5 Deadly Vampires From Legends Around The World

1.      The Brahmaparusha

The Brahmaparusha vampire is the brain-eating vampire from India and it is creepier than many other vampires. The Brahmaparusha is a male vampire who has a strange habit of collecting its victim’s intestines as trophies and wearing them around its head like a turban, as a sign of power to show off how powerful he is. Pretty messed up right? This vampire’s ego doesn’t stop there because it would also pour its victims blood into a skull cup which it carries about for drinking blood.  Once the vampire had drunk its victim’s blood, it would proceed to crack the victim’s skull open, then feast on the brain, which happens to be its favourite part. Finally after the vampire would be done eating, it would tear open the victim and rip out their intestines which he would then wrap around his head and neck and wear them as a trophy. The vampire also has a big appetite and it would take more than a few victims before it got its fill.

It is unknown how these vampires were created. Some believe that it’s a demon who possesses a corpse or living person in order to keep feeding, and it begins to eventually destroy the host body from the inside. Unfortunately they are very fearsome and the only way to prevent being eaten is to run away and hide somewhere and hope that it doesn’t get you.

2.      The Aufhocker

The aufhocker is a German shapeshifting, vampire-like creature which doesn’t have an identifiable form.  The creature is known to take on a human shape, the form of animals, and at other times it can appear to be like a grotesque beast.  The aufhocker is said to most commonly take the form of a monstrously large dog, a little old woman, or a businessman.  The aufhocker is considered to be extremely dangerous and it is classed as a vampire because its preferred method of killing its victims is by ripping their throats out and sucking their blood.  The vampire is known to lurk in any place which you may think of being “cliche” for an evil entity to reside, such as graveyards, dark forests, a crossing at a road, and anywhere that someone has been murdered.

The vampire stalks lonely people whilst its hidden under the cover of night, then when its prey’s backs are turned, it proceeds to jump on top of their back, paralysing them as they try to escape.  There are two main ways in which the vampire’s unlucky victims are overpowered and brought down to the ground.  One method is that the victims are too frightened by the attack, that they lose consciousness and collapse, while others state that when the creature jumps on its victim’s backs, it continues to grow in size and weight, and for every step that the victim takes, the creature grows even larger, resulting in the victim collapsing under all of the weight.  The vampire can then enjoy its blood meal, as its victim lies helpless.

The aufhocker cannot be killed, but it can be frightened away by the sound or church bells, sunlight, and by the victim praying (Good luck to them!).  This is one more reason for some of us not to walk outside alone at night!

3.      The Azeman Vampire

The azeman is a vampire in folklore from Surinam, which is situated north of Brazil, and it is in South America.  This vampire can be male or female, and it has the ability to shape-shift into different animals which it uses to search for pray during the night, and it is not classified as “undead” because the vampire is a living person who chooses to transform at night, and who cannot be easily identified as a vampire when they are in their human form. 

Similar to many European vampires, the azeman has a very bad habit or obligation to count things, and people can use this as a way to distract the vampire during an attack and run to safety, defend their home from the threat of attack, or even distract the vampire until daylight.  A good way to protect yourself from this vampire is to put a pile of seeds in front of your house entrances and windows, so that the vampire will have to count them all before they are able to enter the premises.  Protecting yourself from a vampire and farming at the same time is like killing two birds with one stone right?

A way to discover who the vampire is, is to get a big pile of seeds and scatter them when you see the azeman, so that it will take a very long time to count them all, resulting in the process taking until morning, then the azeman turns into their human form, and it can be identified.  This type of vampire does not die when the sun shines on it, but if someone sees it transforming back into a human, they can use other “methods” to get rid of the vampire, before it gets rid of you.

4.      The Vampire from Berwik

In Berwik, England, there was once a vampire known as the Berwik vampire.  There once lived a religious man who everyone looked up to, but when he died, it was discovered that he had lived a life full of sin, and everyone disliked him afterwards.  The man died, possibly as a result of a plague, and since no one was too fond of the sins that he committed, he was denied to be buried in a normal graveyard, therefore his grave stood alone on unconsecrated grounds.

Soon after the man was buried, a pale apparition which resembled the man, was seen roaming the streets at night and attracting the attention of many dogs who followed him around, and barked endlessly all night long.  Residents were too afraid to walk outside at night, in case they crossed paths with the wicked creature and its hellhounds.  Disease began to spread around and some people thought that it was caused by the vile man getting revenge and spreading a plague.  A group of people eventually decided to try and fix the problem, therefore they went to the man’s grave during the day, dug him out, chopped his body into numerous pieces, then finally burned the body, in hope that this would destroy the undead phantom for good.  After all of this took place, the man ceased to wander the streets at night, and the loud barking of dogs also stopped, thus assuring the residents that evil had been vanquished and once again, they were free to walk the streets at night.  All did not go to well afterwards, because the plague returned to Berwik and many of its population perished, but many believed that it was caused by the previous presence of the vampire.

