Spectral Homicide
If you love ghosts, gritty history, and true crime twists, you’re in the right place. Join my daughter and me as we investigate the paranormal, revisit haunting historical events, and break down chilling cases—together.
Spectral Homicide
Vladdy the Baddy
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Vlad the Impaler is one of the most recognized and feared dictators. His name became synonymous with terror, torture, and mortality. His reign was a long nightmare for many villagers as he was responsible for the deaths of men, women, and children who became casualties in his path.
Hi everybody, I'm Vera.
SPEAKER_02I'm Mia.
SPEAKER_01And we are Spectral Homicide. Okay, like I know we keep saying we're gonna walk in. Um, I gotta be honest.
SPEAKER_02I forgot. She forgot. Um it's me. It's not her. I'm flaky.
SPEAKER_01You're flaky. I'm taking these off. At some point, we will be more consistent. Right now, I guess it's just not that fucking point. Um, so do you want to do your album of the day?
SPEAKER_02Yes. All right. The album of the day is Self Loather by Wait, Self Loather, yeah. By Ghostbath. This one is signed by the vocalist because I saw them a couple days ago at the Granada. Uh they were an opener for Cradle of Filth. They were with Suffocation and Cultist Black. Cultist Black put on a really good show. Um, I hadn't, I I had heard about them before that, but I hadn't heard them. Um, I listened to their music on the way there. They're definitely better live. Yeah, they're really good live. Like the the bassist was pumping everybody up. I really respected that. Um, I got to talk to the bassist after the show, he was really cool. Um, but I got to meet everyone in Suffocation. Um, and this was my second time meeting Charlie Arigo, which was awesome. Um the one who gave me his guitar pick when um we met last time. Um the last time I saw Suffocation was like three years ago. Same same venue. Um, but they were opening for incantation skeletal remains and stabbing was there, but so was Unmercible. Unmerciful. Sorry, I don't listen to Unmerciful, I forgot their name. Um but yeah, Ghostbass put on a really good show. Um, all the band members were really nice. Um, as which you really you don't know what to expect when you meet DSBM bands because like what is DSBM? Um Depressive Black Metal.
SPEAKER_01Okay, because I was thinking it would be DSM.
SPEAKER_02No same thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um we have a special guest today. We do have a special guest today, but I'm finishing my album. Maybe we don't have special guests. Oh, we know um, but originally formed in 2012, claiming they formed in Chongqing, China, I think.
SPEAKER_01That's how you pronounce that, but Hey, what is that called that you do with your neck?
SPEAKER_02Um, it doesn't really have a name. It's just like I don't know, I really like it. It's like a form of contour.
SPEAKER_01But um It is actually really like first time I ever saw anybody do it was when you did it, but now I'm noticing it more frequently.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I don't do it very often, but I really like it. Um I think Cultist Black actually inspired me to start doing it again because it looked really cool on them, but their entire bodies were blacked out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Like that takes a lot of fucking tempura.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um I really like it. I think it's cool, and I also ran out of my contour.
SPEAKER_00So I'm sorry, go ahead.
SPEAKER_02Go ahead and um they did not form in China, they were just trolling. Um they formed in Minos North Dakota. They are a DSBM band with a shoegazy mort kind of sound, in my opinion. Um I yeah, uh I saw them on the 21st. So and we're recording this on the 26th.
SPEAKER_00Day the 25th. That's right. It's lucky 13 for Chris and I. Right. This is the 13th anniversary of our first date.
SPEAKER_02Oh, um the vocalist was really nice. He put up with me when we met after the show, and I was like pretty much illiterate from anxiety, which I'm normally am, but I just also really wanted to go and go home. And also, someone had broken my nose during that show. Um, so I was just kind of like trying to walk off the pain. You know how like when a cartoon character gets hit really hard on the head and there's like stars floating around? Yeah. That's what I was feeling pretty much the whole time after that. Um actually it was during their set that I got my nose broken.
SPEAKER_01Your nose is still a little crooked.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. Um she fucked my shit up, but surprisingly, there's not bruising.
SPEAKER_01Well, the bruise, no, there is a little bit, but it's gone down more.
