The Vampire of Bakersfield

When making your way down the I-5 through Kern County, you are likely to spot a host of abandoned factories lying just beyond the horizon. From wind farms to mercury refineries, that deep stretch of grassland that precedes entry into Los Angeles has a way of gathering industries to its surface as a corpse might draw flies. Few take the time to look into their history, wrought with controversy as they are; yet, for those who dare interrogate their origins– as I have– they may find more than a few legends worth preserving. And some secrets that have yet to see the light of day.

The Dawson House is a singular sight. Hidden away behind Bakersfield's low, rolling hills, and surrounded by a black iron gate, you might never give it a second glance were it placed in a bustling city center. Instead, the building stands alone amid a vast oil field, with its windows boarded over as if condemned and its back garden left to rot in the heat. Such has the ruin stood for close to a hundred years now, and for a hundred years more will it remain– assuming its owner were to have his way. 

Bradley Dawson, founder of the Dawson Oil Company, was a man who refused to part with his work. His candor was much like that of a worker ant– always moving from place to place, with an insistence in his voice that rivaled the Caesars of Rome. It was often said of the man that he was utterly devoid of sentiment, and delighted only in the authority that his name provided him.

"I expect results," he was like to say, to those clerks who worked under him by some foul misfortune. "Else you are no better than a leech on my side!"

The Dawsons were cattle men, when they first settled west. First hailing from Texas until after the war. They soon held control over a vast plot of earth, which stretched nearly as far as Los Padres Forest when Bradley was born. Inevitably, their trade shifted into that of landowners, who rented their earth to what families followed. From this business the Dawsons grew vastly rich, with a ranch erected outside Bakersfield said to rival even their plantations out east.

But it was not enough. 

The first sign of the young Bradley's aptitude arose in the summer of 1893, less than a year after he was given control over the family's eastern assets. As court records state, that Summer was marked by a flurry of voided contracts, and countless foreclosure letters sent in the height of the California heat. At first, no reason was ever directly stated as to why the Dawson heir had chosen such a path for his business, and many simply assumed he was attempting to return to his family's roots as cattlemen. That notion was, however, aptly dismissed one September morning, when the following article was published in the Bakersfield Monthly:

Oil!

Further prosperity was delivered upon the Dawson Estate this year, with the news that their ancestral land shows the marks of vast oil reserves, planted right beneath their feet. This news comes on the heels of the tragic death of the family's patriarch, Abraham Dawson, aged ninety-seven this last May.

According to all involved, the prospect of oil has reinvigorated the family's spirit, such that proper machinery has already been ordered to Kern County, with the hope that they can begin drilling as soon as possible. 

To that end, citizens of surrounding counties have been asked not to trespass on land reserved for these surveys, so as to prevent any unwanted deaths by accident.

It has often been said that no sane man would ever build his home where he works, and it is to that effect that we must return to the Dawson house once more. 

The building is an elaborate construct. Built of brick and mortar, the manor has a way of catching the evening light such that its inner halls light up a dull red hue; not unlike the innards of some hungry beast, some have said. What few parties Bradley held from his oilman's abode do not paint him as a lover of any fine comfort; yet, the house seems always to hold artistry thought lost to the ages. From ancient maps, to antique bibles, and the odd painting or two to decorate the wall. As a man who has studied the house for some time now, I can assure you that nothing within is a forgery. It is, for lack of a better term, a house that seems built to be displayed. Or, more accurately, to be preserved.

Legacy was, after all, the Dawsons' greatest obsession; for more so than their health, that is for certain. Though the family was deeply private– and Bradley himself most of all, signs of their worsening condition can be seen throughout their Ken county abode. 

Bradley's office, for all of its art and gold-encrusted ashtrays, also holds a rack by the desk where he could prop up his canes after his back began to wear away. So too are the stairs built with weak knees in mind, as just beside the main stairwell one can also spy a second set of steps winding up to the third floor like a great, ponderous chain. These additions are but a few of the improvements Bradley made to his house over the years, as a life spent crouched over a desk with the curtains drawn did little to relieve him of the slow progression of father time.

Indeed, it is the mystery of Bradley Dawson that first attracted me to this story in particular. For, though he was a goliath of a figure within Kern county's economic history there is little known of the man outside of his business dealings. The rest of the Dawson estate rarely invited him east– as they seemed also to be aware of his isolationist tendencies. Likewise, he seemed to share very little in common with his wife Abigail, who often described him to her fellow socialites as "a work horse, and little else."

