OTHER REPORTS ABOUT SETEALÉM

Here some other reports about Setealém we can find on Luciano Milici's page:

Report 02: My daughter went to Setealém 

Antônia, a 40-year-old nurse, commented: "It happened this week, people. I was watching television. My daughter, Patricia, 7, was playing in the living room. She took a risk on a piece of paper and said, "Mom, I've got one day to go to the party at Dad's!" She was right. It was one day before the party. 

Before I said anything, the phone rang. Right at the time of the novel! I answered with anger. Mainly because the extension of the room was broken and I had to meet in my room. He was a man with a strange voice. Very thick and rough. - Ms. Antonia? Are you the mother of Patricia? - Yes it's me. Who wants to know? "You must go to the steps of the condominium to get your daughter." - Staircase? What staircase? Which condo? "I do not know, ma'am. Was not she wearing a green T-shirt when she disappeared? You can go up the steps to the condo... - Green shirt? My daughter does not even have a green shirt, you crazy! Listen here. I'm going to call the police, okay? My daughter is in the living room with me. We live in a condo, not a condominium. You're trotting at this hour, you... - "The man hung up. I ran to the living room and Patricia was there, still with her notebook and a lot of wax chalk. Yesterday, I sent Patricia to her father's house for the party. I put on her a pink blouse and a jacket on top. 

My ex-husband brought her back at night. Patricia grabbed me very hard when she saw me. I asked him if everything went well, he said that before he brought her, he went into the disgusting building of his new girlfriend and that Patty knocked juice down her shirt and so he needed to borrow a T-shirt from his girlfriend's daughter. That's right, my daughter was wearing a green T-shirt. He wanted to know if anything strange had happened, but she said no. He said that Patricia left the party all happy, but that on the return was strange and serious. 

Actually, my daughter was very weird. When he left, I tried to talk to Patty, but she did not open at first. I insisted a lot and she told me that when she went downstairs from the girlfriend's building in front of her father, she got lost and went to another building called Setealém. She said she was crying loudly and calling for her father, until a nice man with yellow eyes took her to his home. "God, baby, what's this crazy story?" "I said, with a cold neck. "The nice, yellow-eyed man telephoned here, Mama, but you told him that you were going to call the police and that I was here with you and he hung up. Then he sent me down the stairs of the building again and Dad found me."

Only recently, before I joined Orkut, did my daughter come and show me a sheet of paper with seven scratches. I asked what it was, and she said, "It's been days since I stayed at the man's house, away from you, Mother." I do not know what to say. My daughter had spent only a few hours away from me, but she is able to count with conviction every detail of the seven days she stayed at the house of the good-looking, yellow-eyed man who lives in Setealém. 

Report 03: The office boys 

Elisa from Bahia, posted the following comment: "Hi, my name is Elisa and I'm 17. Do not worry about this subject. Here in my city (I'm northeastern, ok?) three friends of mine are always talking about Setealém, Setealém, Setealém. That they went there and they know people who came from there and got lost here. 

They work in the street as office boys. I do not know if they're high on something, but they told me that this place is not even a neighborhood. And when they come back, they can not find the entrance any more, they said that it is very similar to here, but that there are differences that are frightening, they also said that it is a very big place, my friend Giba said that the people of Setealém know here but we cannot know about there. 

A girl from there he met said that some authorities here know Setealém, but they do not tell the people because they would not know how to explain what that place is. I think it's all a lie but as I found this community, I wanted to tell. They told me that many people who disappeared actually went there and found no way out. 

Peterson invented the worst of lies. He said that he met Marcelo, his cousin who disappeared in the 80's. He said that he talked to the guy and he does not even know he's gone. He thinks he's still in the 80's, just imagine! Peterson said his cousin got stuck in the '80s. What the fu**, right? Cheap lie. I just came in here to tell you this. 

Report 04: The Shopping mall bathroom

Júlio, a boy from Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, told the following experience: "My name is Julio, I work at a gym in Porto Alegre. I was happy to see this community because that damn name does not get out of my head. Six months ago, I went with my girlfriend to the movies. We went to celebrate two years of dating. We did that basic celebration: we had dinner at the mall and then went to watch the movie. 

As soon as we left the session, we walked down the aisles to look at the windows. My girlfriend said she would buy a purse and asked me to wait for her next to a store. I suspected she wanted to surprise me with a gift, I agreed, and went to look at some magazines on the bench. I told her that I would wait there and she said she would not take long. As she walked away, I went to the bathroom that was right in the hallway in front of the store. There were four or five people in the place that is quite large. All the urinals, however, were occupied and so I went to a booth. 

Quick game, I did not even lock the door. I took my cell phone from my belt and placed it on a wooden trim. Oddly enough, I did not even spend two minutes in the booth. I heard children laughing in the bathroom and talking. As soon as I finished urinating, I left. I do not know if I can describe it, but there was something strange in the bathroom. I'm not much of a detail to notice. My girlfriend is. She's a virgo. Despite this, I noticed that something had changed. Starting with the lights that were yellow and not white. Very yellowish, I mean. A very thick green band crossed the wall and the mirrors were smaller. There was no one inside. Not the kids who had been laughing for a few seconds. 

I washed my hands and thought I was going crazy. For me the water was a bit too warm and very, very thick. Nasty, to be honest. I searched for paper and did not find it. I left shaking my hands to dry in the air. 

Outside the bathroom, I thought I might faint. I thought I'd gone out the wrong door or into some new hallway. Well, at least that's what I tried to believe. The mall was actually looking like a gallery. It was still a mall, conceptually, but it was much older and worn out. The light was dim, and the stores seemed cluttered with goods. All very ugly. I rushed to a more open area and was sure that I was no longer in a known place. Nothing was similar to what I had seen somewhere in my city or even on television. Starting with little details that startled me. 

There were aquariums the size of garbage cans scattered everywhere. Inside these aquariums, I identified a kind of cloth, I do not know, it looked like a piece of purple blanket that kept moving around within these aquariums. 

People would go up to these aquariums and put both hands up and start laughing! And these were ugly laughs, as if they were coughing with a cold-filled chest. I stood up, staring at these aquariums. People came in groups of two or three, leaning back and laughing. I whipped my head around quickly looking for my girlfriend. All I wanted was to understand what was happening and see a familiar face. People passed me and ignored me. They were similar to normal people, but still, they were not quite normal. They were similar between them, too. Not identical, like twins. I do not know how to explain. It's like when you travel to a different country where people have similar traits but also have particular traits. Oh, and the magazine was no longer there. 

At the site, a man was selling parts or something. He had a large rustic wooden table with several black objects that looked like iron. The objects had strange shapes: hooks, horseshoes, and gears. I got close and he asked if I would trade or buy. I did not answer. A girl about seven years old approached and picked up a piece of iron that looked like a black spoon and showed it to her mother. The mother approached and took out a wallet to pay. The girl pointed the spoon at me and I could see her face well. It was normal, but it also had something very strange. I do not know if it was the eyebrows or the distance from the eyes. I felt an inexplicable fear. The girl's gaze was full of meanness. 

The man replied to her: "No, no, he will not buy it, you can take it. I do not think he's even from Setealém." The mother looked at me in disgust. He took the spoon from the girl, put it back on the table, and pulled her daughter away from me, as if I had an illness. 

