5 Movie Monsters Ripped from the Pages of History Books
#5. The Demon King
The Byzantine empire was the Matrix: Revolutions of Roman empires: It made a ton of money and stopped some big invasions but wasn't much to talk about. (Also, Keanu Reeves was there.)Michael IV ruled from 1034 to 1041. He was a peasant who fell in love with the empress (aw, that's sweet), even though she was married (aw, that's ... really not smart). Since Empress Zoe was the previous emperor's daughter, her husband, Romanos III, feared losing both his wife and his throne. The emperor asked Michael to swear on holy relics that there were no shenanigans going on, which he did. Silly Romanos! A peasant with the stones to ball the friggin' emperor's wife probably isn't afraid to break a sanctified pinkie swear.
Sure enough, in April of 1034, Romanos III was found dead in the tub. Cause unknown, but, y'know, not that unknown. Especially since Michael and Zoe were married the same day.
The new emperor, Michael, bribed the patriarch into properly crowning him, adding to his lousy reputation as a counterfeiter, adulterer, and regicidal boy toy. That's when Michael began bleating like a sheep, moving in erratic jerks, and hurting himself ... all things you might recognize from that exorcism movie that gets remade with a new title every year.
Screen Gems, Lionsgate, Warner Bros., Paramount
What was it called again? The Demon Be-gonner Guy?
HBOIt's often said that for every beautiful woman there's a guy who's bored of screwing her after he's murdered her husband and stolen her kingdom. Michael was that guy. Ignoring his adoring cougar wife, he struggled to rule amid epileptic fits. And just like all those crappy exorcism movies, epilepsy explains pretty much everything about this story.
#4. The Werewolf's Last Confession
Peter Stumpp had many aliases, which is weird, considering that he was pretty conspicuous (he was missing his left hand). Oh, and also because all of his crimes were committed in wolf form. How many canines do you know with alternate identities?Now, witch and werewolf trials were pretty common in Germany in 1589, due to it being Germany in 1589. The only things to do at the time were farm, worship the devil, and make either sausage or war. Clearly, Stumpp was a big fan of those first three. But it was the brutal manner of his execution that put this story on the front page of the Syphilitic Holsteiner Gazette.
When caught and pressed, Stumpp admitted to eating livestock and at least 14 kids (including his own son), two pregnant women, and sundry German maidens.
Jupiterimages/liquidlibrary/Getty ImagesNot a fun guy at parties.
Stumpp perpetrated his crimes on countless victims for 25 years by exploiting the "killer in the woods" cliche. He practically invented Jason Voorhees' patented shtick, including the bit about waiting for the rest of the stupid teenagers to split up and go looking for their missing friend. But one day some hunters got the belt off of Stumpp, and then it was time for old-timey German country justice, as seen in this creepy paper animation:
The Boring Reality
What if I told you that people don't actually turn into werewolves?
Stumpp was a Protestant in a part of Germany that had recently been returned to Catholic control. Torturing a fellow Christian, even a heretic, could be a dodgy proposition to explain before the Lord, but a Satan worshiper guilty of the worst crimes -- ah! That's doing God's work. Basically, the new ruler of the region made a bloody example of him.
But Stumpp confessed to prosecutors, right? More like persecutors -- people give false confessions all the time, especially while you're torturing them. And even if you don't confess, what's to stop them from saying you did? If you're still not convinced that Stumpp's conviction wasn't on the level, his mistress and daughter (who were known to be of good character, save for that whole Protestant thing) were also tortured, flayed, strangled, and burned.
It would be 400 years before Germany finally settled down and took up much more acceptable hobbies, like fascism and coprophilia.
#3. The Rebel Vampire
In the early 1700s, Serbian peasant Arnold Paole fought against the Ottomans as a hajduk -- a term that meant either "highway bandit" or "freedom fighter."Returning home from the war in Turkish Serbia, Paole had a great life waiting for him: a new patch of farmland ready for plowing, an eager new wife ready for plowing, and a hero's welcome from his town, which hopefully also involved plentiful plowing.
But something wasn't right with young Paole. He had ... changed. Neighbors noted his now gloomy demeanor. Of course, this being a rational period in history like rural 18th century Eastern Europe, everybody chalked it up to PTSD and worried no more. So imagine how unsettled they were to hear Paole's explanation: He had been attacked by a vampire.
According to Paole, he managed to slay the vampire, but sustained a nasty wound in the process. He made the mistake of trying to inoculate himself from vampirism by rubbing his foe's blood in his wound and eating soil from its grave. Come on, man, everybody knows you're supposed to eat the blood and rub the soil. What is this, your first vampire rodeo?
Astonishingly, villagers did not run to get their pitchforks, and Paole lived out the rest of his days in gloomy peace -- which in this case was literally just days. He fell from a hay wagon in the stupidest death any vampire ever suffered. What's a wagon's top speed? 5 mph? Geez, even toddlers and hemophiliacs laugh off a wagon fall, Your Dark Majesty. So the villagers buried Crazy Arnie, made a few wagon-based puns at his expense, and went back to plowing fields and each other.
And that's when the corpses started piling up.
About three weeks after his death, four people reported Paole stalking them ... and then died soon after. You know what happens next: shovel, stake, saw, scorch. The report says the mouth of Arnold's corpse was full of blood, he hadn't decomposed at all, and even creepier, he allegedly groaned when stabbed. Five hasty piles of ash later, everyone could rest easy.
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Except for Paole's mother, who was not invited to bridge club that week.
Those attributes are as common in corpses as poor life choices at a Gathering of the Juggalos. Mostly they're due to gasses that escape during decomposition. Which, come to think of it, also describes a gathering of the Juggalos. Best to stab them through the heart just to be safe. Hey, it worked for the Serbs.
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