Albert Fish, the Brooklyn Vampire

Albert Fish. It’s too mundane a name for the horrifying things he did. His other names, the Brooklyn Vampire, the Bogeyman, the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria, all fit better with the monstrous crimes he committed.

To say that Albert Fish was a bad man is an understatement. He was a monster. He was a child rapist and killer, who drank the blood of his victims. He found children to be “tasty” and would chop them into pieces, cook them, and eat them.

At first, he went after children who he thought that “no one would miss.” He would attack children who were mentally challenged, and also black children. In 1927 he stole a boy named Billy Gaffney, grabbing him through a skylight. Another boy who witnessed this said, “The Bogeyman took him.” Billy Gaffney’s body was never found, but Albert Fish later confessed to the boy’s mother what he had done to him. He stripped him, burned his clothes, and tortured him. He whipped him, and then cut off pieces of him until the boy died. And then he cooked him, at ate him.

Another of Albert Fish’s victims was a ten year old girl named Grace Budd. He kidnapped her, and then he wrote a letter to her parents, detailing what he did to her. In his letter he wrote that, “Grace sat on my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her.” What he did to her was similar to what he had done to Billy Gaffney.

Sometimes I think people made up the idea of vampires and monsters because it seems impossible that any human with a beating heart could do such horrible things. It doesn’t make any sense. How could someone be so completely devoid of compassion? How could someone bear to do such terrible things? And why? That the villain is a monster, some sort of vampire or supernatural creature is the only explanation that would make sense.

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