The phantom vampire of Croglin Grange is one of the best known vampire stories in Britain.
It’s so easy today, when we read about something fantastical that supposedly happened at some point in the past, to dismiss it. “That couldn’t have happened,” we tell ourselves. Our minds, whether we intend it or not, immediately start to search for the logical explanation, to discern the misidentified, misunderstood truth behind the accounts. And the farther back in time the event in question is supposed to have taken place, the easier it is to brush aside. The farther back one goes, after all, the less educated the populace, the more gullible, the less reliable any and all sources. Undoubtedly stories get altered in the repetition, facts get scrambled. Memories distort.
The account of the vampire preying on the Cranswell family at Croglin Grange cannot be proven. There is no solid evidence that it ever happened outside the imagination of writer Augustus Hare, who first committed it to paper. Looking at it with modern eyes, it seems nothing more than a good story, meant to entertain (and sell books). But what IF? Don’t we secretly or not so secretly want it to be true? Don’t we WANT to believe in things that go bump in the night? I know I do.
it did happen