Dracula's Guide to Romania

I always wanted to write about the Pitești Prison experiment, but it is a very complicated topic and it is a very dark story. What happened is quite simple: overly zealous prison guards tried to take apart enemies of the communist regime and turn them into torturers of other inmates. The Youtube video further down will get into some details.

What lessons will you learn?

• Even the communists realised this experiment was disastrous. Failure was never an option for the Romanian communist regime but this was too big to avoid.
• People that try too hard to prove themselves have the ability to become the ones that bring the most amount of pain to others.
• Real horror is much more terrifying than fictional one.
• Don’t give absolute power to people.

Why you shouldn’t watch it?

• It is emotionally disturbing.
• Even if it’s Haloween, you don’t have to ruin fun vibes with a historical horror story.
• It is a simplified version of the stories, and there are some details that should have been added to the video.

And finally the video:

There is also the movie version, a bit too Hollywood for my taste…

There are other documentaries on YouTube, but to be honest it is emotionally draining to check if they go too much off the rails so I kept it short and to the point.