W.B. Yeats spent years performing magical rituals to defend himself against psychic vampire attacks

A closer look

When you're a Nobel Prize-winning poet, writer's block is the least of your worries. W.B. Yeats was notoriously paranoid about psychic warfare, convinced that a rival magician in his secret society was sending invisible astral vampires to drain his energy. Yeats would frantically perform banishing rituals and draw protective pentagrams in his bedroom. Apparently, writing some of the greatest poetry of the 20th century requires a strict regimen of fighting imaginary bats.