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Tuesday 14 October 2014

10 CREEPY PLACES WITH THEIR OWN VAMPIRE LEGENDS


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10 Creepy Places With Their Own Vampire Legends
By Debra Kelly,
Urban Ghosts Media, 12 October 2014.

Mankind has always been eerily fascinated with what’s lurking in the shadows of the night, just out of sight, just far enough from the campfire that we can’t quite see what it is. Vampires have always held something of an honoured position among man’s mythological monsters, and for centuries we’ve told stories of these blood-sucking, perpetually hungry creatures. If the stories are to believed, vampires roam the entire world - and in some places, well, they have their own haunted homes.

10. Southern Necropolis, Glasgow

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Image: Chris Downer, cc-sa-4.0

On one September evening in 1954, hundreds of children converged on the Southern Necropolis in Glasgow, Scotland. Some were armed with knives and improvised weapons, some had brought their dogs, and they were all determined to get a piece of whatever it was that had stolen two of their classmates. If no one could quite come up with the names of the children that had supposedly disappeared, well, they were undoubtedly sure that someone else had known them.

The cemetery was rumoured to be the new home of a 7-foot-tall vampire with iron teeth, one who was satisfying his thirst with the blood of children. And Glasgow’s children certainly weren’t about to stand for that sort of thing. Rumours spread through schools, playgrounds and parks, and on September 23, children from four to 14 years old were ready and waiting for the creature to make its appearance.

It didn’t, of course, but it’s easy to see why the Southern Necropolis would have given birth to such rumours. The city of the dead had been organized in 1840, built to deal with the ever-increasing number of Glasgow’s dead. With more than 250,000 people buried in the sprawling cemetery, its green fields of monuments, statues, tombs and mausoleums seems an overwhelming, eerie place that stretches forever…especially when you’re four.

In the end, there was, of course, no vampire, and even though it took many, many days of convincing from law enforcement, teachers and parents, the child mob finally subsided. What didn’t subside, though, was the public outcry over what had planted these thoughts in their heads in the first place. The poem that was taught to the children from the Bible and included a monster with iron teeth was overlooked, and instead, the finger was pointed at the monsters in comic books like Tales from the Crypt. In the end, no vampire was ever found, but the incident did spark the beginning of regulations limiting what kinds of materials could be sold to young children.

9. Zarozje, Serbia

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Images: Goldfinger; VolimKrv; cc-sa-3.0

When a centuries-old mill in the small town of Zarozje, Serbia collapsed in 2012, it caused a major government health warning to be issued. Not because of any danger from the mill itself, but because of the danger its otherworldly occupant presented.

According to legend, the mill was once home to a vampire named Sava Savanovic. The vampire would prey on those people who trespassed on his mill or those who had simply come to grind their grain. Savanovic reportedly lived in peace with his neighbours for centuries, as they kept their distance, treated him with respect, and kept some garlic on hand…just in case.

In the 1950s, the mill was converted into a tourist attraction by a family who decided the town needed to have some good income from their centuries-old legend. And it worked, for a while; tourist trade was brisk, but no one was allowed to stay in the mill overnight out of respect for Savanovic. All the while, strange growls were heard at night, and some people said they even saw him standing by the mill. Not surprisingly, none of the locals would go near the mill, leaving it to the mercy of the elements. Damage, wear and tear became disrepair, and the mill finally collapsed.

With the destruction of his home, locals feared that he’d be active again - and looking for a new home. At the bidding of the town’s major and council, locals redoubled their efforts at keeping the vampire at bay. The official vampire warning issued by the town instructed everyone to keep garlic and a Holy Cross in every room…and they did.

8. Berwick-upon-Tweed, England

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Image: Walter Baxter, cc-sa-4.0

Berwick-upon-Tweed is a town in northern England that boasts of their Elizabethan town walls, as well as museums, galleries, a bustling music scene, and sporting events for the whole family. They’re also the site of one of the first recorded vampire accounts in all of Britain.

