Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Glasgow's Vampire Hunting Kids

One dismal night in 1954, hundreds of Scottish school children--armed with wooden stakes and other weapons--swarmed Glasgow's Southern Necropolis cemetery to slay a vampire. The creature dubbed the 'Gorbals Vampire,' was a 7-foot tall, fearsome apparition with iron teeth. According to rumors circulating among the students, the vampire was responsible for devouring two small boys. The local constabulary was wholly unprepared for the mass of tiny vampire hunters darting about the cemetery's many Gothic Revival tombs as the Hadean fires of a nearby foundry illuminated the cemetery in hellish hues. Policemen such as PC Alex Deeprose were unable to persuade the kids to leave the cemetery. Eventually, it was the chilling rain that dissuaded them from their hunt. Still, they would return for the next two nights before eventually giving up. Or maybe they got their man. In the aftermath of these events, concerned parents, concerned citizens, and local churches began to look for someone to blame in all this. They settled on the Americans and their horror films and comics that were washing up on the shores of Great Britain like so much detritus. Much of this stemmed from the fact that a popular horror comic of the time was titled "The Vampire with the Iron Teeth," completely ignoring that their own cherished Bible contained reference in the Book of Daniel to a dreadful, terrible beast with iron teeth. There was also a legend from the 19th century about an old woman with iron teeth that stalked a local park known as Glasgow Green. So, did the children really let their imaginations run away with them? Or is there something more sinister lurking about the crumbling old tombs of this ancient Scottish city?

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