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iFtrgpok ifttgaHine
October 30, 1991
Interview with a Vampirologist
Due to the recent rise of vampire attacks
in Athens-Clarke county, we contacted Dr.
Raymond McNally of Boston College, the
world's leading expert on vampires and
their ways.
Flagpole: What’s the best way to kill a
vampire?
DrM: Well, first of all, in Transylvania, it’s by
driving a stake through the heart in daylight
hours. Another way is by taking an iron oar
heated red hot and plunging it into the
corpse, that’s much better than just a stake.
The point to remember, however, is that it's
not the way it’s done in the movies where
you just drive the stake through the heart,
you have to drive it through the body into the
ground underneath the corpse. So, in Tran
sylvania, as I witnessed myself, the coffins
are made of wood. When you drive that bar
in it goes through the wood and pins the
corpse to the earth, that’s the whole idea,
like [pinning] a butterfly. And then, after
that, as sort of double insurance, if your still
worried that some day some idiot will come
along and pull out the stake and you’ve got
your problem back again, what you do is
burn the body. Stake it out, and then burn it,
because the vampire is not an apparition,
it’s not a ghost, it’s a walking corpse Get rid
of the corpse, (and you) get rid of that
particular vampire.
FP: The sunlight won't destroy the body?
DrM: No, that’s the movies. In the Transyl
vanian folklore, and in the novel by the way,
he walks during the daylight hours. He’s not
as strong as he is at night, he can’t attack,
but he can move.
FP: What happens when sunlight hits him?
DrM: Nothing. He doesn’t like the sunlight,
but, as with the disease Porphyria, there is
a chemical reaction to the sunlight. He is
just not as strong in the daylight as he is in
the dark.
FP: What's Porphy
ria?
DrM: This is a rare
disease that’s only
been diagnosed in
the twentieth cen
tury. It’s an excess
of porphins in the
body; it’s one of the
possibilities for the
basis of vampirism
In one form of the
disease, you can’t
stand the bright
light, you can’t go
out into the light, lit
erally, because it
hurts your eyes, and
also you develop
skin lesions which
tend to bleed in the
light. So, in the old
days, you know I’m talking the old days, not
now, 500 years ago, standard treatment for
the disease was to drink blood, fresh blood,
to replace the blood you’ve lost. You have to
remember that these nobles tended to in
termarry, and keep this property in the
family, so the genetic structure tended to
break down and you’d have these aberra
tions. When a Transylvanian peasant said.
“Hey there’s a vampire up in that castle,”
well, sometimes he wasn’t kidding.
FP: These nobles, being nobles, when they
needed blood, just went down into the
village and got some?
DrM: Right.
FP: What is your
opinion of Anne
Rice's novels?
DrM: I think they’re
very well written, fas
cinating, I like them.
But they are morose,
they are perverse.
There’s a strange
phenomenon, where
vampires seem to be
very bored after a
while, and she over
throws the tradition
completely.
FP: Ri±, ht, that's
what bothers me
about them, the most
appealing thing
about the vampire
legend to me is that
there are these
rules...
DrM: Yes!
FP: The horrific is mixed with the rational,
science with religion. A vampire can de
stroy you with a single attack, both killing
you and claiming your eternal soul. But if
you keep your rationality, and follow these
rules...
DrM: Yeah, there are ways, there are meth
ods, there are weapons you have at your
disposal, that's correct. For example the
folklore of garlic, it’s a potent weapon. The
peasants use it to ward off disease, which it
does by the way, so anything that wards off
colds, the flu, whatever, can ward off evil.
So yeah, you have the weapons.
FP: That myth, the blood drinker, the soul
stealer, is common to many cultures.
DrM: That’s correct, I would say it’s univer
sal. There are Chinese vampires, Roman
vampires, Greek vampires, it’s a very old
myth.
FP: Let me ask about a few addenda to the
vampire myth; If you throw rice on the ground
the vampire has to stop and count each
gram?
DrM: Right. Here's the way you do it though;
on the way from the graveyard to the village,
you toss the rice and the vampire must pick
up each gram, and if you throw enough on
the ground it will keep him busy until sunrise
and then he’ll have to go back and rest in his
grave.
FP: How about the churchbell.
DrM: If a vampire rings achurchbell. every
one who hears it dies on the spot.
FP: Yikes!
DrM: It’s important to remember though,
that a vampire always begins by attacking
those with whom he was intimate in life, his
immediate family. He doesn’t want to go
through eternity alone.
FP: What can I do to protect myself from a
vampire in Athens, GA. ?
DrM: Garlic. Garlic is universally effective,
to ward off, but not to kill a vampire. So in
Athens. Georgia, smear yourself with gar
lic.
Joe Greema
Garlic. Garlic is universally
effective, to ward off, but
not to kill a vampire- So in
Athens, Georgia, smear
yourself with garlic.
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