The Croglin Grange Vampire story took place after the English Civil War in the 1650’s. The story goes such as this; a family with the surname Fisher decided to move to southern England and rented a remote farmstead. There were two brothers and a sister named Cranswell.
The summers were quite hot; they decided to sleep with the windows open. During this time period, the building structure was only one storey high and near the hallway stood a chapel. Nearby was a small graveyard which once belonged to the Howard family, who were the landowners.
Late in the evening, the two men sat with their sister Cranswell looking up at the moon. They later decided to retire for the evening going to bed. The sister was lying in her bed scantily clad from the hot heat in the air. She then closed the window to her room but decided to not fasten the shutters.
Afterwards, she glanced out her window propping up her pillows as the summer day dissipated. The night engulfed itself onto the evening, however in Cumbria at midsummer it does not get as dark between sunset and sunrise from being so far north.
Sister Cranswell noticed several lights coming from the house which separated the lawn from the small graveyard. After struggling to see, she made out to be a dark shadow moving towards the house coming closer to her window.
After being completely petrified she couldn’t get closer to the window and it appeared to her a long boney hand which stretched in turning the window catch. Whatever strange thing this was, it rushed towards her through the window afterwards biting her neck and forced her onto the ground. She then screamed in terror.
Both of her brothers heard the scream, and then battered down the door. They looked upon a creature which then fled back through the window, leaving their sister lying on the floor and bleeding from her neck. One of the brothers chased after this strange creature but it was quite fast and before he could catch up to it, it disappeared into the shadows.
This undead fiend nearly killed their sister, was it one of the first known reports of a blood sucking vampire also known as a Nosferatu?
Warning! Vampires within
The Grange, and the vampire graves
