With Halloween just around the corner, let’s take a look at some real-world events that may have inspired the creation of vampires, werewolves and zombies. And if you’re in the market for Halloween-appropriate clothing, consider our “Vampires Are a Pain in the Neck” shirt (available in men’s and women’s).

Vampires

One dark and stormy evening, Spanish neurologist Juan Gomez-Alonso was watching a vampire movie when he realized something strange; he noticed that vampires behave an awful lot like people with rabies. The virus attacks the central nervous system, altering the moods and behaviors of those infected. Sufferers become agitated and demented, and, much like vampires, their moods can turn violent.

Rabies has several more vampire-like symptoms. It can cause insomnia, which explains the nocturnal portion of the legend. People with rabies also suffer from muscular spasms, which can lead them to spit up blood. What’s stunning is the fact that these spasms are triggered by bright lights, water, mirrors, and strong smells, such as the scent of garlic. (Sound familiar?) After watching the Dracula movies a few more times, Dr. Gomez-Alonso felt compelled to continue studying vampire folklore and the medical history of rabies. Eventually, he discovered an even more profound connection between the two phenomena: Vampire stories became prominent in Europe at exactly the same time certain areas were experiencing rabies outbreaks. This was particularly true in Hungary between 1721 and 1728, when an epidemic plagued dogs, wolves, and humans and left the country in ruins. Gomez-Alonso theorized that rabies actually inspired the vampire legend, and his research was published by the distinguished medical journal Neurology in 1998.

The Madness of King George
Dr. Gomez-Alonso wasn’t the first scientist who tried to pin vampirism to a real illness. In 1985, Canadian biochemist David Dolphin proposed a link between vampires and porphyria—a rare, chronic blood disorder characterized by the irregular production of heme, an iron-rich pigment found in blood. The disorder can cause seizures, trances, and hallucinations that last for days or weeks.

As a result, people with porphyria often go insane. (Britain’s King George III, the one who inspired our founding fathers to start their own country, is thought to have suffered from it.) Porphyria sufferers also experience extreme sensitivity to light, suffering blisters and burns when their skin is exposed to the sun. Another symptom of porphyria is an intolerance to sulfur in foods. Which food contains
a lot of sulfur? That’s right, garlic.

Werewolves

In addition to explaining away vampires, medicine also has some answers for werewolves. In The Werewolf Delusion (1979), Ian Woodward explains that rabies may have also inspired the werewolf myth.

Rabies is transmitted through biting, and the dementia and aggression of late-stage rabies can make people behave like wild animals. Now, imagine that you are living in a village in medieval Europe and you see your friend get bitten by a wolf. A few weeks later, he starts foaming at the mouth, howling at the moon, and biting other villagers. Suddenly, that story your grandmother told you about the Wolfman sounds like a decent explanation for what’s going on.

Zombies

Zombies may also be creatures of science, at least according to Costas J. Efthimiou, a physicist at the University of Central Florida. In 2006, he attempted to explain the mysterious case of Wilfred Doricent, a teenager who died and was buried in Haiti, only to reappear in his village more than a year later, looking and behaving like a zombie. Efthimiou concluded that Wilfred was not the victim of a curse, but of poisoning. In the waters of Haiti, there is a species of puffer fish whose liver can be made into a powder, which has the ability to make a person appear dead without actually killing him. Wilfred may have been poisoned with the powder and then buried alive.

According to one of Dr. Efthimiou’s theories, once underground, Wilfred suffered from oxygen deprivation that damaged his brain. When the poison wore off and Wilfred woke up, he clawed his way out of the grave. (Graves tend to be shallow in Haiti.) Brain-damaged, he wandered the countryside for months until he ended up back in his village.

After Dr. Efthimiou published his explanation of the case, Dr. Roger Mallory, a neurologist at the Haitian Medical Society did an MRI scan of Wilfred’s brain. Although the results were nonconclusive, he found that Wilfred’s brain was damaged in a way that was consistent with oxygen deprivation. It would seem that zombification is nothing more than skillful poisoning.

This article originally appeared in mental_floss magazine.

Where is the house of blood? It could be your house with these home furnishings, most of which are available at the click of a mouse. Individually, they might be described as conversation pieces; put them all together and you’ll have a house of horrors no one would want to visit twice. One of these products used the description “Gruesome, bloody, and absolutely offensive.” This collection is not for the squeamish.

Dining Room

Designer Amy Lau  was inspired by the serial killer show on Showtime when she came up with these Dexter dining room chairs. The chairs are decorated with embroidered blood spatters. There are also bloody dinner plates and disfigured flatware to match, available from Spring Design.

Lighting

The Blood Bucket Lamp looks like it’s pouring all over your desktop, but the blood is the stem and base. Also available in a wall version, and in white if you’re squeamish. Ordering information is in Japanese.

Lamp

This Blood Lamp doesn’t look that bloody, but the way you turn it on can be considered gruesome. It only works once, and you need to add of a drop of your blood to activate it! The idea is to stop and think about how badly you need light before you use it. Designer Mike Thompson created the lamp in order to draw attention to how much energy we waste.