History has since not been kind to the Dawsons, and Bradley is no exception. As a man who preferred to make his mark through contracts, there is little to know of him outside of a handful of financial scandals and health scares. He had few true friends, and never made any public appearances outside of ribbon-cutting ceremonies. He preferred to keep his office curtains drawn, and as time went on shriveled into a bent-over goat of a man, replete with all the signs of a life ill-spent. 

But even still, there are things we can use to better understand his mindset. The only question is whether you have the aptitude to trust them.

Most notably, it was often said that the good sir Dawson was prone to night terrors, ever since he was a boy. Though he shared details with no one but his doctor, this malady may indeed be the only example we know of in which the infamous businessman was at his most vulnerable. The diaries he kept in the pursuit of this endeavor are preserved today in the archives at UC Riverside, listed as vol. 16 of the Hartlov Collection. The first passage in his testament reads as follows:

8.16.1898

This is the first entry in what Doctor Harlov has referred to as my 'dream journals.' If I am to understand the good doctor correctly, they will serve as a record of my nightly terrors to refer back to during our in-person meetings, and in addition a method by which I might better put to words the things that haunt me. As it stands I cannot quite see the merit behind this, but I will hold back my judgement for now. God knows I am paying the man enough, and so I might as well play his games. All the same, I expect results.

But now to the dreams. As I said at our first meeting, there is much in the way of detail that I cannot yet explain. I know for a fact that I am wandering– through a dark and empty desert of some kind, I believe. The sand and stone beneath my feet is dyed a deep red hue. Not red like the rock in the Utah or Arizona Territories either. Dark red. Bloody red. Red like a steak served rare, or the moon during a total eclipse. But still dry. Dry and brittle as any desert I've ever known. The ground seems to groan and crunch at my every step forward, and some nights I have to hike up the side of sheer cliffs to reach my destination. The earth around me is piled in strange, illogical mounds, much like the hives of a great ant colony. Though, in all directions the earth is barren of all life but me. Some nights I might come across a town, or settlement, which was once housed snugly against the desolate hillside. Only, whenever I check the houses nearest me I find them empty of all life. As though they have been abandoned for centuries.

I cannot remember much more than that, I'm afraid. Only that I awoke drenched in sweat. 

Looking back at it now it seems a bit strange. I have often gone hiking in our ancestral land, and never once feared the earth beneath me. Perhaps this is what Hartlov wants. To make me face these dreams, and dismiss them for the fantasies they are. 

These diaries paint an intriguing picture of the man often called 'The Robber Baron of Kern County.' More than anything, it seems to reinforce the notion that Bradley Dawson truly saw the land he was re-purchasing as his family's ancestral home; despite the fact that it had only been in their possession for a little under half a century. Still, we must be hesitant to trust these passages beyond their emotional value. For, who among us has not met with the unexplained in our dreams?

Of course, there is much in these diaries that must be taken with due scrutiny. Today, Doctor Gregory Hartlov is best known for his incessant pursuit of Dreamscape Theory, a now defunct field of parapsychology that posited that between each recurring nightmare there laid a consistent landscape. One that could be mapped, manipulated, and even studied. In this pursuit his patients were often encouraged to engage in deep, meditative forms of sleep, from which they repeatedly emerged shaking and desperate for reprieve. It is unclear what benefit these sessions provided for his patients, if any, and even all these years later the journals Hartlov collected in his studies require explicit approval by the Department of Psychology to handle, as their contents have been known to drive research aides to the brink. When asked what he felt on the matter, Riverside's current dean went on record to say:

"Psychology is no stranger to the occasional quack who thinks themselves capable of piercing the veil through various uncouth methods. No matter the details of their particular crimes, it is the responsibility of institutions like ours to not only preserve what remains of their work but present it in the proper context, as a means of warning all who might follow. The only danger that the Hartlov collection holds is to those young minds who wish to see more in their words than what is necessary. And, truly, if the accounts of a few dozen patients caught in the grip of psychosis is enough to drive our students to madness, then I fear they may never have had the aptitude for this work in the first place."

But back to the matter of Bradley Dawson. Whether or not he was truly in the grip of a slow psychotic break, his business acumen did not seem to suffer as a consequence. For, it was in the closing years of the 19th century that his fortune truly amassed. Under his leadership, Dawson Oil managed to expand its reach across California's central valley– from the eastern edge of Kern county to all of the Dawsons' former land holdings near Bakersfield, and then into further tracks out west. In those days no hill was free from the silhouette of a Dawson oil rig, so it was said, and within months the citizens of the Central Valley found their hills covered with the low dirge of oil rigs, incessantly drawing liquid gold from the earth.

