Occasionally, I get the compulsion to re-research topics to ensure I didn’t miss anything the first go around or see if any new info has come to light. This compulsion struck recently, leading to today’s soapboxing on media literacy and vampires.

The Mineral Point Vampire is a subject I researched exhaustively months ago, with my work compiled in the article “The Mineral Point Vampire: A Challenge to Credulity” on DriftlessTimesMedia.com. However, that compulsion to re-research hit the other day, so I went digging. What I found was podcasters using the vampire to attack journalism.

For those unfamiliar with the folklore, the Mineral Point Vampire was a person or creature encountered by Mineral Point Police Officer Jon Pepper during a routine patrol of the small city’s Graceland Cemetery on the night of March 30, 1981. According to Pepper, the person/ creature was dressed like Dracula and fled from him on sight, leaping over a four-foot-tall fence to escape into the rural countryside.

Occasionally, I get the compulsion to re-research topics to ensure I didn’t miss anything the first go around or see if any new info has come to light. This compulsion struck recently, leading to today’s soapboxing on media literacy and vampires.

The Mineral Point Vampire is a subject I researched exhaustively months ago, with my work compiled in the article “The Mineral Point Vampire: A Challenge to Credulity on DriftlessTimesMedia.com. However, that compulsion to re-research hit the other day, so I went digging. What I found was podcasters using the vampire to attack journalism.

For those unfamiliar with the folklore, the Mineral Point Vampire was a person or creature encountered by Mineral Point Police Officer Jon Pepper during a routine patrol of the small city’s Graceland Cemetery on the night of March 30, 1981. According to Pepper, the person/ creature was dressed like Dracula and fled from him on sight, leaping over a four-foot-tall fence to escape into the rural countryside.

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Spooky, no? Some say Pepper hoaxed it. Others maintain it was an actual monster. In my article, I detail how there’s evidence for both a paranormal and normal explanation.

The vampire was then seen twice more, first in 2004. In this encounter, the vampire was up a tree outside an apartment complex, taunting the residents. When the police came, the vampire fled and, once again, escaped by jumping a high wall.

The second story takes place four years later. Two night fishing teens encountered the vampire when it climbed up from underneath their pier. At first, they heard odd noises and thought it was just an animal, but stomping on the pier to scare it away caused the creature to reveal itself. The vampire then chased the frightened teens to their car. The pair sped off to report their encounter to the police, but there was no sign of the monster when the cops arrived.

Even spookier, yes? That’s why you’ll hear both stories repeated endlessly as fact. Yet, they’re total fabrications. I spoke with the Mineral Point police chief and a local historian, verifying there is no truth to either of the two accounts. I even dug deep and found the origin of these tall tales; as far as I can tell, I’m the only person to locate this info and debunk the 2000s stories.

Regardless, there I was the other day, double-checking my research and listening to some podcasts on the vampire. As expected, nothing new – everyone was detailing Pepper’s encounter, then focusing on the two spookier stories. However, blogs and entertainment sites are the only sources for the two 2000s stories, so it’s all anyone can cite. There are no newspaper reports of them, something these podcasters noted, but a few dared to blame slipping journalist standards as the reason for this.

Rather than take the lack of professional news reports as a sign that the stories are made up, they used it to attack journalism.

If any of these folks had done any of their own research into the vampire, rather than spew the same old fictitious nonsense as fact, they’d learn Mineral Point is covered by the Dodgeville Chronicle – one of the few community newspapers left in the state not owned by Adams Publishing Group, a company that’s been buying up newspapers from Minnesota to Florida. The Dodgeville Chronicle has been owned and published by Mike and Pat Reilly since the 1960s. Pat Reilly was elected president of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association in 2022.

These are the people you’re choosing to slander while your “research” comes from Ranker.com? No wonder people in the paranormal are ridiculed.

Maybe I’m extra annoyed because I got my start in community journalism with the Cambridge News & Deerfield Independent, which Adams Publishing Group purchased a few years ago. I know firsthand the importance of community newspapers and small-town journalism and see the devastation large companies like Adams cause. The free press is a cornerstone of democracy; when one company owns a few hundred newspapers, does that sound conducive to democracy?

But no, journalism is in trouble because people can’t find vampire stories in the archives. If only those lamestream media reporters had worked harder.

Newsflash – there is a scoop about the vampire in the Dodgeville Chronicle. In 2017, the paper ran a story on local legends, featuring a source claiming firsthand knowledge that Pepper’s 1981 vampire sighting was a hoax perpetrated by a local resident

The newspaper’s reporting, directly and indirectly, suggests that the entirety of the Mineral Point Vampire is a hoax. If you don’t want to believe it, fine. I’m not sure what to think of it all myself. However, don’t conflate being unable to verify an internet tall tale with a professional news source as a failing of journalism. Consider, instead, that maybe the vampire stories aren’t real because journalists only report on reality.

I understand the paranormal requires an inherent level of gullibility to take seriously. While I try to approach the paranormal from the angle of the humanities – history, philosophy, etc. – at the end of the day, I’m talking about a vampire. I have to entertain the notion a cop saw a vampire. That’s a silly thing to do.

It doesn’t mean I have to give up common sense, however. I can talk about ghosts and goblins while also recognizing 1+1=2. If there are newspaper reports about the 1981 vampire but none about the 2000s encounters, something doesn’t add up.

This entire paranormal field of interest is sorely lacking in discernment. It’s merely laughable when it’s just true believers insisting ET disclosure is right around the corner. However, something has gone terribly wrong when people are attacking foundational institutions like journalism over vampires.