lot of Dracula themes here.
14:42Have you any idea how many films have been on vampires and Dracula?
14:46A couple of hundred.
14:48It's very hard to keep accurate documentation on this kind of thing
14:51because they stretch into the darker areas.
14:55There are the porno films, there are people's 8mm versions,
14:58there are the stuff made in Mexico and in Spain.
15:02There's a man called Paul Naishy, who in the last...
15:08Paul Naishy, the Hunchback of the Morgue,
15:11who seems to have started off the entire Spanish fantasy film industry.
15:15He regularly plays a wolfman involved with fighting vampires.
15:19But Dracula's the star.
15:21I've just been to a convention of films, fantastic films in Paris,
15:25and at one stage they pulled out a film and put in a Mexican film,
15:31Santo versus the treasure of Dracula.
15:34The moment the man said the word Dracula,
15:35there was this great ripple of applause running around the audience
15:38and they started chanting, Dracula, Dracula.
15:42But I think the Dracula we have in film is still that of Stoke.
15:45Of course he's undergone modification, he's had this...
15:48the whole business with the opera cloak and Kane and so on,
15:51came in really with Lugosi and has continued with Christopher Lee.
15:55The head of Hammer Films is Michael Carreras.
16:01Well, that's our latest diversification, Dan.
16:03When you started and in a way created the Dracula industry 20 years ago,
16:09did you have any concept of the sensational success it would be?
16:13It would be a terrible lie if I said yes.
16:16No, it really did, it was like a dam bursting.
16:19There was all over the world a complete readiness
16:22for that type of entertainment to be revitalised.
16:26And of course coming back in colour, it just caused a sensation.
16:30To what extent did the recreation by Hammer of Count Dracula
16:35save the British film industry?
16:37Oh, I think to a large extent.
16:39Not only the Dracula films themselves,
16:41but the actual spin-offs from the idea of reviving horror
16:44has really, I think, been a great saviour
16:47for not only this company,
16:49but many, many other producers have jumped on the horror bandwagon.
16:53Do you find yourself that people are fascinated by the idea of horror
16:58because they find the present unacceptable?
17:01Well, that of course is one of the many theories.
17:03I think I subscribe to it to a great deal.
17:06I mean, here is an adrenaline excitement
17:08and a horror titillation, which in actual fact
17:11you don't carry with you into the streets
17:13after the experience in the cinema.
17:15The modern horror, which now I suppose you can call
17:18mainly social documents, I think far more frightening
17:21and those are things that you do carry into the streets with you.
17:24And modern horror like Belfast?
17:26Yes.
17:27Yes.
17:28Are you proud of your industry?
17:30Very.
17:32But what gets them off the streets and into the cinema
17:35is not simply the horror, but the sexuality of the vampire.
17:39Though Stoker might have been unaware of it himself,
17:41the original novel is blatantly erotic,
17:44as Denham Elliot realised when he portrayed Dracula on television.
17:48To illustrate the sort of sexuality of Dracula,
17:53particularly in the original,
17:54I'd like, if I may, to read a passage from the original book.
17:57This is one of Dracula's daughters attacking the hero.
18:01Lower and lower went her head
18:03as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin
18:06and seemed about to fasten on my throat.
18:09And she paused.
18:11And I could hear the churning sound of her tongue
18:13as it licked her teeth and lips.
18:16I could feel the hot breath on my neck.
18:19And the skin of my throat began to tingle
18:22as one's flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it
18:25approaches nearer, nearer.
18:28I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips
18:31on the super-sensitive skin of my throat
18:33and the hard dents of two sharp teeth
18:36just touching and pausing there.
18:40I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy
18:43and waited, waited with beating heart.
18:51The symbolism of that is pretty obvious, isn't it?
18:54I think it's the feeling of being totally taken in
18:57and absorbed in
18:59and the whole thing of
19:01total absence of any responsibility.
19:04You are totally contained
19:07sexually, mentally, spiritually
19:09by this
19:11lover, really, you see.
