Vampires of Great Britain by Tom Slemen

Author:Tom Slemen [Slemen, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B004ULYMOU
Published: 2011-03-30T04:00:00+00:00

Vampires of the Road

The lone night-driver knows only two well how the roads and highways seem so deceptive and different during the hours of darkness. The motorist’s mind after dark becomes more susceptible to fatigue – and imagination; our worst enemy at night. Some drivers combat this fear by turning on the car radio or CD. The passing landscapes of the roads, bathed in the light of the sodium roadside lamps, become quite eerie. The shadow of a gnarled oak may be perceived as the outline of something supernatural, but sometimes it isn’t all in the mind, for there are paranormal entities that haunt roadside Britain, and a few of these may be vampires.

Union Street, in Bedford, runs close to the town’s category B prison, and at the point where this street meets Tavistock Street and Clapham Road, you will find a roundabout now exists. Beneath this roundabout lies a staked corpse: the mortal remains of a vampiric highwayman nicknamed Black Tom, who was hanged for highway robbery in 1607. Strange rumours surrounded this bandit, who earned his nickname because of his swarthy, almost yellowish-green skin and coal-black hair. Some said he was a vampire, while others believed he had sold his soul to the Devil. The authorities were warned by the superstitious people of Bedford that Black would rise from his grave if he wasn’t staked, and so, after his body was removed to the gallows, and before a huge mob, a man approached with a large hammer and a sharpened wooden stake, four inches in diameter and almost two feet in length. He tore open the dead man’s shirt, exposing his breast, then pushed the point of the stake into the corpse’s breastbone. A volunteer held the stake in place, and the man brought down the hammer hard seven times. Blood issued from the mouth, nose, and anus of the corpse, and wind thus expelled from the stomach and intestines showered several onlookers with blood and mucous. The corpse started to shudder with post-death nerves, and it was then turned over so Black Tom faced Hell when he was lowered into his deep grave. People spat down the hole as the gravediggers tried to fill it, and that should have been the end of the demonic highwayman, but it was only the beginning. He outlived everyone who had stood at his graveside, for somehow, the highwayman who had been rumoured to thirst for blood, emerged from his grave, and was seen by many of the terrified people of the town, dressed in a long black cape with his head lolling about as he walked – probably because the hangman’s noose had broken his neck. One evening in 1608 the vampire is said to have jumped onto the back of a horse being ridden across a common by a well-to-do lady named Susanna Higgins, who was subjected to a violent attack by Black Tom. Her breasts, neck and thighs were bitten deeply, and Miss Higgins was saved by a passing gentleman named John Gibbons, who was passing in a stagecoach at the time of the assault.

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