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Here you will find stories recorded of peoples' encounters with what they thought
(or what seemed) to be vampires. Also included here is the tale of poor Mercy Lena
Brown, who was unfortunate enough to fall victim to vampire hysteria after her death.
It is interesting to note that the fear of real vampires remains strong in some Central
European countries. Here is a first hand account of an incident witnessed by Dr
Raymond T McNally, an American scholar and expert on Central European folklore,
particularly vampire tales.
"In 1969, I was passing through the village of Rodna, which is located near the Borgo
Pass (that is where Bram Stoker located Castle Dracula). Noticing a burial taking
place in the village graveyard, I stopped to watch. As I talked with some of the
bystanders, they told me that the deceased was a girl from the village who had recently
died by suicide. The villagers were afraid that she would become a vampire after death.
So they did what had to be done--and what I had read about for so many years. They
plunged a stake through the heart of the corpse."
So, as you can see, old beliefs die hard, and with tales such as the following, it is easy
to understand why some communities would prefer to endure the distastefulness of
driving a stake through the heart of a corpse rather than risk having a vampire return
to bedevil them.
Ronald Seth, a British author who has written extensively on the
occult and the bizarre, was a student at Cambridge University in the
late 1920s. Peter Grimes, a classical scholar and fellow student of
Seth's, had rooms in the college which, although decidedly 'splendid',
had their disadvantages. Firstly, they overlooked the disused
graveyard of Little St Mary's church. Secondly, there were bars on the
windows, giving the rooms a 'prison-like atmosphere'. The bars were
there to prevent students locked out of the college after curfew from
climbing through the easily accessible windows of the rooms.
While neither of these things bothered Grimes, it became obvious
that something was troubling him. His appearance one morning was
so bad it caused Seth to comment that he looked like he hadn't slept
all night. Grimes admitted that he hadn't then, after some hesitation,
he went on to explain that he was kept awake by scratching at his
windows. This, he said, was "the third time it's happened in the last
ten days." He knew it could not be tree or bush branches causing the
noise as there were none close enough to the windows. He had
decided that someone was playing a joke on him, because each time
he got up to investigate, the noise would stop, only to begin again
once he was back in bed.
Another student, who had been listening to his tale, set him straight.
"No. It'll be the vampire." he told Grimes, explaining that "Little St
Mary's churchyard reputedly houses a vampire."
Grimes, although knowing a great deal about vampires, did not
believe in them. Someone was simply playing a practical joke on him,
of that he was certain.
A week or so passed. Grimes had not heard anymore scratching at his
windows, and Seth all but forgot his conversation with him. 'Then he
heard that Grimes had been rushed to the infirmary in the middle of
the night.
'The college authorities took a very serious view of the incident. They
conducted a careful investigation. The paint on the outside of the
window overlooking the churchyard had been badly scratched. Yet
there were no footprints in the soft earth beneath the window. The
college was divided into two camps, those for and against the
vampire theory.'
Seth visited Grimes, who explained why he had been found 'collapsed
and gibbering on the floor.'
Having gone to bed around 11pm, he had been asleep only a short
time when he was awaken by the scratching again. This time,
however, the scratching didn't stop when he switched on the light.
Feeling 'particularly peeved', Grimes made his way to the sitting-
room. "As I went into the room, the scratching grew louder and
increased in speed." Peering outside, Grimes 'could just make out a
hooded figure moving up and down next to the window, drumming
it's fingers on the glass.' Thinking it was "some silly ass" trying to
frighten him, he shouted at it to go away and threatened to call the
porter. The figure's response was to begin pounding on the glass.
Then Grimes did something strange and unaccountable.
"I only realized what I was doing when my hand was actually on the
window-catch. I tried to draw it back, but couldn't....As the catch
came off, he lurched at the window, which flew open, catching me on
the forehead....he thrust an arm through the window and seized hold
of my right wrist. "I tried to pull his fingers off my hand, and as I did
so noticed how long they were and that they did not look like fingers
at all, but an eagle's talons." Grimes was able to describe his
attacker, eyes like burning coals and fangs, because during the
struggle his hood slipped off. "What I saw made me panic. I renewed
my struggle to get free from his grip, and when I realized I couldn't, I
let out a shriek and passed out. I don't remember any more until I
came round in this bed."
He showed Seth his injured wrist which was still raw, with 'four
distinct scars that could have been made by sharp and abnormally
long fingernails.'
Grimes knew the description he gave of his attacker sounded like a
typical vampire. But he was certain it was not someone wearing a
mask, and certain it was not someone playing a practical joke on him.
After taking a term off school, Grimes returned, but not to his old
rooms. Those were taken instead by a mathematician who, when
asked if he heard scratching at his windows, replied with a smile:
"From time to time, but they don't worry me. I have heavy new
shutters fitted on the outside."
As for Grimes, the marks on his wrist took almost a year to
disappear, but the psychological scars of the experience remained,
and he was 'more nervous and withdrawn than ever.'
Croglin Grange, owned by the Fisher family, was a rather small, one
story house "from which large grounds sweep away towards the
church in the hollow" with "a fine distant view".
When the Fisher family grew too large for Croglin Grange, they
moved to another, larger house. They rented the Grange to two
brothers and a sister who did not seem to mind the house's isolated
location.
