Meet & Geek: Vampirism
Mütter Museum
19 S 22nd St.
Philadelphia
Feb. 5, 2026
This Thursday, the Mütter Museum – known to my out-of-town friends as “the museum with all that gross stuff” – hosted "Meet & Geek: Vampirism." The event was an extension of their seasonal vampire-themed pop up, and included a presentation on how medical anxieties of the past influenced the existence of literary vampires, as well as two special guests: a pair of bats named Duchess and Gabriel.
Shortly after 6 p.m., Museum Educator Jo D’Avella greeted the sold out crowd and dove right into their presentation on vampirism. The people in attendance were more than ready for the big night, and many were wearing the vampiric uniform: lots of black and red, metal accessories, and dark makeup. Shoutout to one attendee in particular, who wore a My Chemical Romance hoodie and knows that vampires will never hurt you.
D’Avella’s presentation was packed with deep knowledge about vampires and their origins, diseases of the 18th and 19th centuries, and vampires in popular culture. As someone who went into this thinking I had a handle on the history of vampirism, I found out through this presentation that I knew less than I thought. D’Avella informed us of the many diseases that humans all those years ago were experiencing with little to no medical guidance, and certainly none of the medical expertise we have today.
Vampirism was, in short, a way of explaining why people got sick seemingly overnight. Have you ever woken up on a winter morning with a sore throat? Back then, you’d have been suspected to have fallen prey to a vampire during the night. Forget the fact that there was no ventilation in the factories or that chamberpots were being emptied in the streets. The only way to explain these mystery illnesses was, of course, that the devil was in town.
Most interesting to me was when D’Avella listed the many ailments folks were experiencing, but didn’t quite have names or diagnoses for at the time, and how their symptoms became the “signs” of vampirism. For example, syphilis gave people strange marks on their necks, pellagra made the gums recede so the teeth appeared longer, and porphyria invoked photosensitivity and skin burning in sunlight. It doesn’t matter which vampire books or movies you love, you’ll recognize these characteristics that D’Avella did an excellent job relating to today’s popular vampiric tropes.
And while their presentation was as entertaining as it was informative, the people wanted the bats. For this Meet & Geek installment, the Mütter Museum partnered with Pennsylvania Bat Conservation and Rehabilitation, who allowed all of us to meet the adorable sky puppies Duchess and Gabriel. Their involvement in this event was obvious: bats get a bad rap when it comes to vampires due to their depiction in films and novels. As it turns out, though, movies don’t even use vampire bats because they’re too small. Instead, they use the larger fruit bats which – duh – eat fruit, not blood.
Just about everyone in the sold out crowd was experiencing cuteness aggression when they got the chance to meet the little angels. Museum coordinators had to do crowd control to ensure that everyone got their bat pictures. I, for one, had to be moved along because I physically could not stop cooing over Gabriel’s tiny face or Duchess’s erratic eating habits (it was her dinnertime, and she was absolutely ravenous for her serving of mealy worms).
My venn diagram for Halloween nerd and climate nerd are just about overlapping, so bats have long been a fascination of mine. I appreciated that the presentation not only debunked many vampire-related myths about bats, but that the conservation spoke on issues such as white-nose syndrome, a disease that’s killed off millions of bats in the last 20 years (not to mention the number of human infants that pass away due to farmers using 31% more chemicals to account for how many insects are in their goods without the help of bats eating them). This information, macabre as it may be, felt expertly intertwined with the night’s presentation and overall vibe of the museum itself. These are, after all, our modern day medical anxieties. And in today’s era of old diseases popping up due to lack of willingness to be vaccinated and disbelief in climate change, creatures like bats once again end up receiving the backlash.
My experience at the vampire party was wrapped up with a short info session on one woman’s posture corrective garments meant to assist in her tuberculosis induced spinal angling, as well as a look at old-timey medical tools like an autopsy kit that made my skin crawl, a tuberculin syringe, and the teeny tiny skeleton of a bat that looked too delicate to be true. Meet & Geek somehow made discussing the topics of disease and death into a feel-good evening with great company, and felt like the perfect way to bring those of weak stomach for a first-time visit to the Mütter Museum. And for those already inclined to enjoy a healthy dose of grim and gore, well, welcome home.
