tunnelofhorror

[tunnelofhorror]

Bibliography for my work :)

The vampire of Highgate cemetery

Bess LoveJoy, “The bizarre 1970 Vampire panic of Highgate Cemetery”, Mental Floss, November 2015, https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/71535/bizarre-1970-vampire-panic-highgate-cemetery

“Highgate Vampire”, Vampedia, accessed January 10 2022, https://vampires.fandom.com/wiki/Highgate_Vampire

Katie Serena, “These supernatural lines supposedly connect the Universe through monuments and landforms”, ati, March 14 2018, https://allthatsinteresting.com/ley-lines

Lucy Skoulding, “The terrifying story of the Highgate vampire hunt where 100 people stormed the cemetery to find the 'vampires' lurking in the graves”, MyLondon, August 30 2020, https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/terrifying-story-highgate-vampire-hunt-18851350

Clinton Road

Asbury Park Press, “Weird NJ: A dark ride on N.J’s scariest road”, app., October 15 2015, https://eu.app.com/story/news/local/new-jersey/weird-nj/2015/10/25/weird-nj-dark-ride-njs-scariest-road/74542390/

“Clinton Road: The most haunted street in America”, Roadtrippers, accessed January 10 2022, https://maps.roadtrippers.com/trips/15740010

“Clinton Road in NJ is said to be the scariest road in America”, dangerous roads, accessed January 10 2022, https://www.dangerousroads.org/north-america/usa/4371-clinton-roadusa.html

“Road of ghosts “Clinton Road”, Haunted Kingdom, accessed January 16 2022, https://hauntedkingdom.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/road-of-ghosts-clinton-road/

[tunnelofhorror]

The tales of Clinton Road

These are the tales of Clinton Road, a place that holds many dark stories and legends.

This seemingly never-ending strip of concrete is classed as one of America's most cursed highways, laying in West Milford, New Jersey. It appears to be around ten miles long, but what haunts it, lasts forever. The local police describe the road as ‘a long, desolate stretch and it makes the imagination go nuts.’

The first tale is The Ghost boy of Clinton Road. This is the most popular and well-known story of Clinton Road. This mystery ghost boy allegedly haunts the bridge, at midnight, next to a place called ‘Dead Man's Curse’. Several stories are going around about how this boy died. He fell off the bridge, where most disturbances happen, into the river and drowned. Or he fell into the river when an oncoming car was speeding down the road towards him, and drowned. The legend goes, if you sit on the bridge and throw a coin into the river, you can summon the ghost boy. While sitting watching the water run by, with an odd penny in your pocket, you can either summon a ghost or make a wish, your choice. The boy will then toss the coin back to you or leave it the same spot the next day. Some claim that while being on the bridge, if one stood too close to the edge, the little ghost boy would push them back, almost to stop them from potentially falling into the running water beneath. Other's say that while they are staring into the river, they can see the ghost of the bridge, staring back at them, in the water's reflection.

This is not the only ghost that haunts this lengthy road, drivers have said that while driving along they have seen vanishing cars, floating headlights of cars rushing towards them in the distance. They call them 'phantom cars'. Are these victims of the road, haunting where their lives came to an end? For one girl it was. This is the story of The girl in the Camero. In 1988, a young woman was driving down Clinton road and crashed, dying on scene. The legend goes, if you mention the incident while driving down this potentially cursed road, bad things may happen to the speaker.

Some people have stated that Clinton Road is known to home some odd creatures, some you only hear in fantasy stories. Apparently wolves, hellhounds, skinwalkers and a dog that floats, roam the surrounding woods.. So it is really not a road you want to break down on. These creatures supposedly live in this area due to the amount of dark magic that occurs there. Leading onto the next topic.

Haunted Cross castle is placed near the road, somewhere in the woods. In 1905 a man named Richard Cross built the castle and the estate. Cross died in 1917. His remaining family sold the property in 1919 and moved on with their lives. Some years later a random fire was started at the large home, at this time no one lived there, leaving only a broken home and memories. After this incident, the ruins became a shelter to Satanists and Ku Klux Klan gangs. When Cross castle was first built, the surrounding woodland area was known to be home to witches and bad spirits. In 1988, the entire building was demolished. However years on, many wanderers of the area, where once a beautiful castle stood, have said that they have heard manic laughter from the depths of the woods and chanting. Some explorers found animal sacrifices and had random seizures while walking around this part of the world. Others have also witnessed KKK meetings. You certainly do not want to get lost in those woods.

