Just re-read this in David Stuart Davies'
Children Of The Night (Wordsworth Editions, 2007). Peter Haining made use of it more than once and I'm sure you'll all have a copy somewhere!
Augustus Hare - The Vampire Of Croglin Hall; Croglin Grange, Cumberland, circa 1875, or perhaps even 1680 (!). The vampire - distinguishing features "Hideous brown shriveled face ... glaring eyes ... bony fingers" - attacks a young woman, Anne Cronswell (or Amelia Cranswell depending on your secondary source), having gained access to her bedchamber via a window from which it has picked away the lead. True to type, it bites her throat. Girls tortured screams arouse her brothers, one of whom pursues the fleeing fiend, which is last seen scampering over the churchyard wall. After a short convalescence in Switzerland, Anne/ Amelia insists on returning to see out lease on property. Come March the following year, a repeat performance, save this time one of the brothers fires his pistol at the intruder, hits it in the leg. A search is made of the churchyard and a coffin containing a mummified corpse with a fresh bullet wound in it's sprightly shanks is discovered and hastily cremated ...
It's a delightful penny dreadful in miniature but how on earth was it ever taken as fact and offered up as "proof" of vampire activity in England?
Augustus Hare brought this formerly obscure alleged vampire 'legend' to the attention of a wider public when he included the case-history related to him by a certain 'Captain Fisher' in his three volume
The Story of My Life (George Allan, 1896-1900) and volunteered that these events came to pass circa 1875, but this date, like the story itself, has since been widely disputed. Hare was also responsible for promoting the dubious "
Lord Dufferin premonition" (which I'll attempt to cover later as it seems to have been the inspiration for E. F. Benson's
The Bus-Conductor) and according to the
Dictionary of National Biography, he was "a devotee of fashionable culture and, when in England, much of his time was spent in country houses where he was well known as a raconteur of ghost stories". Among the 'true' spook sagas he committed to print,
The Dream House and
Two Friends hardly warrant classic status, but it's a safe bet that his Croglin account will remain in print for as long as 'factual' vampire literature has an audience, no mean feat when you consider that Charles Harper as good as did for the veracity of story way back in 1907 when he discovered that "the churchyard contains no tombs which by any stretch of the imagination could be identified with that described by Mr. Hare"
The Rev. Montague Summers, being a 'vampires exist!' obsessive, wasn't very keen on Mr. Harper who was far too free with his negative theories for his liking. "[His] criticism does not seem to affect the story in the slightest", pouts the prelate, adding that the vault would, of course, have been obliterated after such a fearsome outbreak so small wonder Harper couldn't locate it! Summers had included Hare's story in his
The Vampire In Europe (Kegan-Paul, 1929) and within a few pages he reproduced the first chapter and some notes on Rhymer's
Varney The Vampyre. It's incredible that he failed to notice the alarming similarities between the two - why, it's almost as if the Hare story
is a complete rip off! However, F. Clive Ross's research, published in
Tomorrow magazine (Spring 1963) cites doubtless impeccable witness Mrs Parkin of Ainstable's testimony that she was familiar with one of the Fishers: "... this gentleman, born in the 1860's, had heard the story from his grandparents. Mrs Parkin also stated that according to the deeds of Croglin Low Hall, it was commonly called Croglin Grange until 1720".
I've always loved the Croglin Grange story, even if it's fiction. "Ghosts & North Country Legends" is one of my favorites.....
