There has been a modern revival of vampirism in recent years.  Although AIDS has put a dampener on sucking your girlfriend’s blood, no one can deny there is a growing subculture which embracing everything vampish, and its popularity has spilled over into mainstream pop-culture.

What is modern-day vampirism? Simply, the party by night, sleep by day mentality. Dressing in black, celebrating everything macabre and sensual. What is its origin? To cut a long story short, the early Slavs and Britons had a strong belief in vampires (living corpses empowered by evil, craving blood as sustenance) up until the early 1800s. Some occultists today believe supernatural vampirism to be a fact (another post perhaps?).

If I was to ask who is the most popular vampire in history – an overwhelming majority would say Dracula (although my kids might say Sesame Street’s The Count). Have you ever wondered how the superstar of horror was inspired?

Dracula was very much a real person, called Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia (or more commonly known as the Vlad The Impaler, or Draculea (1431-1476). He was a madman who massacred more than 100,000 men women, children, and babies during his lifetime in the most sickening, disturbing ways imaginable. And to drive the point home (pun intended) let me go into detail – but please be warned, the next paragraph isn’t nice to read (skip it if you want).

The atrocities committed by Vlad included impaling, torturing, burning, skinning, roasting, and boiling people, feeding people the flesh of their friends or relatives, cutting off limbs and drowning.  As his name implies… Impalement was Vlad’s preferred method of torture and execution. An oiled stake was slowly forced through the anus until it emerged from the mouth. Death by impalement was slow and agonizing and victims sometimes endured for hours or even days. One claim says he impaled 10,000 in the Transylvanian city of Sibiu in a single day (and I bet you thought Transylvania was only a fictional country).

Sorry you had to read that – but again I wish to make a point, which is simply this…

The origins of vampirism is nothing short of pure evil. The original vampire, Vlad Dracul, was nothing short of pure evil. The vampires in books and films of yesteryear were nothing short of pure evil.

But times have changed.

Pure evil has become not-so-bad-pretty-good-actually evil. The repulsive has become romantic. The villain has now become the hero. We, the pop-culture consumers have made the slow (but sure) transition from hating the vampire, to cheering for him… or her.

Is anyone else concerned?

A comment on yesterday’s post reminded me of an old urban legend about another hell hole in Russia, but one which is rather more disturbing. The story goes like this…

Geologists working somewhere in remote Siberia had drilled a hole some 14.4 kilometers deep when the drill bit suddenly began to rotate wildly. The project’s manager was quoted as saying they decided that the center of the earth was hollow.  Supposedly, the geologists measured temperatures of over 2,000 degrees in the deep hole. They lowered super sensitive microphones to the bottom of the well, and to their horror they heard the sounds of thousands, perhaps millions, of suffering souls screaming.  The plot thickened when a recording emerged of the account, and just when you thought the story couldn’t get any better, a man who witnessed the drilling went on record with the description of the bat-like creature coming out of the same hole.

The story and it’s additions were made famous by supermarket tabloids (and by the gullible people who read them or well-meaning religious folk) of the early 1990s and it has now entered the halls of infamy thanks to the Internet (and by the gullible people who…).Is there any truth to it?  Snopes says “no”, truthorfiction says “no”, my common sense says “no”, and I tend to agree with all three.

Before I continue, let me digress for a moment. There is something about human nature which yearns to believe the unbelievable.  There is the child in all of us which still is innocent enough to believe in fairy tales. Problem is we simply don’t do the research, or use our God given brains.  We hear, then re-tell the incredible stories without hesitation (or a simple google to see if it is truth or fiction) and before long fiction is re-labeled fact.  That is until the truth is discovered and we get egg on our face.  Unfortunately many of us Christians are the worst culprits, and not only does our character lose credibly… our faith loses credibility.  We must remember that Jesus is the Truth, we are followers and carriers of Truth and although we still desperately need the child-like faith, we shouldn’t have child-like intelligence.

With that in mind, back to the story…

The truth.  In 1984, an experimental well in Russia’s Kola Peninsula which reached 12 kilometers into the earth.  Scientists discovered rare rock formations, flows of gas and water, but no damned souls, no hollow center, and not temperatures of 2000&deg but of 180&deg.  You can read all about the Kola well here, all factual and very interesting.   The origin of the recording? unknown. The bat-out-of-hell creature addition?  A simple lie designed  to see whether a religious television program would accept the story at face value without checking it out, which they did (unfortunately).

In conclusion, I wish to say that although Hell isn’t situated under the snow in Siberia… it is very real, you don’t want to go there, and there is only one way to avoid it. Find a Bible look up John 3 :16 and think about it seriously.

Siberia hell hole aside, is hell really in the Earth’s bowels?  My opinion is again “no”, simply because the Bible says Hell  is eternal, and that the earth is not.  In fact it is going to all go up in flames one day… But not on Dec 22, 2012 (that is another blog post )

Perhaps it’s is because of the not so subtle (down right scary) imagery hidden throughout the movie. Don’t be deceived by it’s cute Disney musical facade with the ever so innocent Mary (fresh from singing in the Swiss alps).

Pure evil I say.

You doubt me? Watch the original trailer if you dare.

*Shudder*
]]> http://www.symondrake.com/mary-poppins-hide-your-children/feed/ 5 http://www.symondrake.com/the-mair-park-bigfoot-pays-off/ http://www.symondrake.com/the-mair-park-bigfoot-pays-off/#comments Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:01:00 +0000 Symon http://www.symondrake.com/?p=198 Many moons ago while surfing Amazon’s Listmanias I came across an author by the name of Jeremy Robinson. To cut a long story short, he was running a viral video contest to promote his new book, Pulse. I bribed my good buddy Lesmondj into spending a Saturday afternoon in the bush and what eventuated was two versions of the now infamous Bigfoot attack video (over 10,000 hits now on Metacafe and YouTube).

