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Croglin Grange Vampire

K

Korolev

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Nov 25, 2010
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Hi Folks, new on site...

Wonder if any one can help? Am looking for any articles, writing and references in Fortean Times to the Croglin Grange Vampire of 1875. The events happened near the village of Croglin in Cumberland.

Two brothers and there sister returned to England from New Zealand and are terrorised by a vampire - eventually they and the locals deal with the vampire.

In anticipation of any help Thank You

Korolev
 
This has been discussed on here somewhere, but god knows where. There seems to be plenty about it on the web though.

It sticks in my mind because I first read about it back in the 70's on a sweet packet, it scared me and my friends stiff, especially as our school was called the Grange. We thought it had happened locally.
 
It's been mentioned in a few threads (search "Croglin") but we don't have one dedicated to the story. Until now, I suppose.
 
Didn't the story of this appear in some 1970s spook/vampire story book? The Vampire of Croglin Hall rings a bell.

Scared the crap out of me, esp. the bit where he's interrupted picking the lead off of the window to get in.
 
Didn't the story of this appear in some 1970s spook/vampire story book?
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Are you sure it wasn't on those sweet packets I mentioned earlier.
 
I'd forgotten all about this vampire until BlackRiverFalls mentioned the vampire picking the leading out of the window. I remember reading this rather creepy story in the late 60s/early 70s in a book of ghost/ghoul/vampire stories. Can't for the life of me remember the name of the collection of stories though.

As a tale in the 'true stories' genre, it's a good one.
 
oldrover said:
This has been discussed on here somewhere, but god knows where....
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Dotted about, but there's a fairly good strand discussing the case within Vampires in England.

I must admit, I tend toward the theory that this was an old legend concerning something that wasn't necessarily a vampire, that then morphed into the suspiciously well-constructed Gothic tale with which we're now familiar. As JW points out in the linked thread above, there are many similarities with the contemporary, and entirely fictional Varney the Vampire.

This sort of thing does happen a lot. It only takes one more-or-less respected author / researcher to take a story at face value, and before you know it all the other compendiums gleefully recount it too.

edited to update thread link
 
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Yup. After all, we FTMB posters know there's no such thing as vampi
 
Ronson8 said:
And you thought you were just getting a hickey. :eek:
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Titter ye, not!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/21/hickey-stroke-love-bit-paralyzes-woman-_n_812286.html


Hickey Paralyzes Woman

Huffington Post. 01/21/11

The next time you find yourself getting intimate, be sure to cover your neck -- a hickey might be more dangerous than you thought.

That's right, a woman in New Zealand suffered a small stroke that partially paralyzed her after receiving a hickey -- or as the Kiwis call it, a "love bite" -- from her eager bedfellow, reported New Zealand Medical Journal.

At first, doctors struggled to find the cause of the stroke, until they discovered a small "bruise" on the woman's neck -- located very close to a major artery.

The force of the hickey-giver's suction had caused a blood clot in the artery, which then travelled to the woman's heart, doctors told the The Press. The woman made a full recovery.
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[That's enough off topic stuff. P_M ] :)

Perhaps, that's how these vampire rumours start! :shock:
 
Are you sure it wasn't on those sweet packets I mentioned earlier.
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I'm fairly sure it was a library book, cira 1978 so i'm buggered if i can recall the title.
 
I read it in the 70's in a Vampires - Fact or fiction (not the real title, I can't recall what it was) kids book with very gory illustrations. Interesting for a kids book in that it also featured write ups of real life 'vampires' John George Haigh and Peter Kurtain.
 
Plus there was a version of the story in the Peter Haining edited Dracula Scrapbook (which is awesome). A great mix of fact/fiction/movie/press stuff.

If anyone's interested, the softback version is much better with a Vincent Price-ish cover (and bigger) than the hardback with Christopher Lee.
 
I am sure i read about it 1st in a book of ghosts that was in my school library,scared the poo right out of me. :D
And welcome Korolev :D
 
Thank You!

Hi folks

thank you so much for your replies and chat, it really is appriciated. I may like to add the following (perhaps it may help your researches/work?)

Mayfair, Vol. 15, No.12, December 1980 has a good four page account with a dramatic painting

Rebecca Dane and Craig MacNeale had four small booklets published by Nordales(Four Counties) publications, Darlington with in there 'Around the North' series. the first booklet 'Tales of Haunting and Terror' has the Croglin Grange vampire as the first story. the booklets were published from 1972 to 1980 in various editions.