SPEAKER_02Oh it's swelling. So I she might have just misplaced it, but like it felt like a break because I heard that wet pencil breaking sound and that wet crunch.
SPEAKER_00You had a pretty she she she rocked your shit.
SPEAKER_02She rung my she rung my bell.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Like um, anyways, yeah. But the vocalist signed my CD and he also opened it because um when I'm too anxious, I can't really function, which is all the time actually. Um I got like low functioning anxiety, high fun. There's features on this album fe featuring oh wow. There's features on this album like CJ McMahon, who it sounds familiar. I cannot for the life any place who I know that where I know them from. But Graph Von Baffament, I talked about did I talk about Psychonaut 4 once? Yeah on the show. Yeah. We know Graph Von Baffament by now. Um this specific album has incredible vocal whales, and the instrumentals are in particular are amazing. Um just an overall really good album. Um they were like really good live. Um I was in front of the speaker and the guitarist. I got a guitar pick. Um I also got a Cradle of Field guitar pick. That was cool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um But uh the the vocalist was like really nice. Um I feel bad because I'm pretty much socially inept anyways. But um Oh, and when I met my friend after the show and the entirety of suffocation, I was like, oh it's so cool to meet you. Um, can we get a picture? Can I get a picture? And it's just like, oh my god, shut up! Shut up. Embarrassing yourself. You're you're embarrassing me in front of the house. Like, oh god. Alright. Um but I met I met a lot of good friends at that show. Um Vitus, Braden, Peyton. Um, and I saw my friend Tate there. Tate's really cool. Um I brought Sam. We love Sam. We do love Sam. But we don't show him on here because he's a minor.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um I forgot that I keep forgetting that Sam's a minor.
SPEAKER_02I forget that I'm 19.
SPEAKER_01I forget that you're 19 as well.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, ew, I'm old. I forget how old I am too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah? No.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I have to fucking have you. Um all right, let's start on the should we do a history first? Because I've got all the atrocities covered.
SPEAKER_01Oh no, I'll do the history first, yeah. Okay, okay. Um our special guest is my husband. He's just here for side comments.
SPEAKER_02Your feet, not for free.
SPEAKER_01Oh, don't show my feet for free. We're doing this on the deck today. I'm gonna be cropping out my feet because don't crop out my sick battery shirt though. Yeah. So um, today we're gonna do uh Vlad the Impaler. Um, so I'm gonna cover the history and some of the some of the things that led up to it. So, anyways, blah blah blah. So biography. Biography. So Vlad Vlad the Impaler was Vlad the Third. Um, in medieval times they did not have uh last names. So um, but he was also known as Vlad Dracula. Well, actually, no, that was his dad's name. He was uh Vlad Dracula the Third. Dracula the Third.
SPEAKER_02Vlad Dracula, Vlad Tepez, Vlad the Impaler.
SPEAKER_01Yes, okay, good, you got it written down. So um they mainly went off like royal lineage and reputation.
SPEAKER_02Um he was the third ruler of urned names, like if you were a miller, you you were Miller. If you were um a if your family were Smiths, you would be Smith.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's true, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they did have last names back then, but they were really uncommon. And if you were like a peasant, you did not have a last name.
SPEAKER_01So baby.
SPEAKER_02You barely even had a first one.
SPEAKER_01You were you were listening to a show about that. How do they pronounce that? Walachia, what Walakia?
SPEAKER_02Wallachia.
SPEAKER_01Was it Walakia? Wallachia.
SPEAKER_02It's Wallachia.
SPEAKER_01Wallachia. Walakia.
SPEAKER_02I thought you were gonna say you were alive back then. What was yours?
SPEAKER_01No, no, he was like watching a show about it when I told him that this is the one we're doing. It was a movie, yeah. So um he was the third ruler of Walka Wallachia, named Vlad. Um, and so he was called Dracula because he was the son of Dracool. Um his dad was Vlad II, a member of the Order of the Dragon, thus nicknamed Dracool.
SPEAKER_02God damn it, you also have mine. That's okay. I'll check it out.
