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Just a note before we begin, Some of the stories we tell on Lore are fun and spooky. Others are important cultural deep dives into the folklore that shapes our and not always for the better. Today's tales fall into the latter category. This episode contains some pretty disturbing depictions of violence and antisemitism. So take care of yourselves. And if you need to skip it, no hard feelings. We'll see you next week. And now, on with the show. The child had vanished in the night. One moment little two year old Whitney was fast asleep and the next, gone. As a parent, I can only imagine the horror her mother must have felt when she found her daughter's bed empty. Especially because Whitney wasn't just any child. Not if the local folklore was to be believed. Some said that the little girl was a ghost, others that she could not die. And others still believed that her tiny body contained unfathomable powers of healing and magic. Which is why when the two year old disappeared, her mother knew immediately that this was no ordinary kidnapping. Two weeks later, the horrible suspicion was confirmed. The girl's skull, teeth and clothes were discovered in a nearby village. Whitney had been murdered and her body sold to witches. It may sound like a Grimm's Fairy tale, but tragically it's not. And it isn't ancient history either. Far from it. Whitney Chilumpha was killed in April of 2016. And she wasn't the only one. All across Eastern Africa, similar fates had been befalling other children who looked like Whitney. That is children born with albinism. According to the BBC, more than 70 people with the rare genetic condition of albinism and had been murdered in East Africa since the year 2000. Not to mention hundreds of additional attacks, all due to the superstition that their pale skinned body parts can be used in spellcasting. It can be more than tempting to think of folklore as romantic, whimsical even. But the truth is, magical belief and superstition have long been weaponized against the most vulnerable members of society. Stories have been used to ostracize, to villainize, and even sometimes to kill. I'm Erin Manke, and this is lore. It begins as a single whisper. Next, a rumor passed between townsfolk, repeated enough that rumor starts to sound an awful lot like fact, which, before you know it, becomes a deeply held belief adopted by an entire community. And beliefs, you see, are powerful because beliefs precipitate actions. Folklorist Alan Dundas called it evil folklore. That is folklore that exists solely to reinforce racist, sexist, ableist, or anti Semitic stereotypes. And of all the dangerous folklore out there, Dundas named one particular legend as, and I quote at, or at least very near the top of the list, the folklore of blood libel. And look, folks, this is an ugly one. At its most basic, blood libel is the belief that Jewish people murder Christian children in order to drink their blood during dark rituals. And let me be super duper clear here, this is not a thing. It has never, ever happened. In fact, the entire concept of blood libel completely ignores key tenets of the Jewish faith, Like, for example, the fact that Jewish dietary laws explicitly prohibit the consumption of blood. Not to mention that blood sacrifices in general are absolutely forbidden by the Torah. But the Christians who started spreading this hideous rumor way back in the 12th century clearly didn't care what Jews were actually doing. What they cared about was inventing an excuse to eradicate a rival faith once and for all. And it's hard to think of a better excuse to get rid of someone than, hey, those guys are drinking the blood of our kids. And the old blood libel stories named all sorts of reasons for this practice, by the way. In some stories, Jewish people were said to use the blood as an ingredient in baking Passover matzah, in others to make wine for the Passover seder. And in others still, Christian blood would heal circumcision cuts or aid in fertility rituals. And sometimes Jewish people were even accused of stealing children to perform gruesome reenactments of Jesus crucifixion. But one of the most bizarre and fascinating explanations for blood libel was that Jewish men needed the blood to replace that which they lost during their monthly menstrual cycles. And yes, you heard me correctly, in an attempt to not only demonize, but also emasculate Jewish men. Some anti Semitic lore claimed that male Jews actually menstruated, but not in the ordinary way, of course. Apparently, as a punishment for murdering Jesus, God cursed the Jewish people with hemorrhoids. You see, Christians believe that not only were hemorrhoids a Jewish disease, but that male Jews experienced a monthly hemorrhoidal flux equivalent to male menstruation. All of which resulted in needing to replace the lost blood with new blood. Specifically, innocent Christian child blood. Now, it's worth noting that these lies weren't confined to the realms of oral tradition alone. They were also distributed through artwork, poetry and fiction. Heck, some of these publications were even funded by church officials. Why? Well, the blood of a martyr could be turned into a relic. The kind of relic that tourists would pay handsomely to see on display in your church. And if you claim to have not just any old relic, but that of a murdered Christian child whose blood was used in an evil Jewish ritual, now that was a showstopper. In other words, blood libel was good for business. By the way, have you ever heard of Geoffrey Chaucer's the Canterbury Tales? I