North America as a whole seems to have been largely free of vampirism until the arrival of Europeans. Humans have been in North America for 12,000 years or more and the indigenous population has developed a rich mythology, yet there is little that could be interpreted as pertaining to vampires. Various tribes do tell of “mosquito men,” a humanoid version of the insect that stealthily sucks out the brains of its victims through a proboscis, but there seems to be no truth to the legends. Another possibility is the Wendigo (sometimes written as Windigo). Most closely associated with the Algonquin Indian peoples of North America’s northeastern coastline and forests, it is said to be a monster transformed from human form, or a spirit possessing a human host. Its transformation is said to be the result of the sin of consuming human flesh. In fact it seems to be an Indian parable against the dangers of cannibalism, and several Native American nations have variations of the Wendigo, including the Ojibwa, Cree, Innu, Abenake and Micmac.
While some claim the Wendigo were giants, many descriptions of the monster do seem strikingly familiar to the vampire hunter: they are said to be skeletally emaciated with deathly pale and decayed-looking skin, cold, dead hearts but bright eyes, and to be insatiably greedy for flesh.
Still, taken as a whole, it is clear that Indian mythology is far more redolent with warnings against the dangers of cannibalism than the threat of vampirism. It does indeed seem that the true vampires arrived in North America with European colonists.
The notion of Satan abroad upon the face of the earth had been preached since the 15th century in Europe and led to the generally held belief that supernatural evil was ever-present and part and parcel of daily life. With plague and war epidemic across the continent, there was also a mounting sense of impending Armageddon in both a very literal and also a theological sense.
One of the results of this growing apocalyptic terror was the fueling of religious hysteria, triggering waves of persecution of anything from witches to Jews to midwives. The vampires of Europe were also obvious targets and, despite their physical prowess, fell victim to blood-soaked pogroms. Not only were they justifiably blamed for being inherently evil, as well as child stealers and seducers of maidens, but also as the less justifiable cause of crop failures, pandemics and political intrigue.
Of course, religious persecution extended far and wide, and when Puritan Europeans were victimized, they sometimes took charters across the Atlantic to the wide-open spaces of the North American Eden. Naturally, vampires secreted themselves amongst them (there are no records of how many) to escape the stakes, fires and crosses.
Evidence is sparse and most of what we know from the time is largely the result of speculation, but it seems that it was the older, more wily and venerable Strigoi who hid in plain sight amongst the Puritans. Some nonhaemophagic types may well have been amongst them: incubi and succubi, those who could tolerate the sun and were resistant to amuletic attack. They could also have feigned seasickness to keep themselves hidden below decks, beyond suspicion during the long crossing, and even fed on rats if need be.
Their new homes were far from the fairytale castles and aristocratic mausoleums of Europe. They were also surrounded by dogmatic, suspicious, paranoid and belligerently pious Europeans who practiced the most extreme Calvinism, people who believed that to deny the existence of the supernatural was to deny the existence of angels and therefore of God. This was a certain way to guarantee a one-way trip to the stake.
A rather fanciful depiction of events during the Salem witch trials. The connection between the trials and vampires is still a hotly debated topic amongst academics. (PD)
As such, these vampires had to proceed with extreme caution. Inquisition investigations indicate that often vampires portrayed themselves as the most austere and frugal of zealots, eating lightly and living simple lives. They were usually single, instead claiming to devote themselves to their one true love, the worship of God. Ironically they were often seen as the most virtuous of the colonists.
While it was dangerous to feed within such confined and familiar quarters, there was a ready supply of victims awaiting their arrival in the form of the indigenous population. And if things went wrong, they could kill their Puritan hosts and blame it on the local Indians.
The power struggles between English, French and Dutch settlers, and the various Native American nations on the Atlantic coast, resulted in massacres and atrocities by all sides. This was a “happy time” for the vampires, who could move freely, often acting as scouts, trappers or hunters, while killing at will, with little suspicion falling on them or concern about the likelihood of supernatural agents at work. They could also begin “turning” individuals and building their numbers.
There are no records of vampires being killed during this tumultuous period; equally there are no conclusive victims of haemophagy. However, alleged witches were being executed as early as 1647. Minister Cotton Mathers wrote, in his 1689 book on witchcraft, of children being possessed by spells around what was to become the evil eye of the witchcraft maelstrom: Salem, Massachusetts.
Much of the carnage that followed seems to have been nothing more than mass hysteria stoked by the settling of old family scores. In such a tinderbox environment, it only took a disgruntled neighbor accusing the wife of another for the fuse to be lit. And in such a pious atmosphere, the men whose duty it was to uphold the scrupulous morality of the colonies could not ignore accusations of supernatural devilry.
