Vampires of Great Britain

by Tom Slemen

  The Frenchman then started to become incoherent. He started to sing, then began to sob. Thinking he was mad, the soldiers decided to let him go, and he disappeared back into obscurity. His identity is stil unknown. Could he have been the Count St Germain?

  Today, most historians regard the Count St Germain as nothing more than a silver-tongued charlatan. But there are so many unanswered questions. What was the source of the Count's wealth? How can we possibly explain his longevity? For that matter, where did he come from? If he had been an impostor, surely someone would have recognized him.

  The only surviving manuscript written by the Count, entitled, La Tres Sainte Trinosophie is in the library at Troyes, France, and to date, it has resisted every attempt to be fully deciphered, but one decoded section of the text states:

  We moved through space at a speed that can only be compared with nothing but itself. Within a fraction of a second the plains below us were out of sight and the Earth had become a faint nebula."

  What does this signify? Could it be that the Count St Germain was some type of traveller in the realms of space and time? A real-life Doctor Who? A renegade timelord from the future who liked to meddle with history? If this were so, perhaps he really had talked with Christ and the kings of bygone days. Was the Count a type of vampire? I personally don’t believe St Germain was, but he does exemplify the possibility of beings on this earth with incredible lifespans. Who knows if there are evil beings at large in the world today who have been around for centuries? This brings me back to the entity that troubled the household in Camden, London, in the 1960s. With holy water, a crucifix, and most importantly, his faith, a young priest confronted a spine-chilling man in a white periwig and a long flowing white cloak who materialised almost every night in the home of a Baroness who did charity work for the poor of East London. The attacks always happened after midnight, and the vampiric entity would be heard creeping down the stairs of the house from the attic. The first casualty was a 17-year-old girl named Claudia who had been rescued from the streets of London by the Baroness after running away from her violent father in Nottingham. Claudia was awakened at around 12.40am by what she initially believed to be kisses to her neck. She found an oddly-dressed stranger leaning over her, gently biting her neck. The girl screamed and the stranger clamped a cold hand over her mouth and gazed into her eyes. Claudia felt lethargic and all fear left her. The man bit her neck again and sucked the blood from her for an indeterminable period of time before Claudia drifted into a strange dreamless sleep.

  The same thing happened to a woman in her fifties staying at the house. Her name was Bridget and she managed to close her eyes, so the vampire’s hypnotic gaze couldn’t silence her. The stranger muttered something in a foreign tongue and stormed out of the room. Bridget awoke one morning with a deep cut to the left of her throat that wouldn’t stop bleeding for almost an hour. Three nights later a woman in her thirties who cooked at the house woke up just after midnight to the sensation of someone biting into her breast. ‘Jesus protect me!’ she cried, and felt the thing rise off her in the darkness, followed by the heavy slamming of the bedroom door. One morning at 4am the vampire appeared in the room of the Baroness herself and she bravely asked him what he wanted, and after standing at her bedside for a minute in silence, he suddenly smiled, then left. The priest who was called in to deal with this unusual persecutor held a vigil at the house each night for a week – and then the cloaked menace put in an appearance in Claudia’s room. The girl threw a Bible at the unearthly visitor and he fled onto the landing and down the stairs. The priest investigating the vampire reports had been patrolling the landings and saw the shadowy figure in the white periwig hurrying towards him. The priest produced his crucifix and held it out at the weird intruder, and he came to a halt. By the feeble light of a lamppost shining into the house, the clergyman could see that the vampire was a swarthy long-nosed man with intense dark eyes. He was staring at the small silver crucifix in abject fear. The pries took out a small bottle of blessed water, lifted it to his mouth, and removed the cork with his teeth. The vampire backed away, sensing what was to come. The holy water was hurled at the man in black, and he screamed and turned to hurl himself through the panes and frame of a window. The vampire crashed through wood and glass and landed in the street below – apparently without harm – for he picked himself up and ran off into the rainy night. The priest bravely tried to pursue the bloodsucker but the vampire was too agile and at one point he bounded over an eight-foot-tall wall and escaped. He never returned to the home of the Baroness, and his identity remains a mystery, although the priest, later seeing an engraving of the so-called immortal Count of St Germain, believed he was the vampire he had tackled that rainy night in the 1960s.

