Coming day after day to torment his wife, the Buckinghamshire vampire terrorized the entire town for days. And he was not stopped until the bishop intervened.
Hidden among the villages and misty forests of Buckinghamshire in southeast England, a county better known for its pastoral landscapes and historic estates, lies the strange and disturbing tale of a vampire who is said to have once terrorized the area.
Unlike the renowned aristocratic bloodsuckers of Gothic fiction, this legend, whispered among locals for generations, tells of a malevolent specter rising from the grave to prey on the living.
A folklore fragment from rural England
This story is also one of the vampire tales we have from the historian William of Newburgh, who recorded many stories about monsters and ghosts from medieval England and Scotland. He is said to have received this story from Stephen de Swafeld, archdeacon of the diocese of Buckinghamshire from 1194 to 1202.
The respected Buckinghamshire man died unexpectedly in 1192 and was buried by his family and grieving widow on Ascension Day eve. He must have been a opulent man to be buried in the grave. Buckinghamshire gained much wealth under the Anglo-Saxons, which was soon taken over by William the Conqueror.
The next night the widow was awakened by something lying next to her in bed. When she opened her eyes, she saw her dead husband lying next to her, staring at her with dead eyes. They said he lay on top of her and pushed her into the bed.
It is uncertain and undefined what this actually means. Did he paralyze her like a nightmare, or did he force himself on her?
When the sun rose, the man returned to his grave. But he'll be back the next night. Some say he did the same thing a second time. But the widow was prepared for the third. She invited friends and family to look after her in case her delayed husband returned.
He crept through her window, but as he made his way to her bed, the walking dead man was attacked by her defenders, who drove him loudly into the fields where the animals were grazing. Some say he instead went to attack his brothers who lived in the same city.
For a long time, the vampire appeared in the town, attacking sleeping people and resting animals. Soon everyone in the house was up all night defending themselves against the vampire stalking them.
It was so bad that he began to appear in broad daylight, seen by immense groups of people in the streets and fields. He was often seen being followed by a pack of dogs, something the undead did in William's writings as well as other British ghost and vampire stories.
Blessing from the Bishop
The story of the undead reached the Bishop, who decided to investigate. It is also said to be Archdeacon Stephen. He wrote to Saint Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, seeking advice. They said that they should open his grave and burn it to ashes, but the archdeacon did not want to and asked if there was another way.
They decided to open his grave and exhume his body. After opening the tomb, it turned out that the body had not decomposed. The bishop wrote down an absolution and placed it on the man's chest before the tomb was resealed.
It is said that this helped, and the bishop's blessing meant that the ghost remained in the grave and never bothered anyone again. .
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The Buckinghamshire Vampire – OCCULT WORLD
William of Newburgh: Medieval vampire hunter? | Our antique history
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