I started to get dizzy and sat on a wooden bench that was very much like the normal mall banks, except that it was much lower and just accommodated one person. I saw other banks like that in that place. A loud sound rang and everyone stopped and looked up. It was a loud noise like those ship horns that we see on film. 

After the sound stopped, everyone resumed their ways. I thought about my girlfriend and my mother. It could only be a dream. I got up fast and got so dizzy that I had to lean on a shop window that, I speak from my heart, sold live doves. Doves! A dozen doves walked there, tried to fly and pounced behind the glass case. I screamed. People started looking at me and pointing at me. They groaned. I decided to call my girlfriend. I put my hand on the belt and my cell phone was no longer attached to it. I'd forgotten about the trimmings. I went back down the hall and into the bathroom quickly. Three men were sitting on the bathroom floor. One of them, under the sink. They talked about something I did not even want to know. I jumped over them and entered the booth. My cell phone was still there. I locked the door, sat in the pot and tried to call my girlfriend, but I could not. The unit was simply turned off. I pressed the buttons hard, but it did not help. I heard children laugh again. 

I stayed there about ten minutes, until someone knocked on the door. He was the man from the magazine bench. He said he had seen me enter the bathroom and that my girlfriend was already waiting for me on his bench. He asked if I was feeling ok. The bathroom was bright and the mall was normal. 

My girlfriend did not believe me, but she saw that I was really very nervous. It was the worst day of my life. I ruined our celebration getting sick from the stomach hours later. I have not been back to the mall yet, and I'm seriously thinking about doing therapy. I thought I had gone crazy until I found this community with the same name as the man on that bizarre bench. Setealém. God forbid me to exist a place like that."  

 

Ps.: I'm not trying to infringe any copyrights and I did not write this post myself. This post was taken from Luciano Milici's Blog that you can visit HERE.

SURVIVING CYBER BULLYING ON SOCIAL NETWORKS

 I know this subject is not of supernatural nature, but it doesn't make it any less scary and dangerous.

When we go to social networks, we are looking for an environment where we can relax and find people with the same interests as we do to befriend.

That was my thought when I started to use my twitter account I had since 2008 in August last year. How wrong I was!

I met a "friend" that at first was the sweetest person I've ever met, he was an MJ RP, always telling how much he loved me, almost too good to be true... because it was...

After a while he asked me to block someone cause they were rude to him and I believed him and did, then some time later he came with the same thing but this time the someone that was rude to him was a good friend of mine, that I knew a lot better than I knew him. So I thought wait, something is fishy there and I waited to talk to her and found out it was the other way around. 

The guy was a control freak that insulted and unfollowed her just because she didn't have an MJ logo on her twitter page, but the day before that he said he loved her so much.

The amazing thing was that the very next day I was the one with a nasty DM of his waiting for me calling me names, accusing me of playing with people's feelings and the list goes on just because I didn't comply with his order to block my friend. Truth is he was just getting started, this way his MO he would tell you to do something and if you didn't he would attack you, block you and tell others on DM to block you too cause you hurt him. This way nobody would ever know what really happened between his victims and himself and he could play the victim.

I started to meet lots of other people he did the same to and I couldn't be quiet cause I KNOW FOR A FACT THAT HE WON'T STOP and many more will be hurt in the future. So the other victims of his and me would talk about what he did to us in hopes others would see and be careful for the same not to happen to them, that's when the bullying started, he making jokes calling us haters, devils that our day was coming, threatening to make a movie to show the good and bad people in his life (a good way to expose us to his followers so more people could bully us), threatened to go to court because we were harassing him and finally put our @ names on his page lying that we were fake MJ fans that have hurt him and would hurt others asking people to please block us.

His last one, he wrote a twitlong talking about suicidal thoughts because the "hate club" according to him (talking about his victims that came out and spoke about what he did in public) hated him and wanted him gone and all the pity talk he could throw out but that a stranger was with him on the phone giving him strength not to kill himself and in the same twitlong he asked people not only to block us but to report us so we would be gone.

Guys social networking bullying is true and nobody is safe from suffering it, and the social network itself won't be much of a help to you. You know how many times this guy was reported? Hundreds and he just deletes tweets and keeps going. So be careful out there, specially with RPs of famous people and unverified pages of famous celebrities that you love. They surely are fakes but they will use the love you have for the celebrity they are portraying to get control over you, and you never know who is on the other side of the screen, can be a psychopath,  a pedophile, a narcissistic and the list goes on.

THE MESSAGE FROM WATER - HOW OUR EMOTIONS AND INTENTIONS REFLECT IN WATER

This post reflects information on the work of Mr. Masaru Emoto, a creative and visionary Japanese researcher. Mr. Emoto has published an important book,  with the findings of the global survey that was done by him, which showed how the thoughts, intentions, words and sounds altered water molecules.

We know that our thoughts, our feelings and intentions influence our body and everything around us, attracting good or bad things...

If you had any doubt that your thoughts can affect everything in and around you, the information and photographs that appear in this video will change your mind and alter your beliefs deeply.

With Mr. Emoto's work we are provided with evidence that human vibrational energy, thoughts, words, ideas and music, affect the molecular structure of water. The same water that comprises 60% of a human body and covers the same amount of our planet.

Watch the video and see for yourself:

TOP 10 UNSOLVED MYSTERIES PART 2

Croatoan

In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh dispatched an expedition to the east coast of North America, since Queen Elizabeth I gave him permission to colonize Virginia. He returned from the trip with two American Indians and samples of animals and plants. Between 1585 and 1587, two groups of colonists were left on Roanoke Island (part of the current North Carolina) to secure their settlement seat.

Because of continuing struggles with the natives of the local tribes, the first colony had little food and men to defend the settlement, so when Sir Francis Drake visited them after a raid in the Caribbean and offered to take them back to the England, they accepted and left.

In 1587, 121 new settlers arrived and found the local natives (the Croatans) as being friendly. The first English child born in the Americas was the daughter of one of these settlers. The group tried to be friendly with some other tribes that the colonists had fought earlier, which resulted in the killing of George Howe. The remaining members of the group convinced the leader to return to England and bring help. The leader (John White) returned to England leaving behind ninety men, seventeen women, and eleven children.

When White returned in August 1590, the settlement was deserted. There were no signs of struggle or remains were ever found. The only clue was the word "Croatoan" carved into a post of the fort and "Cro" carved into a nearby tree. The settlement became known as the "Lost Colony" and none of the members were ever seen again till this day.

Their fate became one of the great unsolved mysteries of history.

The Mary Celeste

The Mary Celeste was launched in Nova Scotia in 1860. Its original name was "Amazon". It was 31 feet long, displaced 280 tons and was recorded as a half-brig. For the next 10 years the ship was involved in numerous accidents in the sea, and went through a number of owners. Ultimately it appeared at an auction of "salvation" in which it was purchased for $ 3,000. After many repairs, it was placed on American record and renamed "Mary Celeste".

The new captain of the "Mary Celeste" was Benjamin Briggs, 37, a master with three previous commands. On November 7, 1872, the ship departed New York with Captain Briggs, his wife, young daughter and a crew of eight. The ship was loaded with 1700 barrels of raw American alcohol, bound for Genoa, Italy. The captain, his family and crew were never seen again. The ship was found floating in the middle of the Strait of Gibraltar. There was no sign of struggle on the ship and all documents except the captain's logbook, were missing.