  Vampires are still being reported today. Google “Birmingham Vampire” to see what I mean – or enter “Chupacabra” into a search engine and you will read copious internet reports of a creature that sucks blood out of animals yet seems to be invisible. Many people refuse to believe in ghosts until they encounter one, but knowing what I know about the vampire, I hope the reader will never encounter one, unless of course, you wish to become one yourself one day. Sleep well.

  Tom Slemen

  Vampires of the Life Force

  When I was a child, adults confidently reassured me that vampires such as the legendary Dracula do not and never did exist. Today I know the grown-ups were wrong to dismiss the bloodsuckers. Believe me, vampires do exist, although there are two varieties of them nowadays; fake and genuine. Firstly, there are cults in several major cities (notably San Francisco and London) in which members drink each others blood and the blood of sacrificed people and animals. This isn't a very good idea in the AIDS era, but a cursory browse of the Internet will list many of these vampiric sects. Without a doubt, a lot of the blood-drinkers undoubtedly indulge in this type of vampirism for erotic reasons, but throughout history, from the days of the ancient Egyptians to the present, there have been many well-documented reports of real vampires attacking and subduing victims.

  We don't have to go back thousands of years to examine reports of these strange beings, because there have been several vampire alerts in modern times, and they are still being reported today. On 16 April 1922, a man was admitted to London's Charing Cross Hospital with a strange deep wound in his neck. All the man could remember was that he had been turning a corner off Coventry Street when he felt an agonizing stabbing sensation in his neck. Then he passed out. He saw no attacker, so the police had nothing to go on. A few hours later, another man was brought into the hospital - with a wound on his neck. He too had felt a sharp pain in his neck before losing consciousness - at the very same turning off Coventry Street near Piccadilly Circus. This second victim was also unable to give a description of his assailant because there had been no one within twenty feet of him when something penetrated his neck.

  Incredibly, a third patient was later taken to Charing Cross Hospital, and he too had a deep wound to his neck - which he had received at the same corner in Coventry Street where the previous two incidents had occurred. The People newspaper covered the strange story, and rumours of a vampire at large in the West End of the capital spread like wildfire. Alas, the invisible Coventry Street attacker was never apprehended by Scotland Yard, but the case has all the hallmarks of a true vampire assault. I have looked at the case in more detail later in this book.

  Contrary to popular belief, not all vampires are shape-shifters who turn into bats and fly off in search of victims; although the dark talent of such metamorphosis was described by Bram Stoker in his 1897 novel Dracula. From the data we have on actual vampire attacks, it would seem that many of these strange bloodthirsty beings have the ability to 'teleport' themselves about either in physical form, or by somehow projecting their 'wraith', or astral body to the victim's home. Furthermore, there seem to be a species of vampire that rarely bites the victim to imbibe blood. Instead, the vampire usually 'draws off' the very life-energy of the victim, lea
ving them physically and mentally exhausted and quite ill. In fact, the symptoms of a subtle vampire assault are identical to a strange condition that is now becoming increasingly prevalent in the civilized world: 'ME' - short for myalgic encephalomyelitis. This is a benign but debilitating (and often long-lasting) condition which allegedly occurs out of the blue, and causes headaches, weakness, muscular pain, extreme fatigue and even fever. Over 150,000 people in Britain are affected by this enigmatic condition, and for some obscure reason, most of the sufferers are women. The medical authorities still cannot agree amongst themselves about the nature of ME. Some doctors think the condition is psychosomatic (originating in the mind), while other experts believe the syndrome has a link with the coxsackieviruses in the human body. Whatever the cause, the strange incapacitating condition is reaching pandemic proportions all over the world.

  No one had even heard of ME in 1970, but in the summer of that year, a 19-year-old girl from Winsford, Cheshire, named Judith, was stricken with ME-like symptoms. A doctor examined the teenager, and initially diagnosed flu, but the girl returned a week later, accompanied by her mother. Judith was very pale and lethargic, and had a number of purple marks on her neck and breasts. The GP recognised the discolorations as 'love bites' and surmised that the girl was suffering from a form of glandular fever that is quite common from ‘French kissing’. However, Judith's mother told the doctor about her daughter's screaming fits in the dead of night and the strange lucid nightmares that haunted the girl's sleep.

