I'm afraid the source you mentioned is on a TV show called [Lost Girl][1].

The best source for finding relevant info on the Vetala is the [Kathasaritsagara][2] especially book 12

And especially the story [(better known as Vikram and the Vampire)][3] of [Baital Pachisi ][4]  or Twenty-five (tales of a) Baital (In Sanskrit, Vetala-pancha-Vinshati. "Baital" is the modern form of Vetala)[¹][3]


> The twelfth book is important as it contains the plan and details of a collection of tales extremely popular in India, existing both in Sanskrit and in all the vernacular dialects, called the Vetala Panchavimshati: twenty-five tales of a Vetala being related by a sprite, who haunts cemeteries and animates dead bodies, to Vikramaditya, king of Ujjain, according to the usual version, to Trivikramasena, king of Pratishthan, on the Godavari, according to the Kathasaritsagara.<sub>[Kathasaritsagara Wikipedia][5]</sub>

Further information may be gleaned from the [The Imperial Gazetteer of India Vol.2][6] a great historical reference book, which is available online for free and linked at the bottom of the quote.


> A collection of pretty and ingenious fairy-tales is the
> Vetalapanchavimsati, or ' Twenty-five Tales of the Goblin,' stories
> supposed to be told to king Vikrama of Ujjayini by a demon inhabiting
> a corpse. They are known to English readers from Sir Richard Burton's
> Vikram and the Vampire. Another collection of fairy-tales is the
> Simhasana-dvatrimsika, or ' Thirtytwo Stories of the Lion-seat,'
> supposed to be told to king Vikrama by his throne. Both these works
> are of Buddhistic origin. To the same class belongs the Suka-saptati,
> or ' Seventy Stories of a Parrot,' represented as narrated to a wife
> whose husband is away on his travels. <sub>[The Imperial Gazetteer of
> India (waybackmachine)][7]</sub>


¹ [page 5 line 7 of Vikram and the Vampire][3]


  [1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1429449/
  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathasaritsagara
  [3]: https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/content/books/ebooks/vikram-and-the-vampire.pdf
  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baital_Pachisi
  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathasaritsagara#Books_11_to_13
  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imperial_Gazetteer_of_India
  [7]: https://archive.org/details/imperialgazette02hunt/page/252/mode/2up