In early 1873, it was reported that two lifeboats stranded in Spain, with a body and an American flag, the other containing five bodies. It has been argued that these must have been the remains of the crew of the Mary Celeste. However, the bodies apparently have never been identified.

The Black Dahlia

"The Black Dahlia" was a nickname given to Elizabeth Short (July 29, 1924 – c. January 15, 1947), a 22 year old American woman who was the victim of a gruesome and much-publicized murder.

Short was found mutilated, her body sliced in half at the waist, on January 15, 1947, in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, California. Short's severely mutilated body was severed at the waist and completely drained of blood. Her face had been slashed from the corners of her mouth toward her ears, creating an effect called the Glasgow smile. The body had been washed and cleaned and had been "posed" with her hands over her head and her elbows bent at right angles.

The autopsy stated that Short was 5 feet 5 inches (1.65 m) tall, weighed 115 pounds (52 kg), and had light blue eyes, brown hair, and badly decayed teeth. There were ligature marks on her ankles, wrists, and neck.

Short's unsolved murder has been the source of widespread speculation, leading to many suspects, along with several books and film adaptations of the story. As it stands, the case remains unsolved and one of Los Angeles most famous murder cases.

The Hum

"The hum" is a persistent and invasive low-frequency humming noise not audible to all people, heard in many places around the world, especially in the U.S., UK and Northern Europe. Usually heard only in quiet environments, and is often described as appearing to be the sound of a distant diesel engine. Since it was proven to be undetectable by mics or VLF antennae, its source and nature are still a mystery.

In 1997, Congress ordered the scientists and observers from some of the most prestigious research institutes in the nation to investigate a strange low frequency noise heard by residents in and around a small town called Taos, New Mexico. For years those who heard the noise, often described by them as a "hum", have sought answers. Until today, no one knows the cause of the "hum".

The Shroud of Turin

The shroud of Turin is a piece of linen that contains the image of a man who apparently died of crucifixion. Many Catholics consider him as the cloak that wrapped the body of Jesus Christ. It is currently kept in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy.

Despite several scientific investigations, no one has yet been able to explain how the image was imprinted on the shroud, and despite several attempts, no one has yet managed to replicate the feat. Tests of the radiocarbon dated to the Middle Ages, however apologists for the shroud believe it is incorrupt - and carbon dating can only date things which decay.

Previous to the middle ages, reports of the shroud exist as the Image of Edessa - reliably reported since at least the 4th century. In addition, another cloth (the Sudarium) known since biblical times (John 20:7) is said to have covered Christ's head in the tomb. A 1999 study by Mark Guscin, a member of the multidisciplinary investigation team of the Spanish Center Sindonology, investigated the relationship between the two tissues. Based on history, forensic pathology, blood type (the Shroud is reported to have AB blood stains), and stain patterns, he concluded that the two tissues covered the same head at two distinct periods, but close to each other. Avinoam Danin (a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) concurred with this analysis, adding that the pollen grains on the two tissues are the same.

THE DAY CHUCK NORRIS WAS ROBBED

If someone asks who is the last person anyone would think of robbing certainly 80% or more of respondents answer would be "Chuck Norris".

Over the years a lot of jokes about Chuck Norris appeared, but many do not know somebody actually have tried to rob him once, check out the real story:

Surprisingly two idiots tried it in 1994. Norris mentions all of this in his autobiography, "Against All Odds". And, by his testimony, that's what happened...

In 1994, early in his job as Walker, Texas Ranger, Norris was living in Dallas, Texas, where the show was filmed. One day he was walking down the street all alone, no entourage, no fans following him, no bodyguards, not even his wife. He turned next to a block in the commercial area of ​​downtown skyscrapers and saw two men, a little bigger than him, coming straight for him on the other side of the court.

They were looking right at him, Norris thought they wanted autographs. Then he walked up to them and stopped with a smile, after that, the one that was in front of him, picked up a pair of large knives, and said: "Give me your wallet, Chuck! Give it to me!"

Norris amazed opened his mouth, and then asked: "Are you crazy!?"

"No, we know who you are! And we know you have a lot of money! Now give it to me, or you're dead!"

Now, before we go any further, let's just go over some of the particulars. All jokes aside, Chuck Norris actually has the following belts: 1st degree in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, 8th Degree Master in Tae Kwon Do, 9th degree in Jeet Kune Do with Bruce Lee ( he was Lee's best student), Dan Inosanto, 10th degree Shito-Ryu Karate, 10th degree in Tang Soo Do, 11 degrees in Chun Kuk Do.

Granted, his art is his own mix, a hybrid of all the best moves he's learned over the years, all blended for both self-defense and competition, and is only allowed a grade of 10 or better at anything when you found your own dojo. But that's enough to say that the burglars never used their weapons.

The police arrived about 4 minutes later, three officers in two cars, and were greeted by a scene of two men with guns, very broken (the bones had gone through the skin) sitting on the sidewalk, two knives with blood in the gutter, and Chuck Norris, the Almighty, leaning against the wall, wearing his beard, jeans, cowboy boots and a cowboy hat.... and giving shoulders for them. The police started laughing so hard, holding up the walls, unable to put the cuffs on the thieves. One of the officers asked: "Didn't you not know who he was?"

The thief said: "Yes, we knew who he was! We thought all the crap that appeared on TV was fake!"

THE WATERFALL OF THE ETERNAL FLAME

Fire and water are two things that do not mix, because they live on opposite sides, so when we need to eliminate a flame is water that we use.

But in nature there is an unusual place, where these two elements apparently live in relative peace.

At the base of a waterfall, in the U.S. state of New York, there is a different place, where a flame burns eternally beside the waterfall, in a sort of natural chamber, where natural gas is released, and this gas does keep the flame Burning like a candle lost in the woods and hidden behind the waterfall.

The phenomenon for many years led locals to believe that there lived the spirit of nature or even fairies, but over time people have been noticing that there was a smell in that place that was different from other parts of that forest, and eventually it was discovered that what was feeding the flame was a natural gas leak and that put an ending to the legends involving the mysterious flame and its origin.

Still, the phenomenon is nonetheless beautiful and interesting as it is unique in the world and it attracts thousands of tourists every year, who go there to observe the Waterfall of the Eternal Flame burning steadily in a show created by nature.

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TOP 10 UNSOLVED MYSTERIES PART 1

This list comprises the most famous Unsolved Mysteries known to man that really defy rational explanation.

The Babushka Lady

During the analysis of the film footage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, a mysterious lady was spotted. She was wearing a brown overcoat and a scarf on her head. Her nickname arose from the headscarf she wore similar to scarves worn by elderly Russian women.

The woman appeared to be holding something in front of her face which is believed to be a camera. Even though the shooting had already taken place and most of her surrounding witnesses took cover, she can be seen still standing with the camera at her face. She was observed standing on the grass between Elm and Main streets.

The FBI publicly requested the woman to come forward and give them the footage she shot that day but she never did.

Till this day she nor the film she may have taken have been positively identified.

The Zodiac Killer

The Zodiac Killer was a serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The killer's identity remains unknown.

The Zodiac murdered victims in Benicia, Vallejo, Lake Berryessa and San Francisco between December 1968 and October 1969. Four men and three women between the ages of 16 and 29 were targeted.

The killer originated the name "Zodiac" in a series of taunting letters sent to the local Bay Area press. These letters included four cryptograms (or ciphers). Of the four cryptograms sent, only one has been solved.

