La Sagenas de Diable, the Devil's Snare

The Devil's Snare (Spanish: la Trampa del Diablo), also known as the Vampire Vine, is the appellation for a cryptobotanical carnivorous plant that reputedly exists in the lands around Lake Nicaragua in Central America. According to an account of the vines, first widely circulated by William Thomas Stead in the October 1891 issue of Review of Reviews (which he, in turn, credited to Annie Besant's Lucifer), a Mr. Dunstan encountered them when his dog became entangled and had to be cut free, and, based on observed evidence, concluded that the vines were possessed of suckers that allowed them to drain the blood of their prey (similar to the Arbor Diaboli, the Devil Tree of Mexico).

Dramatis Personae

 * Mr. Dunstan, the naturalist, whose dog was ensnared by the vines;
 * William Thomas Stead, editor of the Review of Reviews and other magazines;
 * Annie Besant, Theosophist, editor of Lucifer.

A Curious Story
As published in


 * Mr. Dunstan, naturalist, who has recently returned from Central America, where he spent nearly two years in the study of the flora and the fauna of the country, relates the finding of a singular growth in one of the swamps which surround the great lakes of Nicaragua. He was engaged in hunting for botanical and entomological specimens, when he heard his dog cry out, as if in agony, from a distance. Running to the spot whence the animal's cries came, Mr. Dunstan found him enveloped in a perfect network of what seemed to be a fine rope-like tissue of roots and fibres. The plant or vine seemed composed entirely of bare interlacing stems, resembling more than anything else the branches of the weeping willow denuded of its foliage, but of a dark, nearly black hue, and covered with a thick viscid gum that exuded from the pores. Drawing his knife, Mr. Dunstan endeavoured to cut the animal free, but it was only with the greatest difficulty that he succeeded in severing the fleshy muscular fibres. To his horror and amazement the naturalist then saw that the dog's body was blood-stained, while the skin appeared to have been actually sucked or puckered in spots, and the animal staggered as if from exhaustion. In cutting the vine the twigs curled like living, sinuous fingers about Mr. Dunstan's hand, and it required no slight force to free the member from its clinging grasp, which left the flesh red and blistered. The gum exuding from the vine was of a greyish-dark tinge, remarkably adhesive, and of a disagreeable animal odour, powerful and nauseating to inhale. The native servants who accompanied Mr. Dunstan manifested the greatest horror of the vine, which they call "the devil's snare," and were full of stories of its death-dealing powers. He was able to discover very little about the nature of the plant, owing to the difficulty of handling it, for its grasp can only be torn away with the loss of skin and even of flesh; but, as near as Mr. Dunstan could ascertain, its power of suction is contained in a number of infinitesimal mouths or little suckers, which, ordinarily closed, open for the reception of food. If the substance is animal, the blood is drawn off and the carcass or refuse then dropped. A lump of raw meat being thrown it, in the short space of five minutes the blood will be thoroughly drunk off and the mass thrown aside. Its voracity is almost beyond belief.

THE VAMPIRE VINE
As published in.


 * Every one has read Victor Hugo's description of the octopus, which has hitherto been regarded as the most hateful and horrible of all created things. According to Lucifer, however, there has been discovered in Nicaragua a plant which is as horrible as the devil fish. This is a vine called by the natives "the devil's snare," which seems literally to drain the blood of any living thing which comes within its death-dealing touch.

(With the same story of Mr. Dunstan, verbatim, as the earlier Lucifer account.)