The Vampire of Crogland Grange is one of the most famous of all our stories about ghosts

and witches and hauntings, and so one might reasonably expect that the story has some

pretty hard to explain elements in it, or at least some good solid evidence.

But when we shine the light of critical thinking and sober research onto it, we find not

a vampire, but a rich lesson in how to best approach any extraordinary idea. The Vampire

of Crogland Grange is up next on Skeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid, I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com. The Vampire of Crogland

Grange.

By now, in the annals of Skeptoid, I feel compelled to point out why we do what we do here,

why we bother to take a skeptical look at an old vampire story. Now there's nothing

interesting or surprising in doing documentary research that finds a lack of evidence that

an actual vampire was running around biting people, and thus little to learn from such

an exercise, or even to be much entertained by it.

But the value comes into clearer focus when put into the context of popular phenomena

today that we're all exposed to on a daily basis, that have no more plausibility, and yet

are commonly believed. The same lazy thought processes that lead people to embrace harmful

modern pseudosciences are the same that drove belief in vampires in centuries past.

And thus we now find ourselves enriched with a justification for spending our valuable

time examining an old mystery of a nighttime attack by a blood-sucking, undead-being, long

ago. It really is a much more fun way to sharpen our skills at navigating our modern world.

And so we return to the year of our Lord 1874 to the village of Crogland in what is today

Cumbria County in the northwest of England. Three siblings, assistant to brothers, vacationed

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