The Zodiac Killer's crimes, letters and cryptograms to police and newspapers inspired many movies, novels, television productions and other serial killers but the identity of the killer until now remains a mystery.

The Bermuda Triangle

The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and surface vessels are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

Popular culture has attributed these disappearances to the paranormal, time warps, ufo's, Atlantis and other spiritual explanations..

There is still no explanation for the unusual large number of disappearances in the area.

Jack The Ripper

In the later half of 1888, London was terrorized by a series of murderers in the east end (largely in the Whitechapel area). The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer, that was disseminated in the media. The letter is widely believed to have been a hoax, and may have been written by a journalist in a deliberate attempt to heighten interest in the story.

The victims were typically female prostitutes who had their throats cut and bodies mutilated. In some cases the bodies were discovered just minutes after the ripper had left the scene. The removal of internal organs from at least three of the victims led to proposals that their killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge.

The police at the time had many suspects but could never find enough evidence to convict anyone.

In modern times there has been some speculation that Prince Albert Victor was the murderer. Even with modern police investigation methods, no further light has been shed on the murders till this day.

The Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich manuscript, described as "the world's most mysterious manuscript", is a work which dates to the early 15th century, possibly from northern Italy. It is named after the book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who purchased it in 1912.

Some pages are missing, but the current version comprises about 240 vellum pages, most with illustrations. Much of the manuscript resembles herbal manuscripts of the time period, seeming to present illustrations and information about plants and their possible uses for medical purposes. However, most of the plants do not match known species, and the manuscript's script and language remain unknown and unreadable.

Count Of St. Germain

The Count of St. Germain (Transylvania, May 28, 1696 - Eckernförde (?), February 27, 1784) was one of the most mysterious figures of the eighteenth century. Known as mystic, alchemist, goldsmith, diamond cutter, a courtier, adventurer, scientist, musician and composer. After the date of his death (accuracy uncertain), several organizations have adopted it as a mystical figure model. According to ancient accounts, was immortal and had the elixir of youth and the philosopher's stone.

In 1779 St. Germain came to Altona in Schleswig, where he became a friend of Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel, who provided materials and allowances for Earl perform their experiments.

On February 27, 1784 the Comte de Saint Germain died in residence near the factory provided by Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel. His death was recorded in the annals of the Church of St. Nicholas in Eckernförde and was buried on March 2. On 3 april mayor of the camera and proclaims Eckernförde issued an auction of the few possessions left by the count, since no relatives came to claim them.

In the late nineteenth century began to appear rumored sightings of the earl. St. Germain allegedly been seen in 1835 in Paris, and in 1867 in Milan. Adherents of theosophy were proponents of such an immortality of the count, claiming it as the master and who was still alive.

Several legends have arisen surrounding the Count of St. Germain, which lacks historical support. Nowadays these legends are acclaimed by mystical-religious groups.

CELEBRITIES WHO DIED IN BIZARRE CIRCUMSTANCES

Sonny Bono

Bono died on January 5, 1998 of injuries sustained when he hit a tree while skiing on the Nevada side of Heavenly Ski Resort near South Lake Tahoe, California. His death came just a little less than a week after Michael Kennedy, a son of Robert F. Kennedy, died in a similar skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado.

After Bono's death, Mary told an interviewer from TV Guide that Sonny had been addicted to and was seriously abusing prescription drugs, mainly Vicodin and Valium. Though Mary claimed that Sonny's drug use caused the accident, the autopsy performed by the Douglas County Coroner showed no indication of any substances or alcohol.

Natalie Wood

The Rebel Without A Cause actress died in 1981 at 43, after falling overboard on a boat sailing near California's Catalina Island. 

According to the autopsy report, Wood had dozens of bruises on her body, including injuries to her face and arms. The autopsy found that her blood alcohol level was .14, and an examining doctor stated that it was higher when she went overboard. They also found two drugs in her bloodstream: Cyclivine, a sea-sickness pill, and Darvon, a painkiller, which they believed caused a "much more drunken state" when combined with alcohol.

Officials ruled her death an accidental drowning, adding Wood had drank as many as eight glasses of wine, and was intoxicated when she died.

Detail: The West Side Story actress had developed a deep-rooted fear of water ever since her mother warned her as a child that she would meet her death by drowning in 'dark water'.

Marvin Gaye

The singer was fatally shot by his father, Marvin Gay, Sr. in the West Adams district of Los Angeles at their house on Gramercy Place (Marvin was living in his parents house at the time because he was depressed and suicidal). Gaye was shot twice after an altercation he had with his father after intervening in an argument between his parents over misplaced business documents. Gaye's wounds proved to be fatal and he was pronounced dead on arrival at the California Hospital Medical Center.

Gaye's father had reportedly been beaten by the singer prior to the shooting, and received five years of probation after pleading guilty to manslaughter charges. 

Gaye's death produced several musical tributes over the years including recollections of the incidents leading to his death. 

Michael Jackson

While preparing for his concert series titled This Is It, Jackson died at the age of 50 of acute propofol and benzodiazepine intoxication on June 25, 2009, after suffering from cardiac arrest. The Los Angeles County Coroner ruled his death a homicide and his personal physician was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. 

The day after Michael Jackson passed away, Lisa Marie Presley took to her blog on MySpace and posted about a conversation they had years ago where Michael Jackson stated that he was afraid he was going to end up like her father Elvis Presley.

Jackson's death triggered a global outpouring of grief, and as many as one billion people around the world reportedly watched his public memorial service on live television.

Lisa “Left Eye” Lopez

The TLC beauty, known for hits such as Waterfalls and No Scrubs, died of head and neck injuries at 30 in 2002, following a single-car accident in La Ceiba, Honduras.

A documentary on the final twenty-six days of Lopes's life, titled The Last Days of Left Eye premiered at the Atlanta Film Festival in April 2007. The film captured a car accident in which Lopes was a passenger and her assistant was the driver. 

Ten-year-old Bayron Isaul Fuentes Lopez walked into the path of the van driven by Lopes' personal assistant. The child had been trailing after his sisters and brothers and stepped off the median strip at the last minute. The boy was hit. Lopes' party stopped and found the boy critically injured. They loaded him into the car, and Lisa cradled the dying boy's bleeding head in her arms. Someone gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as they rushed him to a nearby hospital. The boy died the next day and Lopes paid for his medical expenses and funeral.

Earlier in the documentary, Lopes mentioned that she felt the presence of a "spirit" following her, and was struck by the fact that the child killed in the accident shared her last name, even thinking that the spirit may have made a mistake by taking his life instead of hers. The program also showed the last minutes of Lopes's life, including her swerving off the road.

Brandon Lee

The son of karate icon Bruce Lee died at 28 in 1993 in Wilmington, North Carolina after he was accidentally shot on the set of his film "The Crow" by a gun with malfunction.

One of the scenes shot for the film required that a gun was loaded, cocked and pointed at the camera but because of the short distance of the shot, live ammunition was real but with no gunpowder. After completion of this scene, the assistant wiped the gun dealer to remove the capsules, knocking one of the bullets in the barrel. The gun was loaded with blanks (which usually has two or three times more powder than a normal bullet to make a loud noise). Lee entered the set with a grocery bag containing an explosive bag of artificial blood. The bullet that was stuck in the barrel was accidentally shot at Lee passed through the bag he carried, causing holes in his internal organs and breaking his spine, causing his death by internal bleeding, even with the desperate attempt of a six-hour surgery to remove the bullet. There were rumors that the negatives with the filming of his death would have been destroyed without ever being revealed.