William of Newburgh, also known as William Parvus, lived from 1136 to 1198. He tells the story of Berwick, sitting at the mouth of the River Tweed, and home to a man who had sold his soul to the devil. It was said that after he was buried, the devil brought him back to the land of the living and sent him wandering through the town with a group of ghostly hounds. Locals would wake to the relentless barking of dogs, and know that he was walking the streets. At first, the townsfolk barred their doors. After several nights of listening to the barking dogs, it was decided that having this walking corpse haunting their streets just wouldn’t do.

Some of the braver souls are credited with exhuming the body of the man in question, and cutting it to pieces. Villagers that had seen the corpse in its nightly wanderings had been told that they needed to burn the body, or else he would simply return. They did burn the body, but the legend says that it released a plague on the town and on the surrounding land, taking a number of lives before finally disappearing.

7. Poenari and Tokat Castle

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No list about real places haunted by vampires would be complete without a mention of the titular vampire, Count Dracula. It’s well-known that he’s been based on Vlad the Impaler, but the reign of the young Romanian prince has been so often retold and embellished that it’s difficult to separate fact from fiction.

Recently, archaeologists think that they’ve uncovered a new chapter in Vlad’s life story - that of Tokat Castle. He was only 12 years old when he first fell into the hands of the Turks; his father, Vlad II, left his ultimately more infamous son in the hands of the Ottomans in order to convince them that they had the loyalty of the elder Vlad. Vlad III and his younger brother, Radu, were held in Tokat Castle and archaeologists are now saying that they’re starting to piece together a little known period of the young prince’s life.

They’ve uncovered a dungeon, which is also near a military shelter and connected to other buildings - like Roman baths - by a series of underground tunnels. Keeping the two young boys in such a place would go a long, long way in explaining Vlad the Impaler’s hatred for his Ottoman enemies, and we can only imagine what childhood nightmares were going through his mind as he impaled a rumoured 20,000 Ottoman soldiers as a very clear message to his life-long enemies.

The other castle that’s been linked to the infamous prince as an actual, permanent residence is Poenari Castle. By the time Vlad came to power in 1456, Poenari (which had been built in the 13th century) had largely fallen into ruin. Recognizing the amazing defensive benefits that the castle had to offer, he had it rehabilitated, in a way that would have made his fictional counterpart proud. According to the story, it was the first day of Easter, and Vlad raided the nearby town of Targoviste - who he already knew was home to a number of people who were set on opposing him and his rule. The old and infirm were mounted on stakes, and the others quickly fell in line. Vlad put them to work rebuilding Poenari, and the story says that many were so frightened of him that they worked themselves to death.

A sad footnote to the story is the fate of Vlad’s first wife. Terrified by a Turkish attack on the fortress, she threw herself from the walls of Poenari and into what’s now known as The Lady’s River. She died on the rocks, and the river was said to have run red with her blood.

6. Nellie Vaughn, the Vampire Who Never Was

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Image: Patrick, cc-4.0

Nellie Vaughn was 19 when she died from pneumonia on March 31, 1889. At the time she was buried in the cemetery of the Plain Meeting House Baptist Church, there was nothing phenomenal about her. Sad, surely, another life cut too short, another child buried by her parents. But there was no rumours of her rising from the dead, no stories about her stalking her family, no other family members that suddenly started wasting away.

The family-wide cases of tuberculosis that plagued New England at the time and ultimately gave rise to widespread vampire panic didn’t happen in the case of Nellie Vaughn. But still, she’s tragically become the town’s own vampire legend.

In 1977, a newspaper article was published about her grave site, saying that nothing would grow there and it had a distinctly sunken appearance - both signs that it was the burial place of a vampire. It also cited the gravestone’s inscription - “I am waiting and watching for you” - as another thing that linked her to vampiric folklore…even though the inscription is a rather harmless and common one for graves of the time period. The legend took off, reinforced by a high school teacher who supposedly told their class about the town’s own vampire…although the teacher has never been identified.