As such, whether the first cases were secular malice hidden beneath religious zeal or not, it touched off an inferno. By the end of 1692, 20 people were dead, mainly women, executed for various witchcraft-related crimes.
Whilst historically interesting, the Salem witch trials would seem to have little bearing on the matter at hand, were it not for one factor: all the initial victims of the supposed witchcraft were young women, as young as nine and as old as 12. Their hysteria has been attributed to anything from pathological fear of Indian attack to ergot poisoning. However, many of these girls would have been entering puberty and would have been easy prey for a stealthy incubus. The evidence is entirely circumstantial, but remains a curious footnote in the development of vampirism in North America.
As the European settlers expanded in number and slowly started pushing west, on the American eastern seaboard new hunting grounds were springing up for the vampires and non-haemophagic predators. Early cities such as New York, Chicago, Washington and Philadelphia contained sprawling slums lacking the most basic law enforcement and rife with crime. Murder and death by illness were everyday occurrences and an experienced and stealthy vampire could easily find prey.
Again, there is little in the way of all but the most circumstantial of evidence to track the activities of vampires. However, Vatican records show vampire hunters were dispatched to the New World in the early 19th century to follow up on the witch-hunting hysteria, but also to look into a number of unusual deaths reported by trappers in and around Minnesota that were attributed to wolf attack. While wolves maintained a dreadfully savage reputation until well into the 20th century, Vatican vampire hunters were wily and astute enough to know wolves rarely, if ever, killed humans. More to the point, the attacks were of such notable violence that reports of them made their way across the Atlantic and into the hands of the Inquisition. However, the hunters were unable to ascertain the true nature of the attacks and further exploration of the region by the inquisitors found no evidence to support the presence of vampires.
Unlike Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the 1872 vampire novel, Carmilla, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, is thought by many to be based upon real events. (PD)
Meanwhile, a new wave of immigrants began enjoying the fruits of the burgeoning United States of America. Charles Dudley Warner and Mark Twain coined the term “the Gilded Age” to describe, in barbed satire, the chronic polarizing of American society. While most American citizens scratched out a living below the poverty line, an elite hierarchy were embracing the sociological thinking of British philosopher Herbert Spencer. It was he who coined the term “survival of the fittest” while describing Darwin’s treatise on evolution, On the Origin of Species. His social Darwinism was seized upon by a new generation of steel magnates and business entrepreneurs who took a very literal view of the theory of evolution in industrial terms. They set about using Spencer’s philosophy to ruthlessly exploit the environment and their employees, justifying their worst excesses as proof of their “evolutionary” success.
Another drawing from Carmilla, the first story to note that even female vampires seem generally more interested in female victims. (PD)
Naturally, the Old World vampires of Europe were very much at home. A number of them, mainly those who were centuries old, had amassed considerable fortunes by the time they arrived in the USA. Most were fleeing the increasingly sophisticated and organized vampire hunters and, with little experience of vampirism, Americans seemed easy prey.
Easily able to bribe their way ashore and into relative comfort, these new arrivals quickly set themselves up as rich business tycoons, investing old wealth in new industries: steel, railways, communications.
While wealth allows a certain amount of eccentricity to explain odd behavior, these New World vampires set about developing strategies to integrate into American society that remain effective even today. They began the practice of using human proxies, humans surgically modified to look like the vampire, to allow them to be seen under any circumstances, in daylight and at social functions. But, where possible, the vampires remained shadowy figures even as they fully embraced the tenants of social Darwinism. This provided not just cheap labor but ready supplies of easily disposable food.
Having accumulated considerable fortunes, it is easy for the New World vampires to use money and their own innate powers to control considerable material holdings from deep in the shadows. Many vanish into highly secure underground worlds that are very difficult for the vampire hunters to penetrate. Even identifying the vampires amongst the industrial elite requires a total change of approach, one that embraces psychology and criminology to spot tell-tale behavior patterns. Assessing for psychopathy and narcissistic personality disorders is one avenue of pursuit. Another is studying certain areas of criminality. Wily and cunning, these vampires are rarely clumsy or stupid enough to leave any overt sign of their activities behind, but to keep themselves well fed, and with plenty of money at their disposal, some have invested in human trafficking, prostitution and even slavery. Wealth has also made it very easy for them to dispose of their victims. Unlike the vampires of popular culture, they do not gather in covens of leather and silk-clad Goths drinking only the finest blood from champagne goblets, or in bordellos that cater to very specific tastes. They would never be so crass or blatant. Instead, they glide effortlessly through boardrooms and exclusive, isolated and luxurious resorts, invisible to the populace at large.
