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Why can't vampires drink "dead blood"?

Vampires drink blood because it sustains them.

In the Ricean universe, a vampire must not drink blood from a dead person.

"Dead blood" will make them seriously ill.

And confirmed by Lestat's own storyline in the film, it does not kill him as some mistakenly think.

Dix Love,

Re: Mysterious Balkan Creatures: Lurking from the Dark

I was only vague
I'm glad to know that I do not know

Mysterious Balkan Creatures: Lurking from the Dark

There is a reason why people all over the Balkans don't like dark corners and shady groves. You never know what is lurking from the dark. Continue reading and see what you can expect if you find yourself alone with a feeling of an unknown presence behind you. Boo! 

If you forgot why as a kid you didn't love the darkness of the attics and basements, maybe a glance at the creatures below will refresh your memory.

Vampires

There is not a corner of the Earth where you cannot find a vampire lurking his latest victim. But, just like Yeti is linked to the Himalayan region of Nepal, vampire roots come from the Balkans. It is also well-known that vampire (vampir) is a Serbian word, but that doesn't mean we should glorify them as a part of our national heritage. No evil and vicious creature should be.

Werewolves

Just like vampires, werewolves are spread over the entire planet. They are ordinary people that got infected with a specific type of virus that made changes in their behavior and body. Werewolves are hairy, with big teeth (canines are very distinctive), and sharp claws. Due to virus, diseased person changes, so we get an aggressive and bloodthirsty animal. Werewolf is capable of tearing apart a human being or even a child.

Infected people usually know they can turn into a werewolf, and they lock themselves somewhere. Transformation usually occurs on the full moon so, if they put on curtain or take strong sedatives, lives can be saved.

Todorci

Todorci are one of the most terrifying and most dangerous creatures that inhabit the Balkans area. Vodenjaci and rusalke are scary, ale also, but none of them cannot be measured with the horrors that todorci can make. Luckily, these demonic creatures show up rarely, but when they do, you better run!

Todorci appear on the st. Todor's week, so they probably got the name from that. You can see them on white horses with white cloaks. They ride continuously so some of them coalesced with their horses. That doesn't mean todorci have similarity with centaurs, they are nothing alike. These creatures have their leader, Big Todor and they stomp everything that comes in their way. There are even some stories that these cruel creatures envelope trees with intestines of their victims. There is not any defense against todorci, so if you see them, may God have mercy on your soul.

Psoglavi

Psoglavi are creatures known in some other regions besides the Balkans. Ghoul or psoglavi hides in caves, empty graves, and pits during the day, and in the night this creature goes to cemeteries and other places where it can find corpses to feed on them. This creature has a human body with horse legs and dog's head. It uses arms to run and its body is covered in gray hair.

If they cannot reach corpses, psoglavi will attack humans, but it does that if it is very hungry. They are the most dangerous when they are in the pack. Intelligent, cunning and cruel, psoglavi are not the creatures you want to be in touch with, so try not to visit cemeteries at night.

Čuma

It is a plague that comes into our world in a shape of an old woman. It has big scary eyes and bushy hair. This creature can crawl into your house through a chimney or attic and it can kill with just one look. Čuma carries pestilence and death, so it is for the best to stay away from this creature.

So, next time you hear scratching on the back door or some stamping that comes from the attic, maybe it is better for you to run. And don't look back! In the meanwhile, some other creatures (less scary, but equally important) are waiting for you in the next part. Stay tuned and mysterious!

Dix Love,

Re: The Bloody Truth About Vampires

It's still deep inside, 🤭

Re: The Bloody Truth About Vampires

There will be more to read.  You can also add two new profiles, Vlad Tepez and Barthory Elsbeth.  They are dark european medieval profiles.  Am sure you will love them.

Dix Love,

Re: The Bloody Truth About Vampires

This is the first time I read about vampires. I was attracted interest 🧐

Juicy pork chops with mustard and honey in the oven

Ingredients:
4 pork chops
2 tbsps honey
4 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp mustard
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Garlice powder
1 tbsp dried rosemary
1 tbsp dried oregano

Preparation:
We put the pork chops in oven heat proof pan.  In a big bowl, we put the olive oil, the honey, the mustard and the lemon juice.  We stir the mix well till ingredients have combined smoothly.  We add the garlic powder and the dried rosemary and oregano.  We stir well and we cover the pork chops.  We add two glasses of water and we bake in the 180C for about 45 minutes.  We can serve with rice or fried potatoes or boiled/grilled vegetables.

Itadakimasu!

