Episode Details

Narrator: Boo RhodesWriter: SM KingIntro Music
Don't Go Around that Corner - Boo RhodesBackground Ambience
Abyss - MYUUBeware of the vampires of Northern California. Truly terrifying and frightening! These stories of people who believe they are vampries will chill your blood. Maybe that's a good thing, would you enjoy cold blood as a vampire?Hello, it’s Spooky Boo from Spooky Boo’s Scary Story Time. I’m sitting here in the lighthouse in Sandcastle, a little unknown town in Northern California where the fog rolls in from the ocean and settles here quite nicely. It keeps us hidden from tourists and those pesky people who enjoy stopping for a bite to eat down Highway 1. They wouldn’t want to eat here anyway for you never know what the old butcher is cooking up in his food. Speaking of food, California has a few infamous vampire serial killers. Many of them hide out here in Sandcastle because the fog often times protects them from the sun. More on those vampires on an evening show, for the day is for true scary stories here at Spooky Boo’s Scary Story Time.Two of my favorites to talk about are from Northern California in San Francisco and Sacramento.Let’s start with Richard Trenton Chase: The Vampire of SacramentoImagine the winter of 1977–1978 in Sacramento, California. Christmas lights still twinkled on suburban homes. Families gathered for holiday meals. But something ancient and hungry moved through those quiet streets — something that looked like a man but thirsted like a creature from nightmare.His name was Richard Trenton Chase. To this day, he is remembered as the Vampire of Sacramento, the Dracula Killer. In just one month he slaughtered six people in their own homes, drank their blood, mutilated their bodies, and left scenes so grotesque that veteran detectives still speak of them in hushed tones.This is not just a story of murder. This is the story of a broken mind convinced that only warm human blood could keep him alive.The Making of a MonsterRichard Trenton Chase was born on May 23, 1950, in Sacramento. From the beginning, his world was unstable. His father was a strict, often violent disciplinarian. His mother suffered mental health struggles and once accused her husband of trying to poison her — a paranoid delusion that would later echo horribly in her son’s own mind.By age ten, young Richard already displayed the full “MacDonald triad” — the three warning signs that criminologists say often predict violent behavior in adulthood: chronic bed-wetting, fire-setting, and extreme cruelty to animals. He tortured cats, dogs, and other small creatures. He set fires. He wet the bed long past the normal age.As a teenager, the problems deepened. He became a heavy drinker and drug user — alcohol, marijuana, LSD, and anything else he could get his hands on. He had multiple short relationships with girls, but suffered from impotence. A psychiatrist told him the cause was “repressed rage.” The rage never left. It only grew.By his early twenties, Chase had become a full-blown hypochondriac. He believed his body was rotting from the inside. He thought his heart was shrinking. He shaved his head so he could watch his skull change shape. He once checked himself into a hospital claiming someone had stolen his pulmonary artery.In 1975, things spiraled. Chase injected rabbit blood into his veins and nearly died of blood poisoning. Hospital staff nicknamed him “Dracula” because of his obsession with blood. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and institutionalized. Doctors tried antipsychotic medication. For a short time it seemed to help.In 1976 he was released into his mother’s care. She stopped giving him his medication, saying it “dulled” him. Soon after, she helped him get his own apartment. It was the worst possible decision. Alone, the voices in Richard Chase’s head grew louder.He began capturing neighborhood pets — dogs, cats, rabbits. He would disembowel them while they were still alive, drink their blood warm