To this day, many questions exist regarding the circumstances of Lee's death.

David Carradine

The veteran star of classics like Kung Fu and Kill Bill died in 2009 when he was in Bangkok to shoot his latest film, Stretch. A police official said Carradine was found hanging by a rope naked in the room's closet, causing immediate speculation that his death was suicide. However, reported evidence suggested that his death was the result of autoerotic asphyxiation. Two autopsies were conducted and concluded that the death was not caused by suicide. The cause of death became widely accepted as "accidental asphyxiation".

Immediately following his death, two of his former wives, Gail Jensen and Marina Anderson, stated publicly that his sexual interests included the practice of self-bondage. Anderson, who had plans to publish a tell-all book about her marriage to Carradine, said in an interview with Access Hollywood, "There was a dark side to David, there was a very intense side to David. People around him know that." Previously in her divorce filing she had claimed that "It was the continuation of abhorrent and deviant sexual behavior which was potentially deadly."

TOP 10 EVIL CHILDREN PART 2

4. Jon Venables And Robert Thompson

Jon Venables and Robert Thompson (both 10 years old) had been stealing things all day at the shopping center - candy, a troll doll, some batteries, a can of blue paint, and other incidentals.

They boys approached James Bulger who had been wandering by the open door of the shop while his mother placed an orderand spoke to him, before taking him by the hand and leading him out of the precinct. This moment was captured on a CCTV camera recording timestamped at 15:42.

The boys took Bulger on a meandering 2.5-mile (4.0 km) walk across Liverpool to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal where he was dropped on his head and suffered injuries to his face. The boys joked about pushing Bulger into the canal. During the walk across Liverpool, the boys were seen by 38 people. Bulger had a bump on his forehead and was crying, but most bystanders did nothing to intervene, assuming that he was a younger brother. Two people challenged the older boys, but they claimed that Bulger was a younger brother or that he was lost and they were taking him to the local police station. At one point, the boys took Bulger into a pet shop, from which they were ejected. Eventually the boys arrived in the village of Walton, and with Walton Lane police station across the road facing them, they hesitated and led Bulger up a steep bank to a railway line near the disused Walton & Anfield railway station, close to Anfield Cemetery, where they began torturing him.

The video cameras at the mall caught several images of James Bulger in the hands of his killers, frozen in time. He was to be taken on a long, aimless walk, cruelly tortured along the way. James was senselessly abducted, tortured and beaten to death by his ten-year-old captors, who callously abandoned him on the railroad tracks. 

Before they left him, the boys laid Bulger across the railway tracks and weighted his head down with rubble, in the hope that a train would hit him and make his death appear to be an accident. 

The case's pathologist, stated that Bulger suffered so many injuries - 42 in total - that none could be isolated as the fatal blow.

3. Jesse Pomeroy

Jesse Harding Pomeroy was the youngest person convicted of the crime of murder in the first degree in the history of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Jesse Pomeroy was 14 when he was arrested in 1874 for the horrific murder of a four-year-old boy. He was quickly labeled “The Boston Boy Fiend.” 

His horrible trek had begun three years earlier with the sexual torture of seven other boys. For those crimes, Pomeroy was sentenced to a children’s reform school but was released early. Not long after, he mutilated and killed a 10-year-old girl who came into his mother’s store. A month later, he kidnapped 4-year-old Horace Mullen, took him to a swamp outside town and slashed him so savagely with a knife that he nearly decapitated him. Because of his strange appearance (he had a milky white eye) and his previous abhorrent behavior, he was under suspicion. When he was shown the body and asked if he’d done it, he responded with a nonchalant, “I suppose I did.” Then the girl was found buried in his mother’s cellar and he confessed to that murder, as well. 

He was convicted and sentenced to death. Following a public outcry against condemning children to death, his sentence was commuted to forty years of solitary confinement. 

2. Mary Bell

Mary Bell was convicted of strangling a young boy, Martin Brown, on May 25, 1968, the day before her 11th birthday. She was, as far as anyone knows, alone on this occasion. On July 31, 1968, Mary and her friend (Norma Bell - no relation to Mary) took part in the death, again by strangulation, of three-year-old Brian Howe. Police reports concluded that Mary Bell had gone back after killing him to carve an “N” into his stomach with a razor, this was then changed using the same razor but with a different hand to an “M”. Mary Bell also used a pair of scissors to cut off bits of Brian Howe’s hair and part of his genitals. As the girls were so young and their testimonies contradicted each other, it has never been entirely clear precisely what happened. 

Martin Brown’s death was initially ruled an accident as there was no evidence of foul play. Eventually, his death was linked with Brian Howe’s killing and in August, the two girls were charged with two counts of manslaughter. Mary was released in 1980 with court ordered anonymity. In 2003, the courts awarded her and her daughter anonymity for life.

1. Eric Harris And Dylan Klebold 
 

The rise of school shootings has been staggering over the past 15 years and they still leave many people ultimately wondering why? Most of the kids involved had been ridiculed one way or another by not only school mates, but also family members at home. These murderous children acquired large caliber weapons in most cases; though in others, knives, hand guns, or the like were brought in to their schools and use just as effectively. Teachers, faculty, and students loose their lives each and every time this happens.

On Tuesday, April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12 students and 1 teacher. They also injured 21 other students directly, and three people were injured while attempting to escape. The pair then committed suicide. It is the fourth-deadliest school massacre in United States history, after the 1927 Bath School disaster, 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, and the 1966 University of Texas massacre, and the deadliest for an American high school.

In the aftermath, a great deal of debate occurred about the killers' motivation and whether anything could have prevented the crime. Unlike some other school shootings, the fact that both shooters committed suicide made this one particularly difficult to assess. Answers were slow in coming. There were no arrests or trial through which the victims could vent their outrage.

This list is nothing but the tip of the ever-increasing iceberg...

TOP 10 EVIL CHILDREN PART 1

Children are supposed to be innocent and pure; without malice, contempt, sinister anger or desires to kill, yet every year many commit horrific crimes.

Here is a list with Ten of the Most Evil Children in History. The age limit for this list is 17 years old.

10. Brian And David Freeman

The Freeman boys had always been a handful, drinking beer from the age of six, taking drugs and even becoming racist skinheads. Everyone in the community knew they were troubled, but no one expected them to kill their whole family in cold blood.

Bryan Freeman, 17 and David, 16, who had shaved and tattooed their heads as a symbol of their neo-Nazi beliefs, were immediate suspects when their parents and younger brother were found bludgeoned to death in their Salisbury Township, PA, home. The boys had been terrorizing the family and as a whole, the town. As the police told it, the triple murder uncovered in Salisbury Township, Pa., that week was every parent’s nightmare - the ghastly culmination of a long-running battle of wills between the parents Brenda and Dennis Freeman and their loutish, hulking sons Bryan and David. 

9. Edmund Kemper

Also known as "The Co-ed Killer", he is an American serial killer and a necrophile who was active in California in the early 1970s. 

In 1964, when Edmund Kemper was 15, he shot his grandparents, killing them both. He had been planning his repulsive act for some time and had no regrets later. The California Youth Authority detained him in Juvenile Hall so that they could put him through rigorous series of tests administered by a psychiatrist. Because the results suggested that he was a paranoid psychotic, he was sent to Atascadero State Hospital for treatment. There he learned what others thought about his crime and worked hard to make his doctors believe that he had recovered.

