The Vampire of Croglin Grange?

In the mid 1870's a one-story home called Croglin Grange was rented to a two brothers and their sister in Cumberland, England. One night the sister noticed two lights coming from nearby trees. She soon realized that the lights had been coming from some creature. She was too terrified to scream. The creature began scratching at the glass and trying to get in.

She bolted for the door. But by then the creature had scratched a hole in the glass and unlocked her window with a long bony finger. The creature grabbed a hold of her and began to bite her neck. She let out a scream and her brothers came running to her aid. By the time the brothers got to her the sister was already unconscious on the bed, and the creature had fled.

One of the brothers tried to catch the creature but had failed. The family moved away to help the sister to heal and they returned seven years later. That March, the sister heard the same scratching again at the bedroom window. She screamed as loud as she could. One brother managed to wound the creature in the leg with a pistol but the creature still escaped into an old crypt that had been in Croglin Grange for centuries.

The next day the brothers along with some townspeople went to the crypt to investigate.. Inside, all coffins but one had been broken. One was intact with only the lid skewed to one side. Within, the townspeople found a withered, mummified corpse with a fresh bullet wound in the leg. The corpse was removed and burned.

Erzsebet Bathory

Elizabeth or Erzsebet, was born in 1560. At the time Elizabeth was born, her parents belonged to one of the oldest ad wealthiest families in the country. Her cousin was the prime minister in Hungary, another relative was cardinal, and her uncle Stephan later became King of Poland. However, other members of her family tree included a devil-worshipper,others mentally insane and perverted.

Elizabeth married Count Ferencz Nasdasdy, of Hungary, when she was 15. She became introduced into the occult by one of her manservant's named Thorko. After that she began torturing her servant girls, along with the help of Thorko, major-domo Johannes Ujvary, a forest witch named Darvula and a witch Dorottya Szentes.

It wasn't until 1600, when her husband died, did her real terror begin. By then she was getting older and afraid of loosing her beauty. Elizabeth was a very vain woman and she wanted to keep her beauty eternal. One day she got mad at a maid and slapped her so hard it drew blood. The blood fell on Elizabeth's skin and she thought that through the blood she took on the youth of her maid. She had her maid killed and her blood drained from her body, and then Elizabeth bathed in it.

She would torture her victims by stripping them nude and then by whipping them on the front of their body. She liked to watch them in pain so this way she could see their faces rather than whipping them from behind. She would stick pins in sensitive areas of their bodies, such as under the fingernails. After 10 years of doing this Elizabeth thought it best to bath in noble blood, so she began choosing local girls of nobility. She became careless and people began to talk. In 1610 soldiers raided Castle Csejthe and found the bodies of some 50 dead girls. A register with the names of around 650 victims was found in her quarters. The Hungarian Emperor condemned to lifelong imprisonment in her own castle. Stonemasons were brought in and walled up the windows and door to her bedchamber with Elizabeth still inside. There was a small opening for food to be given to her.

In 1614 one of the guards noticed her food was untouched and looked inside. There he found Elizabeth dead,at age 54.

Who Is... Vlad the Impaler?

The folklore of the vampyre is thought to originate from the historical figure of Vlad Tepes or Vlad the Impaler (1431-1476). He was the prince of Wallachia and his reign was one of the bloodiest in history. An estimated 100,000 people were killed in his reign. He got his nickname "Tepes" or "Impaler" from the manner in which he used to punish people. He would impale them on stakes, blunted and sharp, in various ways. The stakes were meant to pierce the internal organs very slowly.

These people were impaled and put on stakes around Vlad's castle. There were so many bodies that one time a Turkish army thought his castle to be surrounded by a great forest. When they came closer they realized that it was not trees but impaled bodies. Another story involves Vlad and some Italian ambassadors. When they came to Vlad's court they did not remove a little cap that they wore. It was their custom to keep it on. Vlad wanted to "strengthen" this custom, so he had their caps nailed to their heads.

Vlad also used to eat dinner amongst the bodies and he used to dip his bread in their blood. He was suspected of eating the limbs of the dead and it was proven that he forced others to eat human flesh. He also tortured and killed people in a manner related to the crime they were being punished for.He strangled, burned, boiled, skinned, roasted, blinded, and buried people alive. He not only killed men, but women, children and the elderly.

Vlad had a mistress who lived in a house in the back streets of Targoviste. This woman apparently loved him and was always anxious to please Vlad. Once, when Dracula was particularly depressed, the woman told a big lie to "please" him. She told him that she was pregnant. Vlad told her not to lie about such a subject and he was unsure of her telling to truth. So he had the woman examined by the bath matrons to determine if she was carry his child. When he found out that she was lying he drew his knife and cut her open from the groin to her breasts. Dracula then left the woman to die in agony.

On St. Bartholomew's Day in 1459 Vlad ordered thirty thousand of the merchants and nobles of the Transylvanian city of Brasov to be impaled. The prince wanted to enjoy this site so he had a table set up in the middle of this "forest". He then ordered his boyars join him for a feast amongst this. While dining, Dracula noticed that one of his boyars was holding his nose in an effort to alleviate the terrible smell. Dracula then ordered the nobleman impaled on a stake higher than all the rest so that he might be above the stench.

Once Vlad noticed a man working in the fields while wearing a too short caftan. Vlad stopped and asked the man if he were married. When the man said yes, Dracula had the woman brought before him. He asked her what she did during the day and she answered that she spent her days washing, baking and sewing. The prince pointed out her husband's short caftan as evidence of her laziness. She was then impaled despite her husbands protests. Vlad then ordered someone else to marry the man and warned them of the consequences if she became lazy like the other wife.