  Judith's accounts of her night terror resulted in her being referred to a psychiatrist named Dr Michael Dwerringwood. Judith told him that once midnight arrived, she felt a sinister cold presence invading her bedroom. Then a young man in black would appear at the foot of her bed, leering at the teenager, who was often paralysed with fear.

  ‘Who is this man?’ Dwerringwood inquired, and Judith told him that it was a foreign-looking art student from her neighbourhood named Lazzlo. Judith said that there was something attractive but eerie about him. She then went into detail about the first 'assault' in her bedroom. Judith claimed, 'I was just nodding off when I felt a cold hand stroking my breasts. I opened my eyes and the room was in darkness, but someone was on top of me in the bed, and he was kissing biting my neck, and I was so frightened I couldn't move or cry out. I closed my eyes and hoped I was just having a nightmare, but when I opened them he was still there. From the light of the lamppost shining into my bedroom I saw his face. It was Lazzlo.'

  The young man in question, Lazzlo Ordog, was a 23-year-old Hungarian art student. He was quite tall; over six-foot-four in height - and was olive skinned with black slicked-back hair and a lively pair of dark brown probing eyes.

  Dr Dwerringwood asked Judith what her relationship with her father was like, as he suspected him of being the nocturnal culprit who came into her bedroom, but it transpired that the girl's father had died several years before. The psychiatrist therefore asked if any uncles or male relatives were staying at Judith's house. The only male on the premises was Judith's 6-year-old brother Graham; a typical prepubescent boy who had no time for girls.

  Then came the bizarre twist in this intriguing case. Another girl in Judith's neighbourhood was also referred to Dwerringwood. The girl, named Zara, had just turned sixteen, and her body displayed the same cluster of love-bites on the neck and breasts. Zara also exhibited the same apathetic symptoms as Judith, and stranger still, this girl also tremblingly related how a 'ghost' got into bed with her on some nights and tried to have sex with her. Dwerringwood asked Zara to describe this ghost, and the girl's descriptions matched Judith's in every detail. The apparition was of a handsome but spooky man with black hair and penetrating eyes.

  Dwerringwood asked Zara if she had perhaps been having a nightmare, but the girl insisted she had been awake throughout the nightly ordeals which stretched back months. The psychiatrist then asked the girl if she knew of any person who resembled the man who came to attack her in her bed, and the girl said she did know of such a person. She said that she had seen a tall man who looked identical to the man who had practically raped her in the wee small hours. Zara didn't know the man's name, but she knew the street where he lived, and that was the very same street where Lazzlo Ordog was residing. The police were powerless to quiz the Hungarian on the strength of such a bizarre testimony from the teenaged girls, but Dwerringwood decided out of curiosity to break with protocol and pay a visit to Lazzlo himself.

  The landlady who ran the small boarding house admitted the psychiatrist into the hall and called down Mr Ordog to see him. The student descended the stairs silently and furtively with a half-smile, and he gave the disquieting impression that he had been expecting Dwerringwood to call. The psychiatrist introduced himself to Ordog and asked if he could speak to him in private for a few minutes. The student simply nodded and beckoned Dwerringwood to follow him up to his quarters in the attic of the old lodging house. Lazzlo was evidently using the attic digs as his studio. There were several canvases propped up on easles. All of the pictures were of female nudes, and most were incomplete, but Dwerringwood was intrigued to see two finished watercolour paintings lying side by side in the corner of the room. The subjects of these paintings were two girls who bore an uncanny resemblance to Judith and Zara.

  Dwerringwood asked the tall wiry artist who had posed for the two paintings but Lazzlo said he had painted the girls from his imagination. The psychiatrist got straight to the point and told Lazzlo how he was the bogeyman haunting the dreams of two troubled teenagers. He added that both girls had identified Lazzlo as the night visitor, and then asked him if he had any theories why the girls were dreaming of him. The Hungarian couldn't maintain eye-contact with the psychiatrist for some reason, and after shrugging to Dwerringwood's question, he busied himself with the arrangement of his tubes of paints. Then, in an irritated manner he suddenly said: 'Girls are crazy!' The psychiatrist felt very uneasy being alone with the art student, and decided to leave.

  As he reached the door, Lazzlo turned and said: 'What do you think of the girls' stories? Do you believe them?' Dwerringwood felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. He didn't turn around. Instead he left, answering, 'I don't know.'

