Real Vampires - In the UK

Bram Stoker literally created the proverbial monster when he imagined Dracula but since then, the blood sucking night stalking fiend has taken on many forms and has been romanticsed over and over.

From Lestat de Lioncourt to Edward Cullen these creatures of the night are marvelous forms of fiction... or are they?

The united Kingdom has vampire stories that pre date Bram Stokers Dracula so where does fiction end and fact start?

We know the first literary work in the UK involving the blood sucking legend was 'The Vapyre' written by anglo-italian physician Johm William Polidori in 1819.

Polidori used LOrd Byron as inspiration for his fictional character Lord Ruthven.

The story follows the typical vampire narritive wher a gentleman meets the vampire and agrees to stay with him. Lord Ruthven, as per tradition is a Don Juan, attempting to seduce women along the stories path whilst keeping his guest or captive alive throughout.

So having established that Stoker took an already published work and his was actually an adaptation, Where did Polidori get his idea from?

Well there are few vampire legends in the UK but each have a very blood thirsty and disturbing history.

The most well known is probably the Highgate Vampire.

The Highgate Vampire

Legend has it that a vampire stalks the famous Highgate Cemetery located on the edge of Londons affluent Hampstead Heath.

It all started in 1969 when reports started coming in of a tall black apparition stalking the tombs of Highgate Cemetery.

Most reports were put down to regurgitations of local gossip until a man came forward who claimed to have had a first hand experience with the vampire.

The witness recalled having been hypnotized by something lurking in the shadows. He began to make his way to the exit but soon found himself lost and disorientated.

As he stumbled around in the night, he began to feel the presence of something behind him. Spinning around, he saw a tall black figure, which abruptly vanished. Not long after, two teenage girls who had been walking home along Swain Lane claimed to have witnessed the spirits of the dead rising from their graves. An elderly woman also claimed she had been frightened by a “tall dark man” with “glaring eyes” while walking her dog inside the cemetery gates. Then, the foxes started dying.

The Highgate Vampire frenzy soon took hold and leading it was a man named David Farrant.. Farrant much like Matthew Hopkins with the witches proclaimed himself the Vampire Hunter and went on a supernatural spree to find the vampire.

Farrant claimed to have had a personal encounter with the vampire and wrote a book of his experience titled Beyond The Highgate Vampire

David Farrant created the Highgate Vampire Society which can be accessed here - The Highgate Vampire Society

The Blandford Vampire

Not many towns or villages can claim their very own vampire…yet Tarrant Gunville can!

Tarrant Gunville’s vampire is reckoned to be William Doggett a ‘corrupt manservant’ who stole a large sum of money from his employer, the Second Earl Temple.

The Earl had inherited Eastbury House, then one of England’s finest country houses, but was finding it far too expensive to run. In 1795, he moved to Italy and to reduce house running costs he instructed William Doggett to dismantle the wings of the massive property. The greedy Doggett believed that the Earl had moved permanently abroad and saw an opportunity to make money for himself. Doggett demolished the main house and also the south wing and then pocketed the proceeds from selling the building materials.

With evidence of his fiddling all around him, Doggett was told that the Earl had just alighted from the London mail coach. It had stopped on the Blandford – Salisbury Road at the Tarrant Gunville turning.

The distressed servant scurried immediately into Eastbury House library and shot himself. Apparently, the blood stains on the marble-covered library floor could not be removed.

William Doggett then passed into local folk-lore as it was said, not being worthy of being buried in consecrated ground, he regularly appeared in Tarrant Gunville Churchyard at night as a vampire. While according to author, Peter Underwood, the Eastbury House library doors would mysteriously open by themselves and William Doggett’s face would appear covered in blood.

In 1845, when Tarrant Gunville church was being rebuilt William Doggett’s body was exhumed. The body was found not to have decomposed and the face had maintained a rosy complexion.

Bizarrely, it was also discovered that the legs of the body had been tied together with almost new broad yellow tape.

In the customary manner for vampires, a stake was driven through the body’s heart and it appears the Tarrant Gunville vampire made no further trouble for the village thereafter.

The Croglin Vampire

Three unnamed siblings, a sister and her two brothers, rent an old house known as Croglin Grange which lies in a remote spot overlooking a churchyard.

One night the young woman is disturbed by the sight of a figure moving across the lawn in the moonlight and soon a sinister brown skeletal apparition with glowing eyes appears at the bedroom window.

Petrified with fear, she watches as the creature picks away at the lead holding the window glass in place with its long bony fingers until one of the panes falls out and the figure reaches in, opens the window catch and is soon advancing across the room towards her.

Finally, as it drags her across the bed and sinks its teeth into her neck, the paralysis is broken and she utters a piercing scream which both alerts her brothers to the danger and also seemingly drives the vampire away.

The two men find their sister unconscious and bleeding from the throat while the beast of Croglin Grange makes its escape into the night.

The brothers take the young woman on holiday to a Swiss resort to recover from the experience but at her insistence they return to the Grange where all appears to be normal.

Several months later, again on a moonlit night, the sinister scratching sounds again at the window, heralding the appearance of the same cadaverous-looking horror.

This time the girl is able to scream a warning and her two siblings burst into the room, driving the apparition away. As it flees across the lawn, one of the brothers aims with a rifle and manages to fire a single shot into one of its legs.

The following morning the men follow a trail of fresh blood into the adjacent churchyard which leads them to the mausoleum of a local family.

Inside all of the coffins have been vandalized save one, which contains the brown and mummified creature with a lead slug lodged in its leg.

The usual ending to the tale is that the coffin and its contents are burnt to ashes, thus ending the rampage of the Vampire of Croglin Grange.

The image below of Croglin Low Hall which is believed to be that of Croglin Grange. One can see the window which the vampire apparently came through, Bricked up and protected by lucky horseshoes.

What ever caused these strange occurrences we cannot be sure, However we can be sure that each one stemmed from an actual incident.

Vampire or crazed lunatics murdering innocent people?.. which ever it is, it paves the way for perfect locations to be investigated!

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