5.      The Jaracaca

The jaracaca is a vampire from Brazil, and isn’t quite like your everyday vampire.  The jaracaca usually appears in the shape of a snake, and it loves to drink blood and a woman’s breast milk!  The vampire slithers its way between a nursing mother and her child while the mother sleeps, and then it puts the end of its tail into the baby’s mouth in order to keep it quiet, so that it can then drink the mother’s breast milk undetected. 

This vampire prefers milk to blood, and will only drink blood from anyone if there is not enough milk available for it to drink until it is satisfied.  The jaracaca doesn’t only pose as a danger by drinking your blood, but it can also secret venom into its victims, which then results in the victim going crazy.  Waking up crazy isn’t something that most of us plan every night before we go to bed!

The Vengeful Ghost of Carl Pruitt

In Kentucky, June 1838, a carpenter named Carl Pruitt arrived at his house and he caught his wife having an affair with another man.  The other man managed to run away and escape by leaping out of a window, but carl went into a blind rage and he choked his wife to death with a metal chain.  When Carl's rage subsided, he then realised what he had done and that his life was ruined, so he decided to take his own life.  Unlike many couples who die, Carl and his wife were not buried beside each other.  They were not even buried in the same cemetery.

A few weeks after carl had been buried, residents noticed that a discolouration was developing at the top of his headstone and it looked like the shape of a chain.  Some of the locals suggested that it was a bad omen and that the headstone should be removed and placed somewhere else, but officials disagreed with the idea and they chose to let the headstone stay.  A month or so passed and a group of boys were passing past the grave on bicycles, and one of the boys named James Collins, stopped and threw rocks and chipped the supposedly "cursed"gravestone, probably to show that he wasn't scared of all of the hype that the grave had gained.  On his way back home, James lost control of his bike, as if it were being manipulated by an unknown force, and it began to pick up speed until he eventually crashed his bike into a tree.  To everyone's surprise, the bicycle chain not only came off of the bike, but it also managed to wrap itself around James's neck, strangling him to death.  News of the incident spread quickly, and when residents went to investigate the gravestone, they noticed that it was unharmed, despite James's friends saying that James had thrown stones at it. This event began to fuel rumours that Carl's Ghost was responsible for the boys death.

As expected, James's mother was heartbroken that she had lost her son.  A month after, she went to the graveyard with an axe, and enraged, she hacked away at Collin's gravestone until it lay on the floor in numerous pieces.  The next day, she was hanging her washing outside on a washing line made of chain instead of wire or rope, and she slipped and got entangled with the chain.  despite all of her struggling and her best efforts, she was unable to break free and she choked to death on the chain.  After her death, Carl's gravestone appeared to once again, be undamaged.

Rumours continued to circulate, and shortly after the incident, a farmer and his family were riding past the graveyard on their horse-drawn carriage.  The farmer began to boast how he wasn't afraid of ghosts, then he pulled out his pistol and began firing shots at the gravestone, damaging it.  The horses that were pulling the carriage got spooked and they began to run faster and faster.  The family managed to jump off to safety, but the farmer stayed on and tried to stop the horses from running.  The horses ran too fast round a corner, resulting in the farmer being thrown off of the carriage and getting his neck caught on one of the chains on the traces.  The farmer's neck was broken, and once again, another victim was claimed and the gravestone remained undamaged.

The police were eventually called to the cemetery to try and investigate the gravestone and all of the misfortune that it had caused, but there was nothing that they could actually do, and one of the officers laughed at the gravestone and at the townspeople's superstitions.  The officers eventually got into their car and began to drive away.  The officer who had laughed was driving the car and he glanced back towards the graveyard.  He saw a light rising from the graveyard and quickly fly towards the police car.  The officer suddenly lost control of the car and it began to pick up speed.  The car went off of the road and crashed between two posts and began to roll around.  The officer who was sitting in the passenger seat was thrown out of the car, but he only suffered minor injuries. The officer managed to get to his feet and he went to check on his partner.  His partner had been killed, but not due to the impact of the car crash itself.  There had been a metal chain hanging between the two posts, and as the car crashed, the chain broke off through the car's windshield, and wrapped around the officer's neck, and it almost took his head off!

After this incident, most of the residents became afraid and they decided to avoid the cemetery altogether.  One man named Arthur Lewis wasn't afraid and he was adamant that everything was superstitious gibberish, and he was determined to prove it to everyone.  He told his wife what his plans were before he left to go to the graveyard at night with a hammer and chisel.  Arthur began to chip away at the gravestone, and everyone who lived nearby could hear the noise.  Suddenly, the noise of the chiseling was replaced with a spine-chilling scream.  A group of men with lamps ran towards the cemetery where they found Arthur's dead body lying at the cemetery gate with the gate's chain wrapped around his neck.  Despite countless witnesses having heard the gravestone being chiseled, it remained undamaged.

Eventually, the graves from the cemetery were moved to somewhere else, but Carl's grave remained and was forgotten under weeds.  In the 1950s, a strip mining operation took place in the area, and Carl's grave was destroyed in the process.  No more deaths had happened as a result of this, but the 5 previous similar deaths still remain to be mysterious and unexplained.