The single, surviving still from VampCam.
However, the rise of the Internet and global, instantly accessible communication has proved disastrous for the New World vampire. Operations by SAU in the Old World, during the breakup of Yugoslavia, showed that the mass of information being generated by news outlets and intelligence sources worldwide makes it much harder for the vampires to obscure their tracks. This has finally allowed UNESCO and the SAU to begin actively pursuing and eliminating the New World vampires who have for so long escaped eradication.
These efforts were given an unexpected boost by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent passing of the Patriot Act the following month. This legislation allows for the indefinite detaining of suspects, the searching of homes and businesses without consent, the use of roving wiretaps, and the searching of financial, phone, library and email records without a court order.
In May 2009, a group of four vampire fanatics – all in their late teens – from Detroit, Michigan, decided to embark on a reality series to document vampires. Dubbed VampCam, this short-lived show was filmed over three consecutive weekends. The enthusiastic youngsters would go out into the night and search for vampire activity to film and upload to their website.
The youngsters successfully managed to record genuine vampire action on three occasions. Filmed at night near the downtown Detroit area, the 40- and 50-second clips showed groups of vampires engaged in feeding frenzies.
The website was taken down shortly after the third video was posted, which showed the young cameraman being mauled to death by the vampires he was filming. The FBI reportedly took the site down, pending an investigation, though no further information has ever been released. Naturally, all reference to the site has been removed and the three surviving youngsters have not been seen or heard from since. Though rumors suggest that they entered witness protection, the reality is likely to be far more sinister. All that remains of VampCam is a single still from the action that evening, grabbed from the site seconds before it was shut down.
Other informational areas that help in the detection of vampires include:
• Tracking missing persons: looking for patterns not just over months or years, but decades.
• Law enforcement websites: monitoring these can expose unusual murders or crimes e.g. hospital or blood bank break-ins.
• The in-depth study of fiscal records, using specially trained accountants to monitor the movement of money and to look for unusual spending patterns.
The global “war on terror” has provided a massive cash injection for many shady and covert organizations, and some of that money has found its way to SAU. This has allowed the building of a new infrastructure that provided a serious increase in the capabilities of the organization. New interrogation facilities were built. While much of the information regarding these “black sites” remains understandably classified, it can be revealed that the holding cells are circular and built from treated stainless-steal and ceramic composites that are largely indestructible, and equipped with batteries of strong ultraviolet lamps. The SAU operators use modified bomb disposal suits, acid-etched with religious iconography and featuring embedded amulets.
SAU is also believed to have its own fleet of specially equipped aircraft used for extraordinary rendition to these facilities, which are located worldwide. It is understood these bases and aircraft have already been put to use by SAU for the interrogation of High Value Targets (HVR). The unit has also received training from the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), a highly classified US military program originally set up covertly to remove or rescue US military personnel from “denied” areas – enemy territory. JPRA also runs a program called SERE: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. It was originally intended to prepare the likes of US fighter pilots or Special Forces teams for the eventuality of falling into enemy hands and being tortured by putting them through a grueling training program. To this end, JPRA has amassed what might be considered the definitive library on physical and psychological torture techniques. Following the 9/11 attack, the US government asked JPRA to “reverse engineer” the methods studied so they could be used against terrorist suspects. The resulting interrogation manual was adapted by SAU, aided by JPRA operatives and SERE instructors, for use against vampires, in the hope of exposing their network of fellow haemophages and also to seize their assets, the money from which was ploughed back into the SAU.
A CH-47 Chinook taking part in SAU operations. (US Department of Defense)
It is, however, a time-consuming process. Effective interrogation does not rely on “medieval” techniques such as beatings and stress positions, but on the intelligent use of coercive pressure that is difficult to endure. The standard techniques are in many ways redundant when dealing with vampires, especially ones as resilient as Old World vampires, but these methods can be adapted. If a vampire is found to be susceptible to amuletic attack, the use of religious icons such as crosses can be used as part of the interrogation. However, the most effective methods still remain the development of a rapport with the HVR, winning their trust through the applied use of psychological threat and more subtle physical attacks such as “cold turkey” – the removal of their food source, which has a similar effect on vampires as does the removal of drugs from an addict. These are far more effective approaches than using a magnifying glass to burn a vampire with directed sunlight; such physical abuse tends just to stiffen their resolve. As such, SAU interrogators are required to be intellectually and psychologically robust.
Following 9/11, the SAU decided to make use of the sudden flood of intelligence data and resources available to them to try and land their first US target, nicknamed rather sardonically as “Mister X.”