And as it happened, the site most replete with resources was the land just below Bradley's feet. So it was that as time went on Bradley began to approve further projects in the valleys about his manor– such that now it is near impossible to tour the estate without the low growl of petroleum drills battering at your senses. It is a near-constant irritant. Enough to drive a lesser man to the edge of insanity.

With that in mind, perhaps it is not surprising to hear that Bradley's health only continued to spiral as the years went on. Though not an elderly man, nor one suffering from any known disorder– surviving photographs paint a dire picture of the Dawson family's patriarch in his middle years. Crooked and knobby in frame, Bradley was never far from a cigarette or a bottle of wine whenever he had the displeasure of being removed from his private estate. Similarly, he was often said to eat only rare meat, and turned up his nose to any cuisine of which he was not already familiar. Among his many vices, his love of tobacco was held dearest of all, and it was an open secret throughout Kern county that their oil baron could not sleep at night without at least two cigars to close out the evening. 

Many have painted this habit as perhaps the reason for his night terrors, and while that may indeed be true, very little today can explain the vivid nature of his visions. Or, why they seemed to develop so rapidly as he crested into his thirties.

As another entry in his dream journal states:

3.4.1899

This is the third night in a row that I have suffered a terror while abed. Though I am loath to agree that the visions are reaching their peak of intensity, I cannot argue that Hartlov's treatment has thus far aided in clarifying the components of these dreams, and aided my ability to operate within them. I am still unable to fully exit these terrors at my leisure, as I would most desire, but alas I am told that may be beyond the scope of this therapy. All the same, I will remain steadfast. 

The dreams continue to take me to the desert, with its blood-red sand and milk-white moon. In my memory it is always so hot, even in the dead of night. Even in its darkest caves. I cannot help but feel this aspect of the night remain when I at last awake and find my body coated in sweat. I could have sworn I found a bit of red dust behind my ears this morning while washing up, but I was assured it was just my imagination.

There are things in the desert now. Huge, monstrous things. At first I thought them to be part of the topography, but now I know better. I saw one of them crawl out from its hive, and scurry along the ground like a bloodhound in search of its prey. At its infancy the creature appeared to be roughly the size of an automobile, and scurried through the sand on appendages tipped with barbed points. 

I followed one at a distance, and watched as it came upon a spot in the hillside– one no greater than any other– and dug its claws into the earth. I watched as its mouth split open, revealing a great hungering proboscis, which it drove down into the soil and further beneath as though it was looking to tap a well. Slowly, its body began to swell. And as it did so I swore I tasted pennies on the air. 

Last thing I can remember, I was running. Crawling, really, to safety. I awoke to my wife at my door, and several members of the help at the standby with a cool cloth for my brow. It appears that in my sleep I had begun to let out howls that had awoken half the house. I will speak no more of it tonight, but I trust that by recording what I remember I can aid my recovery.

It is hard to say what might have been, had the public learned the extent of Bradley Dawson's condition. As it stands, however, it is safe to say that the man was liked no more than a local specter, and thought of as a corpse long before his death. 

For, though it is true that Bradley made sure to always keep his public appearances to a minimum, and commissioned no artwork of his contenance, that does not mean there are no depictions of the man to be found. Quite the opposite. Were you lucky enough to tour the Bakersfield City Hall, you might come across his alleged likeness on display in a mural depicting the region's entrepreneurs. Painted by renowned surrealist Lazlo Hurst, the piece does not shy away from illustrating the man's notoriously gaunt features, or the hole in his throat that resulted from a life long addiction to tobacco. When asked on his philosophy when painting the figure, Hurst was noted to have replied:

"There is no more potent an image to capture a man's life than to depict him as he was. Every crease, every wrinkle. Every bag beneath his eye, or stain on his shirt. I do not hate Bradley Dawson, or any businessman of our Inland Empire. I merely wish to show them as they were. As people, who by some stroke of luck managed to get all the money in the world, and yet could not thrive."

Other depictions have not been nearly as charitable to the businessman's memory.