Like many urban legends, no one really seems to have ever heard the story from a first-hand source. But sadly, that didn’t stop locals from desecrating the grave. The original headstone was chipped away and stolen; more than once, the morning sun would reveal that someone had tried to dig up her body. Ghost stories started circulating about people having their faces scratched by unseen hands, and mysterious women who would be seen by the grave, and ferociously deny that Nellie was a vampire. Eventually, her headstone was moved to protect the location of her body, when in 1993, vandals did succeed in digging up a grave. The coffin contained the remains of an older man, and when the exhumation was discovered, the corpse had been given a can of beer and a pack of cigarettes.

5. The Sarbanovac Vampires

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Image: Pdarko, cc-sa-3.0

In some areas, the Catholic Church tried - unsuccessfully - to stem the tide of reported vampire sightings and the inevitable aftermath of the exhumation and desecration of the bodies in question. Sadly, it didn’t always work.

Today, Sarbanovac is home to less than 2,000 people, a small town in the eastern part of Serbia. In 1839, villagers became convinced that there was a vampire in their midst, and they appealed to the church for help. Help was denied and, more than that, they were forbidden from taking any action themselves. Because things have a funny way of happening, it wasn’t long before the Sarbanovic’s priest was called out of town, and the villagers did what they thought they needed to do.

They hired a man named Novak Mikov, who took on the responsibilities for being in charge of the vampire hunt. There were nine villagers that they had named as vampires in their appeal to the church (along with giving them the names of their supposed victims); the nine graves were dug up. Eight of them, the villagers found to be vampires; they extracted the hearts from the bodies, boiled them in wine, then replaced the hearts and reburied the bodies. The ninth body was in a state that suggested she wasn’t a part of the vampire clan that had been terrorizing their small village, and she was reburied without being desecrated.

When the priest returned, the case was taken to court. Two of the men, including Mikov and the man who had acted as his right hand, were found guilty of mutilating the dead and desecrating graves. They were sentenced to serve seven days in jail and be flogged 30 times with a cane; by all accounts, though, their actions stopped the vampire terror.

4. Eastbury House, Dorset

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Image: Miss Steel, cc-sa-4.0

Eastbury House was originally built in 1718, designed with the idea that it was going to be not just a massive country home, but one of the largest in England and a testament to the success and wealth of its family. George Doddington died before the house was completed, though, and passed it on to his nephew. There were a series of non-supernatural problems with the house and its residents, including debt and a feud between the nearby villagers and the inhabitants of the house - whose dreams of being elected to public office were soundly dashed. Eventually, the 2nd Earl Temple found himself saddled with it, and couldn’t even pay people to live in it.

While he was away in Italy, care of the house fell to William Doggett. Doggett received orders from his boss to start dismantling parts of the house; because Doggett was fairly sure the earl wouldn’t be returning from Italy - ever - he decided to not only dismantle the house but to start selling the materials. By the time he received word that the earl was coming back, all that was left of the once-massive house was a single wing and the stables. The rest of the materials had already been not just sold, but used in other buildings. Doggett committed suicide rather than face his boss, and it was said that his death left a bloodstain on the floor that wouldn’t go away.

At first, it was Doggett’s ghost that was thought to be inhabiting the house. Then, during a 1845 re-organization of the local churchyard, Doggett’s body was exhumed and found to be in the same state in which it was buried. Strangely, the legs were tired together with a yellow ribbon, but there were no signs of decomposition - villagers knew that they had a vampire on their hands, and that the ghost they’d seen was Doggett himself.

Later versions of the story have a pretty creepy addition. Every night at midnight, any villagers still foolish enough to be awake and in the vicinity of the churchyard would see a hellish coach, driven by a headless coachman and pulled by similarly headless horses, go into the churchyard. Doggett would emerge from the grave and request to be driven home. The coachman would oblige, returning him to Eastbury House, and when Doggett reached the house a single gunshot is heard as he is forced to relive his suicide night after night.

3. Gliwice and Kamien Pomorski

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Image: Bin im Garten, cc-sa-3.0

Sometimes, legends and folklore are lost to the mists of history - and sometimes, real people’s fears and beliefs get just as lost.