19:13Did you enjoy the devouring?
19:15Well, actually, to be quite frankly,
19:18that isn't really my scene.
19:19But, um...
19:21I did enjoy playing it.
19:23It was fun.
19:24Yes, I did.
19:25I didn't take Dracula too seriously.
19:27I don't think it's...
19:29I, um...
19:30I couldn't afford to.
19:31I think you can play very dangerous games
19:33when you play around with people like Dracula.
19:35I think you can get terribly involved
19:37in the idea of Satan
19:38if you let yourself.
19:40It really is very frightening.
19:42You know, I have to...
19:44really to keep an absolute balance
19:46in one's mind
19:47because I think you can become
19:49totally involved in
19:50sure erotic enjoyment
19:52if you really let yourself go.
19:54And it can go beyond oblivion
19:57into obliteration almost.
19:58Well, that's it, you see.
19:59You lose yourself.
20:01Which is what they're after.
20:03Now!
20:05Good.
20:06Good.
20:07Good.
20:08Very good.
20:09Next one.
20:10How stunned
20:11my poor old great uncle
20:12might have been
20:13by these scenes
20:14and by the hard professionalism
20:16that goes into the making
20:17of this latest style
20:19of vampire film.
20:20Now, let me give you a rough idea.
20:22If we were lying up on this,
20:23you're dead right.
20:24Exactly like this.
20:25Ah, ah.
20:26And come that.
20:27Like that.
20:28And turn like that.
20:29And go.
20:30That, that, that is the thing.
20:32I won't be able to hold of that.
20:34All right.
20:35One moment.
20:36One moment.
20:37You come again alive
20:38with your hands like this.
20:39When I say action.
20:41And when you do
20:43bang, bang, bang.
20:45Just to put you in the picture,
20:46the two girls are lesbian vampires
20:49carrying the exploitation
20:51of the original novel
20:52to the absolute limit.
20:53Four, one, four, take one,
20:54die track.
20:57Action.
21:04Very good.
21:05Finished up here in the foreground
21:06and here in the background.
21:07Good.
21:08It's good. Looks good.
21:09Oh, yeah.
21:10The way she rolled over
21:11in the background.
21:12Don't move an inch, you know.
21:13Still like that.
21:14All the time.
21:15Please.
21:17The latest to climb
21:18on the Dracula bandwagon
21:19are the travel agencies.
21:21Encouraged by the Romanians
21:22who have just discovered
21:23the immense tourist potential
21:25on their Transylvanian doorstep.
21:27The Dracula Package Tor.
21:29This brings the tourist
21:31following eagerly,
21:33hard on the footsteps
21:34of Stoker's hero,
21:35young Jonathan Harker.
21:36Jonathan Harker.
21:37Jonathan Harker.
21:38Jonathan Harker.
21:39The
21:41The
21:52The
21:53The
21:54The
21:55The
21:56The
21:58The
22:05The
22:09We've read bits of Dracula,
22:11Dracula films and I just lapped those up.
22:14And when you saw the name Dracula mentioned
22:16in the tour, it immediately clicked.