Hope this helps. Well do some digging with the info you provided and hope you too come up with more.

Thank you once aagin, you come over as a great bunch!

Take care out there!

Korolev
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
Didn't the story of this appear in some 1970s spook/vampire story book? The Vampire of Croglin Hall rings a bell.

Scared the crap out of me, esp. the bit where he's interrupted picking the lead off of the window to get in.
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Arghhhhh! I read that story when I was a kid too, in a book from the library. I'm 30 now and to this day I hate noises at the window when I'm in bed.

On the one hand I'd love to find out what book it's in so I could read it again. On the other, I wouldn't like to find that it wasn't as terrifying as I remember it being all these years.
 
When Captain Fisher related the Croglin Grange story to Augustus Hare in the late 19th Century, the latter seems to have neen under the impression that the events had transpired only a few years earlier.

I suspect that Fisher himself believed the story to date from the earlier 19th Century. By the way Fisher's own existence has been verified (he died in 1916).

In relatity the story seems to have been around since circa 1680.

Thus we can safely erase both New Zealand and Australia from the equation.
 
ASSAP used to run occasional research days, and I attended one at Charlton House about 2000. One of the speakers was Lionel Fanthorpe who had done some work on the tale. I recall he had some evidence that the incident can be dated some time before the customary setting of the tale (I think the 19th century). I can't remember anything more of his tale.
 
DrPaulLee said:
ASSAP used to run occasional research days, and I attended one at Charlton House about 2000. One of the speakers was Lionel Fanthorpe who had done some work on the tale. I recall he had some evidence that the incident can be dated some time before the customary setting of the tale (I think the 19th century). I can't remember anything more of his tale.
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Thanks for that in-depth update.
 
Attempts to authenticate the case merely try to associate it with the workaday Croglin Hall - nothing like the fashionably Gothic Grange of Hare's fable. Nearly every element of his story can be traced to the vampire literature - I forget if the picking of the lead out of the windows was an original, chilling touch. Much as it kept me awake, when I was about nine, the Croglin Hall Vampire should be regarded as an after-supper yarn, ending as it does with the extraction of a rare pistol-ball from the leg of a long-deceased - yet recently active - corpse! :evillaugh:
 
The story was also in Ghosts, Ghouls & Other Horrors by Bernhardt J. Hurwood. It was published a few times in the 70s. My copy was a Target paperback.
 
A good write-up!
https://www.davidcastleton.net/vampire-croglin-grange-cumbria-england/
I liked this bit:
The next researcher to have a crack at the legend was Francis Clive-Ross. In a 1963 article for the journal Tomorrow, Clive-Ross stated he’d discovered information that might lend some truth at least to the setting of Fisher’s tale. Clive-Ross found out that Croglin Low Hall had actually been known as Croglin Grange until the beginning of the 18th century. The house had originally had only one storey and a second floor had been added later – Clive-Ross observed the corbels that would have once supported the roof. A chapel had also stood nearby, which Clive-Ross felt had been demolished around the time of the English Civil War (1642-51). He discovered the stubs of its walls and evidence of its foundations. (Historic England’s webpage about Croglin Low Hall also mentions the chapel, but states it was knocked down in the 19th century.) Clive-Ross found that the vampire story indeed seemed to be a long-standing legend in the Fisher-Rowe family. Croglin residents, however, told him that the incident hadn’t occurred in the 1870s, but rather way back in the 1680s.
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I also don't think I heard this before:
It was, however, a revelation in a book put out 10 years later that really added a new dimension to the Croglin Vampire conundrum. In his Haunted Churches and Abbeys of Britain, Marc Alexander stated he’d unearthed an account from a former Croglin rector, the Reverend Dr Matthew Roberts. Roberts linked a series of vampire attacks to sightings of a bat-like creature in Croglin Churchyard. Among the victims of this flying fiend was the daughter of one of Robert’s predecessors, the Reverend Joseph Ireland, who’d officiated at Croglin from 1804 to 1837. During the assault on Miss Ireland – as was the case with the Croglin Vampire – the creature was wounded and fled back to a tomb. The tomb it escaped to was that of the Reverend George Sanderson, who’d served at Croglin in the 17th century. Local rumour asserted the bat had appeared from Sanderson’s grave before other vampiric incidents.
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Any chance it was a naturally unwell bat that went back to the same tomb repeatedly to shelter?
 
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maximus otter
 
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