The Source:
Charles G. Harper:
"Haunted Houses - Tales of the supernatural with
some accounts of hereditary curses and family legends"
Chapman & Hall, London, 1907.
The Case
"What many readers will probably think the most horrible ghost-story they
have ever read is the following narrative told by Captain Fisher to
Mr. Augustus Hare, and printed in the Story of My Life.
"Fisher", said the Captain, "may sound a very plebeian name, but this
family is of very ancient lineage, and for many hundreds of years they
have possessed a very curious sort of place in Cumberland, which bears
the weird name of Croglin Grange. The great characteristic of the house
is that never at any period of its very long existence has it been more
than one story high, but it has a terrace from which large grounds sweep
away towards the church in the hollow, and a fine distant view.
"When, in lapse of years, the Fishers outgrew Croglin Grange in family
and fortune, they were wise enough not to destroy the long-standing
characteristic of the place by adding another story to the house, but
they went away to the south, to reside at Thorncombe near Guildford,
and they let Croglin Grange.
"They were extremely fortunate in their tenants, two brothers and a
sister. They heard their praises from all quarters. To their poorer
neighbours they were all that is most kind and beneficent, and their
neighbours of a higher class spoke of them as a most welcome addition
to the little society of the neighbourhood. On their part the tenants were
greatly delighted with their new residence. The arrangement of the house,
which would have been a trial to many, was not so to them. In every
respect Croglin Grange was exactly suited to them.
"The winter was spent most happily by the new inmates of Croglin
Grange, who shared in all the little social pleasures of the district, and
made themselves very popular. In the following summer, there was
one day which was dreadfully, annihilatingly hot. The brothers lay
under the trees with their books, for it was too hot for any active
occupation. The sister sat in the verandah and worked, or tried to
work, for, in the intense sultriness of that summer day, work was next
to impossible. They dined early, and after dinner they still sat out in the
verandah, enjoying the cool air which came with evening, and they
watched the sun set, and the moon rise over the belt of trees which
separated the grounds from the churchyard, seeing it mount the
heavens till the whole lawn was bathed in silver light, across which
the long shadows from the shrubbery fell as if embossed, so vivid and
distinct were they.
"When they separated for the night, all retiring to their rooms on the
ground floor (for, as I said, there was no upstairs in that house), the
sister felt that the heat was still so great that she could not sleep,
and having fastened her window, she did not close the shutters - in
that very quiet place it was not necessary - and, propped against
the pillows, she still watched the wonderful, the marvellous beauty
of that summer night. Gradually she became aware of two lights, two
lights which flickered in and out in the belt of trees which separated
the lawn from the churchyard, and as her gaze became fixed upon
them, she saw them emerge, fixed in a dark substance, a definite
ghastly something, which seemed every moment to become nearer,
increasing in size and substance as it approached. Every now and
then it was lost for a moment in the long shadows which stretched
across the lawn from the trees, and then it emerged larger than ever,
and still coming on - on. As she watched it, the most uncontrollable
horror seized her. She longed to get away, but the door was close
to the window and the door was locked on the inside, and while she
was unlocking it, she must be for an instant nearer to it. She longed
to scream, but her voice seemed paralysed, her tongue glued to the
roof of her mouth.
"Suddenly, she could never explain why afterwards, the terrible
object seemed to turn to one side, seemed to be going round the
house, not to be coming to her at all, and immediately she jumped
out of bed and rushed to the door, but as she was unlocking it,
she heard scratch, scratch, scratch upon the window, and saw
a hideous brown face with flaming eyes glaring in at her. She
rushed back to the bed, but the creature continued to scratch,
scratch, scratch upon the window. She felt a sort of mental comfort
in the knowledge that the window was securely fastened on the
inside. Suddenly the scratching sound ceased. And a kind of pecking
sound took its place. Then, in her agony, she became aware that the
creature was unpicking the lead ! The noise continued, and a diamond
pane of glass fell into the room. Then a long bony finger of the creature
came in and turned the handle of the window, and the window opened,
and the creature came in; and it came across the room, and her terror
was so great that she could not scream, and it came up to the bed and
twisted its long bony fingers in her hair, and it dragged her head over
the side of the bed, and - it bit her violently in the throat.
