Ghost Stories Collections

The Vampire of Croglin

The district that surrounds Penrith, in Cumberland, is not only wildly beautiful but much haunted. Edenhall, with its magic cup that held the luck of the house; the Weird Hill of Wallow Crag, where the spirit of the terrible Sir Jamic Lowther used to walk; the ghosts of King Arthur and his knights by the road to Lowther Castle, known as the King’s Round Table. At little Salkeld is a circle of stones called Long Meg and her Daughters, thought to have been a Druidical Temple; and here, when one of the stones was lifted, there took place what a native of those parts guardedly called “manifestations of an unpleasant nature”.

It is old country, where man has not yet got the upper hand in spite of the spread of communications. Nature spirits dwell on riverside and lonely crag, Old Romans and Britons fight out their battles still, castles hold within their massive walls more than their flesh-and-blood inhabitants.

Croglin Hall, in the village of Croglin, north-east of Penrith, had stood for centuries; a lonely, low-built house owned by a family called Fisher. In 1874, the fishers departed and a Mr. Edward Cranswell, from Australia, bought it and moved in with his young sister and brother, Amelia and Michael. Coming from that great continent they thought nothing of the isolated situation of their new home, or of the wild landscape surrounding it. Compared with the outback, the district was populous: the hall was neighboured by the little churchyard, whose ancient memorials dating from Norman days charmed the young people who had grown up in a young country.

Edward Cranswell, however, did not assume foolishly that a peaceful rustic spot was automatically danger-free. There were wandering marauders in the bush: they might well exist in Cumberland. Because of the curious Architecture of the house, all the windows were on ground level and extremely vulnerable. Cranswell gave orders that they should be made to fasten securely, and that every night bedroom doors should be locked and each window kept shut. No outcry was made by his Victorian household: night air was still thought to be bad for one.

It was a summer night in 1875, when the Cranswells had been in the house about a year, that Amelia Cranswell sat up in bed and wished that her brother could be persuaded to relax his rule. The day had not been hot with a sultry heat not often felt in the far north of England. The burning rays of the sun had given way at dusk to a brilliant full moon, and the young Cranswells had stayed up until nearly midnight, strolling in the garden. Michael quoted Romeo. Amelia retaliated with several verse “To the Moon” from the Poetical Album which was her favourite reading, for she was a romantic young lady. Then, as the night began to chill, Michael led his sister back to the house. Their brother and the servants were already in bed.

It was fortunate that Amelia’s bedroom windows overlooked the wide lawn of the Hall, now a sheet of palest silver, like a calm sea. Behind it a row of trees marked the end of the grounds, beyond which lay the churchyard. Amelia was quite unable to sleep for the heat and stuffiness of her room. She sat up in bed, suffering in the high-necked, bishop-sleeved nightdress of the period, but consoling herself with the beauty of the scene outside. She began to grow a little sleepy. Her mind strayed to other, even brighter, moons in the far-off Antipodes: to a calm bay of the pacific, the water motionless as grass, just as the grass outside was. Her eyes were closing, her head began to sink towards the pillow. Suddenly a movement outside roused her. She sat up with a jerk.

There was somebody crossing the lawn. Edward’s fears about night wanderers were justified, after all. The moonlight could not be as bright as she had thought, for she could not make out any details of the figure which-oh, horrors!-was approaching her window with a sort of motion between hopping and skimming.

In barely a moment, the terrified girl saw a face appear at the window. What kind of face she could never afterwards say, except that it was dreadful. A scratching noise on the glass told her that the person outside was attempting to break in. It was trying to force a diamond pane out of the leads that held it.