SPEAKER_01That's okay. Um so so but you could correct me on this one because I know I'm gonna fuck this up. So Vlad Tepes, Tepez, Tepez, um, the Romanian monikor for Vlad the Impaler is it basically was because it's how he punished his enemies. Um he was born in 1431 in Transylvania from the modern day Romania. Which is yeah, modern day Romania, which is the uh into the royal house of uh Draculesti? Dracolisti. Dracolisti, yeah. Dracolisti. Um line of Walkia.
SPEAKER_02I'm probably saying that wrong, but we're not Romanian.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm really trying here. I looked up the pronunciations and I knew I'd still fucking. I just don't want to see him. So he's from the royal royal house of Dracolisti, the line of Wallachia. So um, interestingly enough, we're gonna talk about his uh captivity in the Ottoman. Now, when but basically what happened is in 1442, he and his younger brother, uh Radu, were Radu Radu. I don't know how to pronounce it.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, you're getting stuck on the names.
SPEAKER_01Okay, it's hard. Get it together. I'm trying. They were traded to the Ottoman uh Sultan as a political as to be political hostages to ensure their father's loyalty. Um, so psychological effects from this, the impact was basically he was taught like Turkish Turkish military tactics, and it gave him this fucking psych, the psychological fucking to know like how Sun Tzu said, to know your enemy, you must become your enemy.
SPEAKER_02I would have loved to have seen a art of war written by Vlad the Impaler, even though it would have just been put that bitch on a stick. Like, put that bitch on a stick.
SPEAKER_00Oh look, I've been impaled.
SPEAKER_02I like I like the art of war because it's just like shit that you know nowadays, but it's like that was revolutionary back then because it's like to know your enemy. Basically, you don't fucking know shit. Fight downhill. Wait, you know, fight uphill so the sun coming up blinds your enemies downhill. Oh my god, you're a genius. Oh my god, you really got me there. That's so profound. How dumb were people back then? Alright, I know that's like I don't mean to be disrespectful at all. Because like Sunzu, cool, that's my homie, I guess. Um but he was a genius for his time, but it's like, huh? Whoa, yeah, you could have fooled me.
SPEAKER_01Um but he's alive in our hearts. So, okay, but um, so basically as a result, he became just completely fucking psychologically twisted. And that he used all of these things that he learned from you know being this captive as a child. Um don't cover any of the atrocities.
unknownThat's my job.
SPEAKER_01I will not cover the atrocities, it's for you. So basically that's what he used for his um for his warfare methods. Just, I mean, he everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten, basically, written by Vlad the Impaler. So it's like it's it's seriously, it's a poem.
SPEAKER_02I feel maternal.
SPEAKER_01So um in 1447, tragedy struck the Wallachia um struck his family because the Wallachia nobles assassinated his father and they buried his older brother alive.
SPEAKER_02Oh fuck, yeah, they make Jacob's to him. That's a spoiler. Sorry, anybody watching Euphoria, don't don't let like sorry.
SPEAKER_01What? Oh my god.
SPEAKER_02You don't even watch that show.
SPEAKER_01I don't. Um, so basically, he held a grudge. And so when he began his reign of terror in 1456, he was there till 1462. Um he as revenge, he held an Easter banquet for the boyers and the nobles, and he invited them all and their families.
SPEAKER_00Another event. This is the history. Okay, another event happened in the first time. Okay, what happened to haven't like no talk about I'm talking about the history? Okay, okay, I know.
SPEAKER_01Dude, we're so excited for this one. We are so excited. What? I'm not the forest. Oh.
SPEAKER_02Don't talk about that. That's mine.
SPEAKER_01We won't talk about Bruno. Okay, so I will. So as bait, he uh so it was called the um, sorry, you like totally distracted me.
SPEAKER_02I'm sorry, I gotta make sure you're not covering my shit.
SPEAKER_01It is called the Easter Feast Massacre of 1457. And as bait, he was using it as like he was saying it's like an olive wrench. Your families, bring your families, all of them, all of them. So funny. He said, bring your families. We're gonna have this great feast, dress your best, dress to impress. And um, he fucked them up and their families too. Basically, um he held a grudge and he used this as an event to avenge his family. So after the meal, he began his investigation by starting a casual conversation with them asking about how many princes they've had um in Wallachia, how many have they had rule? They were super excited, they got super boastful and they started bragging about their princes throughout history. And then he used their answers as grounds to try them and punish them for treason. I forgot to play the album in the background. That's okay. So, so what? Ominous music, Chris said.
