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Vampires have been sighted for many centuries, their appearance and behaviour has changed drastically over the years, from a purple, bloated corpses that dragged themselves out of their graves to feed upon villagers, to Dracula, a vampire scared of running water and garlic and finally into the realms of Twilight where Edward Cullen sparkles in the sunlight, more like a faerie than a vampire.
Although vampire sightings were common in old mythology, it is far rarer to have a modern day vampire story, and in all places, Highgate London.
Highgate Cemetery, London was constructed in 1839, where the dead were peacefully buried until the late 1960's when suspicious sightings and rumours began to occur...
"Two seemingly unconnected incidents occurred within weeks of one another in early 1967. The first involved two 16-year-old convent girls who were walking home at night after having visited friends in Highgate Village. Their return journey took them down Swains Lane past the cemetery. They could not believe their eyes as they passed the graveyard’s north gate at the top of the lane, for in front of them bodies appeared to be emerging from their tombs. One of these schoolgirls later suffered nightly visitations and blood loss. The second incident, some weeks later, involved an engaged couple who were walking down the same lane. Suddenly the female shrieked as she glimpsed something hideous hovering behind the gate’s iron railings. Then her fiancé saw it. They both stood frozen to the ground as the spectre held them in thrall. Its face bore an expression of basilisk horror. Soon others sighted the same phenomenon as it hovered along the path behind the gate where gravestones are visible either side until consumed in darkness. Before long people were talking in hushed tones about the rumoured haunting in local pubs. Some who actually witnessed the spectral figure wrote to their local newspaper to share their experience. Discovery was made of animal carcasses drained of blood. They had been so exsanguinated that a forensic sample could not be found. It was only a matter of time before a person was found in the cemetery in a pool of blood. This victim died of wounds to the throat. The police made every attempt to cover-up the vampiristic nature of the death. Seán Manchester informed the public on 27 February 1970 that the cause was most probably a vampire. He appeared on television on 13 March 1970 and repeated his theory. The VRS, whose specialist unit within a larger investigatory organisation (now defunct) had opened the case twelve months earlier, established a history of similar hauntings that went back to before the graveyard existed. A suspected tomb was located and a spoken exorcism performed. This proved to be ineffective." [1]
Sightings and dead animals seemed to increase after the exorcism and more began to believe that this was in fact a vampire haunting the cemetery. People believed that a nest of vampires may be living and feeding within the area, scaring film makers away from the terrifying cemetery, they dubbed the creature "Vampire King of the Un-dead."
Another sighting, "In 1971 several years after the many publiciced vampire sightings, a young girl claims she was actually attacked by the vampire in the lane outside the cemetery. She was returning home in the early hours of the morning when she was suddenly thrown to the ground with a tremendous force by a "tall black figure with a deathly white face. At that moment a car stopped to help her and the vampire "vanished" in the glare of the headlamps." [2]
No one knows the reasoning behind these sightings and they may still be continuing; whether it's a vampire or a human is undetermined, but I certainly wouldn't be heading into the Highgate Cemetery at night.
Read more through the links:
[1]http://www.gothicpress.freeserve.co.uk/The%20Highgate%20Vampire.htm
[2]http://www.ghost-story.co.uk/index.php/unclassified/126-highgate-vampire-london-england
[3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highgate_Vampire
This is my own work from my other blog that I am locked out of, not copying: http://magicalcorners.blogspot.co.uk/
Till next time...
xox - E
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