22:17the tour it oh yes yes because there's so much fiction i wanted to see if there was any fact
22:24behind it which of course there is of course there is yes there must be a certain amount
22:33please come on
22:37that is the main entrance to the castle lying on a 60 meters high rock but the fact remains
22:45the count dracula is simply a figment of stoker's imagination this way please and this is simply a
22:52romanian castle called bran which happens to be spookily appropriate however this does not seem
22:58to diminish the appeal the ever curious americans blazed the trail six thousand spanish dracula
23:04aficionados a book this year and now the british can indulge in their fantasies what do you do in
23:11england i'm a teacher in a grammar school what did the school children say when they heard you were
23:16coming out i told a group of them that i was visiting dracula for my half-term holiday so
23:22they were rather amazed and a bit apprehensive in case i didn't get back the romanians now find
23:29themselves in a dilemma it is only recently that they've even heard of bram stoker's dracula but
23:36they have a real one of their own
23:43vlad dracul was born here in the old saxon town of sigisora in 1431. he became the ruler of vallachia
23:52but there was no such country as romania then only the three states of vallachia
23:57moldavia and transylvania though he was certainly bloodthirsty dracula was no vampire
24:04he was a warrior and after one of his battles against the turks the bells rang out as far as
24:11the island of rhodes to celebrate the victory of christendom he made his capital here in turga vista
24:21he was a man of really exceptional cruelty even for his own time he was known as vlad sepes which means
24:27vlad the impaler because of his habit of impaling his enemies on sharp pointed stakes which slowly
24:34split them apart until after several hours or even days they died and seldom can death have been so
24:40welcome after one battle he impaled as many as 20 000 of his enemies and amid the screams and the
24:47smells at a cheerful lunch underneath here in his castle at turga vista when a visiting deputation of
24:56turkish ambassadors failed to doff their turbans in his presence he ordered that the turbans be nailed to
25:02their heads he was cruel but he had a certain style
25:09today romanian children are taught that dracula is a national hero without too much stress on his cruelty
25:15it is to historical monuments like this one at turga vista that today's tourists are being taken
25:32alongside the children's pioneer corps nothing to do with bram stoker's count dracula at all
25:38yet stoker got the atmosphere absolutely right all from books in the british museum for amazingly he
25:47never set foot in transylvania himself the town of bistrita is the town of bistrits that he wrote about
25:54if you go there you can find the same small type of hotel that jonathan harker might have stayed at
26:07and incredibly enough across the street and undertakers it out stoker's stoker
26:16jonathan harker traveled by coach through the borgo pass it is there
26:21and it is almost too good to be true with lonely crosses and swirling mists
26:25but there is no castle dracula for the tourists the romanians in pursuit of hard currency have come up
26:36with the answer the castle dracula
26:49the castle dracula hotel a mixture of disney and iagolith with taped wolves howling as the tourists
26:54are driven through the pass is to be opened hopefully in 1977
26:58meanwhile bran castle will do at least the tourists are there and the currency is starting to flow
27:06at the moment there's an innocent bewilderment amongst the romanians for their souvenirs a bit
27:20behind the times feature that other 20th century figure mickey mouse but count dracula is about to
27:27push him aside the local plum brandy dracula you know dr eight there all the way down the bottle
27:31there three star two frankly i'm slightly bewildered by this obsession with dracula it seems to be deeper
27:39than just an amusing gimmick the infatuation with the idea of vampires sucking of blood and indeed
27:46perpetual life is peculiar but perhaps it is a part of the general resurgence of interest in the occult
27:52which is greater in britain today than it has been for the last few hundred years
28:06the interest is intense one london bookshop concentrates entirely on the occult science fiction
28:14and the ramifications of the dracula cult catering to this insatiable appetite for horror and also
28:21man's apparent need to believe in the inexplicable
28:26i find it quite extraordinary to come into a bookshop like this and see masses of people all
28:32buying books on vampires and dracula uh what what have you got i've got in search of dracula why do you
28:40find the subject exciting well i suppose um uh feeling rather aggressive perhaps who well my husband
28:51left me and i felt very angry about it and as i couldn't do anything to him so i suppose i took up
28:58her fantasy violence instead i'm sorry i really don't get this um you're interested in the idea of
29:06vampires because your husband left you yes i was very annoyed about it well i should think you were
29:12yes but i couldn't do anything to him in the way of attacking him or hurting him in any way