  When the psychiatrist returned home, he found his cat dead on the doorstep. There were no signs of physical injury on the cat's body, so Dwerringwood took it to the vet, who was a friend of his. The vet could not establish why the cat had died, but the psychiatrist felt his pet's death was somehow connected to the sinister Hungarian painter.

  On the following night as Dwerringwood was watching the late news on TV, the mirror above his fireplace split in half with a loud crack. Dwerringwood could not explain the cracked mirror, and later that same night when he retired to bed, the psychiatrist distinctly caught a glimpse of a man's silhouette standing at the top of his stairs. The shadow-like figure vanished a split-second after Dwerringwood glanced at it, but it looked like Lazzlo Ordog's outline. The psychiatrist knew he had not imagined the figure, even though its transient appearance flew in the face of reason.

  Dwerringwood never told his fiancée Glynis about the strange incidents or about the mysterious Hungarian, but one night she was lying in bed with the psychiatrist when she woke up choking. She felt a pair of powerful ice-cold hands wrapped around her throat, throttling her. As soon as Glynis managed to scream out, the strangling sensation instantly ceased. She was so sure there was an attacker in the bedroom, Glynis jumped out of bed and rushed to switch on the light, but there was nobody there.

  Dwerringwood racked his brains wondering what he was up against. He was a man of scientific rationality, and he felt out of his depth tackling the menacing Lazzlo Ordog. One afternoon a bizarre thought dawned on him: what if the Hungarian was some sort of - vampire? It was a far-fetched thought to Dwerringwood, but the more he thought about the Hungarian, the less ludicrous his theory seemed. The psychiatrist obtained two copies of the Bible and bought three small crucifixes. He left one copy of the
Bible in Judith's bedroom and left the other copy in Zara's bedroom. He also gave the girls a crucifix each and told them to wear the cross when they went to bed. Dwerringwood wore the third crucifix on a chain about his neck, and when he went to bed, he turned off the lamp and settled down, ready to sleep. Then a low gruff voice seething with hate whispered in his ear: 'I'll break your neck one day.' The voice sounded as if it came from someone standing at the bedside. For as long as Judith and Zara wore the crucifixes and left the Bibles in their rooms, they enjoyed a quiet night's sleep, regained their zeal for living, and the purple contusions quickly faded from their bodies.

  Some time later, Dwerringwood went to the lodging house to see Lazzlo again. This time the psychiatrist carried a Bible and wore his crucifix, ready to confront the creepy young man, but Lazzlo had left. The landlady said he had moved out during the night without giving her a forwarding address. Dwerringwood's experiment with the Bibles and crucifixes seemed to do the job, and yet for many years afterwards, he tried to rationalize the whole vampire episode, and wondered if it had just been a case of hysteria, autosuggestion and coincidence.

  Curiously, in October 1991, there was a haunting reported in Winsford. In the very house where the teenager Judith had lived in the 1970s, a young woman awoke one dark morning at four o’clock and saw a man in black with his arms stretched out floating close to the ceiling directly above her bed. The woman was naturally terrified at the levitating phantom in black, and she hid under the covers of her bed, quaking with fear. She summoned enough courage to have another look up at the ceiling, and she saw that the black-clad figure had vanished. One wonders if the hovering entity was Lazzlo on the prowl again. According to the acupuncturists of ancient China, the health of a person depended on the life-force ch'i. If ch'i did not flow smoothly and harmoniously through the body, physical and mental sickness were said to result. Ch'i was regarded as the very essence of the soul, and was said to circulate in the body under the skin through a series of specific channels known as meridians. Recent scientific research has proved beyond a doubt that the human body is buzzing with electric fields, and furthermore, any interference with these fields can have serious repercussions in the state of a person's health. It has been proven for example, that children living in close proximity to electric pylons and electrical substations are highly likely to develop leukaemia, because strong electromagnetic fields have a detrimental effect on the human body's immune system. Perhaps this is how Lazzlo and others of his kind prey on their victims; by sapping the very essence of their life-energy, or ch'i, as the Chinese and Western acupuncturists call it. For all we know, the parasitic vampires may be at large at this very moment in our society, draining the energy of their unsuspecting victims. Would this explain the explosion in recent years of ME cases?