In 1818, a new doctor named Heinrich Spatz and his wife arrived in the Bavarian town of Würzburg. The couple looked quite happy. And the doctor himself was distinguished by refined manners, was engaged in charity work and never refused friends a small amount of money. An ideal person, if not for some oddities.
According to Heinrich Spatz, after studying at the University of Prague, he served as a military doctor for several years. Then he retired and decided to settle with his wife in Germany. His choice fell on Würzburg, which the locals were incredibly happy about: in the whole city it was difficult to find a person more popular than Spatz. Indeed, he is so smart, he wrote several works on military field medicine and infectious diseases, but at the same time he is not at all arrogant, but on the contrary - friendly and welcoming.
His house was always open to guests, but only during the day and evening. Doctor's visitors, no matter how long the feast ended, never stayed for the night: they were always politely but persistently escorted out. The owners even forked out for cabs, if only the guests left the house. The only servant was not left to spend the night. The doctor, of course, had an explanation for this strange behavior. He referred to the fact that he loves his wife so much that he wants to be alone with her as much as possible.
In 1831, when Spatz suddenly sold his property for almost nothing and left Würzburg, the locals were very surprised. Before leaving, the doctor announced that he had been invited to lecture at the University of Prague. What happened a few days later caused the townspeople to completely change their minds about Spatz.
After the doctor's departure, two young doctors, his assistants, came to the police. They stated that the Spatz spouses are vampires who constantly drink other people's blood. Under the guise of a benefactor, they picked up beggars and homeless people, brought them to their home, where they provided shelter and food. Soon the kindly poor fellows disappeared without a trace. At the same time, the doctor told the assistants that he found them a home in other places or that, having received what they needed, they left themselves.
Young people believed Spatz until the war veteran, disabled Joachim Faber disappeared without a trace. He served as the doctor's gatekeeper and repeatedly turned to Spatz for help. Faber could not leave the city himself, since he did not have the funds for this, and it is difficult to find a job for a person who does not have one hand.
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It was decided to search Spatz's house, as a result of which the remains of a total of 18 people were found in the basement. It was obvious that all of them had undergone some kind of surgery and bled out. One of the disfigured bodies had no hand. The examination established that the hand was amputated during the victim's life. Based on this, the police concluded that these were the remains of Joachim Faber. The rest could not be identified.
The local police immediately contacted the representatives of the law from Prague to return the doctor to Würzburg. But it turned out that the University of Prague had never heard of Heinrich Spatz. The killer doctor disappeared without a trace.
However, the story did not end with the disappearance of the doctor. Six months passed, and one of his assistants, who came with a denunciation to the police, took his own life by hanging himself from the ceiling beam. Shortly before this, the young doctor, leaving his family, went to a neighboring suburb, where he rented a basement room. There he lived in complete solitude, not allowing anyone to visit him. One day, a worried wife decided to visit him.
What she saw shocked her. Instead of a blooming, young man, a pale, withered old man opened the door for her. As neighbors later said, he did not go out, being afraid of the sunlight. He ate pork blood, which was delivered to him by the butcher, which could not but cause stomach problems. Why this happened remains a mystery. Most likely, the young doctor became addicted to blood while assisting Spatz in his experiments.
The second assistant to the killer doctor died under even more dire circumstances. Once, while visiting his sister, he retired with his little nephew in the bedroom and began to drink his blood. During this occupation, the child's nanny caught him, grabbed a poker, which was at hand, and hit the vampire on the head. To save the woman from prison, this story was not widely publicized. But leaked rumors made Würzburg residents even more convinced that Spatz and his assistants were vampires.
Rumors spread throughout the city that the doctor was at the head of a satanic sect and that he cursed those who betrayed him, turning them into vampires in his own image. Of course, there were also sane versions explaining Spatz's crimes by scientific experiments. Indeed, at that time, the dissection of corpses was illegal, and the doctor was doing just that. The assistants, having seen enough of the horrors happening in the basement of the house, just went crazy.
According to some modern researchers, the Spatz spouses had a rare blood disease - porphyria. Moreover, the assistants knew about the problem of their patrons and tried to help them with their participation in the experiments.
Despite the fact that Heinrich Spatz was officially recognized as a maniac murderer, many residents of Würzburg are still afraid to pronounce his name aloud, fearing to incur misfortune. They believe that the doctor, like any vampire, is immortal and still leads the vampire sect. But, I must say, this terrible story contributes to the prosperity of the tourist business in the city. Isn't it mass psychosis?
Today, the existence of vampires is not surprising to anyone. Blood drinkers are not mystical villains like Bram Stoker's Count Dracula. They are just sick people, tormented by either porphyria, a blood disease, or Renfield's syndrome, a mental disorder. Most likely, the last person to suffer was Heinrich Spatz, a maniac from Würzburg.
To commit a crime, maniacs do not need a reason - as a rule, they are not tormented by either selfish motives or a desire to take revenge.
One or another mental disorder makes them kill. In the case of Renfield's syndrome, or clinical vampirism, this disorder awakens the thirst for blood. The syndrome got its name in honor of the assistant to Count Dracula, who ate insects. Most often men are affected by this disease.
So, experts did not find any diseases like porphyria in any of the serial vampire maniacs. Their body did not need any specific substances that can be obtained only from blood, they drank it only in order to get moral satisfaction from the process.
In 1992, Richard Knoll, in his book Vampires, Werewolves and Demons in Twentieth Century Psychiatric Messages, detailed the symptoms and causes of Renfield syndrome. It is strange that, despite the detailed description of this deviation, clinical vampirism is not in any of the classifications of diseases - neither in Russia nor in the United States.
According to the scientist, the cause of the syndrome is the "main case", which should be looked for in childhood. As a rule, the disease begins to develop from a mere trifle. For example, a child injured himself, licked his blood, and he not only liked the taste of it, but excited him. During puberty, the taste of blood begins to be associated with sexual pleasure. In the future, a person suffering from clinical vampirism is faced with a serious problem: where to get blood?
Therefore, some begin to deliberately inflict wounds on themselves and even open their veins in order to fall to the "life-giving source." Others commit crimes: they steal blood from hospitals or begin to kill.
It should be noted that the owners of Renfield syndrome do not see the difference between human and animal blood, they do not care. They catch cats, dogs, birds, kill them and drink still warm blood. In this case, the sexual component may be completely absent. For some patients, according to them, the blood received from the victim is also a mystical symbol of power.
People suffering from clinical vampirism, no doubt, need to be treated. However, there is one difficulty: they must be calculated first, and the carriers of Renfield syndrome are cruel, cunning and inventive.