Cutlery

The Bloody Kitchen Knife is food safe, except when someone comes into the kitchen and sees you use it!

Coffee Set

How about a 14-piece Bloody Coffee Set, complete with drops and smears? From designer Antonio Murado.

Table Linen

With all these implements of destruction this tableware, you need a tablecloth to match. The Bloody Hand Tablecover is available through Amazon.

Table

Although it wouldn’t show the bloodstains on your tableware as well as a white tablecloth, this table by John Nouanesing stands on its own very creepily. The dripping blood masks, or actually are, the table legs. He named the table “Paint or Die, But Love Me.” Sadly, it’s an art concept and not available to the public.

Candles

Complete the look of your entertaining experience with Bleeding Pillar Candles that start out as ordinary white candles, but drip red wax as they burn!

Shower Curtain

Don’t forget the bathroom! The Blood Bath Shower Curtain features handprints in just the right shade of red. You’ll never be able to shower without thinking of a certain Alfred Hitchcock film.

Towels

The packaging on these towels spotted by Flickr user MShades lends a gruesome sight to your linen closet. There are towels for each blood type, sold at Loft Umeda in Japan.

Bath Mat

Complete the murderous bathroom look with the Bloody Bath Mat. It will never look clean, or safe.

For more creepy and bloody home products, see Killer Home Decor and Morbid Home Decor. You can tell I’ve done some serious online shopping.

It’s Stephen King’s birthday! Do you suppose he’s celebrating somewhere with a Bloody Mary? (He’s not: see Fact #8.) I know – just because a guy writes in the horror genre doesn’t mean he loves all things creepy. But in King’s case, I think he does. Anyway. Whether you like his writing or consider it fluff, he’s one of the most successful and prolific authors out there, so today’s Q10 commemorates the King of Terror’s 62 years.

1. King and his wife, Tabitha, own “The Zone Corporation,” a company that serves to head their three radio stations in Maine. One of them, WKIT, goes by the tagline “Stephen King’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Station” and has a mascot named Doug E. Graves. That’s him in the picture to the left. The picture is from the website of Christian Hanson, the artist who made the mask, by the way. Only four were ever produced and at least one of them resides in King’s private collection.

2. He’s a hardcore Red Sox fan. Not only did he write a story about the Sox – The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (a former BoSox pitcher) – he also had a little cameo in the Jimmy Fallon/Drew Barrymore movie Fever Pitch, which is about a crazed Boston fan. He plays himself and throws out the first pitch at a game. And, in 2004, he and Stewart O’Nan, another novelist, chronicled their reactions to the season that finally brought the World Series title back to Beantown. It’s appropriately titled Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season.

3. You probably remember that King was hit by a van not far from his home in 1999. He suffered from a collapsed lung, a broken hip, a gash to the head and a leg broken in nine places. Afterward, King and his lawyer bought the van for $1,500 and when King was better, he wailed on it with a baseball bat before sending it to be crushed at a junkyard.

4. There may be a reason for the way his brain seems to be able to create chilling stories at such an amazing clip: he saw a friend get struck and killed by a train when he was just a kid. The idea that such a traumatizing event stuck with him and inspired his line of work is one that King shrugs off.

5. He wrote a musical with John Mellencamp. It’s based on a house that Mellencamp bought in Indiana that came complete with a ghost story. The legend is that three siblings were messing around in the woods and one of the brothers accidentally got shot. The surviving brother and sister jumped in the car to go get help, and in their panic, swerved off the road right into a tree and were killed instantly. Of course, the three now haunt the woods by the house Mellencamp bought. The singer approached King about maybe doing something with the story, and between the two of them, they wrote songs and a plot for a musical called The Ghost Brothers of Darkland County.

6. If you’re a regular Q10 reader, you already know that Stephen King plays rhythm guitar for a band made up of writers. They’re called The Rock Bottom Remainders and they “tour” about once a year. King shares the stage with Amy Tan, Mitch Albom, Matt Groening and Ridley Pearson, among others.

7. He writes about Maine a lot because he knows and loves Maine. He grew up there and now lives in Bangor. Castle Rock, Derry, and Jerusalem’s Lot are just products of King’s imagination, but he can tell you exactly where in the state they would be if they were real. And his house is awesome. The gate is why I think he appreciates all things creepy, or at least has a pretty good sense of humor about himself. J.W. over at Odd Things I’ve Seen has written a post about his trip to King’s manor, should you feel inclined to virtually drop in.

8. Maybe this is a surprise and maybe it isn’t – King had pretty serious drug and alcohol addictions in the ‘80s. He says that he doesn’t remember writing Cujo at all, really, and wishes he could. It came to a head when his family members confronted him with drug paraphernalia they had collected from his trash can, including Xanax, cocaine, beer cans and Valium. It was the eye-opener he needed: he got help and has been sober ever since.

9. King is an avid Lost fan and sometimes writes about it in his Entertainment Weekly column “The Pop of King.” The feeling is mutual – the writers mentioned that King was a major influence in their work. There was a lot of speculation that he was the man behind Bad Twin, a Lost tie-in mystery published a few years ago, but he has debunked that rumor. He loves Hurley and Ben.