Within the woods, these woods really do hold a lot of tales and secrets, lies an eighteenth-century furnace, nicknamed The Druidic temple. Word of mouth states that Druids (members of ancient Celtic cultures) would regularly gather at this furnace. It is said that horrible things happen to people who go to the furnace of Clinton Road. In recent years the furnace has been fenced off to prevent people from entering the decaying building,

Clinton Road is not just home to myths and tales, a real crime occurred here in 1983- the Iceman dumping ground. A cyclist found vultures picking at a human corpse somewhere in the woods off Clinton Road. When reported, it was found that the deceased man had died due to foul play. Ice crystals were found in the man's veins, showing he had died several days before he was found. But the killer had frozen his body, to make the death appear recent. The frozen man was called David Deppner, a business associate of a well-known mob. Three years later, the killer was found, named Iceman Kulinski, a mobster.

This is it for Clinton Road. A lot seems to go on here, so try not to break down on the road, or sit on the bridge, or wander the woods, or... well best to take a different road I think.

[tunnelofhorror]

The vampire of Highgate cemetery

Highgate cemetery was created in 1839, located in North London. It holds over fifty thousand lost souls, graves I mean. A fun fact, one of the tombs belongs to Karl Marx, the guy who thought up Marxism. It also, allegedly, houses a vampire. These rumours began circulating the town, in the sixties, which was around the time some of the graves and tombs began to wither away. Maybe stirring what lays beneath? Witches are also said to meet there and perform rituals, back in the day. 

The first sighting of this bloodsucker was in 1963. Two girls spotted something lurking in the shadows while walking through the graveyard to go home. This wouldn't be my first choice of a shortcut home. They saw a body rise from one of the tombs. Was it a vampire or had they just been high on some sort of substance? They described the figured as being seven-foot-tall, wearing a long black coat and a black top hat. 

Two weeks after this first, publicly known sighting, a couple saw a deathly face staring at them from the darkness near the iron gates. They said they felt compelled to continue staring at the face for several minutes. Damon Salvatore maybe? After the word got out about an unknown, horrific-looking thing haunting Highgate cemetery, many more witnesses came forward. People said they had seen shadowy and spectral figures, like a ghost, that would move between gravestones. Maybe it's the vampire, looking at the graves of his once friends, that had passed away many years ago. The newspaper began witting about these stories, warning the whole of North London that something was creeping around Highgate. Investigators visited this graveyard and came across lots of animal carcasses dotted around the area, drained of blood. Stefan Salvatore? That's another Vampire Diaries reference if you hadn’t clocked on already. 

Eight years after word got out about strange going-on occurring at Highgate, things began to turn physical. In 1971, a young girl was attacked by some sort of figure on Swain Lane- this is positioned next to Highgate cemetery. She was walking down the road in the early hours of the morning, heading home, when a tall, black figure with a deathly face, approached her. It appeared out of the icy morning fog and hit her. A motorist, driving down this lane, came to her assistance and scared the attacker away, back into the gloom. The young lady went to the police after this attack, she suffered from abrasions to her arms and legs. The police searched the area and noticed that twelve-foot walls surrounded it. This means that the attacker would have to climb over this high wall to run away but this is near impossible for a human to jump over, without assistance. 

In another story, a man claims that he was hypnotised by something in the cemetery while he was visiting, during the night. Why was he hanging around the dead in the pitch black? He said he became disorientated and lost his way, while there. He felt like something was behind him, watching his every move from the bushes that surrounded this burial ground. When he looked over his shoulder to see what was following him, he said he was hypnotised by a black figure. He couldn't run, he was too scared, he was almost paralysed on spot. 

Is this a local weirdo that stalks people at the cemetery, a ghost of someone buried there or is it a vampire that calls Highgate cemetery its home? Many locals believed that it was a vampire that was following, attacking and paralysing these people and that it lived in one of the tombs. A popular theory was, this vampire hung around this part of town because it is built on a ley line. Ley lines are lines, usually straight ones, that join two features in a landscape, which are thought to have been a prehistoric pathway or to have some sort of magical significance. David Farrant suggested in his book that this cemetery has power lines that create psychic energies, allowing vampires to manifest there. He also believed that the hub of power in the graveyard is at a large circle of tombs called The Circle of Lebanon and it crosses through two nearby pubs- The Flask and Ye Old Gatehouse. If you're near, visit one of the pubs and see if you feel anything magical or supernatural there. 

Highgate cemetery is prone to supernatural events. One story was that a man vanished one day, without a trace, while walking his dog through the gravesite. He had witnessed a figure before disappearing. In another story, a man had returned to his parked car, after visiting the graveyard and found a freshly dug up corpse, lying beside his car. That's a lovely surprise. Some say that an elderly woman is seen running frantically around the cemetery, looking for her children who she had murdered. Maybe she is a ghost that is trapped in a loop as punishment for what she did when she was living. Adding onto this list of spooky stories while you're strolling around this cemetery, you sometimes come across a man who simply stares into the ground but disappears as you approach him. Lastly, something with laminating eyes has been seen running in and out of the graves. 

These are the stories of Highgate cemetery, where the dead lay to the rest. However, it appears that not all of the dead are resting. So are these creatures real, is it just an old ‘Wives tale’ or is it a figment of one’s imagination?