'Buried Worlds with Don Wildman' Episode 1: An abandoned town, a portal to hell and a vampire catacomb
In the season premiere of 'Buried Worlds with Don Wildman', Wildman journeys to Eastern Europe to uncover the truths behind one of the most well-known creatures of lore, vampires. He dives into the history of the creatures of the night and sets out to investigate their existence with a group of vampire hunters in Bulgaria's Rhodope mountains, followed by the dungeons beneath the streets of Budapest and the forest in Hungary which are also notorious for witches.
In popular belief, vampires are known to turn into bats and suck the blood from people turning them into vampires. In Bulgaria, people believe that a vampire is made when an evil spirit takes possession of a corpse and hunts for blood, the source of its supernatural powers. These present-day myths about the evil bloodsuckers originated in the Balkans and then spread to the West as historians began documenting oral folklore and mythologies from Bulgaria, Romania and Greece.
Rhodope Mountains, Bulgaria
Some years ago, archeologists unearthed hundreds of 'vampire burials' in the Rhodope Mountains located in southern Bulgaria and when they were radio-carbonated, the remains were traced back to the 1400s. In Asen's Fortress, a large fortified structure atop a mountain that has been abandoned for centuries, they found vampire tombs that revealed they had been buried there, at least a hundred years after the fortress was uninhabited. Nearly 20 tombs were recovered from there and some skeletal remains were discovered with missing or mutilated body parts.
During the middle ages, people believed that bodies of the dead could be possessed by evil spirits and would resurrect as blood-sucking vampires that tormented the living, in the night. The ancient pagan ritual practiced by Orthodox Christians in the Balkans was to drive a stake made from wood or iron into the heart of a dead person, so as to prevent them from becoming vampires. Wildman travels to a very remote, old and abandoned town, the remnants of which are rubble, that has not been cited on any map to investigate a case of a vampire that has been terrorizing a neighboring town.
He joins a group of active vampire hunters, the 'Sabonitci', who explains to him that their name is based on the day of the dead in Bulgaria, a Saturday. The townspeople had been complaining of farm animals missing each night and only found the bodies of said animals around the valleys and mountains with strange wounds, which are not from a hunter or a wild animal. According to the Sabonitci, when vampires can't obtain the blood of humans, they can survive temporarily on the blood of livestock. The animal killings have been pointing to vampire activity. Vampires leave behind both physical clues and residual dark energy, which help the Sabonitci track them down. If they find a vampire, they deal with it in the most effective way ie, a wooden stake to the heart, and then perform rituals to get rid of the dark energy left behind. Their investigation leads to them some shocking discoveries, including an unmarked grave that could be the vampire's tomb.
According to local legends, there is a cave in the Rhodope mountains that is considered to be the entrance to hell called the 'Devil's Throat' and Wildman is next to explore the veracity of these unfounded claims. It houses the biggest cathedral hall in the Balkan peninsula and even has an underground waterfall, which ancient Greeks believed lead to straight into the underworld, the kingdom of Hades. People also believed that this cave was also where fallen angels mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible were imprisoned, and according to some scriptures from the middle-ages, those fallen angels may have escaped becoming vampires. Essentially, Bulgaria is believed to be the birthplace of vampires.
Szeged and Budapest, Hungary
Wildman meets with historians at the county library in Szeged, who provide him with 300-year-old meeting records of the City Council that may have some answers to his questions pertaining to the existence of vampires in Eastern Europe. The manuscripts particularly contain sentences and testimonies connected to the 1728 witch trials. The main accusations against witches that led to the trials were their affiliation with the devil and some were even involved in practices that used blood. Wildman flicks through the record and finds an autopsy report of a victim who had no obvious external injuries, but his heart had been drained of blood. The cause of death had been ruled out as 'bewitchment and blood-sucking'.
In the 18th century, hundreds of witches across the country were tried and convicted for practicing black magic. Their sentences were rather brutal and the 12 witches that had been drawn out from within Szeged were burned at the stake. Wildman then meets a real modern-day witch in the Isle of Witches, the place where the six men and six women convicted were burned at the stake, for a deeper understanding of the witch trials, and to determine if the witches were really vampires. It is said that on hot summer days if one were to walk through the forests, they can hear the screams of the witches that were burned alive. Wildman is given the opportunity to summon the spirit of witches, from beyond the grave and ask them if they were actually vampires. He learns that witches would practice witchcraft by day and shape-shift into black cats by night sucking the blood out of the innocent to fuel their dark powers.
And to conclude his adventure, Wildman explores the dark secret of one of the most famous vampires in the world, made famous by popular culture and Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'. Vlad the Impaler, the Count of Wallachia from the 15th century, was known as one of the cruellest rulers to ever exist and had a reputation for impaling people in the chest and for being a bloodthirsty ruler who enjoyed the sight of blood and torturing or burning people. Legends also say the Count bathed in the blood of virgin women. In the end, his bloodthirst ultimately became the basis for the vampire myths surrounding the Hungarian ruler. Wildman explored the catacombs underneath the Buda Castle, which was where Vlad was once taken and incarcerated as a political prisoner. The labyrinthine catacombs were dungeons in the medieval times that acted as a prison and torture chamber.
'Buried Worlds with Don Wildman' premieres on Mondays at 9 pm ET/PT on Travel Channel.