We won by a landslide, the closest (and only) opponent trailing by 9000ish hits (but who’s counting) and I was delighted to recieve the promised books last week.

A massive THANKYOU to Jeremy Robinson for the very generous prize (and for forking out mega moolah for the postage). Please check out his site here.

And for all those dying to know how the movie magic was created, here is some Bigfoot Attack Footage trivia…

1. No, the Bigfoot wasn’t real. There was more than one concerned person thinking the footage was authentic. Lesmondj and I must have the mean acting skills (and girls dig guys who have skills…).

2. The entire attack scene was done on the first take… with an imagined Bigfoot, yes imagined, not real.

3. Jon Dylan used his computer hacking skills to overlay the Bigfoot sound effects (purchased from Itunes for $1.79).

4. Apparently, the Bigfoot growls sound identical to a real Bigfoot, as one reader commented (as she deals with them on a daily basis – seriously).

5. The Mair Park Ghost legend is mostly true.

6. On the short version, Yes, the blood was real… from my nose. Don’t ask.

7. The rotting bone at the cave’s entrance (tedious version) was stolen from my dog.

8. Lesmondj spent the majority of the attack scene voluntarily lying in a puddle of water. The mark of a true friend.

9. There was no script.

View the short (and exhilirating) version below:

Footage of Bigfoot Attack? – Click here for more blooper videos

View the long (but informative) version below:

To rub salt in my wounds, at the film’s conclusion, when Data (the same kid who was in Temple of Doom) is talking to the reporters, he says: “…Yeah, and the part with the octopus was really scary!”

I could have cried.

And now, thanks to the magic of Youtube, let me reveal to you, the deleted Giant Octopus scene in all it’s glory. 29 years later all I have to say (once again) is… “Meh.”
]]> http://www.symondrake.com/the-goonies-and-the-illusive-giant-octopus/feed/ 7 http://www.symondrake.com/nzs-very-own-giant-man-eating-bird/ http://www.symondrake.com/nzs-very-own-giant-man-eating-bird/#comments Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:51:00 +0000 Symon http://www.symondrake.com/?p=195 Those of us with a fascination for cryptozoology will be familiar with Americas ‘Thunderbird’ (giant man-eating) bird legend. Well, wouldn’t you know… I Came across an extremely interesting article in this week’s NZ Herald about New Zealand’s very own man-eating bird with a 3-meter wingspan and talons as big as tiger’s claws that terrorised the early Maori.

Now if that’s not worthy of a blog post, I don’t know what is.

The Maori Legend of the giant man-eating bird, Te Hokioi, is a legend no more. It is now believed by scientists to be the Haast’s Eagle that was discovered in swamp deposits by Sir Julius von Haast in the 1870s.

Haast’s eagle has until now, always been thought to be a scavenger because its bill was similar to a vulture’s, but a re-examination of skeletons using today’s technology shows it could easily deliver a killing blow as it dived at speeds of up to 80kph.

“They were certainly capable of swooping down and taking a child… and had the ability to not only strike with their talons but to close the talons and put them through quite solid objects such as a pelvis. It was designed as a killing machine.” says Paul Scofield, the curator of vertebrate zoology at the Canterbury Museum.

The eagle’s main prey would have been Moa, flightless birds which grew to as much as 250kg and 2.5 metres tall. Tragically, it is believed that once the Moa were exterminated by humans, the giant man-eater simply died out also.

We have a sign on our church building that says ‘Jesus is the answer’, but I wonder if we unconsciously believe that ‘Google is the answer’?

I must confess, that if I want to find out anything about anything… where do I go first?

Google.

In fact, anything I may want to do online, I can do through Google.

Email? Gmail.
Advertising? Adwords.
Make money? AdSense.
Start a blog? Blogger.
Shop? Froogle.

The examples are endless (click here to see the full list of Google products).

It cannot be denied that Google has successfully infiltrated every aspect of our lives, and it’s almost as if we have become dependant on Google as our IT surrogate mother and cannot live without her.

Should we be concerned at how globally intrusive Google is becoming? Let’s face it, if your local terrorist network is frequently using Google’s free satellite imaging app. to accurately identify targets, then yes, you should be concerned.

Does anyone else think that taking photos of every street in the western world is a little obsessive (and creepy)?

Is there some sort of whacked out conspiracy happening right under our noses? Could Google be the affront for world domination? If I was an evil ‘take over the world’ kind of guy I would be taking Google very seriously. Check out the images below.

Indeed, the plot thickens.

(and just for the record… no, I don’t think Google is the Antichrist).

Although entertaining, the movie was far too long and I hate to say it… boring. Good news folks. I have re-edited it to a lean 1.15 minutes, and thanks to a blood-nose (don’t ask), it now has an alternate ending (like special edition DVDs

So PLEASE view the clip below and tell your friends about it as the more views it has, the better chance I have of winning. Thanks heaps!

Footage of Bigfoot Attack? ]]> http://www.symondrake.com/authentic-footage-of-bigfoot-attack/feed/ 2 http://www.symondrake.com/mair-park-ghost-footage/ http://www.symondrake.com/mair-park-ghost-footage/#comments Mon, 15 Jun 2009 06:52:00 +0000 Symon http://www.symondrake.com/?p=178