Vampire Island (Full Documentary) | Timeline

vampires night lurking creatures that prey on our deepest fears at the margin between life and death fiction and fantasy have molded our perception of these night stalkers but what is the truth behind the myth of the vampire vampires were somewhere between a nuisance and in danger they could curdle the milk in your cows they could steal your sheep they could physically attack you or your family now forensics medicine and science are uniting to expose the facts behind the fiction natural trace of decomposition can build into the appearance of the vampire the Living Dead they're proving vampires are much more than simple horror stories this takes replace their favorite things to stop this man from transforming himself for some people vampires are still a terrifying reality [Music] I saw him coming at night they were sucking my blood this is my pitch book I used it to remove his heart to unlock the secrets of the vampire will travel across Europe and Beyond and find a proof that could even upgrade vampires from creatures of legend to historical fact in 1897 a mysterious boat's slowly floated it Swain would be harder than all these coast of England everyone on board was either missing or dead the very instant she was touched an immense dog sprang up on deck from below and running forward jump from the bow onto the sand making straight from steep cliff where the churchyard hangs over the lane it disappeared into the darkness which seemed intensifies just beyond the focus of the search right with these words Bram Stoker's infamous vampire Dracula was introduced to the world and entered the popular psyche everything everything that vampires in contract the archetypal image of the vampire as we know it but where did Stoker's tale of gothic horror originate and could there be a real-life figure behind his creation vampires exist in every culture china's shanxi yerim a yahoo from australia he indian ezra park the jaracaca of brazil or the many european incarnations such as the Strix Strigoi Rico Lucas revelant poopy vampire Drac all such creatures predate the Bible yet they weren't just myths they were very real reanimated corpses that feed on the living to prevent their own decay [Music] damn Jones is an author and historian with a particular interest in society's portrayal of vampires the rules in vampire stories in Europe but it really comes to a head in the 18th century when the under theologian Callum I started to get a dossier of vampire tales actually in an attempt to debunk vampire myth unfortunately what that does is give a story's legitimacy because they're being engaged with by the scientific men at the age by the turn of the 19th century the vampire myth starts feelings of Gothic literature and so you have Polidori and stuff like the vampire really template for what Bram Stoker does when he writes Dracula and every time you have the vampire story reinvented it tightly reflects the preoccupations and the concerns of the society that's reinventing in the 20th century you have lost Farrar too and there's a kind of strain of anti-semitism in it in Hammer horror the vampire stories a lot more bloody it's a lot more violent in n Rice's interview with a vampire you have a real undercurrent of homosexuality and when you get to blade say in the late 90s it is sort of reciting futurism that again characteristic of that society fictional vampires continue to reflect our morality today if you look at the 21st century the Twilight movies and books the vampires the geek but actually there's a beautiful story in there as well I mean that's totally 21st century models all over preying on our ethics was no doubt at the forefront of Stoker's mind when he dreamt up Dracula if this symmetry with account first bites Lucy Westenra to impure a 19 year old virgin she eventually transformed into a lusty vampire herself who terrorizes North London biting young children and this mixture of sex and scandal that Stoker was doing pretty deliberately to titillate and to scare under shock his audience probably helped build a sales figures at the same time Bram Stoker's Dracula is so successful it hasn't been out of print for over a century yet unlike Stoker's count the real-life vampires of history were not charismatic gentleman with a black cape mesmerizing stare and upon shock for nubile young women the vampires of the Greek folklore will not glamorous at like the Hollywood vampire they were bloated corpses that spread all diseases you're not going to get people fooling over deformed Mediterranean peasants slobbering along biting chunks out of your breasts now recent discoveries on a small Greek island are revealing who these creatures really were and what it took to become one professor Hector Williams has been conducting archeological research on the Greek island of Lesbos for over 30 years [Music] but it was in 1988 that he made a discovery that could put flesh on to the stories of vampires [Music] I'm standing on top of the ancient city wall of middle Eenie for five seasons with more than 40 workmen we dug on both sides of it and around it dozens of discoveries emerged a Roman brothel over there the Hellenistic industrial district down here pottery from the age of SAPO 600 years before Christ down below but nothing prepared us for the remarkable discovery we were going to make at the far end of the wall built actually into the wall itself it was a discovery that shook the very foundations of archeology proof that vampires may not just be creatures of legend but of historical fact we're here on the edge of the ancient city wall and it was at this point that we discovered the wall had been cut in two and a crypt very carefully excavated in which a wooden coffin had been lowered and heavy stones placed on top for some reason somebody had gone to the huge effort of digging a grave right into the foundations of the city walls but that wasn't the only mystery it stretched along here for about two meters and in it were sprawling the remains of a middle-aged man creature our students nicknamed glad after Vlad the Impaler Vlad the Impaler was a 15th century ruler of Romania and was probably the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula