The Croglin Grange Vampire

Like all the cases in this chapter, this is a tale that can't be proven. With re-telling, stories often become a little more exciting than they might have ben. Eventually, the original facts can be lost even by the storytellers, making some stories in folklore a little hard to accept as truth.
The case of the Croglin Grange Vampire is a good candidate for a story that might have been altered with re-telling. An account of it appeared in Augustine Hare's book Story of My Life in the later 1890s. Although it was not told to him by an actualy writness, Hare felt that it must be true and wrote it down. How much of the story has a basis in fact is anyone's guess.
According to Hare's account, Croglin Grange was a house in Cumberland(modern-day Cumbria), England. While no record or remains of such a place exist, the house seems to be a reference to the real Low Croglin Hall of the area.
Sometime in the mid-1870s, the owners of Croglin Grange, the Fisher family, rented the large one-story house to three(un-named) tenants--two brothers and their sister--among a few others. On one night in the fist summer the three spent in the house, the yooung woman decided not to close the shutters on her window. As she lay in the bed, she had a clear view from her house to the belt of trees that separated the churchyard from her yard. She noticed there were two bizarre lights moving in a weaving manner between the trees. In a few moments, the lights emerged from the tree belt, and she realized they were the eyes of some dark, humanoid creature.
The young woman sat up in bed, terrified, as she noticed the thing running across the lawn toward the house. Every so often it would vanish into the shadows, only to re-emerge, closer than before. Seh wanted to scream, but her voice was paralyzed with terror; she wanted to run to her bedroom door, but the window was too close to it and she feared that the thing might be able to see her.
Eventually, the creature seemed to change course, and the woman thought it was running around the house. She immediately jumped out of bed and ran to her bedroom door, appearently hoping to get to her brothers, but when she reached the door, she heard a strange scratching at her window, and turned to to it. The thing was right outside her window. It had what she would later describe as a hideous brown face with flaming eyes, and it was staring right at her. She screamed and ran back to her bed.
She noticed the creature had started picking at one of the panes in the window, and in moments, one of the pieces of glass fell into the room. The vampire then put its hand in through the window, unlocked it, and opened it. Within seconds, it was in the room and standking over her. It immediately grabbed her by the hair, pulled her head back, and bit into her throat. She screamed loudly, and in a few seconds, her brothers came running to her locked bedroom door and broke it down.
When they entered the room, the two men found their sister lying in bed, unconscious and with her neck bleeding. The vampire was in the process of escaping through the open window. One brother chased it into the woods and noticed that it seemed to disappear over the wall of the churchyard. The other brother tended to his injured sister.
Later, when the woman recovered consciousness, she commented that her attacker was probably some lunatic who had escaped from an asylum. The doctor who examined her the next day felt that she had suffered a great shock, and, regardless of what had caused it, some change in her surroundings would do her much good. So the three decided to go away to Switzerland. They stayed there until the autumn, when the young woman decided that she would like to return, commenting that lunatics do not escape from asylums every day.
She stayed in the same room upon her return, but started closing her shutters from then on. However, the shutters were of the type that did not cover the top pane of the window. One night in March, she heard a scratching again. When she looked out the top pane, she saw the same brown face with the flaming eyes looking at her. She screamed immediately thsi time, and her brothers, who were ready for such an occasion, ran out the front of the house with pistols. They chased the creature, and one of the brothers managed to shoot it in the leg. The vampire still made it over the churchyard fence, however, and the two watched it vanish into an old, decrepit vault.
The next morning, the brothers went with all the other tenants in the house to the churchyard. There they opened the suspected vault and found that all of the coffins within had been opened and their contents ripped out. One coffin alone was untouched. The group immediately went to that coffin and opened it.
Inside they found the vampire. They described it as being shriveled, brown, and mummified in appearance. On its leg was the mark of a pistal shot, which positively identified the creature to the brothers who had chased and shot it. To destroy the vampire, the group took it out and burned it.
The authenticity of the above story is questionable, as is the case with many folktales of vampirism. However, like those other tales, there might be some truth in it. What makes the story most interesting is the description given of the vampire. Descriptions of brown, mummified-looking vampires with shriveled skin are not exactly common in folklore. There is possibility, however, that the "vampire" was little more than just a decaying corpse, which would explain the creature's appearance, but not the story of the two young men and their sister. What motive they would have for making up such a story is anyone's guess. We will never know for certain if this story is true or false.
Let's say that the three were telling the truth, and really did witness the strange occurrences already described. The case of the Croglin Grange Vampire would then be the first documented instance of vampirism where the attacking vampire was physically proven to be the same entity as the corpse exhumed by a hunting party. The bullet wound found in the creature's leg might very well be the first piece of evidence to put a vampire at the "scene of the crime."
There is still controversy over whether the Croglin Grange Vampire was factual or fictional. The people in the area, as well as reachers from around the world, have differeing opinions about the famous case. However, not every case of vampirism is disbelieved afer its occurrence. I have learned of a particular incident that as recently as the mid-1970s was definitely accepted as having occurred, although I haven't been able to ascertain if that is still so in the mid-1990s.

What follows is the story of an undead who terrorized a village in Greece in the early 1920s. Unlike the cases that preceded it, this one was told to me by an eyewitness' daughter, who heard of the incident from her mother and many others in the area throughout her life in the country. As you shall see, the case wonderfully illustrates the general beliefs that Greek people have about vampires.

The Vrykolakas of Pyrgos

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