10. Of the five people in the immediate King family, four of them are authors. Tabitha King, Stephen’s wife, has seven published novels. Joe, their oldest son, followed in his dad’s footsteps and is a horror writer (I really like his books, for what it’s worth). Youngest child Owen has written a collection of short stories and one novella (and he married a writer). Naomi, the only King daughter, is a minister and gay activist.

You know him as the top-hat-wearing lead guitarist for Guns N’Roses, Slash’s Snakepit, and Velvet Revolver. Do you know where he got his signature hat and the name “Slash,” though? Let’s take a look at the man who’s darn near unbeatable in Guitar Hero.

1. He Grew Up With Rock

Slash was born Saul Hudson in Stoke-on-Trent, England, in 1965. The Hudson family lived there until Saul was 11, when they moved to Los Angeles. Slash had a pretty good foot in the door of the rock world from the time he was born. His mother, Ola Hudson, designed costumes for John Lennon, the Pointer Sisters, and Diana Ross, and his father, Anthony Hudson, designed album covers for Neil Young and David Bowie, among others. The family also lived near David Geffen and Joni Mitchell. Not a bad way to get into rock music.

Slash’s parents broke up in the mid-70s, and his mom started dating Bowie. In 1990 Slash talked to Rolling Stone about his childhood feelings for Bowie: “I really didn’t like him that much, because he was the new guy in the house. I was really resentful.”

2. Even the Nickname “Slash” Has a Famous Origin

Film buffs know the veteran character actor Seymour Cassel as a frequent player in movies directed by John Cassavetes and Wes Anderson. (Cassel played Max Fischer’s dad in Rushmore and Royal Tenenbaum’s fellow elevator operator in The Royal Tenenbaums.) When Slash was growing up in Los Angeles, though, Cassel was just his buddy Matt’s dad.

Even as a teenager, Saul Hudson had a lot of frenetic energy, and one day he was zipping from one room to another at a party at the Cassels’ house. The actor gently ribbed Hudson’s constant motion by asking, ““Hey, Slash, where ya going? Where ya going, Slash? Huh?” The nickname stuck.

3. He Shoplifted His Top Hat

In 2007 Slash told the Huffington Post that he acquired his signature top hat in 1985 when he went shopping for a memorable accessory to wear for a show in Los Angeles. Since the aspiring guitar god was broke at the time, the line between “shopping” and “shoplifting” was pretty blurred.

According to Slash, he spotted the top hat in a store called Retail Slut and fell in love. Since a top hat can’t exactly be hidden under your shirt, Slash simply grabbed the hat and walked out, apparently unseen. When he got home he realized the hat looked a little plain, so he wrapped it with a belt he’d swiped on the same outing. And just like that, his trademark look was born.

Ironically, when Slash’s hat was stolen during a round of Grammys after-parties a few years ago, he had to rely on the police to regain the purloined lid. Here’s a video of the man himself telling the story:

4. He Also Swiped One of His Guitars

When Slash showed up for a 2007 ceremony honoring his career at Las Vegas’ Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, he had a surprising gift for his hosts. Slash returned a guitar that he’d swiped years earlier from the dressing room of the Hard Rock in Orlando. As he told the story, “It was in the dressing room. I didn’t know what it was doing there, so I took it. I mean, it was in the dressing room and no one claimed it. So I’ve had it all these years and been playing it.”

What made Slash return the guitar that he’d pinched in an apparently perfect crime? He told reporters, “I thought what better way to honor the Hard Rock for honoring me than to give it back, sort of.” At least he eventually did the right thing.

That’s not the only high-profile guitar Slash has given away, though. In 1981 Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry sold his sunburst-finish 1958 Gibson Les Paul to scrounge up some money for Christmas. Ten years later, Perry got nostalgic and started looking for the guitar. He quickly found it; Slash was playing it in a Guitar Player centerfold.

Perry was one of Slash’s boyhood idols, but when he called to see if Slash would sell him the guitar, Slash wouldn’t budge. Perry understood and later said in an interview, “I mean if I had a chance to get hold of the white Strat Jeff Beck played on Wired, I’d have a hard time letting go of it!” In September 2000, though, Perry was playing with Cheap Trick at his own 50th birthday party when a guitar tech walked onto stage and handed him his long-lost guitar as a birthday gift from Slash.

5. He’s a Friend to Elephants

You might not know it, but Slash is a huge supporter of animals and the environment. Earlier this year he got behind the cause of Billy, an endangered Asian elephant who lives at the LA Zoo. When Slash learned that funding for the zoo’s Pachyderm Forest was in jeopardy, he filmed a broadcast-and-YouTube plea urging the Los Angeles City Council to complete the new habitat.

At the time, one of the zookeepers told Reuters, “I’ve always been impressed with Slash’s knowledge of animals. In many cases, he is even able to identify the different subspecies, something that most people can’t do.” Not too surprising for a guitar god who once owned 80 snakes.