29:19so i'd end up in prison obviously but who do you it's much safer to do it this way isn't it but who are
29:25you associating with dracula or the victim or dracula not the victim and you would like to um so to speak
29:37uh in in the books uh devour your ex-husband not devour exactly i suppose just kill him rather nastily
29:46do you think that's healthy no far more unhealthy is the current vandalism and cemeteries breaking
29:56open graves and disturbing bodies mr law is the cemetery keeper at highgate i asked if they're
30:02really were vampire hunters oh yeah yeah some couple of years ago there's this uh person named
30:09afferent he uh supposed to have seen a vampire or something hovering over top of the headstone
30:15and then from them we had nothing else but vampire hunters smashing open tombs sticking stakes through
30:20bodies and all this nonsense did anyone describe this vampire that was him well he's supposed to have
30:27described it as a big tall thing hovering seven foot in uh seven foot over the top of a headstone
30:33and about seven foot tall of course he'd only probably seen things like this we've gone up the road
30:37had a few pints of grog and a couple of glass yard stuff what do you think you think it was all
30:43complete imagination oh stupid nonsense i worked all night long all day long all night long i've never
30:49seen nothing so i mean i don't see why they should see something but they've been quite a few vampire
30:53hunters here haven't there oh yeah yeah how many are together well i couldn't tell you exactly how many
30:58this this time when they started this vampire business in the evening time there's all 100 odd people
31:03outside the gates when the cemetery's all closed i mean this is all privately owned you see
31:07so those gates are closed at uh at four o'clock at this particular time and uh they was all trying
31:12to climb over the walls and one person said they see a horrible gray thing wriggling down the road
31:17all this bloody nonsense you know and uh i thought the police to clear them all off out of it this
31:22was ordinary supposed to be educated people a hundred vampire hunters oh yes ordinary ordinary people
31:30ordinary people perhaps but it is an extraordinary obsession last year in this house in stoke-on-trent man was
31:40found dead in most extraordinary circumstances i asked the coroner what these were well the circumstances
31:48were these it was reported to me as a sudden death of which the cause was unknown and when i had the post-mortem
31:55done the pathologist uh said he swallowed either a pickled onion or a clove of garlic which i thought was
32:02rather unusual but never mind these things do happen people do bolt their food and die but i had the
32:09advantage of a very good report from a young pc in the force which went a bit very thoroughly and it came out
32:17that this man believed in vampires and was frightened of vampires and took various precautions to stop the
32:24vampires getting at him what what precautions well i think i'd better read a bit out the pc's report
32:32uh or refer to it anyhow he had the room strewn with salt in what the pc described as a ritual fashion
32:41he had a bag of salt between his legs resting on his testicles he had garlic around the room and in
32:50addition he had outside on the window sill an inverted bowl covering human excreta and also garlic in the
32:58middle of it now apparently salt and garlic are vampire repellents he mixed salt with his urine in various
33:07containers also outside with his excreta apparently salt i'm sorry garlic the idea being apparently that
33:14the vampire would be attracted by this magnificent feed of excreta or urine and would then swallow it
33:22on the principle of the rack bait and be poisoned by the garlic to make assurance doubly sure he put this
33:29garlic into his mouth and unfortunately choked on it and died would you say that in fact the man was mad
33:37no obsessed perhaps this man believed thoroughly these vampires existed this case sounds unique yet
33:47incredibly there are other cases of vampirism in britain today as i learned from the reverend neil smith
33:53when i asked if he knew of specific instances oh yes more than one i mean one particularly strikes me
34:03is that of a woman who showed me the the marks on her wrists which appeared at night and definitely
34:13where the blood had been taken from her wrists at night and the marks were there in the morning and
34:20there's no apparent reason why this should have occurred what sort of marks well the marks almost
34:25like that of an animal i mean like a scratching but couldn't you have done this herself well um
34:32she's a married woman and there's no evidence from her husband or otherwise that such things did occur
34:38in the night and she came to you for help she came to me for help but she felt that she her blood was
34:44being sucked and did you perform an exorcism on her yes i did and what happened and this these marks
34:50cleared up how recent live is this oh not very long guys a matter of months do you know of other
34:57examples when there was physical evidence yes there was a man from south america who had a similar