SPEAKER_02Here, I got you.
SPEAKER_01She's gonna bring the ominous music.
SPEAKER_02So of course I am, that's my specialty.
SPEAKER_01And then so he ended up torturing them after guards seized the 200 boyers along with their wives and children. But to be nice, he split them up by age and fitness levels.
SPEAKER_02Fucked their shit up.
SPEAKER_01He's like, okay, I'll tell you what, you're like three, so we're gonna put you in a different group.
SPEAKER_02We're gonna put you on a shorter stick. How about that?
SPEAKER_01Like one of those little campfire ones.
SPEAKER_02Did you roast my little skewer?
SPEAKER_01Oh he put them on toothpicks. No, okay, I'm sorry. This is actually fucked up, and I probably should take this out, but I'm not going to.
SPEAKER_02This is so I'll put on Sun O instead of the album, just because, like, there's no fucking CD player out here.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. I fucked your shit up. I wanted to do it on the deck. It's so nice outside, you guys.
SPEAKER_02It's not, it's 88 degrees. She wants me dead.
SPEAKER_01We're in the shade, and there is a still a vampire. Okay, which is ironic because we're covering vampires.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So, um, he splits them up by age and fitness. The younger ones, um, and the ones who were like too old or fit to they they couldn't do shit, basically. Um, he turned them into slaves and he made them march for 50 fucking miles in their party attire to their new destination.
SPEAKER_02At least they were looking good.
SPEAKER_01I mean, right? Dressed to impress. Basically, it was like a parade.
SPEAKER_02That's so cool.
SPEAKER_01He's so fucking twisted. Um, things that he hated was theft and deceit. He put a gold even though he did that. Well, yeah, I mean, like.
SPEAKER_02It's only okay when I do it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Hypocrisy at its finest.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01So he put a gold cup at the in a fountain, in the center of a fountain. Nobody ever stole it because they were terrified of being executed.
SPEAKER_02That's so fucking that's some aura right there.
SPEAKER_01I swear to God.
SPEAKER_02He's so cool.
SPEAKER_01Um, I'm not gonna talk about the forest. I did mine. It's yours. I wrote it down, but I'm gonna go right past it. Um, so uh let me turn my page then. I'm just gonna go away from that forest. No, I just can't see the forest of the trees. Um now I'm gonna start going through like the deviant barrels. Uh burials, not barrels. There were no barrels. There were barrels there, but we're not talking about deviant barrels. I don't even know what those are. So, but a deviant burial basically was what they started doing in Romania as a result of like some of the things that people basically started freaking the fuck out, and they were convinced that like the dead were gonna climb out of their coffins. And this is actually how I got like fascinated with uh Vlad the Impaler because they started doing like they did the shit in World War II too. Yeah, in the 13th and the 18th century in Europe, they would do these anti-vampire coffins where they would trap the corpse, they would have cages over them, yeah. Yes, they had cages over them, and but they weren't just cages, the cages were had long nails, like the bars. So then it didn't actually cover the coffin, it went through the fucking coffin.
SPEAKER_02Like those, like those spiky rocks that fall on you in Mario.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, sure. Just like that. That's where Mario got it from, actually. I believe you. Yeah, no, um, so basically, like these the legs to those those cages that they put over the coffins went through the coffins because they were like nails, and what they would do is they would pin the limbs, they were iron, um through the fucking they would pin them to their fucking coffins. They're doing this to me tomorrow to the fucking base of their coffins. So, like, boom, and they would bang it in there, and so it's like they were literally like pounding these cages, and that's how those cages stay.
SPEAKER_02Would it be weird if I put that in my will?
SPEAKER_01No, you can put anything you want in your will. So now, this is where shit starts to get. I mean, and this is kind of mean, but I actually laughed when I read this. But it's like, so these things, this is called like the shroud eaters, right? So um villagers started hearing like muffled scratching noises coming from the fucking coffins, and this is where the vam the panic, the vampire panic started like to fucking come all over Europe. I mean, it's crazy.