Although he was considered a sociopath, he worked in the psychology lab to help administer the tests to others. In the process, he learned a lot about other deviant offenders. Kemper was released after another five years and remained under the supervision of the Youth Authority. His doctors recommended that he not be returned to his mother’s care, but the Youth Authority ignored this. After Kemper murdered and dismembered eight women over the next five years, these same doctors affirmed his insanity defense. In fact, even as he was carrying parts of his victims around, a panel of psychiatrists judged him to be no threat to society.

8. Joshua Phillips

In 1998, 14-year-old Joshua Phillips bludgeoned his 8-year-old neighbor to death and hid her body beneath his bed. Seven days later, his mother noticed something leaking from beneath the bed. Joshua claimed that’s he’d accidentally hit Maddie in the eye with his baseball bat causing her to scream. In his panic he dragged her to his home where he hit her again and then stabbed her eleven times. 

His story failed to convince a Florida jury, who convicted of the first degree murder, and sentenced to life in prison without chance of parole. 

His mother is still appealing his conviction based upon the fact that he was given an adult penalty for his crime and at age 26, Joshua Phillip is still in prison serving his life sentence.

7. Willie Bosket

Willie Bosket, born on December 9, 1962, is a convicted murderer, whose crimes, committed while he was still a minor, led to a change in New York state law, so that juveniles as young as thirteen could be tried in adult court for murder and would face the same penalties.

On March 19, 1978, Willie Bosket, then fifteen years old, shot dead Noel Perez on the New York subway, during an attempt to steal some money and a watch. Eight days later, Bosket shot another man, Moises Perez (no relation to his first victim) in another botched robbery attempt. Bosket was tried and convicted of the murders in the New York City Family court, where he was sentenced to five years in prison (the maximum for a minor). 

The short length of Bosket’s sentence caused a public outcry, and led the New York State Legislature to pass the Juvenile Offender Act of 1978. Under this act, children as young as thirteen years old could be tried in an adult court for crimes such as murder, rape, arson, assault and burglary, and receive the same penalties as adults. New York was the first state to enact a law of this nature; many other legislatures have since followed suit. 

Bosket was eventually released from prison, but has subsequently been convicted of a number of other felonies, for which he has received a number of life sentences. He is currently in the New York prison system, in solitary confinement. 

6. Laurie Tackett

On the morning of Saturday, January 11, 1992, Indiana resident Donn Foley and his brother Ralph decided to do some quail hunting in a nearby Jefferson County forest. Just one mile into their trip, as Donn turned onto Lemon Road, Ralph spotted a strange object just a few feet from the road in a barren soybean field. At once it appeared to them that it might be a body, but the form was so badly burned and scarred that it looked to them to be a doll. Upon closer investigation, it became painfully obvious that it was not a doll. 

Upon investigation, it turned out to be the body of Shanda Sharer who would later be found the victim of a jealous lesbian love triangle. Her body, prior to the murder, had been slashed and stabbed with death eventually resulting from torching. Laurie Tackett was ultimately implicated along with Toni Lawrence and Hope Rippey.

Mary Laurine (Laurie) Tackett was born on October 5, 1974 in Madison, Indiana. Her mother was a fundamentalist Pentecostal Christian and her father was a factory worker with two felony convictions and prison stints in the 1960s. Tackett claimed she was molested at least twice as a child, at ages five and twelve.

5. Brenda Anne Spencer

On Monday, January 29, 1979, 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer put herself by a window in her home and began randomly shooting at Grover Cleveland Elementary School across the street. She opened fire as children were waiting outside for principal Burton Wragg to open the gate. The shooting claimed the lives of Wragg and Mike Suchar, and injured eight students and a police officer. Wragg was killed while trying to help the children, and Suchar was killed while trying to pull Wragg to safety.

The school was across the street from her house. She used the rifle she had recently been given for Christmas by her father. When the six-hour incident ended and the pretty teenager was asked why she had committed the crime, she shrugged and replied, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.” She also said: “I had no reason for it, and it was just a lot of fun.” “It was just like shooting ducks in a pond.” and “(The children) looked like a herd of cows standing around; it was really easy pickings.”

Her lack of remorse and inability to provide a serious explanation for her actions when captured inspired the song “I Don’t Like Mondays” by The Boomtown Rats, written by socialist musician Bob Geldof. Her quote “I don’t like Mondays” also appears written on a wall in the movie, The Breakfast Club.

DEJAVU

There you are walking down a street where you have never been before, but for some reason it seems familiar. It's almost as if this had happened before! But how?

Déjà vu (literally "already seen") is the experience of feeling sure that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation, even though the exact circumstances of it are uncertain and were perhaps imagined. The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of "eeriness", "strangeness", "weirdness", or what Sigmund Freud calls "the uncanny". The "previous" experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience has genuinely happened in the past.

Theories

1. Scientifically a deja vu attributed to the hippocampus, which is an area of the brain responsible for memory. It is believed that in some situations the hippocampus records before the time a new fact that is happening. This confusion of registration in the presence of an event makes you feel that the situation has already occurred. It is a failure of microseconds but it happens. According to psychologists deja vu depends greatly on the individual's routine. The more imaginative the subject, most frequently the phenomenon can happen. It is also variable, depending on their habits. People who leave or travel a lot tend to feel more often than those who stay more home.

2. Spiritualists believe that Deja vu is related to reincarnation. An event you lived or a place you’ve been in a past life for example. Another spiritualist explanation is that the Deja vu emerges from the unconscious, whereas in the hours of sleep, the Spirit, protruding from the body with the perispirit, wanders around, looking after their interests and preparing to face their new tasks the next day. Thus, the feeling that a certain task has already been done or a certain place already been visited, without ever having been there before, can be the result of this out of the body experience and do not necessarily come from previous incarnations.

3. Well, there's also the theory of the Divine! Because as in the Bible itself is written that God owns  time, which for God  the time doesn’t really exist, He has the power to cross our chronological time, meaning that our memories are still a great mystery, and can store the past and so things to come too! Then the "DEJA VU" is a reminder of a future situation and not a past one.

MADAME DELPHINE LALAURIE

Delphine LaLaurie and her third husband, Leonard LaLaurie, took up residence in the house at 1140 Royal Street sometime in the 1830's. The pair immediately became the darlings of the gay New Orleans social scene that at the time was experiencing the birth of ragtime, the slave dances and rituals of Congo Square, the reign of the Mighty Marie Laveau, and the advent of the bittersweet Creole Balls. Madame LaLaurie hosted fantastic events in her beautiful home that were talked about months afterward. She was described as sweet and endearing in her ways, and her husband was nothing if not highly respected within the community.

At the same time, it is said, Madame’s friendship with infamous Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau, began to grow. Laveau lived not far from LaLaurie’s Royal Street home and the two women became acquainted when Laveau did Madame’s hair occasionally. It is said that under Laveau’s tutelage, Madame LaLaurie began to act upon her latent interest in the occult, learning the secrets of voodoo and witchcraft at the hands of a might mistress of the craft.