35:02phenomenon at night and the blood had been sucked from him and marks were on him and he showed me the
35:08he showed me the marks and again after the exorcism they disappeared they um marks of uh biting or yes
35:18again like a sort of strange phenomena like an animal uh as if an animal had uh you know sucked away his
35:28his blood and and attacked him at night you don't think he just had extremely uh exciting sexual night
35:34somewhere and no no no i i think that uh um you know he's he was sufficiently intelligent to reckon
35:44that this was abnormal but surely any sane person would regard the idea of vampirism as absurd
35:53no i i wouldn't think so because uh i think i found that people in dealing with exorcism
36:00it's the more intelligent people i would think who would accept such ideas uh more easily than the
36:08less intelligent because they would be more open-minded regarding um uh well spirits and forces outside
36:18themselves and you would categorically say that there is in fact then an evil force of energy
36:25around us as if this could attack uh you or me um perhaps not you but anyone any ordinary person in the street
36:34oh is it good to me as well i mean i'm in danger and doing exorcism that the thing would come on to me
36:39uh i mean i admit this and uh i believe that the devil has his agents and these are the demons all around the place
36:47and are we all vulnerable i i i can't think that people could say that they are never vulnerable
36:56i think it's dangerous uh idea because it may be just when they're saying that that something may
37:02attack them it is just this dabbling with the occult that so many people regard as dangerous
37:09recently it has assumed the scale of an epidemic especially in our cities in the reassuring setting of a
37:16vicarage in hull i spoke to the reverend willis he is a family man with both feet firmly on the ground
37:22but he is seriously worried by today's fascination with the ouija board seances and witches covens
37:29he believes that this presents the church with a real problem um clergy all over the country have been
37:35deluded with people coming to them for help because um either it's induced a mental breakdown with a lot of
37:42people ending up in mental hospitals a lot of people are driven to attempted suicide in this area
37:48at any rate and in other areas i know there have been several cases of real suicide from people
37:54and playing around with the ouija boards even or just consulting mediums or fortune tellers have you
37:59yourself ever had real evidence that makes you believe in the devil in one particular case i remember
38:07these a family had rung up the samaritan service who in turn asked myself and another preach to go
38:14along and help a family who were in terror out in the street we got the family back into the house
38:19and um after having talked to them for some time um one of the women complained that that something was
38:26around her a horrible coldness and could i help her could i go over there and pray with her and i went across
38:32the room to her and she began to say please please help me because i'm i'm it's around me i've gone
38:39all cold it's it's it's it's all around me please help please please help me please help me and she
38:46began to struggle with something around her throat she began to physically choke and i read plenty of
38:53times in fiction of people saying uh you know that their eyes bulged in terror but this is the first time
38:58i ever really saw it myself and eyes came right out of the sockets of balls like this help me and
39:07and she was struggling and i thought well is this some sort of psychological flip you know some hysteria
39:13so for a while a few seconds i didn't do anything but eventually she she got so desperate and was
39:20obviously choking that i thought i must do something and i must assume that this is this is something evil
39:26around her and i went over to her and um said in the name of jesus of nazareth i command you to come
39:35out of her and go to that place appointed for you and nothing happened uh and for a moment i was puzzled
39:43but then i remember reading um that sometimes people in involved in existence have a big struggle
39:51so i kept on uh with the same command on and on several times over perhaps 10 or 15 seconds which
39:58is quite a long time really uh and and eventually she collapsed on the floor uh we took a glass of
40:05water to and brought her around but for a quarter of an hour she wouldn't she wouldn't talk about it she
40:09just couldn't talk about it she was so frightened but eventually we said well what happened and she had
40:14just something just completely took over me i felt as i was being pushed out of myself and i'm convinced i would
40:20have died if you hadn't begun to do something and she said i heard your voice in the dim distance
40:27um praying and gradually she said i seemed to come back into myself and i said what did you actually
40:34see or feel and she said the only thing i saw was was a face uh which looked like a doll with staring
40:42eyes absolutely hypnotizing me i just couldn't take my my eyes off it and and then i blacked out
40:49um well i prayed with her prayed with the family we eventually went and blessed the whole house and
