The Highgate Vampire

Maybe you will see him one day and hunt him finally down. The Highgate Vampire was believed to be seen in the Highgate Cemetery in the 1970s and there even was a mass vampire hunt.

Echoing the words of Aurora F, «I love Highgate.» Heading up Highgate Hill I turned at the top and surveyed the beautiful scenery of London below me. The air felt fresh, my head felt clear, I liked this place. Continuing my walk I resisted entering The Gatehouse pub for their incredibly cheap Tuesday night steak club. I’ll be back for that.
I made my way down Highgate West Hill and felt transported into the lush surroundings of the countryside. Clean air, trees, cute pubs and eateries — wow! Gated communities adorned the side roads and my view of urban London immediately felt changed. Perhaps a family life could be lived here?
Sitting on the north eastern tip of Hampstead Heath, Highgate has everything an affluent, young professional could want.

It is always difficult when someone comments about a case decades after its closure. Accurate details are nevertheless provided in my book The Highgate Vampire.
The crowd that manifested in Swains Lane on the night of 13 March 1970, for example, came to search out and destroy the vampire; not merely witness its destruction. Only the police prevented the majority of them from entering Highgate Cemetery. And it was early 1967, not 1963, when the two convent schoolgirls allegedly witnessed corpses rising as they passed the graveyard’s bleak north gate.
Vlad Tepes, incidentally, was not a vampire and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) was by no means the first novel about vampires. John Polidori wrote The Vampyre in 1819. Non-​fiction accounts of vampires go back to antiquity and are recorded in England from the twelfth century (Historia Rerum Anglicarum by William of Newburgh). The notion of vampirism has existed for millennia; cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, Ancient Greeks and Romans had tales of demons and spirits that are considered the same phenomenon as modern vampires. The entity we know today, however, is best identified with that found in early eighteenth century Southeastern Europe when traditions of the peoples of the region were recorded and published.

One for trying on halloween for sure!
Picture this On the night of March 13^th, a Friday, the area around Highgate Cemetery saw a huge influx of people, they’d come to witness the destruction of a vampire within the cemetery. Rival groups were about the same task, traces of the vampire were supposedly found there?
Many people have said he has stared at them through the cemetary gates.
Highgate Cemetery was constructed in 1839 and it was a very fashionable burial place for Victorians. By the 1960’s Highgate Cemetery had fallen into neglect and decay. Stories started circulating that the cemetery was haunted and newspapers started reporting England’s first Vampire in over a hundred years.
In 1963 two 16 year old convent girls were walking home at night after having visited friends in Highgate Village. Their return journey took them down Swain’s Lane past the cemetery. They could not believe their eyes as they passed the graveyard’s north gate at the top of the lane, for in front of them, bodies appeared to be emerging from their tombs.
Another incident, some weeks later, involved a couple who were also walking down Swains lane. The lady recorded glimpsing something hideous hovering behind the gate’s iron railings.
Soon others sighted the same phantom as it hovered along the path behind the gate where gravestones are visible either side until consumed in darkness. Some who actually witnessed the spectral figure wrote to their local newspaper to share their experience. Discoveries were made of animal carcasses drained of blood. Very soon it was being described as a vampire.
In 1971 several years after the many publicised vampire sightings, a young girl claims she was actually attacked by the vampire in the lane outside the cemetery. She was returning home in the early hours of the morning when she was suddenly thrown to the ground with tremendous force by a tall black figure with a deathly white face. At that moment a car stopped to help her and the vampire vanished in the glare of the headlamps.
She was taken to the police station in a state of shock, luckily only suffering abrasions to her arms and legs. The police immediately made a thorough search of the area, but could offer no explanation to the incident. More mysterious still was the fact that where the vampire vanished, the road was lined by 12ft walls.
Another interesting case is that of the man who was hypnotised by something in the cemetery. He had gone into the cemetery one evening to look around, and as the light began to rapidly fade he decided to leave, but became hopelessly lost. Not being a superstitious person he walked calmly around looking for the gate when suddenly he became aware of something behind him. Swinging around he became hypnotised with fear at the tall dark figure of the vampire confronted him. So great was the intensity of his fear that he stood motionless for several minutes after the vampire vanished.
You can go on a walk with guides who will tell you all about it. Here’s a tip, stay close together and wear sensible shoes. It’s a Friday thing and will cost you about 5 to 6 pounds.
The most famous vampire is Vlad Tepes, a bloodthirsty Romanian ruler, believed to be the basis for Dracula. Dracula wasn’t the first vampire book, but certainly the most famous.
Where did Bram Stoker learn of him and what of vampire lore well you’ll learn it all on this walk as well as other causes of the myth of the undead. The walk also reveals the famous cemetery and the remains of a nearby house where the vampire was allegedly destroyed and hear of the British Occult Society.