Dracula was known throughout the land for his insistence of honesty. Thieves seldom practiced when in Dracula's lands. For they knew the stake was what awaited. Dracula was so confident in the effectiveness of his laws that he placed a golden cup on display in the central square of Targoviste. For fear of what was to happen to whomever took it, the cup remained there, untouched.

After years of his reign, battles with the Turks, being imprisoned,and regaining his throne, he was killed by an assassin at the end of 1476, early 1477. His burial place is unknown but supposedly he is buried under a monastery. From this Bram Stoker based his story Dracula.

What Vlad did to those he felt had broken his laws:

Any wife who had an affair outside of marriage, maidens who did not keep their virginity or unchaste widows, the punishment was all the same. Vlad ordered their sexual organs cut, they would then be skinned alive and exposed, in their skinless flesh. This would be done in a very public place, such as a square and their skin would be placed someplace else for others to view.

He purged Wallachia of what he deemed "parasites" by inviting the old, the ill, the lame, the poor, and the blind to a grand feast in Targoviste Huge numbers of people arrived and they were given new clothes and taken to a hall and treated to a grand feast. What they did not know was that while they were eating, Vlad's soldiers had left and the doors were locked. Before they knew what was going on flames engulfed them. They tried to escape but nobody ever did.

Impalement was Dracula's favorite but by not his only method of torture. The list of tortures includes: nails in heads, cutting off of limbs, blinding, strangulation, burning, cutting off of noses, tongues and ears, mutilation of sexual organs (especially in the case of women), scalping, skinning, exposure to the elements or to wild animals and boiling alive.

Who Is… Arnold Paole?

Paole was born in the early 1700's in a town called Medvegia, near Belgrade. He served in the army and returned to his homeland in 1727.People saw him as an honest and good natured person so he was warmly welcomed back home. He bought several acres of land and established himself as a farmer. He was betrothed to a local girl and soon they were married.

He told his wife about what had happened during his time he spent in the army. That he had been attacked by a vampyre. He eventually killed the vampire after following it back to it's grave. He ate some of the earth from the vampire's tomb and bathed his wounds in the vampire's blood. He did this because it would "cleanse him of the vampire' for fear of the effects of the attack. Sadly, a week after he told her this he was involved in an accident and was killed. While he was working on the farm he fell from a great height and was unconscious for three days. He died thereafter and was buried immediately.

After about three weeks after he was buried people reported seeing Paole. Four people died who made reports and this caused a panic among the community. Community leaders decided to exhume the body to determine if Paole was a vampire. After 40 days after he had been buried he was exhumed. Two military surgeons were there when the casket was opened. The body looked fresh, like it had just been buried. The nails had continued to grow and the appearance of new skin was present. They stabbed the body and blood poured out. They decided that he was a vampire. They staked the body and people claimed to hear a "loud groan". He was decapitated and his body burned. The other people that had also recently died were treated in the same fashion. Just in case. But it doesn't end there.

In 1731, in the same area, 17 people died of the symptoms of vampirism in a period of 3 months. They were confused as to who was the vampire until a girl told them of a man, Milo, who had recently died had attacked her. Word of this reached Vienna and an inquiry was to be conducted by Field Surgeon Johannes Fluckinger. Milo's body was exhumed and was discovered to be in the same way as Paole's. The body was staked, decapitated, and burned. All 17 others who had died were also staked, decapitated, and burned. The only explanation for the outbreak was that Paole infected some cows and then people ate the cows and the vampirism was passed on through this.

Who Is… John George Haigh?

When he was a young man he left the Plymouth Brethren and joined the Church of England. At this time he had a "revelation" that he should drink his own urine. He also had recurring dreams of a forest of crosses that transformed into trees dripping with blood. At a tree a man would collect the blood in a bowl and offered Haigh the bowl to drink .But before he could drink it he would awaken. He concluded from this dream that he needed to drink blood to make him strong.

After this he built a laboratory in his home. He used this to lure his victims. He would kill them, drain their blood, and then disposed of their bodies in a vat of sulfuric acid. He was finally arrested after he tried to pawn a fur coat of one of his victims. He was confident that without a corpse he would not be convicted. However when the police investigated the laboratory the found several body parts which the acid failed to dissolve. The also found teeth that identified one person because they were unusual dental work. At his trial he confessed to 9 murders claiming them to be religious acts. He also claimed that the drinking of the blood was necessary to sustain his own life. He was convicted and hanged August 10, 1949.

The Vampyre of Alnwick Castle

This story involves a wicked man who served the Lord of Alnwick castle. He had an unfaithful wiife who he tried to spy on. While spying on her from the rooftop, he fell and died. The man was given a Christian burial but soon after returned to wander the streets after dark. People saw him wandering and locked themselves indoors. During this time a number of people died from an unknown disease and people blamed it on the vampyre.

On Palm Sunday, the local priest gathered some townsmen and went to the cemetry and dug up the dead man. They struck the body with a spade and blood gorged out, even though he had been dead for weeks. The body was taken out of town and burned. The epidemic ended and the town returned to normal.

Source: Historia Rerum Anglicarum by William of Newburgh

Who was Mercy Brown?

The Brown family, consisting of one boy and five girls, had a small farm just outside of Exeter, Rhode Island. Mary (the mother) fell sick first, dying in December 1883. Mary Olive, the eldest daughter followed less than six months later. The son Edwin went to Colorado Springs to try and find a cure in the mineral waters. Mercy fell ill and died in 1892, and was interred at the Chestnut Hill cemetery off of Route 102.

Meanwhile, family and friends decided that some evil had descended upon the household and dug up the corpses of the Brown family, the two Mary's were both virtually bones, but Mercy's body, two months after burial was still fresh, and when they cut out the heart it dripped blood. The family burned the heart and liver, and gave the ashes to Edwin as a potion. Edwin died two months later.

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