The SAU seconded selected members of the FBI’s infamous Behavioral Science unit and the JPRA for a long-term black op to eliminate Mister X. Using FBI undercover agents, the SAU planted a number of individuals in a human trafficking organization. Its operatives had been tracking an individual they believed was a buyer for a possible vampire with a taste for the “mother country.” While sporadically acquiring a number of young women as livestock from across the globe, the number bought from Eastern Europe remained high – high enough to draw interest from SAU. An FBI agent was able to develop a relationship with the buyer, and while the latter revealed little, the agent was able to garner enough intelligence to convince SAU that their hunch had been right.
A custom-built, SAU imprisonment and interrogation chamber. Even in such a secure facility, heavily armored suits are still required for all interactions with captured vampires.
Intelligence gathering began on Mister X himself. Due to the vampire’s experience and obvious intellect, this had to be very long-term and subtle. The “sting” required a great deal of time and money to be spent. Agents from the FBI and SAU were set up as executives in a number of technology and communications companies. As many of these were formed following the dot.com bonanza, the agents were able to develop solid résumés, and as the dot.com bubble waxed and waned, the agents moved freely through various boardrooms without drawing attention to themselves. These were sleeper agents in the truest sense, developing new lives that could withstand the most intensive scrutiny.
A number of agents were used in the hope that one would be able to get close enough to Mister X. This “scattergun” approach finally paid off when one of the “executives” was hired by the vampire’s company. Working up through the ranks, the agent finally gained a position within X’s inner circle and began gleaning the intelligence necessary to look at rendering the vampire.
One recent addition to the SAU armory has been the Hare Psychopathy Test, developed in the 1970s to study personality traits in perceived psychopaths. The clinical markers derived from the test’s questions were studied by vampire experts in the US as a possible method of identifying vampires. Such is the confusion between psychopathic, sociopathic, antisocial, narcissistic and histrionic personality disorders that singling out a vampire takes an expert eye, and SAU operatives now include a number of brilliant behavioral analysts and profilers, and forensic psychiatrists, some recruited from law enforcement agencies around the world.
In layman’s terms, there are a number of markers to look for, although the differences between vampire and psychopath are subtle:
• They are charming, charismatic, confident and self-assured.
• Shrewd, sly, deceptive, manipulative, unscrupulous and dishonest.
• Lack empathy, feeling no concern for those in grief or suffering loss, although they can “play act” at being sympathetic; mimicry of other human emotional behaviors is another trait.
• While outwardly gregarious, they actually lack any warmth towards others.
• They are rarely in any kind of long-term relationship and tend to live what could be termed nomadic existences, remaining independent. Should they be capable of sexual relationships, these tend to be very transitory. However, finding sexual partners is easy, as they are coercive and enticing.
• Unscrupulous in exploiting an individual’s or society’s weak spots.
• Usually associate only with a very defined peer group, usually of similar status or role (industrialists, businessmen, etc.).
• Rarely, if ever, ill and generally have no records of injuries (US vampires have been known to fake records to throw investigators and hunters off their trail).
• Usually physically attractive but reclusive or faking a “rich and shameless” lifestyle through use of proxies or doubles.
This blurry, night-vision photograph is the best image to have reached the public from the raid that captured “Mister X.” (US Department of Defense)
A JPRA/SAU team was put on standby. An aircraft was kept fueled, crewed and on 24-hour alert at a military airport close to the city where Mister X was based. The problem was that the vampire rarely left his penthouse that was actually underneath his offices, making intelligence gathering on its layout and final ingress into the building very difficult.
The capture team had a stroke of luck when the FBI agents learned the date and whereabouts of a delivery from the traffickers. In a very carefully orchestrated operation, the trucks delivering the young women were intercepted and the original victims skillfully replaced with an entirely female contingent of FBI agents, specially trained by JPRA. Using various weapons and equipment carefully secreted about their persons, they were able to affect an escape from their holding pens, timing it in late afternoon when studies had shown the vampire to be at his weakest.
At the first sign of trouble, Mister X bolted for an underground escape route that took him into a network of storm drains. Anticipating this, the capture team had the tunnels covered. Using a number of specialized weapons, the SAU and JPRA operatives were able to secure Mister X, although a number of individuals were injured or killed. Using a helicopter to take the immobilized vampire to the military airport, X was quickly airborne and taken to a “black site” in a North African country and questioned on his knowledge of other vampires. He was subsequently terminated and his assets dissolved and disbursed. A cover story alluded to Mister X’s sudden death due to medical problems.