and like his counterpart Hector's Vlad came to a sticky end he had spike driven through his throat middle and his ankle to hold him in the tomb not a normal burial a corpse nailed into his coffin 320 centimeter long metal stakes driven through his body into his ankle pelvis and neck this was unique we found over 50 burials in this area of men and women and this one had received very special treatment the treatment of a suspected vampire so who was glad and why was he considered to be a vampire Hector turned to greet born paleo pathologist anastasius le key for answers she found that far from the fanged figure of fiction this vampire was surprisingly ordinary he was mister average but for some reason of what his death the villagers believed that he would become a vampire or a revenant so when she sit down they took every measure they could in order to prevent him from striking back a building aged 40 to 50 years Vlad had been fit and strong he was probably a laborer and had eaten a decent diet but for some reason when he died he didn't get a normal burial instead he'd been nailed into a crude coffin and hidden right inside the city walls but why was he treated in such a way I have had some characteristics that made him suspect in his lifetime so they weren't taking any chances this was a man that they did not want to see again alive or dead why were the locals so scared of Ladd and why was he considered to be a vampire Clues may lie a thousand miles to the west beneath a quintessential English parish church since Leonard's church in high in southern England is a church with a secret alien pathologist anastasius Aliki has come here not to marvel at its grand stained-glass windows but to pay homage to a clandestine space beneath the chancel a crypt containing the bones of over 4,000 people a place that may hold clues to the origins of vampire belief there are many theories about who we see in where some say that there were the victims of a great battle others that they were the victim to the Black Death but recent studies have found so inside some of the skulls so we believe that these were ordinary citizens of high and in the 13th century when the church needed to be expanded there were dug up from the churchyard and they were brought here there's nothing unusual about this bone creeps like they existed all over Europe and it was not rare for the bones to be dug up and put in a oh sure ease or creeps forty miles south of Prague in the Czech Republic the Church of All Saints in the town of coot mahira has taken the idea of bone crypts to the extreme known as the Sedlec oh sorry this is the largest bone tomb in Europe and holds the remains of up to 70,000 people originally a simple pile of bones dug up from the graveyard like those in hive when the church was extended in the 14th century it wasn't until the 1870s that it took on this macabre gothic display there are four enormous bell-shaped mounds in each corner of the chapel and a colossal chandelier containing at least one of every bone in the human body hanging from the center of the names the beds don't necessarily stay buried forever in many cultures they dig up the forties and they keep the ball in ER and mausoleum a family grave or inari although rarely as ornate bone crypts and mausoleums are still commonplace the world over [Music] my family has its own burial cloth on a small island in Greece so one day I hope with my bones will be transferred there so that I can rest alongside my ancestors back on lesbos Hector Williams is visiting a modern-day cemetery to see whether this practice of relocating the bones could explain the ancient Greeks belief in Vampires sign in the village cemetery mentions because of the small size of the second cemetery of medellin e we have relatives of the deceased proceed with the exclamation of their relatives in timely fashion after three years post mortem even today bones are being exhumed to free up space for new burials we're here by a modern grave in the cemetery one that will soon be excused and the body placed in a box and transferred to the charnel-house you can see part of a leg bone coming out of the ground there's a back bone here there's a bit of rib coming up there with flesh still on it and very conspicuous at the end of the grave is the skull [Music] so could a familiarity with the remains of the dead have led to a belief in the undead the problem started when something unexpected happen for example when the villagers went to dig up the body to traffic the bones and instead of the skeleton they found a corpse looking fresh so when there were only two solutions either that was the body of a saint or they were dealing with a work of the devil and in this case they thought they were dealing with a vampire or a revenant but could there be a more natural explanation for the lack of decay popular misconception is that a body will decompose quite fast after death but in fact nothing can be further from the truth Professor Richard Shepherd is one of the UK's leading pathologists a forensics expert in a real-life CSI he even advises the British government on mysterious deaths the speed at which a body does decompose depends on the state of the body at the time of death when the ground in which the body is buried [Music] the body normally contains millions and millions of bacteria mostly they're beneficial to the body and help in digestion help to an extent in protecting the body against infection because after death there's nothing left for these bacteria to feed on and they'll start to digest the body itself this is the natural process of decay the body's bacteria given with freedom to feed and the result would normally be a pile of bones ready to be moved into the ossuary or mausoleum but they had to be cleaned first between afar did not necessarily know the connection between the spread of bacteria and disease however the ritualized treatment of the bones gave them a way to protect the living from the spread of contagion washing horns with wine for example has been known to act as a disinfectant since he poker design 2500 years ago [Music] during the ritualized treatment of the bones the Greeks were literally protecting themselves from