Do you think that all of these related deaths were just caused by random unfortunate events, or do you think that they were caused by dark forces at work?  Let me know by commenting in the comments section.

The Vengeful Ghost from Indonasia - Sundel Bolong

A Sundel Bolong is a ghost from Malaysian and Indonesian mythology.  The ghost is of a woman with beautiful long black hair, and dresses in a white dress.  She has a hole gaping from her back, and her name means “prostitute with a hole in her back” and this refers to the hole in her back and her method of catching her victims, which tend to be male.

In folklore, there are several variations surrounding the life and death of the Sundel Bolong, but it is supposed to be the ghost of a woman who was forced into prostitution and eventually because pregnant.  The woman later either died and gave birth in her coffin; or died during childbirth and by some strange phenomena, the baby came out of her back instead of the usual process, resulting in the big hole in her back which she hides with her long black hair.  Legend has it that she roams the world looking for her baby, and she is also said to take revenge on men by seducing them with her beauty and scent of perfume.  She then shows the men the bloody and maggot infested hole in her back, and the scent of perfume changes to that of rotting flesh.  If a man is put off by this, she will castrate him, then kill him and devour his organs.

I know that sometimes, times are hard and a man can't be too picky with his women, but it would be a long time in hell, before I hook up with a woman with maggots coming out of a hole in her back! Castration and a grisly death would also be pretty bad, but I could probably escape while she looks for a big enough knife....  What option would you rather pick? Let me know in the comments section!

The Vampire from Berwik

In Berwik, England, there was once a vampire known as the Berwik vampire.  There once lived a religious man who everyone looked up to, but when he died, it was discovered that he had lived a life full of sin, and everyone disliked him afterwards.  The man died, possibly as a result of a plague, and since no one was too fond of the sins that he committed, he was denied to be buried in a normal graveyard, therefore his grave stood alone on unconsecrated grounds.

Soon after the man was buried, a pale apparition which resembled the man, was seen roaming the streets at night and attracting the attention of many dogs who followed him around, and barked endlessly all night long.  Residents were too afraid to walk outside at night, in case they crossed paths with the wicked creature and its hellhounds.  Disease began to spread around and some people thought that it was caused by the vile man getting revenge and spreading a plague.  A group of people eventually decided to try and fix the problem, therefore they went to the man’s grave during the day, dug him out, chopped his body into numerous pieces, then finally burned the body, in hope that this would destroy the undead phantom for good.  After all of this took place, the man ceased to wander the streets at night, and the loud barking of dogs also stopped, thus assuring the residents that evil had been vanquished and once again, they were free to walk the streets at night.  All did not go to well afterwards, because the plague returned to Berwik and many of its population perished, but many believed that it was caused by the previous presence of the vampire.

Some people classed the apparition as a ghost, while others thought that it was a vampire, and some people even thought that it was the man being controlled by Satan himself.  What do you think it was? Let me know in the comments.

The Dark Side Of Kuman Thong Spirit Vessel for Good Luck and Wealth

In Thailand, there is a belief that there are effigies which grant their owner luck and wealth, known as Kuman Thong, which translates into “golden child”.  They are similar to the effigies for the boy spirit Elegua in the Santeria religion in Cuba.  The charm describes the spirit of a young child or baby and they are usually made of wood, and sometimes they may even be made partly of gold.  The boy spirit is also a big responsibility to take care of.  The effigies are given a home on their owner’s shines,  and they require to be looked after well, given food, treats, and drink daily, and they are worshiped and prayed to so that they may grant the owner luck and wealth.  If the owner neglects this responsibility that they have taken up, then it’s believed that the spirit boy can become enraged and cause misfortune.  This practice has been around since the 18^th century and it was told in a Thai fairy-tale called Khun Chang Khun Phaen, and the main character gains a powerful spirit by removing the stillborn foetus of his son from his wife.

Like many good things, there is a darker and more eerie side to the Kuma Thong, and it doesn't involve any malicious curses or ghost stories, or poltergeists in which the owner of the charm is harmed, like you would expect.  In the past, the original Kuma Thongs were required to be made with a dead fetus, which were often surgically removed from the wombs of their mothers.  The dead fetus would be transported to a cemetery where a sequence of dark incantations were chanted as the fetus is being dry roasted above a fire so that the spirit can be bound to it. The name "Golden Boy" doesn’t sound too appropriate now right?  Illegal practitioners of this are also known to bless their fetuses by covering them in fat from human babies or Nam-man, which is gathered by placing a candle under the chin of the corpse of a pregnant woman then collecting the oil which comes out of her skin.  

A recent arrest was made in 2012, of a 28 year old man who was smuggling 7 roasted fetuses in order to sell them on the black market for £24,000.  In 2010, the temple Wat Phai Ngoen situated in Bangkok, was found to have collected almost 350 aborted fetuses which it had collected from an illegal abortion clinic and was helping to dispose of them, although it’s believed that some were sold off to black magic practitioners too.  Incidents like these show that despite the practices being illegal, there are still those deeply dedicated to the occult that are still willing to buy these burnt fetuses.

Do any of you have any good luck charms?  If so, do you have any which you think other people would consider strange?