SPEAKER_02Like the vampire menace, like the Skyrim from like Dawn Guard by Skype.
SPEAKER_01Exactly like that. Um now they were saying that the scratching noises coming from the graves was from decomposing gases or animals that we're trying to either get into or out of the coffins.
SPEAKER_02I don't know how they get in there in the first place. I don't know. They like it there, I guess.
SPEAKER_01I guess. I honestly don't know I did not know that decomposing gases would make a scratching noise. I don't even know what they do. Decomposing gases are. What is that?
SPEAKER_02The gases that your body releases as it decomposes. Oh you're made of a lot of things.
SPEAKER_03Like when it's in the bedroom, stuff like that. Yeah, no, she oh my god.
SPEAKER_01Why do you gotta bring up the pass?
SPEAKER_02You could handle something with your farm. Don't look at the back. But when I was driving back from Lawrence, when I was coming back from the Cradle of Filth concert, I smelled a dead body on the I-70.
SPEAKER_01That doesn't surprise me at all.
SPEAKER_02No, it smelled like a human dead body.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, that does.
SPEAKER_02And it was like I was like tweaking because I was like, oh my god, stay awake, stay awake, stay awake. Because Sam was in the passenger seat and he was fucking conked out. He was so, so sleepy. Um and I was like trying to keep myself awake because we were driving and we're in the middle of fucking nowhere. I got lost for like 30 miles, but um, that's besides the point. Um, I was driving and I was trying to like Sam kept fucking farting.
SPEAKER_01So maybe that's what you smelled.
SPEAKER_02No, it wasn't.
SPEAKER_01It was Sam the window. Sam's decomposing gases.
SPEAKER_03I thought it was a dead body a couple of times in our room.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. No, but it's like unmistakable the smell of a human dead body. Like it's also like instinctual that we know when we smell it because of caveman days.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02Like when we like how we can always tell when someone is sick. Excuse me. Oh my god! Speaking of decomposing gases, you son of bitch.
SPEAKER_00We're outside lustard gas.
SPEAKER_01Okay, excuse me.
SPEAKER_02Um, but like Sam kept farting, so I was like, oh my god, I need to roll down the fucking window. Open the sun, boom.
SPEAKER_01No. Wolf. The sun wolf heat rises.
SPEAKER_02The worst decay smell I've ever smelled in my life. Talk about the dead body.
SPEAKER_01So people thought, because of the scratching noises, that the dead were chewing through their coffins.
SPEAKER_02But you know which this song that's playing right now, um, Scott Connor of Zaster, my friend, recorded while locked in a coffin.
SPEAKER_01I remember you telling me about that. This is the song. That's actually really cool.
SPEAKER_02He's claustrophobic too, so it was it was his fucking idea too. Like, what are you doing, man? Commit to the bit, man. He did, he did, he committed to the bit. He was like, if you guys can get a coffin, then fucking by all means I'll do it. So and then he did.
SPEAKER_01They're like, bet. Okay, here we go. Sorry, grandma, scoot over.
SPEAKER_02They got a coffin.
SPEAKER_01They borrowed it from a relative.
SPEAKER_02He's really tall. I don't know how they fit him in there, but like, I guess you like milk. These things do happen. Sorry, go ahead.
SPEAKER_01So people thought that the dead were chewing their way through their burial clothes and that they would gain strength from it and get out of their coffins and Come get their brains or whatever. I don't even know. So then they started digging people up, jamming bricks and stones in their corpses' mouths to block them from chewing.
SPEAKER_02I've seen skulls with the with the brick marks. Yes. And the bricks still. That's like every fucking thing.
SPEAKER_01Or if they really, really like thought for sure that this person was a fucking vampire, they wouldn't not only do that, but they would bury them without a coffin. They would place them in the dirt with heavy boulders, but face down. Because if they were gonna start chewing their way or digging their way out, they'd go.
SPEAKER_02I eat dirt. Oh my god, we need to go to Europe someday because I would fucking kill to go to Romania and see all the vampire stuff. I want to see it. Yeah. We should all go to Europe someday. Yeah, someday. Yeah, someday.
