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40 Fang-tastic Facts about the History of Vampires

Tim Flight October 24, 2019 26 min

Wiertz Museum - The Premature Burial — The Premature Burial by Antoine Wiertz, 1854. Wikimedia Commons

7. And soon after that, the Croglin Grange Vampire rose from the grave in England

63-year-old shepherd Mircea Mitrica, a Romanian man who got a suspended sentence for digging up a suspected vampire’s grave and consuming the heart. Black Sea

According to Augustus Hare, writing in 1896, a vampire plagued Croglin Grange in Cumbria in the 1870s. One night, a female tenant awoke to see a figure coming towards her from the nearby graveyard. It broke through the window, and before she could escape, clamped down on her neck, leaving her bloodied. Hearing their sister’s screams, the brothers chased it off. The vampire returned a few months later, but this time the brothers managed to wound it before it fed. They tracked it to a crypt, dragged it outside, and burned it. Did they read Varney, by any chance?

Written by

Tim Flight

I am a freelance historical and literary writer based in West Yorkshire, UK. I read for a funded PhD in English at the University of Oxford (Magdalen College) and graduated in 2016. I am a former lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. My publications include peer-reviewed articles in academic publications, and pieces in mainstream magazines such as History Today and Fortean Times. For more information, please see www.drflight.co.uk