the dead a process that could have lent favor to details of vampires many areas in Greece they use boiled wine and vinegar as a defense against the vampires or revenant and these might have something to do with the disinfectant properties of the substances and there are other features of decomposition that can also substantiate the idea of the Living Dead sometimes a corpse might even move inside the grave one of the things that occurs to a body after death is a natural process rigor mortis the stiffening of the muscles after death some people believe it affects the body permanently but that's not true it's a temporary process and as the body relaxes it may cause it to appear to move within the coffin if there's movement there it may also cause noises to come out of the coffin as well and this could give the impression that the bodies are rising from the dead and even the look of the corpse could portray it as a vampire after death the skin of the body dries out dehydrates and shrinks a bit and this can give the impression that stubble is growing on the face blisters forms top surface of the skin can peel off and slip off and the fingernails are growing sometimes to a considerable length we can curve a little like a claw and this can give the impression that the bodies to the live hair is still growing fingernails are still dry so that's no surprise that Hollywood has taken these three natural signs of decomposition the facial hair growth the long fingernails and the smooth skin as being signs of the continuing life of this vampire after there what you get when you see these vampire stories especially about the blood around the mouth the rosy cheeks these bodies apparently not decomposing as they should according to science if you're pushing the boundaries of what science or medicine the cutting edge of the day can explain I think that's one reason one of the prime reasons why people just get so mad for these vampire stories and were they then to drive a stake through the heart that would tend to expel the gases that is developed in the body after death make the body fart it could certainly cause it to sigh and this one doesn't reinforce their belief that this body had in fact been alive all the time so ignorant of the bodies be composition cycle when it came to transferring the remains to the Ossorio mausoleum could offer evidence that vampires are real might be suggester rationale for the stakes driven through the body of lad on the island of Lesbos Greece has a long tradition of Vampira revenue mythology in the 17th to 19th century European travelers would recount story of how suspected vampires were exhumed and nailed inside their caskets in order to prevent them from arise again and I think that's exactly what they found in the case of Vlad here was a poor man who for whatever reason had been assumed to be a vampire so when he died he was treated as such with stakes driven through his body they took a number of precautions to make sure that this man did not return from the dead they put the stakes through him they put the wooden sarcophagus around him they built the special crypt for him they put the heavy stones on top of the crypt to make sure that the coffin could not be opened there was a reason and we'll never know the reason that they thought this man was a threat to the living that he was a potential vampire glads discovery shook the archaeological world and confirmed that vampires were real but why Vlad was considered to be a vampire remains a little more than supposition likely they thought he was a vampire because of his behavior in his lifetime there are dozen reasons why one might have been thought to be a vampire strange behavior on your part strange family history particular evil reputation mistake the priest might have made in the burial there are all sorts of reasons we don't know why they thought this particular man was a vampire we may never know for sure but another even more mysterious grave was soon to be found on lesbos one that could provide the answers [Music] [Music] at the turn of the 21st century beside the tiny Church of taxi arcus high above Vlad's grave in the city walls of Mitylene II a second mysterious burial was unearthed one that may explain what he took to become a vampire 1999 a team from the Greek archaeological service was restoring this medieval Chapel they were digging a drainage ditch around it came across the series of burials running down the hill one up here perfectly normal one here somewhat deformed individual with 216 centimeters stakes laid out on either side of him it was these states that provided the first clues that this burial was unique estates falling underground were too big to be coffee - and there is no sign that they were attached to anything so I believe that they were placed there deliberately as a preventive measure to stop this man from transforming himself to his empire just like black who had been treated as a vampire when he died with stakes driven through his body here lay a man who it was expected would also rise from the grave so why didn't the locals go through with a necessary action that's taking him in place at the time of his funeral they weren't taking any chances so they very carefully after wrapping him in his winding-sheet buried him within 24 hours of death in usual Christian way facing the east for the Last Judgement as a precaution they put these two spikes beside him why they didn't put them through him to keep him in there we will never know but they were there and they were intended to we think act as talismans to keep him in the grave whilst the true nature of the taxi arcus vampire remains unclear a discovery on the other side of the world may reveal the purpose of these talisman stakes in 1988 in the city of Mitylene II on the Greek island of Lesbos Hector Williams and his team of archaeologists unearthed the remains of a vampire they named glad his body nailed into his grave 10 years later a second vampire was exhumed in a churchyard just a few miles out of town these two files have helped elevate the vampires of Eastern Europe from mythical beings to ones of historical fact but why would someone be considered a vampire in the first place clues may lie