Vampirism: causes and real cases of this rare paraphilia

Also known as hematodipsia, this disorder is not exactly as we are told in the movies.

Vampirism or hematodipsia is one of the most twisted paraphilias.Vampirism or hematodipsia: those who suffer from it feel a compelling need to ingest, perform treatments or rituals with Blood (usually human), often motivated by the belief that this liquid contains magical rejuvenating or life-extending properties.

What is vampirism? Causes and symptoms

A first possible explanation for this disorder lies in the possibility that those who ingest blood do so out of pure fetishism: in it they find the sexual pleasure they need to carry out their most Machiavellian fantasies, in which the red liquid is the only thing they need. in which the red liquid is the protagonist.

Another commonly exposed cause is some kind of traumatic experience during childhood, which as adults is linked to sexual stimulation. Psychologists agree that it is a mental disorder linked to sadism, which pushes those affected to hurt and assault others to achieve a specific end. Some experts have even drawn a parallel between vampirism and necrophilia.

Of course, it is possible to detach from the collective ideology that literary works and vampire movies have left us. Hematodipsia sufferers do not use the blood they extract from their victims "to survive" or anything like that. It is a disorder more related to the satisfaction of a pleasure resulting from the suffering of others..

Be that as it may, the causes of vampirism are under discussion, especially because of the few cases described historically.

A brief historical overview of cases of hematodipsia

Several cases have marked the collective unconscious around this disease. Although many of these stories are real, movies and literature have led us to a biased understanding of this phenomenon. In any case, these cases that we will relate below refer to real people who suffered from vampirism.

The Impaler

The cult of blood and its supposed qualities has its roots in history and has given fame to famous characters such as Vlad Tepes "the Impaler" (15th century).

This Romanian prince received his nickname for using impalement as a punishment for both traitors and the fallen in battle of the enemy armies. of the enemy armies; and then drinking their blood, convinced that he could thus achieve invincibility. This figure inspired the Irishman Bram Stoker's famous story of eternal love "Dracula" (1897), as well as many subsequent literary and film adaptations.

The Bloody Countess

We move to the late Middle Ages, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In Hungary, Erzsébet Báthory, also known as the "Bloody Countess", would go down in history for her devotion to the red liquid and for what she was able to do under the pretext of always staying beautiful. and for what she was capable of under the pretext of always remaining beautiful.

When she reached adolescence, this woman of noble birth became obsessed with the idea of wanting to keep her beauty forever. Therefore, she contacted witches and sorceresses to see how she could make her wish come true. They initiated her in ceremonies in which she had to drink blood, preferably drawn from young girls and "virgins of soul", that is, who had not known love. Over time, her descent into hell increased, since, not content with murdering to drink human blood, she began to bathe in it: she spent hours soaking in liters of this liquid, believing that this way she would keep her youthful appearance forever.

After years of disappearances of the local women who lived in the surrounding villages, the countess and her accomplices were discovered. The sorceresses and sorcerers who had helped her commit the crimes and who performed the bloody ceremonies had their fingers cut off with a red-hot iron, then they were decapitated and their bodies thrown into a bonfire. The countess was condemned to be walled up alive in a room with a small skylight at the top through which the sunlight filtered.

Despite the awfulness of the penance imposed and being fed once a day, the countess endured four years in the wall and never showed any signs of repentance for what she did. Did the ingestion and bathing in blood have anything to do with postponing her agony for so long? Or, on the contrary, would she have died a victim of some disease (such as pneumonia) if she had not undergone such processes?

The Vampire of Barcelona

During the early twentieth century, Barcelona, a city today known worldwide as one of the main tourist attractions, witnessed one of the most terrible events that permeate the Spanish black chronicle. The disappearance of several children in the district known as "El Raval" put the people living in this impoverished neighborhood on alert.

The culprit was Enriqueta Martí, who would earn the nickname of "The Vampire of Barcelona" or "The Vampire of Raval", a woman of hermit life and dark habits: it is said that she was dedicated to kidnapping children from poor families or who had been abandoned in the street to murder them, extract their blood and fats to use them as the basis of cosmetic products, ointments and potions that she later sold to personalities of the high spheres with whom she rubbed shoulders.

This woman had her home on the first floor of a well-known street in Barcelona and it was thanks to the good eye of a neighbor that her reign of terror was put to an end. After kidnapping a five-year-old girl on February 10, 1912, on the 27th of the same month, a neighbor who lived across the street from 'la vampira's' lair saw through one of the windows a young woman with a shaved head. At first he did not think it could be related to the disappearance of the little girl, but he was surprised to see her there, since Enriqueta had been living alone in that place for more than a year. After discussing it with some of the shopkeepers and merchants, they decided to alert the police, who finally obtained a reliable clue about the mysterious case.

When the agents went to the place, they found no alarming sign that the woman dressed in tattered rags was the cause of so much confusion... Until they found a room that the owner kept under lock and key: there were several books on witchcraft, bloody clothes of children, large amounts of human fat stored in glass jars, a large skinning knife and the bones of at least twelve children kept in a large sack.

As he confessed at the police station, his modus operandi was as follows: dressed in ragged rags as if she were a beggar, she stalked her victims and abducted them in the street.. Once in her lair, she murdered them, drained their blood and tallow. Then, at night, dressed in her best clothes, she would go to the central areas of the city where wealthy people were concentrated and there she would contact them to trade with their products, which were said to have both rejuvenating and curative properties for some diseases of the time (for example, tuberculosis). She also admitted that there was a time when she had no luck in her abductions of children, so she opted to extract the fat from stray animals such as dogs and cats.

After her statement, she was sent to a women's prison, where she would attempt to take her own life twice, once trying to bite the veins out of her wrist. From that moment on, she was under the watchful eye of three of the most dangerous and respected inmates in the facility, to prevent other inmates from injuring her or doing it to herself.

It is believed that her suicide attempt was to avoid giving in to pressure from the authorities to confess the names of the personalities she worked for, as it was always suspected that important families of the time might have been involved. Perhaps this explains the causes of her death in 1913, when, despite the supervision to which she was subjected, a group of inmates lynched her, a group of inmates lynched her to death.. The most suspicious have always considered the possibility that someone, from outside or inside the prison, ordered her immediate execution. Unfortunately, the case was still in the pre-trial phase, so she was never tried and the full truth was never known.

The Man in the Bag

Who has not heard of "El Hombre del Saco"? In Spanish folklore, in the olden days there was talk of this character who, according to the story, wandered through the villages in search of those children who did not behave well, whom he put in the big sack he carried with him and never saw them again.

Although it could be thought to be a simple invention that arose to terrorize the little ones and make them obey, the truth is that this legend has its origin in the so-called "sacamantecas" or "sacauntos" that, at the beginning of the 20th century, murdered several children in different areas of Spain. At a time when famine severely scourged rural areas, many saw the opportunity to make easy money by murdering and extracting the ointments of young children, and then selling them to the wealthy in the form of poultices or ointments.

Juan Díaz de Garayo, in Vitoria; or José González Tovar, in Málaga, are some examples that occupy a dubious place in Spain's dark history.are some examples that occupy places of dubious honor in the dark history of Spain, which we will undoubtedly address in future publications.