Like all well-established members of society, the LaLaurie's kept a brace of slaves to help run their Royal Street home. Early on, there was nothing unusual about Madame's relationship with her slaves, although they all seemed to hold her in nervous regard. But eventually, whispers began to spread through the lower Quarter of the Madame's double life and of her growing abuse of those indentured to working under her roof. The whispers grew louder and louder, among the Negroes and the Free People of Color and were passed ear to ear throughout the tight-knit domestic community of the Old Quarter. But New Orleans socialites turned a deaf ear to what they considered "nonsense" and “superstition”- until the day Madame LaLaurie was seen chasing a young slave girl through the house and to her ultimate death on the cobblestone courtyard, three stories below.

The death, deemed an accident, and Madame deemed perfectly within her right to exact discipline on her property, nonetheless set off a chain of events that would assure Madame LaLaurie an eternal place in infamy.

It is said that, angered at the needless and awful death of the young slave girl, one of the older kitchen women deliberately set fire to the house. The flames had nearly engulfed most of the lower stories of the house by the time the fire brigade arrived on the scene. The kitchen woman, it is said, ran out to the fire brigade and, hollering something about the "poor souls" in the attic, led those who followed to the top of the burning house.

There are actual accounts, with notarized signatures of at least three witnesses of high standing, of the gruesome and horrible sights found in the dark and smoky attic that day. Dead and half-dead slaves, men, women, and children, were found in various stages of torment and pain - chained to the walls by shackles on their hands and feet, some lying prone, others forced to stand in crudely constructed wooden stocks, they had been subjected to unimaginable acts of morbid atrocity. Eyes gouged out; tongues hacked off and in some instances crudely re-attached; mouths and eyes sewn shut altogether; noses and ears sheared off; bones broken and reset in horrible, twisted manners; genitals mutilated - these were just some of the horrible sights that met the eyes of the fire rescuers and witnessed by ordinary citizens. Most of the slaves thus confined were already dead from torment or smoke inhalation; the others would not last long beyond this day of liberation.

The City was in an uproar. There were cries of vengeance against the Bitch LaLaurie; they wanted her blood; they wanted her skin. And Madame knew it. So, with the mob forming hot upon her heels, she escaped Royal Street and the French Quarter in her carriage, the horses dragging it madly away toward the swamps and Bayous south and east of the Quarter itself.

It is said Madame LaLaurie stopped and took refuge at the Pilot House (still standing) located on the shores of Bayou St. John, and that later she boarded a merchant schooner and escaped under cover of darkness. Where is still a matter of some debate. 

Dwelling deep in the verdant darkness of the piney North shore woods, it is said Madame’s anger at those who had stripped her of her previous life festered and grew along with her interest in the dark arts learned at Marie Laveau’s hand. Soon tales began to spread through the rural community of the "witch woman", the "devil’s wife", living among them and whose strange rituals filled the dark woods with fire and smoke and otherworldly chanting. An atmosphere of dread pervaded the little community and there were whispered stories of animal sacrifices and torture, of curses falling upon land and livestock, of children falling sick and wasting away, and soon the name of Madame Delphine LaLaurie began to be uttered again with fear and loathing.

It is rumored that her dark legacy lives on to this day and there are still numerous reports of midnight ritual fires along the shores of Lake Pontchartrain or in the deep woods adjacent to the St. Tammany Trace. When the subject is raised of a satanic cult still thriving in the area, some modern day residents of the now burgeoning town of Lacombe will wag their heads in a resigned "yes" - though few will talk openly about it.

This is the legacy of Madame Delphine LaLaurie, who dabbled in great mysteries and got a taste for blood that was never sated, as long as she lived. Some say, in fact, that she has never died, having paid for eternal life with generations of blood sacrifices.

As for the home on Royal Street, it was restored and renovated many times over the intervening years, passing through the hands of many a land-loaded New Orleanian. But an odd footnote is that no one and nothing has ever thrived at that location for very long. Since being abandoned by the LaLaurie’s on that fateful day long ago, it has housed single families, schools, clothing shops, and even a government freedman’s bureau, but none stayed established there for very long. In the 20th century it was converted to a collection of studios and small apartments and as I write this, a new wave of interior renovations is underway. But the tales keep surfacing nonetheless.

There are reported incidents of people seeing, feeling and hearing the ghosts of tormented slaves in the LaLaurie home, and there are even reports of the Madame herself being seen there. The docile house servants who entreated the assistance of outsiders when the house was about to burn to the ground are said to often return to their task - running and slamming doors and shouts are heard repeatedly. Nor are the spirits of the restless dead quiet: the reports of moans and weeping outnumber all others, and there are several who have seen the ghostly faces of the dead peering from the upper windows and the chamber of horrors that became the crucible of their miserable lives.

New Orleans is one of the oldest and most multi-faceted cities in the United States, and there are other tales, similar to those of the LaLaurie home that, sadly, have made their way into history. But the gruesome horror of this particular event was so ghastly that it stains the city's memory to this very day.

DRACULA: THE TRUE STORY

Dracula has been attributed to many literary genres including horror fiction, the gothic novel and invasion literature. Structurally it is an epistolary novel, that is, told as a series of diary letters. Although Stoker did not invent the vampire, the novel's influence on the popularity of vampires has been singularly responsible for many theatrical and film interpretations throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

Vladislav III, called "Vlad the Impaler" (that is, Vlad Tepes, pronounced ['tsepe?] in Romanian; also known as Vladislav Dracula or simply Dracula, in Romanian Draculea; November/December 8, 1431 - December 1476), was a Wallachian (Romanian) voivode (nobleman). His three reigns were in 1448, 1456 - 1462, and 1476. Vlad the Impaler is known for the exceedingly cruel punishments he imposed during his reign.

His Romanian surname Draculea, is derived from his father's title Dracul, meaning affiliation to or descent from "Dracul"; the later was a member of the Order of the Dragon created by Emperor Sigismund. Vlad's family had two factions, the Draculesti and the Danesti. The word "dracul" means "the Devil" or "demon" in modern Romanian but in Vlad's day also meant "dragon", and derives from the Latin word Draco, also meaning "dragon".

His post-mortem moniker of Tepes (Impaler) originated in his preferred method for executing his opponents, impalement - as popularized by medieval Transylvanian pamphlets. In Turkish, he was known as "Kazikli Bey" which means "Impaler Prince". Vlad was referred to as Dracula in a number of documents of his times, mainly the Transylvanian Saxon pamphlets and The Annals of Jan Dlugosz.

The crown of Wallachia was not passed automatically from father to son; instead, the leader was elected by the boyars, with the requirement that the Prince-elect be of nominally Basarab princely lineage (os de domn - "of voivode bones", "of voivode marrow"), including out of wedlock births. This elective monarchy often resulted in instability, family disputes and assassinations. Eventually, the princely house split between two factions: the descendants of Mircea the Elder, Vlad's grandfather; and those of another prince, Dan II (Danesti faction). In addition to that, as in all feudal states, there was another struggle between the central administration (the prince) and the high nobility for control over the country. To top it off, the two powerful neighbors of Wallachia, the Kingdom of Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, were at the peak of their rivalry for control of southeastern Europe, turning Wallachia into a battle ground.

Vlad was very likely born in the citadel (a military fortress) of Sighisoara in Transylvania, during the winter of 1431. He was born as the second son to his father Vlad Dracul and his mother Princess Cneajna of Moldavia. He had an older brother named Mircea and a younger brother named Radu the Handsome. Although his native country was Wallachia to the south, the family lived in exile in Transylvania as his father had been ousted by pro-Ottoman boyars. In the same year as his birth, his father, Vlad Dracul, could be found in Nuremberg, where he was vested into the Order of the Dragon. At the tender age of five, young "Vlad" was also initiated into the Order of the Dragon.