SPEAKER_01Someday. Yeah. Um, but they buried them face down so that nobody could kiss their ass. No, I'm just kidding. That way, if they if they started digging, they wouldn't come out of the ground, they'd just go further in it. Um, and then came that's like the and then I promise we'll walk in. Um, in St. Joseph, there was a really cool museum.
SPEAKER_02Is it the asylum? Yes, it is.
SPEAKER_01Yes, we do, because it was really cool. My dad loved it. He and I had so much fun. So we got to go to the morgue and everything. And when we were leaving, I was like, wow, it's the razor wire looks brand new. And Maddie goes, Mom, they still have people here. I was like, what? She's like, Yeah, there's like eight or nine hundred patients still in this, it's still an active asylum.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that place must be fucking huge.
SPEAKER_01Because Maddie always, oh my god.
SPEAKER_02What I don't remember what wait, what did you even say?
SPEAKER_01Oh, you were little when Maddie thought this. Okay, now you gotta explain it, babe.
SPEAKER_02Wait, give him a mic.
SPEAKER_01Well, he he's right next to me.
SPEAKER_02Everybody's talking so quiet. I don't need a mic. You do, I don't, because if I need a mic, you need a mic.
SPEAKER_03I speak louder than you. Anyway, we were on a road trip and the s silos at the farmhouses, Maddie called them asylums. And she said, look at all the asylums on the side of the road.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that would probably work, actually. That's like that's like Saw 10. Like Saw 10 when they were locked in the grain silo. Oh my god, how many saw movies are there?
SPEAKER_0110. I do know that they have a musical and we get to go see it. I'm so excited. Me too. Okay, so now here is where this is where like Bram Stoker, Stoker, not Stroker.
SPEAKER_02Stoker on my Bram to Ly Dracula. What? I can't help it. Anytime I hear his name, I gotta do it.
SPEAKER_01So this is where he starts to like get his information, get his inspiration for his fucking uh for his Dracula, right? So I'm not gonna go to the day. Yes, you may. So he's he got this thing, it's like the boxes of earth. So basically, his inspiration for Dracula, Dracula could not be put in a wooden coffin with the satin thing. He had to be buried, not buried, but he had he had to be um laying in his native dirt. So basically what happened was they had so he had uh in his book, Dracula, he put that they had 50 wooden shipping crates filled with soil from Transylvania.
SPEAKER_02I got a jar of dirt. I got a jar.
SPEAKER_01So from uh from their homeland. So that is where uh Dracula would get his power from, is from the dirt from the home. It's called the native soil rule from dirt from the homeland. They would lay in it at night. So I want to lay in dirt, and so yeah, so he didn't soil, so he didn't lay in silk or a silk lined coffin, he slept in dirt to protect his power. That's so cool. This is where he got it. So there's actually no relation to any of this whatsoever. It's it's mainly a geographical coincidence, is but he was originally going to name him Count Wamper.
SPEAKER_02What the fuck kind of name is that?
SPEAKER_01Or Wamper? I don't even know.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, that's like Whooper, like the Pokemon.
SPEAKER_01But then he went to the library in 1890 and he read a book called The Principalities of Wallachia and Moldova by Moldova. Moldova by William Wilkinson. And then he started to read about Vlad the Impaler, and so he was inspired to write Dracula.
SPEAKER_02It's a way cooler name.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it really is.
SPEAKER_02Womper. That just pissed me off.
SPEAKER_01What do you mean? Womp, womp. All right, okay, and that's that's all I got for that, but it was really cool.
SPEAKER_02Can I talk about the atrocities now?
SPEAKER_01Yes, it's your turn.
SPEAKER_02Okay, yay. I didn't get that, I didn't get that much, but I did cover the forest of corpses.
SPEAKER_00That was really cool to read about. Oh, it's so fucking cool.
