One July afternoon in 1968, Jennings Frederick was hunting in forests near Rivesville, West Virginia when he heard a high-pitched "jabbering" voice address him. "I come as a friend. I come in peace," squeaked the voice. "I wish medical assistance. I need your help." Jennings felt something grab his arm, and turned round to find himself facing a bizarre green-skinned humanoid.

The humanoid had a slender body like the stalk of a plant and extremely thin arms like tendrils. It punctured Frederick’s arm with needle-like fingers and began extracting blood. Then its eyes turned red and started spinning, putting Frederick into a trance. Once it had sated its appetite, the entity released its grip and bounded away, taking 25-ft-long strides. [1]

The fact that Frederick was friends with mercurial Ufologist Gray Barker may well cast doubt on the credibility of his tale. Nevertheless, his was not the only encounter with vampiric beings reported that year. The National Enquirer (again, hardly the most trustworthy source) reported that Minnesota housewife "Jean D" was visited at home late one January night by a whole group of bloodthirsty entities.

The 3-ft-tall beings floated through the wall into her bedroom and announced that they needed her "substance" or else they would not "make it back". Then they made an incision in her stomach and began drawing blood. The beings seemed to be shrinking before her eyes, only recovering once they had ingested the blood. Then they flew back out into the night without even saying thank you. [2]

A Brazilian woman named Claudomira Paixao suffered a similar night-time assault in October 1977. She was woken by a bright light shining through her bedroom window. Then a figure appeared amid a wave of intense heat and extracted her blood with a needle. Claudomira was unable to move or cry out until the being abruptly vanished. She was later taken to hospital and treated for burns. [3]

A rather more efficient method of harvesting blood was attempted by a flying something-or-other in Huntington, West Virginia in March 1967. 21-yr-old Beau Shertzer was driving a Red Cross Bloodmobile along a deserted stretch of road when a glowing object swooped down from the sky and extended a mechanical arm. Shertzer tried to outrun it, but the mysterious object easily kept pace with him. A second arm descended from it, as though it intended to snatch up the Bloodmobile and fly off with it. But at the last moment, a line of approaching traffic scared off the bloodthirsty pursuer. [4]

The vampires of folklore - undead, imbecilic parasites sharing little in common with the clichéd gothic creations of Anne Rice et al - were as likely to be satisfied by animal blood as by human. Cattle and horses were particularly liable to be attacked (indeed, the wasting diseases suffered by farm animals were often blamed on the activities of vampires). In modern times, animal mutilations are frequently associated with night-time Ufo activity. However, it is rare that UFO entities are actually caught in the act of extracting blood.

One such incident occured in December 1968, when Idaho farmer Lonnie Duggan heard a commotion in his barn and discovered "a strange looking little man covered with fur" drawing blood from a horse with a huge syringe. The little man explained that he was from Tau Ceti and that his people had been visiting the Earth for the last 100 years. Then he warned Duggan to return to the farmhouse and stay there for half an hour. Shortly afterwards, a huge glowing object rose up from behind the barn and shot away "like lightning". [5]

Of course, not all vampires hunger for blood. In New Age and occult circles there is a widespread belief in 'energy vampires', which feed off their victim's lifeforce. Although the term generally refers to fellow humans who have mastered the art of sapping others' psychic energy, it may also be used of non-corporeal beings. Many Ufo and entity witnesses have reported feeling utterly drained of energy in the aftermath of their encounters, often requiring weeks to fully recover. This is generally dismissed as a mere side-effect of their experience, but one might equally speculate that the draining of energy was actually the whole purpose of the encounter.

Of all the bizarre entities terrorising our demon-haunted world, the Men in Black perhaps come closest to resembling the Western theatrical concept of the vampire. Dr Herbert Hopkins, for instance, described the MIB who visited his home as having a "dead white" coloured face and "vivid red" lips. The lip colour was due to make-up rather than recent blood-feeding, but nevertheless the implications of the image are striking. The MIB seemed able to exert a kind of hypnotic spell over Hopkins, and performed a peculiar kind of parlour trick in which he made a coin apparently dematerialise. It may be significant that the strange visitor left complaining that his energy was "running low". Perhaps he had found himself somehow unable to feed off Dr Hopkins' lifeforce.

The subject of the Men in Black brings us back full circle to the mischievous Gray Barker. Not only was Barker frequenting West Virginia during the outbreak of MIB and Mothman sightings in the late 1960's, but he was also directly responsible for the birth of the MIB mythos a decade earlier with his book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. Barker cheerily admitted to his friend John Sherwood that he had "deliberately stuck in fictional chapters" to his later book The Silver Bridge, which covered Mothman-related high strangeness. "Kookie books are about all that I can sell these days," he explained ruefully.

In recent times, Ufo mythology has been dominated by the fragile yet demonic figures of the greys. Like the vampires of melodrama, the greys fly into our bedrooms at night and mesmerise us with their shining, compelling eyes. And like the more authentic vampires of folklore, the greys act in a highly repetitive, almost instinctual manner - descending in swarms to steal our vital fluids before returning home to their otherworldly roosts. Unlike the campy vampires of stage and screen, the greys utterly lack personal charisma and make no attempt to seduce us or to win us over to their side. They simply take what they need and move on. Such, alas, is the unglamorous, pragmatic way of all true parasites. Sleep well.


References:
1: Jerome Clark: Extraordinary Encounters
2, 3, 5: Albert Rosales' Humanoid Database
4: John Keel: The Mothman Prophecies
6: John Sherwood: Gray Barker's Book of Bunk (Sceptical Inquirer, May 2002).