Dix Love,

Re: May rose petal spoon sweet

You might find it a bit excessively sweet compared to your sweets but it is so fragrant!

Dix Love,

The Bloody Truth About Vampires

THE TRAITS OF modern-day vampires are pretty well established. They have fangs, they drink human blood and they can't see themselves in mirrors. They can be warded off with garlic or killed with a stake through the heart. Some, like Dracula, are aristocrats who live in castles.

But vampires didn't start out so clearly defined. Scholars suspect that the modern conception of these Halloween monsters evolved from various traditional beliefs that were held throughout Europe. These beliefs centered around the fear that the dead, once buried, could still harm the living.

Often, these legends arose from a misunderstanding of how bodies decompose. As a corpse's skin shrinks, its teeth and fingernails can appear to have grown longer. And as internal organs break down, a dark "purge fluid" can leak out of the nose and mouth. People unfamiliar with this process would interpret this fluid to be blood and suspect that the corpse had been drinking it from the living. 

Bloody corpses weren't the only cause for suspicion. Before people understood how certain diseases spread, they sometimes imagined vampires were behind the unseen forces slowly ravaging their communities. "The one constant in the evolution of vampire legend has been its close association with disease," writes Mark Collins Jenkins in his book Vampire Forensics. Trying to kill vampires or prevent them from feeding was a way for people to feel as though they had some control over disease.

Vampires of Europe
Because of this, vampire scares tended to coincide with outbreaks of the plague. In 2006, archaeologists unearthed a 16th-century skull in Venice, Italy, that had been buried among plague victims with a brick in its mouth. The brick was likely a burial tactic to prevent strega—Italian vampires or witches—from leaving the grave to eat people. 



Not all vampires were thought to physically leave their grave. In northern Germany, the Nachzehrer or "after-devourers" stayed in the ground, chewing on their burial shrouds. Again, this belief likely has to do with purge fluid which could cause the shroud to sag or tear, creating the illusion that a corpse had been chewing it.

These stationary masticators were still thought to cause trouble aboveground and were also believed to be most active during outbreaks of the plague. In the 1679 tract "On the Chewing Dead," a Protestant theologian accused the Nachzehrer of harming their surviving family members through occult processes. He wrote that people could stop them by exhuming the body and stuffing its mouth with soil and, maybe, a stone and a coin for good measure. Without the ability to chew, the tract claimed, the corpse would die of starvation.

Tales of vampires continued to flourish in southern and eastern European nations in the 17th and 18th centuries to the chagrin of some leaders. By the mid-18th century, Pope Benedict XIV declared that vampires were "fallacious fictions of human fantasy" and the Hapsburg ruler Maria Theresa condemned vampire beliefs as "superstition and fraud".  Still, anti-vampire efforts continued. And, perhaps most surprisingly of all, one of the last big vampire scares occurred in 19th century New England, two centuries after the infamous Salem witch trials.

Post-Vampire
During the vampire panic in New England, vampires were finding a new role in European books like The Vampyre (1819), Carmilla (1871-72), and Dracula (1897), as well as in vampire-themed plays. Though drawn from folk legends and past vampire scares, these aristocratic, sexual vampires were more like the vampires we know today.

Vampire panics died down in the 20th century as these fictional monsters replaced folk beliefs (and as medical knowledge improved); however, there was a strange resurgence in the late 1960s, when Seán Manchester, the president of the British Occult Society, said that a vampire was causing people to see strange things in London's Highgate Cemetery.

Newspapers had already covered reports of a tall figure with burning eyes and other spectral sights floating in the cemetery, and journalists quickly picked up Manchester's theory that these sightings were the work of an eastern European vampire.  Newspapers even embellished his claims a bit, calling the figure a "king vampire" or writing that the vampire had practiced black magic in Romania before traveling to London in his coffin.  In 1970, Manchester told a TV news team that he planned to exercise the vampire on Friday the 13th. That night, hundreds of young people turned up at Highgate Cemetery to see him perform an exorcism (which he ended up not doing).  The Highgate panic wasn't a case of vampires being scapegoated for disease but rather a media sensation and an instance of "legend tripping" (young people going to a supposedly haunted place to test their bravery).  In the history of vampire legends, the Highgate incident is a modern phenomenon. It has less to do with the desire to control a community's health and a lot more in common with modern scares, like the creepy clown sightings that went viral this year—even if people don't believe it, they're still drawn to the hype.

Dix Love,

Re: The Original Vampire: Before Count Dracula there was Lord Ruthven

Am happy!!!!  

Dix Love,