Their first winter spent at the house was happy but uneventful
however, come summer, things were about to change dramatically.
On one especially hot night, the sister had locked her bedroom
window, leaving the shutters open, "and propped against the pillows,
she still watched the wonderful, the marvelous beauty of that
summer night."
Eventually she became aware of two lights flickering amongst the
churchyard trees. As she watched, she realized the lights were "fixed
in a dark substance, a definite ghastly something, which seemed
every moment to become nearer, increasing in size and substance as
it approached."
It was obvious the "ghastly something" was making across the lawn
toward her bedroom window. As frightened as she was, the sister was
more afraid now to go to her door because it was too close to the
window. The door was also locked, which meant she would have to
spend at least a little time in close proximity to the window as she
unlocked the door. Terrified, the sister "longed to scream, but her
voice seemed paralyzed, her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth."
Suddenly, the creature made a change in direction and appeared to
now head for the side of the house. Wasting no time, the sister leapt
out of bed and raced to her door, but scratching at her window halted
her attempt to unlock the door.
The sister looked to the window and wished she hadn't. What she saw
there, "a hideous brown face with flaming eyes glaring at her" scared
her away from the door and back to her bed. "She felt a sort of
mental comfort in the knowledge that the window was securely
fastened on the inside." This sense of security quickly dissipated
when the scratching stopped, to be replaced with a "kind of pecking
sound", and she realized the thing was picking at the lead which held
the glass panes in place.
"The noise continued, and a diamond pane of glass fell into the room.
Then a long bony finger of the creature came in and turned the
handle of the window, and the window opened, and the creature
came in."
As the thing approached the bed, the sister found herself too terrified
to even scream. Even as the creature twined its fingers in her hair
and pulled her head to one side she could not utter a sound. But
when she felt its violent bite on her neck, the spell was broken and
she screamed.
Her brothers awoke and ran to her room. But the door was locked.
They had to force it and when they burst into the room they found
their sister lying across her bed "unconscious and bleeding profusely
from a wound in the throat". The creature was gone. "One brother
pursued the creature, which fled before him through the moonlight
with gigantic strides, and eventually seemed to disappear over the
wall into the churchyard."
In spite of her terrible shock and the fact she has lost a lot of blood,
the sister recovered well. She did not believe in vampires, and
convinced herself she had been attacked by an escaped lunatic.
Despite her seeming recovery, her doctor recommended she take
leave of Croglin Grange, for a while at least. So she and her brothers
went to Switzerland where they stayed for several months. But as
autumn approached, she convinced her brothers to return to their
house in England. After all, she said, "lunatics do not escape every
day."
Upon their return, the brothers moved into the bedroom next to their sister's
and she, needless to say, always closed her shutters, "which,
however, as in many old houses, always left one top pane of the
window uncovered."
Things progressed uneventfully until March when the sister was
awakened by the familiar sound of scratching at her window. She
looked up and saw, "climbed up to the topmost pane of the window,
the same hideous brown shriveled face, with glaring eyes, looking at
her." She began to scream and her brothers rushed into her room,
pistols in hand. One of the brothers fired at the creature, which was
fleeing back across the lawn, hitting it in the leg. Although it was now
stumbling, the creature continued to escape at great speed,
scrambling over the churchyard wall and disappearing into an ancient
vault.
"The next day the brothers summoned all the tenants of Croglin
Grange, and in their presence the vault was opened. A horrible scent
revealed itself. The vault was full of coffins; they had been broken
open, and their contents, horribly mangled and distorted, were
scattered over the floor. One coffin alone remained intact. Of that,
the lid had been lifted, but still lay loose upon the coffin. They raised
it, and there, brown, withered, shriveled, mummified, but quite
entire, was the same hideous figure which had looked in at the
windows of Croglin Grange, with the marks of a recent pistol shot in
the leg: and they did the only thing that can lay a vampire--they
burnt it."
Within a four year period George Brown, a Rhode Island farmer, had
lost his wife and two daughters to consumption (Tuberculosis), and
now his son Edwin was sick with the disease.
George did not believe in vampires but was convinced by neighbors
and friends that the only way to save his son was to have the bodies
of the mother and daughters exhumed, in order to ascertain "if the
hearts of any of the bodies contained blood." If this were so, the
neighbors and friends were convinced, it meant "the dead body was
living on the living tissue and blood of Edwin."
Although the medical examiner declared the beliefs "absurd", he
nonetheless unearthed the bodies of the three women.
The mother, who had been dead and buried for four years, retained
"some of the muscles and flesh...in a mummified state, but there
were no signs of blood in the heart."
Of the first daughter, who had died three years after her mother, only
a skeleton, albeit with a thick head of hair, remained.
Lena, the second daughter and most recently deceased, had been
buried for only two months. Her body was found to be in a fairly well
preserved state. When her heart and liver were removed, according
to one report, "a quantity of blood dripped therefrom..." The fact is
that Lena's heart was clotted with blood which, the doctor said "was
normal at this stage of decomposition."
All the same, a fire was lit in the cemetery and Lena's heart and liver
were burned to ashes.
The fact that Edwin still died of consumption did nothing to dampen
the belief of some people that Lena had been a vampire. They simply
stated that Edwin "had been too far gone when the heart and liver
were burned."
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