thought so. Well, the Canterbury Tales happen to contain a messed up little blood libel fable of its own. It's called the Prioress Tale, in which a boy is murdered for the crime of humming a Christian hymn in a Jewish neighborhood. Jews there slit his throat and throw him in a privy. But by some miracle, his corpse continues to sing until his body is found. And for an ending to match the tone of the story, all the Jews are then torn apart by wild horses. Meanwhile, in another folktale recorded over 400 years later, a group of Jews try to convince a farmer to sell them his child for sacrifice, which turns out he's totally down for not exactly Father of the Year material, mind you. All of this is done without the child's mother knowing. But out in the fields, she is suddenly overcome with a feeling of dread. Holding out her hand, three drops of blood fall into her palm. And knowing it to be an ill omen, she runs to the woods, only to find that her son has indeed been, I quote, martyred to death in the most unspeakable manner upon a rock known as the Jew's Stone. Oh, and by the way, the story of the Jew's Stone, it comes to us from some pretty well known storytellers. In fact, you may know them. Their names are Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. And they didn't stop there. The Grimm Brothers. Also set to paper a folktale called, wait for it, the Girl who Was killed by Jews. Yeah. Not exactly subtle, right? And I hope we can all agree that these truly are awful stories. And it would be bad enough if blood libel had remained just that, stories. But unfortunately, this evil folklore has led to plenty of violence that was all too real. Little Hugh was only eight years old when his body was found in a well in the Jewish part of town. The date was the summer of 1255. The place, Lincoln, England. And the explanation for Hugh's death? Oh, go ahead and take a wild guess. Yes. As soon as the drowned Christian child was discovered, rumors began to rampage through town. It was said that Jews from all over England had descended upon Lincoln for the express purpose of. Of murdering this Christian child. That they had kidnapped poor Hugh from his mother's home only to imprison him in a secret room for weeks before killing him. That his blood was used for dark and terrible magics. As the nightmarish gossip reached a fever pitch, Hugh's grieving mother petitioned King Henry III for justice. And the King happily obliged. Which is when the bad got so much worse. You see, the child had been found near the house of a Jewish man named Kopan. And so Kopan was the one arrested for the boy's murder. Imprisoned and questioned none too delicately, I imagine. The terrified man was promised that if he named names, he would be set free. Which is exactly what he did. Over the following days, Copen described vivid, horrifying scenes of the ways his fellow Jewish people had tortured the boy. Copen claimed that they had performed a beat by beat recreation of the Passion of the Christ, complete with whipping, spitting, crucifixion and a crown of thorns. And that was that. The authorities had what they needed. Over 90 Jewish people were rounded up and arrested immediately. 19 of them were hanged, Copen included, by the way. So much for that promised immunity. And the rest would have died too, had not the King's brother, Richard of Cornwall, stepped in and pardoned them just in time. Now, you might be thinking that with all of the scapes thoroughly goaded, the tall tales would have died down. But they didn't. Soon, new stories rose up around young Hugh. In one tale, the Jews tried to bury the boy's body, but it was so holy and pious, it kept rising magically from the grave. Hence them eventually dumping him into a well. Another claim, that when he'd first been lifted from that well, a blind woman had rubbed water from his damp body onto her eyes, only for her sight to be miraculously restored. Which sure does beg the question why anyone would rub corpse Water on their eyeballs. But who am I to judge? Songs and ballads were written about little Hugh, and his story gained widespread popularity far beyond Lincoln. A monument to the boy was erected in Lincoln Cathedral. And although not formally canonized, it wasn't long before he earned a rather lofty name. He became known as Little St Hugh. And I hope that you can see how the whole ordeal sounds not unlike the many witch trials that we already know so well. Some townsperson is harmed, a marginalized person is blamed. They're tortured into false confession of gruesome supernatural crimes, implicating others as well. And finally, the accused are all executed before order is restored. And just like a witch trial, the story of Hugh of Lincoln is so very much more than meets the eye. So let's pull back the curtains of history, shall we? We'll start at the beginning. And yes, it's a beginning that does start with a tragedy. The death of a child. Hugh was indeed found drowned. But not in a well. No, he was in a cesspool. It was the Jewish community who found him, in fact. And immediately they saw danger on the horizon. The drowning seemed to have been by accident, but they knew that wouldn't matter in a Christian court, that despite any evidence to the contrary, the blame would land on them. And so, panicking, they attempted to hide the boy's body in a well. Oh, and that rumor about all the Jews in England having descended upon Lincoln for a blood sacrifice. Well, there was a Jewish gathering in Lincoln that summer. It was a wedding. A prominent rabbi's daughter had just gotten married, and guests had come in from all