on the other side of the world in 1990 a series of shocking discoveries terrified a sleepy American town in New England archeologists working on a gravel pit understand the crop that's dating back nearly 300 years to the time of the founding fathers the cemetery contained the remains of an entire family but one burial plot was distinct bearing the initials JB when the coffin lid was opened the archaeologists found that the bones had been rearranged into the sign of the skull and cross was this a pirate or could there be a more startling explanation [Music] forensic scientist Anastasius Aliki has been reexamining the case for clues and to see if the find can be linked in any way to the vampires of lesbos Island when the phones were first added it soon became clear that there was a series of lesions present the appearance the distribution and the location of the lesions point it out towards one disease and that's tuberculosis also known as TB so the disease would have spread from the four-month flies onto his ribcage and almost certainly it is what killed him tuberculosis is a terrible disease that was rife in eastern America in the 18th and 19th centuries a period known to coincide with a spate of vampiric activity so could there be a connection between tuberculosis and vampires there are a number of symptoms of tuberculosis can be linked to vampirism for instance conductive itis that red and inflamed eyes that often make people dislike going out in bright sunlight or there's the pallor of the skin associated with anemia of the disease or the thin and thready pulse associated with the debility of tuberculosis then of course there's the fact that people tuberculosis are commonly coughing up blood via second understand there's an argument for linking the symptoms of tuberculosis which was also known as consumption with the features of vampirism of course these diseases are highly contagious so they'll stick within a family group and so when one member the family has died is quite likely that other members of the family will die soon after those who are infected would lose the health slowly so it would appear as if life was strained away from them and that they were wasting away I believe that this person died from tuberculosis and his family caught the disease as well and soon followed him to the grave the JB's family members died so soon after him was a sure sign that he had become a vampire and as the disease spread hysteria may have gripped the community they might have been an inclination to dig up the corpse and undertake the appropriate precautionary action and there could have been other indicators of vampire activity thanks to the volume of people dying at the time when many people are dying this will lead to rapid burials barrels in shallow graves and in the digging of those graves other bodies will be disturbed lead to scattering of the bones maybe even body parts on the surface or protruding full grave and this appearance could give the impression that the bodies are becoming alive again and rising from the dead it may have been quite natural to take safety measures to ribery the remains to weigh them down with stones or a heavy casket or to stick them into the grave to stop them rising again or perhaps in the case of JB of simply rearranging his bones by rearranging the bones they may have believed that they were mobilizing the corpse in the grave and that they were preventing it from coming out again and there is one further nail in the coffin to link tuberculosis to vampires 50 miles away in an abandoned Cemetery in Rhode Island later gravestone from 1841 it bears the inscription in memory of Simon Whipple who died May 6th 1841 although consumptions vampire grasp has seized that mortal frame consumption is another name for tuberculosis so maybe this is a proof of the link between tuberculosis and vampires in New England at least and the link even made it into the popular literature of the time front summary Arroway better known as Voltaire is one of the greatest thinkers of the 18th century enlightenment and he wrote in his philosophical dictionary that vampires are corpses who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living either at the throats of stomachs after which they returned to their cemeteries the person so sucked wanes grew pale and fell into consumption while the sucking corpses grew facts got rosy and enjoyed an excellent advertised proof that in earlier times when people's understanding of disease and illness was limited superstition held sway over fearful minds vying for the 18th century but you'd be wrong if you thought that a belief in Vampires had died out today in February 2004 the authorities were called into the small village of Cray over Southwest Romania to investigate six people alleged to have impaled the body of a villager Tom Petra who according to them had transformed himself into a vampire after his death [Music] my brother-in-law died when he died he became a vampire the villagers believed that Petra was returning from the grave and feasting on his next of kin did you know moving in Oporto there you go I saw him coming at night he was calling I was screaming he was sucking our blood his relatives were gradually fading away this will mark the union Medicis I had stomach ache I Chantal O everybody in the neighborhood witness how bad I was feeling at night parameter not me in Slavic society it is still believed that a person's spirit lingers for 40 days after death so there was only one solution six weeks after his funeral as midnight approached Petra's family snuck into the cemetery and dug up his corpse it condition confirmed their worst suspicions [Music] we found him with his hands at his side like this his neck was told and his mouth was full of life a corpse full of blood a sure sign that Petra had become a vampire blood has a symbolism in many religion there's the drinking of wine to symbolize Jesus's blood in Christianity but there's also the drinking of blood to gain supernatural powers in many other religions and so the presence of blood around the mouth must have been truly terrifying the villagers did what their beliefs required results with our part we work inside the grave and we did