"As it bit her, her voice was released, and she screamed with all her
might and main. Her brothers rushed out of their rooms, but the door
was locked on the inside. A moment was lost while they got a poker
and broke it open. Then the creature had already escaped through
the window, and the sister, bleeding violently from a wound in the
throat, was lying unconscious over the side of the bed. One brother
pursued the creature, which fled before him through the moonlight
with gigantic strides, and eventually seemed to disappear over the
wall into the churchyard. Then he rejoined his brother by the sister's
bedside. She was dreadfully hurt and her wound was a very definite
one, but she was of strong disposition, not either given to romance or
superstition, and when she came to herself she said, 'What has
happened is most extraordinary and I am very much hurt. It seems
inexplicable, but of course there is an explanation, and we must
wait for it. It will turn out that a lunatic has escaped from some asylum
and found his way here.' The wound healed and she appeared to get
well, but the doctor who was sent for to her would not believe that
she could bear so terrible a shock so easily, and insisted that she
must have change, mental and physical; so her brothers took her
to Switzerland.
"Being a sensible girl, when she went abroad, she threw herself
at once into the interests of the country she was in. She dried plants,
she made sketches, she went up mountains, and, as autumn came
on, she was the person who urged that they should return to Croglin
Grange. 'We have taken it,' she said, 'for seven years, and we have
only been there one; and we shall always find it difficult to let a house
which is only one story high, so we had better return there ; lunatics
do not escape every day.' As she urged it, her brothers wished nothing
better, and the family returned to Cumberland. From there being no
upstairs in the house, it was impossible to make any great change in
their arrangements. The sister occupied the same room, but it is
unnecessary to say she always closed her shutters, which, however,
as in many old houses, always left one top pane of the window
uncovered. The brothers moved, and occupied a room together
exactly opposite that of their sister, and they always kept loaded
pistols in their room.
"The winter passed most peacefully and happily. In the following March
the sister was suddenly awakened by a sound she remembered only too
well - scratch, scratch, scratch upon the window, and looking up, she
saw, climbed up to the topmost pane of the window, the same hideous
brown shrivelled face, with glaring eyes, looking in at her. This time she
screamed as loud as she could. Her brothers rushed out of their room
with pistols, and out of the front door. The creature was already scudding
away across the lawn. One of the brothers fired and hit it in the leg, but
still with the other leg it continued to make way, scrambled over the
wall into the churchyard, and seemed to disappear into a vault which
belonged to a family long extinct.
"The next day the brothers summoned all the tenants of Croglin Grange,
and in their presence the vault was opened. A horrible scene revealed
itself. The vault was full of coffins ; they had been broken open, and
their contents, horribly mangled and distorted, were scattered over the
floor. One coffin alone remained intact. Of that the lid had been lifted,
but still lay loose upon the coffin. They raised it, and there, brown,
withered, shrivelled, mummified, but quite entire, was the same hideous
figure which had looked in at the windows of Croglin Grange, with the
marks of a recent pistol-shot in the leg ; and they did - the only thing
that can lay a vampire - they burnt it."
It is to be added, from personal observation, that there is no place
styled Croglin Grange. There are Croglin High Hall and Low Hall.
Both are farm-houses, very like one another, and not in any
particulars resembling the description given. Croglin Low Hall is
probably the house indicated, but it is at least a mile distant from the
church, which has been rebuilt. The churchyard contains no tomb
which by any stretch of the imagination could be identified with
that described by Mr. Hare."
The Date:
Charles Harper does not give us a date for the story. Other writers do, although in most cases it is far from clear where they have found their information. Peter Haining, in his "The Dracula Centenary Book", gives us 1848 as the date of the events. He also gives us the name of the family: Cranswell. In his "A Dictionary of Vampires", however, Haining tells us the name of the family is Fisher, and the events have taken place in 1858. This does not make sense, because according to the Charles Harper version, the Fishers where the people who let the house to the people who were haunted by the vampire. A lot of additional information can be found in Donald F. Glut's "True Vampires of History", published by HC Publishers in 1971. I am not going to give you these facts, go check them out for yourself. Let's just say that, according to one of Glut's informants, this case may in fact have taken place as early as some time between 1680 and 1690.
The Place:
Croglin is a small village in Cumbria, in the North of England. Croglin High Hall is situated but a few kilometers to the South West of Croglin village. You can find Croglin Low Hall a little bit further in the same direction. On the Ordnance Survey map, Croglin can be found on Sheet NY 44/54 (Pathfinder 568).
Possible Follow-Up:
Charles Harper appears to have taken this story from the autobiography of Augustus Hare, "The story of my life", which was published in 6 volumes (1896-1903). Although I have no reason to believe that Harper has altered the original version, we obviously have to check Augustus Hare's books to find out if this is true.
Reactions:
And then we received a message from our Spanish correspondent
Luis Lopez, who has been a constant source of interesting facts
ever since we got in touch. Luis informed me that the original version
of the Croglin story by Augustus Hare can be found on the site
of the Augustus Hare Society. Here is a link to them:
http://augustus-hare.tripod.com/
Thank you - again - Luis !
© 1992, 2007 by Rob Brautigam - NL - Last changed 03 October 2007
Link last checked 9 July 2007