over. It seems the gossip mill just left that little detail out. And you know what happened next, right? The accusations, the executions, the merciful pardon Richard of Cornwall bestow upon the remaining prisoners. Except, well, there's more to that, too, it turns out. Because if there's one thing about this history, it's that everyone had a secret motive. The king, you see, had sold his brother the rights to collect Jewish people's taxes. Dead Jews meant no cash flow for Richard. So that grand act of mercy. Yeah, he simply wanted to continue squeezing Jewish citizens for cash. Meanwhile, another law said that any executed Jew's property would go straight to the king. So King Henry III had a motive, right, the bat. To perpetuate blood libel narratives as much as possible so that he could gain his own bag of gold. Even the stories of healing the blind and rising from the grave were driven by ulterior motives. Because, you see, these stories were spread by none other than the Lincoln Cathedral itself. A cathedral that, may I remind you, had recently erected a rather flashy monument to the little saint which would, if visited by enough tourists, bring in a pretty penny. With these added details, it paints a very different story, doesn't it? Not a tale of good versus evil or even of superstition versus logic. No, this is an example of wealthy, powerful men, very deliberately wielding folk belief like a terrible sword and not caring whom it beheads, as long as they come out richer for it. History, as they say, repeats itself. And this case is no different. In 1475, a similar incident occurred when a two year old named Simon of Trent went missing in Northern Italy. But unlike Lincoln, in this case, every single one of the 22 Jewish people who lived in the town were arrested and tortured. All of the men were burned at the stake or beheaded, and the women and children were forced to convert to Christianity. And meanwhile, Simon was of course, celebrated as a martyr and a saint. It was said that his body was incorruptible, but I highly doubt that, because apparently when the papal envoy paid him a visit, the decomposing relic was so gross the guy almost threw up. And then there was the case in Toledo, Spain, when during the Inquisition, local Jews were once again tortured after being accused of crucifying a Christian child. Except there was one tiny problem. No child's body had actually been found. In fact, no Christian child had even gone missing. But that didn't save the innocent Jews from being burned at the stake. This murdered child, who did not exist by the way, came to be known as the Holy Child of La Guardia. And believe it or not, to this day, LaGuardia residents celebrates an annual festival in which paraders carry an effigy of the child to the church. And that story is not alone in its staying power. In fact, all three of these blood libel incidents continue to affect the present day. For example, modern neo Nazis still worship little Hugh. And Simon of Trent, well, he had an entire cult crop up around him which was going strong well into the early 1900s. Yes, tales about a secret cabal of pale blood drinking, shadowy monsters sure didn't die out in the Middle Ages. But before you ask, no, it's not a coincidence that this description is starting to sound a whole lot like vampires. The wealthy stranger had arrived in Britain from Eastern Europe. His eyes were dark and piercing. If his hooked nose and bushy hair didn't mark him clearly as a foreigner, his thick accent certainly did. And the contrast between his long dark cloak and sickly pale skin made him appear almost corpse like despite having moved to a different country, he seemed to have no desire to adopt the local custom, remaining loyal instead only to his own kind. That is, at least when he wasn't mixing his blood with the native inhabitants, creating a hybrid race of his own. As if that weren't worrying enough, it was said that the man was repulsed by Christian symbols. In fact, he couldn't bear to be near crosses or holy water and refused to touch consecrated objects like communion wafers. Unlike any respectable man, the rituals of his faith began not at sunrise, but when the sun set. And the most damning of all, well, that would be his diet. Because the man you see ate none other than Christian blood. That's a pretty specific description, right? But here's the thing. If you happened to live in the late 1890s, this would perfectly describe one of two characters. Anti Semitic depictions of the Jewish immigrants flooding into Britain at the and Bram Stoker's legendary vampire Dracula. And look, Dracula was far from the first blood sucking monster to plague the world of folklore, but he was the very first of a specific kind of vampire, a category that most western vampires are still derived from today. That is a sensual, dark haired, sharp featured Eastern European man with an aversion to Christianity. He's ubiquitous. Heck, even the vampire iPhone emoji features a pale dark haired man. Just like in Stoker's book, when we hear vampire, we think Dracula. But did you ever wonder why exactly Dracula became the most feared and famed monster in Western culture? Well, it turns out there is a very specific historical reason, and this, I have to say, is why I love my job. Because you can tug one seemingly innocent thread like a spooky Universal movie monster, and before you know it, the entire tapestry of history unravels. Because the birth of Dracula actually began with the death of a Russian tsar. His name was Tsar Alexander II. And in 1881, he was assassinated by a revolutionary group