Highgate Cemetary...Vampire Okay, so it may be a little morbid but I find cemetery's fascinating. Places of sacred ground where the bodies of loved ones are laid to rest and where their bones and flesh slowly turn to ash and dust, absorbed into the earth.....fascinating and just a little bit spooky too! All those people, all those tombstones with just a few names, dates and words are stories in and of themselves. I came across the image of Highgate Cemetery, England (above), and was immediately intrigued by the Gothic style architecture, the age of the cemetery (opened in the early 1800's but is said to have been used as a mass grave site for victims of the plague in the 16th century) and the fact that Karl Marx is buried there. Then I did a little research that began with a Google search and the Highgate Cemetery Vampire popped up. Now things are getting really interesting..... In the late 1960's rumors began circulating around the London occult and psychic society about a tall, dark man lingering around the graves in Highgate cemetery. They went unreported and weren't really taken too seriously from it seems until a man identified only as 'Thornton' had an encounter with the tall, dark man who hypnotized him into some kind of evil trance for several minutes. Another woman out walking her dog by the gates saw the tall, dark man floating towards her and her dog went crazy. David Farrant, who has written extensively about the 'Vampire' also visited the cemetery to investigate the rumors. The notion of their being a vampire in Highgate dates back to the mid 1800's. Bram Stoker is said to have drawn inspiration for Dracula from the incidents at the cemetery and even has one of Dracula's disciples buried there. Then there is the very fascinating and disturbing case of a young girl, Elizabeth Siddell, who died in 1855 and whose remains were exhumed in 1862 by a relative who wanted to retrieve some poems from her coffin. It is said that even after seven years in the ground she was unchanged with flowing red hair and untarnished flesh as if she was 'undead'. (In researching Elizabeth Siddell I have discovered a fascinating story which I will share in the future). The 1970's saw several more sightings of the tall, dark man who floated through the graves. This is similar to what was rumored in the 1800's, more than a hundred years between sightings. Why? Where did he go during those hundred years? Why was he back? And where has he gone now?
Intriguing, don't you think? bye for now, (sleep well) Wendy xx References: http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/england/greater-london/hauntings/the-highgate-vampire-how-it-all-began-by-david-farrant.html http://theunredacted.com/the-highgate-vampire-horror-of-the-dead/
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Wendy GoddingWriter of young adult romance with a historical bent. Archives
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