There are still people on this planet who believe werewolves, vampires and zombies exist. Perhaps this belief is fed by the never-ending barrage of television shows which depict these creatures. There are also still many stories about these creatures harming humans and people who claim to be witnesses to some paranormal events. There have been claims of men turning into animals. One of these claims has to do with the disease rabies. It isn’t the looks of people that change, it is their humanity. One man who was in the final stages of rabies in 1959 had been strapped to a hospital bed and was described as a man who seemed to have some sort of demonic possession and had the instincts of an animal. While some of this may have been exaggerated, people who develop rabies sometimes do act more like animals than humans. Was this enough to foster the idea werewolves walked upon the earth? Could this have been how the whole idea started and when it became folklore it became embellished?

If you talk to the people who live on Sibale Island in the Philippines they will tell you werewolves are real. They claim to be experiencing werewolf attacks all the time. Farmers in that area report continuous attacks on animals living on their farms. The attacks always happen between midnight and 2 am and right before the full moon appears. The mayor of the town made a statement saying two hundred goats have already been killed and all the blood has been sucked out of them. Some would say it is a chupacabra. A chupacabra is also known as a goat sucker and while little is known about this animal or even if it exists, there are many stories about it. The people of this town say it is not a chupacabra and that it is a four-legged werewolf which is attacking the animals. What worries the people on the island even more than the loss of their goats is what will happen to them when all the goats are gone? They worry they may be the next meal for the four-legged werewolf. An agriculturalist stated he could not determine if the killers were werewolves, dogs or other creatures pretending to be dogs. This island is isolated and takes about five hours to reach by boat.

Stories of vampires have been with us for hundreds of years. Graves were found in Eastern Europe in which the bodies of people in those graves had a stake driven through their heart. As most of us horror fans know, driving a stake through the heart of the vampire is one way to kill it and keep it dead. Silver bullets are also good in this respect and some have said decapitation works well to. Then there is the story of using garlic to drive vampires away. Even today many people in some areas of Eastern Europe still believe vampires exist. The greatest vampire of them all was said to be Dracula whose legend dates back Vlad the Impaler.

A couple of years ago news came out of New Zealand stating their North Island was under some sort of a vampire attack. A couple of women who lived on the island were running around biting people. It turned out there was a disagreement among three women and one of them bit the other on the ear. A few hours later police were called to a pub. A woman had bitten a man on the neck so hard he had to be taken to the hospital for loss of blood. The bar owner said he had never seen these people before and they were not locals. A third person had been bitten earlier in the week. Apparently these were not vampire attacks, because everybody survived and not one of them turned into a vampire. A woman in New Hampshire who worked for a business there was putting boxes into a dumpster. While she was doing this a man approached her and asked if she wanted help and then told her he was a vampire so she began to run away. Police said she ran inside the store yelling for help, but he followed her. He then wrapped his arms around her, but she fell to the ground. She managed to fight him off until the police came at which time the man told them he was a vampire, but he was a vampire ghost rider. Apparently in 1576 people in Venice believed they had buried a vampire. Archaeologists in 2006 found the body of a woman with a brick wedged into her mouth. It turns out there was a plague in Venice that year and many people died. Workers in the cemetery would sometimes dig up bodies to make room for more bodies and sometimes a blood like substance would appear under the noses and mouths the corpses leading people to think they were vampires and that is why they would take steps to keep them dead.

Zombies are supposedly corpses which have been reanimating. There is a connection between zombies and voodoo. Supposedly a Haitian witch Doctor proved zombies are real and revealed the secrets of zombie powder. Max Beauvoir was known as the Pope of voodoo. It was claimed he introduced a Harvard professor, Bush Armand who resurrected a Haitian man who had been buried for eighteen years. In 1962 a Haitian man was pronounced dead by two doctors. He died from a mysterious fever. His corpse was identified by his two sisters. He was buried in a small cemetery. Eighteen years later in 1980 a man approached the village where the two sisters lived and introduced himself as their brother, the one which was buried in 1962. He had a strange vacant look in his eyes. He claimed he had been resurrected by a witch Doctor who enslaved him on a sugar plantation, but he managed to break free. Weston scientists didn’t buy this story even though the community did. Harvard professor Wade Davis went to Haiti to check the story out. He was given a powder known as zombie powder which could resurrect the dead. Apparently the professor changed his mind and wrote a book about this called “the Serpent and the Rainbow.” Max Beauvoir met many famous people and it is said Bill Clinton was very impressed with him. The powder was tested on rats. They became motionless, but had a slight heartbeat and brain wave activity.

People cannot be brought back to life using zombie powder, but they can be made to look dead and might even be able to be controlled by others. The bottom line about all of this is there are no monsters such as vampires, werewolves, or zombies. Most of these things just exist in our mind or on the silver screen. Can a person be drugged and subject to the suggestions of others, certainly.