called the People's Will. A group which just so happened to have a number of prominent Jewish members. In response, anti Jewish legislation, spiked pogroms or massacres of Jewish towns spread like wildfire. And as a result, thousands of Jewish families fled Russia and its territories in search of safety, with a lot of them relocating to Britain. And I mean a lot. Between 1881 and 1900 alone, the population of foreign Jews in England had grown by a whopping 600%. And let's just say most of England wasn't too stoked about this mass influx of refugees flooding the nation. As immigrants are so often maligned, they were viewed as Parasites feeding off England's wealth and corrupting its culture. Parasites who, mind you, began their religious rituals at sundown, had piercing eyes and hooked noses, shirked Christianity, and lest we forget, were said to drink human blood. So what happens when, smack dab in the middle of all of that, a book hits the stands about a terrifying demon who fits this exact description? Why, it becomes a massive bestseller, of course. Now, let's be fair to old Brahm here. It's not clear whether he intended Dracula to be an anti Semitic allegory or not. It's unproven. Although, given the fact that he did work at London's Lyceum Theatre through all 250 performances of a Merchant in Venice featuring the Jewish caricature Shylock, it's not like the guy was unaware of Jewish stereotypes. But one thing is absolutely certain. Whether intentional or not, Dracula's strong Jewish coding was directly responsive for its popularity. People read the monster as Jewish and it flew off the shelves. The story gave English Christians a place to pour all their hatred, their fear, their bigotry and frustration. And more than anything, it gave them exactly what they wanted most. That thing they'd been trying for centuries to create. It let them turn a Jew into a monster. Foreign. Ever since their first appearance in the mid 12th century, blood libel accusations have been weaponized by antisemitic regimes worldwide. These stories led to the pogroms of the late 18th and early 20th centuries. They were popular in Nazi Germany, and even today, antisemitic groups continue to regurgitate these same thousand year old conspiracy theories to rationalize their beliefs. And I'll be honest, as historically fascinating these stories are, sometimes I wish the ghouls and ghosts of folklore could simply be, well, ghouls and ghosts, just fun, spooky stories. But the truth is, there are always social, political and cultural reasons for why these sorts of tales persist in the first place. And if you think there aren't, well, it just means that you aren't digging deep enough. But let's go back to Dracula for a second, because there's one more potential influence that Bram Stoker may have drawn from that I think you'll want to hear about. And yes, we know that he was likely inspired by Vlad the Impaler. And if you recall, our very first ever episode of this podcast, Mercy Brown, a young woman who died from tuberculosis in Rhode island in the 1890s. But you see, some scholars believe that Stoker partially based his vampire on another real life murderer who was operating in England during Stoker's career. This killer had horribly slaughtered multiple women, many within a predominantly Jewish part of London. The crimes were so anatomically precise, some authorities thought it must be none other than a trained kosher butcher who committed them. Add to that the general anti Jewish sentiments of the time, and it's no surprise that many believed this mystery murderer to be a foreign Jew. When the newspapers published caricatures of the killer, the drawings often featured those same stereotypical Jewish features that Stoker would later assign to his monster. Police targeted Jewish suspects more than others in their investigation, and with each new killing, more anti Jewish riots brewed. Some even believe this was all exactly what the killer wanted. What if, some theorized, the murderer deliberately staged his murders in a Jewish neighborhood specifically to incite antisemitic violence? The truth is, we will never know the killer was never caught. But that doesn't mean that he was forgotten. Far from it. Because you see this very same murderer and possible inspiration for Dracula was none other than Jack the Ripper. I hope you learned something today during our deep dive into one of folklore's darkest and most dangerous corners. Stories have power, and not always for good, but sometimes a little cleverness can take that evil and turn it right on its head. With that in mind, I have a mischievous palette cleanser of a folktale for you that does just that. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. This episode was made possible by Acorns. So many people these days are focused on where their money is now, but Acorns is the financial wellness app that cares about where your money is going tomorrow. Acorns is the smart way to give your money a chance to grow. And Acorns is easy. You can sign up in minutes and start automatically investing your spare change. Even if all you've got is spare change, the Acorns potential screen shows you the power of compounding and how your money could grow over time. Plus, you can quickly adjust how much you're investing every day, week or month to make sure you're building toward your goals. One thing I really love about Acorns is that it's all in one. No more finance apps cluttering up your phone with Acorns. You can invest and give your money a chance to grow in one trusted place. 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