We’re not sure what the stories are behind the vampire burials recently uncovered in Poland, but what’s unmistakable is that the contemporaries of the dead viewed them as a very real threat. A grave site recently uncovered in the town of Kamien Pomorski, located in north-western Poland, revealed a body that had been not only stakes to the ground, but that had had its teeth removed and a large rock forced into its mouth.

And in Gliwice, digging for a new roadway uncovered four skeletons that had undergone a similar burial. Each of the bodies had been decapitated, and the skull positioned on the legs of the dead.

Polish vampires are a little different than the traditional “Count Dracula” sort of vampires - unsurprisingly, as many cultures add their own variations on the basic legend of someone returning from the grave. In Poland, vampires are also believed not only to stalk the living, but to eat their own flesh when they return, as well as the clothes they’ve been buried in. We’re all familiar with the terrifying idea of being bitten by a vampire and then becoming one, but according to Polish tradition, people are born vampires. They often live normal lives, raising families, ploughing fields and celebrating the holidays like their neighbours. When they died, though, they would reveal themselves as vampires; they were also known to return to their families, and male vampires were rumoured to be able to bear children with their wives.

2. Kringa, Croatia and Jure Grando

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Image: Modzzak, cc-sa-3.0

Kringa is a relatively tiny town on the Istrian peninsula in Croatia, with a population of a little over 300 people. They’re hoping to keep tourism coming in and out of their little town by capitalizing on one man who lived in the 1600s, and tormented the village for 16 years.

According to the story, Jure Grando was a local man who became a vampire after his death. For 16 years, the locals lived in fear of this creature that stalked the night, visiting his widow night after night and forcing himself on her. Occasionally, he would wander up to someone’s house, and knock on the door. The knock was terrifying, as it meant that someone in the house would die soon.

In 1672, the locals finally decided they’d had enough of his torment, and they would need to dispatch the vampire. They dug up his coffin and found him, as life-like as the day they had buried him, and most frighteningly, he was smiling. Attempts at driving a stake through his heart failed, and finally, one of the men who had dug up the grave decapitated him. Grando never walked again.

Kringa is revitalizing the vampire they struggled to kill centuries ago. They’ve opened a vampire-themed bar, and they’re commemorating the deeds of the nine brave local men with a plaque. They haven’t met with unparalleled approval, though, as many of the local elders are frowning on the whole thing. It’s long been suggested that there’s other explanations for the stories around Grando, including one which points the finger at his long-harassed widow, claiming that she made up the whole thing to hide her lover from public view.

1. Leacht Abhartach

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Image: SehLax, cc-sa-3.0

The story of the dwarf Abhartach is one of the oldest on the list, and it’s often said to be the oldest incarnation of the vampire legend in Western Europe. The story is told of what’s now little more than a single massive stone, laying in the field of an area of Ireland known as the Giant’s Grave. Between Dungiven and Garvagh, the field is reportedly the resting place of a wicked man - and one of the earliest known vampires.

The stories vary. According to one version, Abhartach was a sorcerer and a tyrant who became convinced that his wife was having an affair. In order to catch her and her supposed lover, he climbed onto the roof of their home and tried walking along the window ledge. Before he could get a look at what - if anything - was going on in the bedchamber, he fell to his death.

The other version of the story says that he was still a vicious ruler and powerful sorcerer, but this time is killed by a rival chieftain.

Regardless of how he gets into the grave, he comes back from it the day after he’s buried. He begins to demand his subjects fill bowls with their blood, so that he might drink it and continue to return from the grave. An assassin hired to dispatch the nightmarish creature attempts to kill him again, but he keeps returning.

A holy man - depending on the story, again, it’s either a druid or a priest - tells them that they must drive a stake made from a yew tree through the creature’s heart, then bury him upside down, sprinkle thorns on top of the grave and then cover the grave with a massive stone in order to keep him from returning. The stone remains, and attempts to remove it have - reportedly - been mysteriously thwarted.

Top image credit: Edvard Munch, public domain.

[Source: Urban Ghosts Media. Edited.]


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