Most notably, his portrayal in the 1926 play "The Robber Barons" by Elijah Mallory is worth consideration. For, though the play details the lives of five notorious men from southern California's history, none are treated with such chagrin as Dawson. Depicted as not only cruel but cowardly in disposition, the play took great lengths to depict the toll his vices took on his body, including an extended sequence detailing the heart attack that nearly claimed his life in 1901, and the emergency surgery that followed. Though Mallory employed a host of creative liberties in constructing the scene, the role of one James Sheff was maintained to the letter.

As we now know, James Sheff was an employee of the Dawson Oil Company. A rig engineer, who had inherited a host of debts from his father. In seeking a blood donor for his looming operation, Bradley Dawson drafted a contract for the man agreeing to pay him a sizable sum to serve as the source of transfusion while under the knife. As fate would have it, however, complications in surgery would end up claiming James's life, even as Bradley's was saved. And to add salt to the wound, only a portion of the agreed sum was ever paid out by the Dawson estate to the grieving Sheff family. In defending the action, Bradley stated:

"Our contract was clearly written to James Sheff, and not his estate or widow. She ought to be glad for what charity I have extended, as the moment her husband died she lost all claim to future compensation."

Indeed, this action was at the time considered so underhanded, so cruel, that it would earn him the title "The Vampire of Bakersfield" for the rest of his mortal life. It is a title that haunts him even today, as illustrations of the man have often gone on to depict him with blood-stained teeth, and another man's heart beating in his chest. And though in truth the most that the businessman ever took from James Sheff was his blood, the image had nonetheless been seared into the minds of all Kern County's residents. Such that each Halloween the likeness of the withered oilman are known to populate the decorations of its autumn parades, standing shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Dracula, Nosferatu, and all his like-minded kin.

Perhaps, then, it is a kindness that they never got a hand on his journals.

For, if Dawson's heart attack accomplished anything, it was to worsen the frail man's already rampant paranoia. And though he does not directly state as much, we can find entry after entry in the years that followed that point towards a rapid deterioration of the man's mental state. One, dated only a few months after his surgery reads:

1.25.1902

I was in the desert again last night. As of late I see myself there often. The ground was a deep ochre, and the moon was like a falling star. 

There are more of those creatures there. Many more than I expected. In my absence they must have multiplied. Like maggots, I presume. From their open jaws I can see gallons of blood filling their bellies from whatever source they are tapping below ground. They are massive now, with the largest well beyond the size of a house. Their every moment was to consume, and the great rate at which they dredged the earth produced a thick pumping sound which filled the air, leaving no room for clear thought or breath. 

Is it possible to feel pain while dreaming? For, I surely know that when I wake I feel the heat of the desert on my skin, and the throbbing of a migraine growing behind my eyes. I am told it is impossible, but if only they knew the way the rocks cut into my feet, and how the wind dries my hands to lumps of useless flesh. In my nightmares I search the villages nearby for people but find only empty hovels. There is no one around to save me. Or, perhaps they have all fled from fear? I do not blame them, for when I wake I wish never to see that realm again.

It is an odd sensation, to dream as I do. It is not entirely lucid, but neither am I unaware of myself. I am a puppet free of strings, but who dances all the same. It is only after I wake that I remember it was a dream. In the moment, it just feels so real. 

I will speak to Dr. Hartlov about this. His study be damned, I need true rest if I am to close my current contracts. I will visit him on the morrow and seek closure. If he has none to give, then our business is at an end. 

And perhaps Bradley Dawson's legend might have stopped there. Had he simply retreated into his home, and lived out his last days in comfort. Perhaps then he might have known some peace before his death. But it was not to be.

Instead, we know today that his worsening health only galvanized the man's desire to be loved, and in his last year of life he took to the streets with his hand outstretched. All who saw him in those days describe him as a grisly sight. 

"A man built of another's blood," some said. "With open sores in his chest and a hole carved into his neck, to which he would regularly raise a cigarette in search of some fleeting comfort." 

Whatever change Bradley hoped this would have on his reputation never came to pass, as his sudden ubiquity on the city's streets only seemed to worsen the community's view of him. But then, it is also worth noting that for all his talk of wishing to reform there are no records of him lending aid, in this period or after. There were no checks cut towards charitable causes, no friends offered a loan, and no debts forgiven. It is therefore quite clear that while the oilman may have indeed wished to salvage his reputation, he was ultimately unable to do anything of value.

And as for his nightmares? Well, though Dawson officially ended his treatment under Doctor Hartlov in February of 1902, his own personal journals continued for the next six months, up to the night of his death. 