everything properly this is my pitch book we used it to remove the heart we got this sheet in dollars in emulsion and a dead man's heart is not supposed to have blood in it if he isn't a vampire witch panic on it [Music] you know they told us all to be Burnett and we track the issues together with water [Music] we drank the ashes and immediately we felt better in Romania at least the vampire is no legend it remains a very real threat a night lurking creature that preys on our deepest fears in the margin between life and death vampires entities that prey on your lifeforce creatures of the night that lurk in the borders between life and death modern medicine can explicate at least some vampire cases but what had flared the other vampires of Lesvos Island it fell on anastasius illegally to examine the remains of the taxi arcus vampire she discovered that he was no mr. average as Vlad had been the person found in the doxiadis grave and had severe facial deformities especially in the area of the nose and the jaws and there was evidence of disease like lesions on the skull at probably a fungal infection to the brain what I think we have here is the poor division to form and we know from folklore that people with TB rabies or deformities were thought to become vampires after death and this is exactly what happened in this case the physical condition may have made people suspicious of them added to outrageous behavior in his part strange behavior on his part the presence of the stakes does indicate a suspected revenue so they weren't taking any chances when he was buried they put the stakes in and covered him up and so he remained till the fall of 1999 when we uncovered him but why didn't they drive their snakes homes as they had done with the earlier discovered glad maybe they were squeamish maybe they thought it was just enough to have them there as a sort of guardian of the grave fearing he would rise again the locals placed their vampire snakes beside him in the coffin but anastasiya thinks these snakes may have had a practical purpose to the spikes inside the grave were sharp and as the body swell during the composition they would have pierced the flesh and they would not have released all the internal gases by releasing the gases built up during decay the internal organs would have been exposed when the corpse would have dried out that speeded up the rate of the decay so after that if somebody wanted to pick up the body they will find only bones no vampire and to me this shows that the locals were taking no chances there is one final twist to the story of vampire Island during his research over the last 30 years Hector Williams has become fascinated by the writings of one of the area's most famous travel authors charles thomas mutant in the eighteen sixties Charles Newton who had been British vice consul at Medellin II published his memoirs travels and discoveries in the Levant and he refers at one place to an island near mythili knee in Italy knee the bones of those who will not lie quiet in their graves are transported to a small adjacent island where they are reinterred this is an effective bar against all future vagaries for the vampire to not cross salt water it's an intriguing clue a written text from a respected author telling of a small island near mytilini containing not one vampire but a whole vampire cemetery thanks to the vampires fear of salt water in Bram Stoker's classic gothic novel Dracula the count and always in Transylvania by sea travelling in a cockpit which is filled with his native soil a vocal taken from Eastern European stories about vampires in fact the vampire couldn't travel over salt water it is really many places that vampires and other supernatural beings cannot cross salt water so the villagers must have thought that to transfer a very a course or an island would be more than enough to stop the vampire attacks if the historians and scientists are right then somewhere off the coast of lesbos lies the real vampire island and the location of the world's first vampire cemetry Newton wrote these words about a hundred and forty years ago and we've been wondering what the Greeks did with their vampires beside bury them locally finding this passage suggested that we found out where they went over there to this little island of the village of Tam Villa from the shore it's almost impossible to see any evidence of burials so there's only one thing for it Hector is going to take to the skies [Music] we've just taken off from middle Eenie International Airport we're heading due north to the island of Buffalo we're about to come up on the island now so things should start getting interesting we're going to drop to about 500 feet under 50 meters that may be a little bumpy but we'll get a good view of the top of the Isle is that way we're going to circle around the island and look and see there's remains of a small building here on the north side there foundations of what looks like a basement a little bit further east of it could these be the burial sites places that may contain structures on the ground we have been able to pick out the lines of several buildings foundations that indicate there are buried structures on the island it's worth coming back with ground-penetrating radar as getting further details of the graves who knows what he'll find for now Hector must wait his curiosity wetland and replete in the knowledge that he may have discovered a world first a graveyard for the undead the real vampire island [Music] Hector's research has confirmed beyond doubt that vampires once roamed the island of Lesbos people his fume vampires are a mist that the Central European Balkan vampire evolved in a particular way that has fascinated people since the 18th century thanks to modern forensics medicine and science we now know that vampires were real people outcasts from society stricken with disease deformities or mental illness he must have been an outcast and this is why he was treated as a vampire after he died and even today in some parts of the world vampires are still regarded as a very real threat one of the most enduring and enduring of all supernatural beings you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 1,980,285