40:58after some time they said we feel completely at peace now whatever it is is gone i returned home
41:05and um creeping upstairs with my shoes in my hand found my my wife wide awake sat up in bed saying
41:13phew thank goodness you're back i said why what's the matter she said i've had the most terrible nightmare of
41:18my life i said what was the matter she said well it was only a dream but she said i felt there was
41:23something evil uh in the house attacking myself and the children um she said in my dream i i i met it
41:31in the sitting room i went downstairs and met it in the sitting room and got hold of it and smashed in
41:36the name of the trinity against the wall and a blue liquid came out when i woke up she said i was so
41:42scared by it and i went around and prayed with all the children and have been awake ever since so
41:48i said what was it that you broke what was it you saw she said it was something horrible evil like like
41:54a doll so so something however you view it happened passed between the two houses my wife didn't know
42:02she knew i'd been called out on something but she knew nothing of the circumstances we've been dealing
42:06with somehow something flashed between the two houses whether it was some telepathic um vision
42:13of some kind or whether it was evil hitting back at my family um of course is open to to controversy
42:22you don't think that possibly because you are a member of the church and in a way associated
42:27with the devil and with evil that you could induce this yourself i don't think so because you see that
42:34the problem was there before i was ever called in you know um i didn't go around and give them
42:39the idea that there could be some sort of possession that they rang up the samaritan said please there's
42:44something in our house can you send us someone who will help what can the church and what should
42:48the church do about the problem um i think we have got to um restudy um christian belief about about
42:58evil about the teaching of christ about evil after all christ gave three commands to the church um
43:04preach the gospel heal the sick and cast out evil and we've rather neglected um the casting out of evil
43:11uh and um we haven't met much of it in the last 300 years in britain and western europe not many
43:18people have dabbled in witchcraft or devil worship or even consulting fortune tellers to any great number
43:25there always have been a few but suddenly in the 20th century we've got this occult explosion everybody
43:30doing it and it's a social problem at nashstrom abbey i asked dom petit pierre who is greatly respected
43:38as an authority on the subject for his explanation of the resurgence of the occult in 1974. well i think
43:46it's due to a number of causes myself first of all it's a reaction against the old materialism of last
43:54century and a good deal of the modern thinking that mental problems are entirely concerned within
44:04inside oneself and this is looking for something outside uh and deeper than merely materialistic
44:11considerations the desperate need to believe in something in something and because the the christian
44:19churches have got caught up with making noises and nothing much else they haven't taught what
44:26we call contemplative prayer people are looking for something beyond themselves that's another factor
44:34so would you say the church has failed yes i think so i think it's kept up a sort of 19th 18th
44:39and 19th century idea that everybody is a christian and knows their stuff and of course it isn't true
44:44now and i think there's a third reason and that is that modern civilization is so utterly impersonal
44:54that in the occult groups you get a deeply personal relationship with about 12 people
45:02and this is of great value to the young but why should man want to embrace the devil and evil well i'm
45:09not quite sure that the occult groups are looking out for the devil or evil i remember one young man who
45:14said he'd been going to a black magic group for two years and lucifer was marvelous he didn't see lucifer
45:21as anti-god he just saw lucifer something big beyond himself what will happen in the future do you think
45:28will the devil win will we oh no the devil never wins he gets occasional victories but no final success
45:37back in romania where the whole dracula business started it is rather ironic that the frescoes
45:43on the churches still reflect the eternal struggle between christianity and the devil a few months ago
45:49i did not believe in the devil and most certainly i did not believe in vampires and i don't think i do now
45:55but i do realize that there's this yearning among people today to believe in something as they see the
46:02cities destroyed around them the landscape scarred all in the pursuit of material gain there's this
46:08ache for something better and less artificial a return to more spiritual values be it a less soulless
46:15way of life even if that means their cult but this is a subject that defies any neat conclusion
46:32it is a subject that is a subject that is a subject that is not being taken to be the oracle a
46:34for all the saints who sit down for a misconception of what they do and the world is that there's this
46:47Amen.