- [first lines]
- Narrator: This is a strange story - a story unlike anything you have ever heard. It is a story of madness - of cruel and unforgettable death - fantastic, unreal and horrible! Through the ages, man has beheld the fear of death. From the moment life enters the human body until the last earthly flicker of his soul, fear holds him in its icy grip - the hopes, the future; yes, his very life. There have been many tales of fear - legends of Frankenstein, of Dracula, of monsters and werewolves. But in all history, no one person has seen or witnessed more of the many strange deaths of humans than a man we shall call - Doctor Terror!
- [transcribed from script on deposit with the New York State Archives]
- Doctor Terror: [introducing first casebook entry, "The Vampire Witch of Charz"] In the forbidding vastnesses of the Carpathian Mountains was born the fearful legend of that fierce and unholy woman Marguerite Chopin, the last of the vampire-witches, who lived beyond death. In the wild depths of these loathsome forests lie the ghostly ruins of an age almost forgotten, when, the villagers will tell you, the vampires - the living dead - roam at night, slowly killing many, driving others of the village to madness. Slaves to superstition, they live in constant fear of a return of the vampires. History has recorded many eyewitnesses to the ghastly orgies of human vampires who, returned from the dead, lurked in the shadows of ancient buildings to prey on their victims. So in this land, every man, woman and child lives in terror of the fiendish vampires. Beat the rugs! Wash them! Soak them in the mill-race where the cool mountain water will cleanse them of the evil spirit of the Devil. Prepare huge rafts to hold the population of the village, for, they will tell you, a human vampire will not cross or touch water! Ghastly flags, soaked in the blood of the last victim, are paraded at ceremonial gatherings to frighten and dispel the sirits of the vampires long dead. I saw hundreds in each village drinking and dancing like wild savages from the South Seas! Could this be the modern world where civilization has given countless benefits? Yes! But here is fear - fear of the horrible, of death never ending, fear of the Devil himself flowing into the body of some villager long dead and returning to destroy the living - perhaps a hundred souls this very night! So these people prepare for the vampires which they know one day will return! This is a story of a whole village under the fateful spell of a vampire woman - the story of the demon Marguerite Chopin. I'll never forget *this* case! It happened in the village the month I was there; it was her *eyes* that I'll never forget!
- [transcribed from script on deposit with the New York State Archives]