Rating: 4.5143476 out of 5

Keywords: vampire documentary, vampire island, full documentary, history documentary, 2017 documentary, full length documentaries, vampires documentary, bbc documentary, documentary movies - topic, channel 4 documentary, scary stories, vampire history, documentary history, timeline documentary, history of vampires, vampire documentary national geographic, real vampire

Id: Q-LEuBqeLzg

Length: 44min 17sec (2657 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 10 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/XanderCageIsBack]

Their "evidence" that vampires exist is that people thought that vampires existed and took measures against them. No shit.

[u/slobarnuts]

evidence has found that Vampires did exist

Horseshit.

[u/[deleted]]

evidence has found that they exist

Yes, and also evidence about werewolves. All hail our hairy overlords.

[u/Idoth]

"documentary" uhuh..

[u/requiemroom]

The evidence is fake. Probably planted by small greys or reptilians.

[u/Bid325]

There's probably a vampire somewhere reading these comments chuckling to himself "oh man that was a close one, they don't even know, they don't even fucking know"

[u/GauntletsofRai]

Of course Santa Claus is real, why else would millions of people have left ritual offerings to him for hundreds of years?

[u/Mugin]

Hate the level of total shit that most "science channels" has decided to set the bar at. Ancient aliens and other totally unscientific crap with no basis in reality and with no proof of their claims.

What is sad is that children watching this kind of crap actually becomes dumber from watching it.

[u/mawwaige275]

The ole "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence" argument eh?