Staked with a spade and burned at the margins of the village (cross roads maybe?), the curse was lifted, the plague ended and everyone lived happily ever after….

Upon striking the putrescent body with a spade, blood gushed out, seeming to prove that the rogue rotter had been feasting on the blood of the living. Then on Palm Sunday, the priest, seized with a Van Helsing-like zeal, enrolled a pitchfork wielding mob (every village should have one) and successfully uncovered the lair of the unruly cadaver. The villagers barricaded themselves in to their homes once night fell. The energetic corpse took to paying less than welcome house calls, bringing sickness and plague in his wake. In de Newburgh’s version the vampire is demoted, and the lord of the estate becomes instead a mere retainer of the lord (perhaps de Newburgh did not want to annoy the powerful de Vescy family who owned Alnwick at that time) the creature is seen prowling the estate Post Mortem looking for trouble. William de Newburgh elaborated on the tale and added a few more vampire-like attributes. His reign of terror was finally stopped when the locals, no doubt wielding pitchforks, dug him up and burned his festering corpse. “It would not be easy to believe that the corpses of the dead should sally (I know not by what agency) from their graves, and should wander about to the terror or destruction of the living, and again return to the tomb, which of its own accord spontaneously opened to receive them, did not frequent examples, occurring in our own times, suffice to establish this fact, to the truth of which there is abundant testimony” ĭespite de Newburgh’s implication that he used apparently reliable testimony there is little evidence of the Alnwick vampire other than local legends.Īn early version of the tale says that the creature was the revenant of ‘the Lord of the Estate’ who lived underground and only came out to wreak mayhem and violence on the local peasantry. Introducing the subject of revenants and vampire-like creatures, he manages to sound both archly aloof to the whole idea, whilst simultaneously seeming to claim that the eye-witness evidence supported the veracity of such claims. Nevertheless, de Newburgh was adept at adding a bit of local colour and even a supernatural twist to spice up his narrative. He was quite proud of his research, and not above a little professional bitchiness -particularly about the work of fellow medieval historian – Geoffrey of Monmouth, dreadful fellow(!). Newburgh wrote his Historia rerum Anglicarum in the late twelfth century primarily as a work of ‘serious’ history.

The strange tale of the hunchback vampire that stalked the grounds of the castle bringing terror and disease in its wake, was most famously recorded by a medieval chronicler named William de Newburgh. William of Newburgh – author of the first vampire diaries?

Vampire dark ages road of sin torrent