His father, Vlad II Dracul, born around 1395, was an illegitimate son of Mircea the Elder, an important early Wallachian ruler. As a young man, he had joined the court of Sigismund of Luxemburg, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary, whose support for claiming the throne of Wallachia he eventually acquired. While the people of Wallachia did give Vlad II the surname Dracu (Dracul being the more grammatically correct form), any connection with a dark power was most likely coincidental. His son Vlad III would later use in several documents the surname Draculea. Through various translations (Draculea, Drakulya) Vlad III eventually came to be known as Dracula (note that this ultimate version is a neologism).

From his first marriage, to a Wallachian noble woman, Vlad III apparently had a son, later prince of Wallachia as Mihnea cel Rau, and another two with his second wife, a relative of Matthias Corvinus of Hungary.
The reputation of Vlad Tepes was considerably darker in the Western Europe than in the Eastern Europe and Romania. In the West, Vlad III Tepes had been characterized as an exceedingly cruel madman. The number of his victims ranges from 40,000 to 100,000. Much of the information about his atrocities and cruelness comes from the German stories written about him, which were for the most part politically, religiously and economically inspired propaganda against Vlad Tepes.

The atrocities made by Vlad in the German stories include impaling, torturing, burning, skinning, roasting, and boiling people, feeding people human flesh (their friends or relatives), cutting off limbs, drowning and nailing of hats to the heads of people. His victims included men and women of all ages, religions and social classes, children and babies.

In the memoirs of the Serbian Janissary Konstantin Mihailovic, it is documented by Mihailovic that the Ottomans feared Vlad III, and Mihailovic goes into great detail about how Vlad III would often cut off the noses of Turkish soldiers, sending them to Hungary to boast of how many of the enemy he had killed. Mihailovic also documents that the Ottomans were fearful of Wallachian attacks at night. He does elude to the famed "forrest of the impaled", where Vlad III was alleged to have lined the roadways with thousands of impaled Turkish soldiers. However, Mihailovic did not actually see this. He was with the army at that time, but was in the rear portion of the Ottoman army, recounting it based on the word of others.

The actions taken by Vlad Tepes must be viewed in the light of the standards and morality of his time. Most of the actions taken by Vlad can be justified on moral grounds or they had a utilitarian purpose or in some cases both. Most of the tortures done by Tepes in the different stories are actually normal punisments in that time. It is also common sense to think that if Vlad really was a bloodthirsty tyrant and a madman, the Hungarian king would not have had him marry a relative of his and put him on the throne of Wallachia.

Impalement was Tepes's preferred method of torture and execution. His method of torture was a horse attached to each of the victim's legs as a sharpened stake was gradually forced into the body. The end of the stake was usually oiled, and care was taken that the stake not be too sharp; else the victim might die too rapidly from shock. Normally the stake was inserted into the body through the anus and was often forced through the body until it emerged from the mouth. However, there were many instances where victims were impaled through other bodily orifices or through the abdomen or chest. Infants were sometimes impaled on the stake forced through their mother's chests. The records indicate that victims were sometimes impaled so that they hung upside down on the stake.

As expected, death by impalement was slow and painful. Victims sometimes endured for hours or days. Vlad often had the stakes arranged in various geometric patterns. The most common pattern was a ring of concentric circles in the outskirts of a city that constituted his target. The height of the spear indicated the rank of the victim. The corpses were often left decaying for months.

There are claims that thousands of people were impaled at a single time. One of the most famous woodcuts of the period shows Vlad the Impaler feasting amongst a forest of stakes and their grisly burdens outside Brasov, while a nearby executioner cuts apart other victims.

An old Romanian story says that Vlad left a gold cup in the middle of the street, then returned to pick it up the next day since no one touched it, as people were so afraid to commit crimes during his reign due to these horrific means of torture and capital punishment.

Many have attempted to justify Vlad's actions on the basis of nascent nationalism and political necessity. Most of the merchants in Transylvania and Wallachia were Saxons who were seen as parasites, preying upon Romanian natives of Wallachia, while the boyars had proven their disloyalty time and time again (Vlad's own father and older brother were murdered by unfaithful boyars). His actions were likely driven by one or more of three motives: personal or political vendettas, and the establishment of iron-fisted law and order in Wallachia.

Vlad Tepes is alleged to have committed even more impalements and other tortures against invading Ottoman forces. It was reported that an invading Ottoman army turned back in fright when it encountered thousands of rotting corpses impaled on the banks of the Danube. It has also been said that in 1462 Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, a man noted for his own psychological warfare tactics, returned to Constantinople after being sickened by the sight of 20,000 impaled corpses outside Vlad's capital of Târgoviste. Many of the victims were Turkish prisoners of war Vlad had previously captured during the Turkish invasion. The total Turkish casualty toll in this battle reached over 40,000. The warrior sultan turned command of the campaign against Vlad over to subordinates and returned to Constantinople, even though his army had initially outnumbered Vlad's three to one and was better equipped.

Almost as soon as he came to power, his first significant act of cruelty may have been motivated by a desire of revenge as well as a need to solidify his power. Early in his reign he gave a feast for his boyars and their families to celebrate Easter. Vlad was well aware that many of these same nobles were part of the conspiracy that led to his father's assassination and the burying alive of his elder brother, Mircea. Many had also played a role in the overthrow of numerous Wallachian princes. During the feast Vlad asked his noble guests how many princes had ruled during their life times. All of the nobles present had outlived several princes. One answered that at least thirty princes had held the throne during his life. None had seen less than seven reigns. Vlad immediately had all the assembled nobles arrested. The older boyars and their families were impaled on the spot. The younger and healthier nobles and their families were marched north from Târgoviste to the ruins of Poienari Castle in the mountains above the Arges River. Vlad the Impaler was determined to rebuild this ancient fortress as his own stronghold and refuge. The enslaved boyars and their families were forced to labor for months rebuilding the old castle with materials from another nearby ruin. According to the stories, they labored until the clothes fell off their bodies and then were forced to continue working naked. Very few of the old gentry survived the ordeal of building Vlad's castle.

It is most likely that Bram Stoker found the name for his vampire from William Wilkinsons book called An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia: with various Political Observations Relating to Them. It is known that Stoker made notes about this book. It is also suggested by some that because Stoker was a friend of a Hungarian professor (Arminius Vambery/Hermann Vamberger) from Budapest, Vlad's name might have been mentioned by this friend. Regardless of how the name came to Stoker's attention, the cruel history of the Impaler would have readily lent itself to Stoker's purposes. The events of Vlad's life were played out in a region of the world that was still basically medieval even in Stoker's time. The Balkans had only recently shaken off the Turkish yoke when Stoker started working on his novel and ancient superstitions were still prevalent. 

Given the history of the vampire legend in Europe it is perhaps natural that Stoker should place his great vampire in the heart of the region that gave birth to the story. Once Stoker had determined on a locality Vlad Dracula would stand out as one of the most notorious rulers of the selected region. He was obscure enough that few would recognize the name and those who did would know him for his acts of brutal cruelty; Dracula was a natural candidate for vampirism.