That final entry, preserved today by the Dawson Foundation under lock-and-key, goes as follows:

7.27.1902

Oh Miserable God, is this what you would reduce me to? This ragged, limp creature, barely able to lift a pen to paper? At least rid me of these terrors, so I might pass peacefully into death instead of being hounded by it. Whatever Hartlov's treatment did to me does not seem to have faded. I fear instead that he has simply released the lock on a dam, and absconded with the key. What dreams I have now are more vivid than before. They come to me whenever I close my eyes, and echo through my waking hours like the moans of a thousand dying cattle.

In my dreams the creatures are monstrously large. Some are the size of buildings, and let the night afire with the low drone of their feeding tubes. The largest looms on the horizon. It is a great, hulking creature. Swollen to the point of misery. It is more like a mountain than a leech, to my eye, with its bulbous body stretched to its limit in whatever accursed pitch they seem to draw from the earth. I have come to accept that the substance is what gives this land its red hue, and so I can only imagine its source as something horrid and foul– left to rot miles below that dreamlands' crust. 

I wonder, what will become of that land once these ticks have their fill? Will they die out in some great famine, or will they migrate to a new source far away? Indeed, part of me fears that they will never run out, and instead the greatest among them will simply burst forth from the volume contained within, and drown its blighted ecosystem with all that it has taken since it first tasted that vile substance. Such a deluge would no doubt sweep away all life about them, and reduce the realm to a sea of bile. Perhaps that is their lifecycle. Assuming that my dreams follow any such logic, of course.

The more time I spend in that forsaken realm the more certain I become that it is all that awaits me upon my death. It may be the divine Hell, or a more personal one, but I know in my bones that whatever that landscape is was formed with my own pain in mind, and without any means of escape. Even now waking has become more a chore to me than the aching pain of my terrors. I awaken with blood pooling beneath my lips, and sores opening all over my skin. The height of California summer is no fit place for a man to die. But that is my fate, it would seem.

If I have any regret, it is that I was not able to know the truth of that damnable realm before I drew my last breath. I would give you the world, just for a shred of certainty. 

I was only able to view this entry after months of careful negotiations with what remains of the Dawson Family's estate. Though their board of trustees has thus far been hesitant to offer the public any information they might use to– in their words– 'further slander their founder,' I was given access to a scant few resources to better form my opinion of the man.

For indeed, were you to tour the halls of the old Dawson house, as I have, you may gain a new appreciation for the man that many came to curse in his final days. In its rooms you may begin to take notice of how many surfaces likely required daily cleaning, in order to hide the black bile that was believed to emerge from the oilman's throat. You may take notice of the heavy wood of the window shutters– likely built for the purpose of concealing the sound of the oil rigs beyond, which even today rattle the foundations with their incessant creaks and groans. You may even take notice of how cheap Bradley's bed was, as even in his final days he could not bear to pay the expenses necessary to replace it. Upon its mattress you might very well lay out your body, and stare into the ceiling, if only to try and imagine what sights might have first caught Bradley's eyes the instant he awoke from a terror. You may find some degree of sympathy for the man, as I did; however, I will not fault you if you do not. Even now, it is a difficult burden to bear.

Then there is his tomb. In accordance with Dawson family tradition, Bradley was laid to rest in the deepest level of his family mausoleum, housed behind his manor to this day. In this crypt he rests, held behind a coffin of stone and steel, and separated from the world via a wrought iron cage, such that none could hope to defile his remains.

That was the hope at least, but as with all things in his life, fate had other plans.

Were you to venture deep enough into his crypt the smell will hit you long before you see his coffin. Though it will sting your senses and burn at your eyes, it will also taste so sweet. Sweet as a cigarette on a cold morning, or a penny coated in molasses.

There are plenty of explanations for what occurred, with many believing that the man's corpse was neither properly embalmed nor thoroughly disinfected. Others have claimed that the blood in his veins simply rebelled against him– that James Sheff at last got his revenge. I am more like to believe that some infection must have been seeded upon his corpse at the time of his death. Some yet unknown bacteria, which even now continues to eat away at his bones.

Whatever the case may be, were you to look upon his casket– as I have– you will no doubt see the results firsthand. What is left of the oil baron's body bubbles forth from it, like pus dripping from a wound. It is a viscous, oily substance. Black as pitch, and smelling foul. It pools upon the floor like molasses running upon the ice; and though it searches eternally for the soil, it is unable to dry. Were you to touch it, you will quickly find that it coats all it meets in a deep crimson hue, and though nothing of it appears human now, tests have confirmed that it was once a man.