difficulty they extricate themselves by sending their whingers ripping and tearing in every direction. It appears that the vampire poppies at night send down these tendrils to gather moisture. Anything which the fearful suckers can catch they drain dry, be it man or beast or bird. Lieutenant Scarlett and his men have been deliberately led into this trap by Tito, who is madly jealous of their compliments to Zara, the dancing-girl. They hold him prisoner and threaten him with condign punishment at headquarters.
Algernon Blackwood brings together two types of vampires in his story The Transfer. One is a human being, the psychic sponge, who absorbs and seems to live upon the vitality of others. He is thus described by the governess: “I watched his hard, bleak face; I noticed how thin he was, and the curious oily brightness of his steady eyes. And everything he said or did announced what I may dare to call the suction of his presence.” There is also a yet more horrible monster, if one may term it so, the Forbidden Corner, an arid barren spot in the midst of the rose garden, naked and bald amid luxuriant growth. A child who knows its evil secret says: “It’s bad. It’s hungry. It’s dying because it can’t get the food it wants. But I know what would make it feel right.” When the human vampire ventures near this spot it exerts its secret strength and draws him to itself. He falls into the middle of the patch and it drinks his energy. He lives on, but he seems to be nothing more than a physical husk or shell without vitality. As for the Forbidden Corner “it lay untouched, full of great, luscious, driving weeds and creepers, very strong, full fed and bursting thick with life.”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his little story, The Parasite, has depicted a human vampire or psychic sponge in the person of Miss Penelosa, who is described as being a small frail creature, “with a pale peaky face, an insignificant presence and retiring manner.” Nevertheless she is able to obsess Professor Gilroy who says: “She has a parasite soul, yes, she is a parasite; a monster parasite. She creeps into my form as the hermit crab creeps into the whelk’s shell.” To his horror he realizes that under her influence his will becomes weaker and weaker and he is bound to seek her presence. He resists for a while, but the force becomes so overmastering that he is compelled to yield, loathing himself as he does so. When he visits her,