SPEAKER_02Um Vlad the Impaler, Vlad Teppas, Vlad the Third, Vlad Dracula. The namesake of the famous count has many names, but that will be covered by mom, which it was. I'm gonna talk about his brutality. He was the ruler of 15th century Wallachia. He was crowned prince three times within his rule. Um, and alright. Um he was the son of Vlad Dracula II, who was a member of the Order of the Dragon, and he was tasked with aiding in the war against the growing Ottoman Empire. Um but his signature method of punishment against um What the fuck? Enemies? Yeah, I know. Not only enemy soldiers, but civilians connected to the Ottomans, including women and children. They just happen to be Turkish, um, was impalement. Um he would slay entire villages, leaving the impaled bodies as a message for his enemies. Can you fucking imagine? Um you know that scene in Mulan when the when they discovered that village that was burnt by the Huns and that an unsettling ass feeling? Can you fucking imagine walking through all of that? All those bodies completely silent, not a not a sound. Like everything is just dead. So go ahead and can you like explain what a failing is? Because at first I didn't know he just mounted them on a fucking stick, like drove a pike through their chest, and they were in the ground, like a garden of people. Kind of, yeah. So you know how you roast marshmallows? Yeah, put he put them on the sticks like marshmallows. And just left them there. Yeah. And like the the pike would be like through your chest. Um, and you just gotta, you just gotta like I think it's a bit like that one method of torture that we saw in the medieval torture museum where they put you above the pike and then the pike slowly goes through your chest as you slide down it. I should probably post some of the pictures. Then you get a fuck ton of splinters. Can you imagine the splinters? That's the real horror. I mean, other than like being fucking murdered, but yeah, yeah, that would definitely suck. Murdered to death. Murdered to death. Well, they're doing this to me tomorrow. Like um. Alright. So he had a lot of methods that would make him considered like a modern-day war criminal. But whatever. Criminal shriminal. I'm saying, right? Um, he used scorched earth methods of retreat, um, starvation, ambushes, guerrilla warfare, and many other tactics that again would have made him a war criminal. Right? So classy. Um faceful Chris ass. Cool. Um now the most notorious of his atrocities committed were his forest of corpses. Now, in the Carpathian foothills outside of Targovista, uh the capital of Wallachia, in 1462, after he lured those people out, I'm assuming, because like that's why I gasped when he said 1462, because I was like, oh my god, wait. Yeah, was that the same fucking thing?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02But, anyways, he cleared out a bunch of villages. 23,884 corpses were impaled in the forest in the Carpathian Hills. Imagine, dude. Like, um, this was discovered by the Sultan Mehmed II after storming the city. It was all Turks. Um, he used it as a method of psychological warfare, which I mean it fucking worked. Because they retreated, yeah. He abandoned his army. Yeah, they got they had to retreat on their own. Yeah. Um, but yeah. Vladim Paler is also is actually viewed as a hero to Romanians because of his resistance and his ability to protect his people from invasion. Um, and also his militant prowess makes him a very honored historical figure, especially in modern-day context of how fucked the Ottoman Empire was.
SPEAKER_00I put my microphone over there.
SPEAKER_02Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_00All right.
SPEAKER_02But I'm glad he joined us. It's still like 23,884. When I read that, I was like, what the fuck? And then walking through that. So, yeah. Um walking through that, knowing that this is your kin. Basically, it's just like, oh yeah, we're doing this to you. And you gotta walk through that the silence and you gotta like prepare yourself. There's no way to prepare for that. Yeah, it was crazy. Um, I gotta know what like weapons he was using. Because like I'm sure that I wanna I wanna go to Romania so bad.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's that that's what piqued my interest was when I saw that show, and he was like going through the um the like the Romanian, like you know graveyards. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Special forces with us.
SPEAKER_02I can't even imagine how bad their graveyards are. Sorry, go ahead.
SPEAKER_03I said we had the Romanian special forces with us in Afghanistan.
SPEAKER_02Shit. I mean, you probably needed them.
SPEAKER_03They were pretty badass.
SPEAKER_02I mean, yeah, they have been for like what 600 years in Romanian mythology.
SPEAKER_01They were troubled, they said that trouble are troubled spirits that are said to have risen from the grave, they are attributed with the abilities to transform into a beast, become invisible, and to gain vitality from the blood of their victims. And that's where the that's where the lit the legend of vampires came from. So but thank you so much for joining us today. We hope you keep listening.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And okay, I'm gonna stop.
