by Tom Slemen
Curiosity seekers from all over southern Hampshire converged on Bere Forest, hoping to get a glimpse of the so-called vampire, and some were not disappointed. A Bailiff from Winchester named Knapp, and a local physician named Benwell, encountered the vampire during a vigil on the south-western fringes of Bere Forest at two in the morning. They had been sitting around a fire, discussing the nature of the supposed bloodsucker, and speculating on the reasons Savage had returned as a vampire. Some believed he had led a debauched life, but those who had known Jack Savage in life believed that because he had been a reclusive outcast of the community in life, he had returned as an outcast from the realm of death. As Knapp and Benwell talked on this subject into the night, they were startled to see the very subject of their conversation emerge from the cover of Bere Forest and stand less than two hundred feet away, gazing at the fire for a minute or so. Knapp cocked his flintlock and Benwell dipped a dry branch into the fire to use as a torch, intending to confront the freakish-looking creature. As soon as the two men got to their feet, the vampire dashed silently back into the forest. Knapp was not at all keen at Benwell’s idea to follow the creature to its lair, and the bailiff eventually persuaded the doctor to give up the pursuit of the vampire. On the following evening, shortly after sunset, a little blind girl of seven years of age named Jane Hutton heard someone come into her bedroom. She asked who was there and received no reply. A coarse hand stroked her face and patted her head, and the breath and body odour of the silent stranger reeked of rancid meat. Jane started to whimper, and when her grandmother came into her little room under the eaves of the thatched cottage, she found the window open. The rotten stench of the mysterious intruder still hung in the air, and the grandmother, remembering the strange tales of the vampire of Bere Forest, closed the window, and took little Jane from her own room and placed her safely between her parents in their bed.
The vampire expert Jonathan - who the gypsies had mentioned to the soldiers guarding the farmer’s land – was sought and consulted. He is described as a man of around fifty years of age, of middle height, with long sandy-grey hair, lantern-jawed, and an excellent swordsman. A traveller from Southampton named Keel described the vampire specialist as a man of military bearing who had served in the Anglo-Turkish War, despite his relatively advanced age. Jonathan would provide no details of his background beyond documented proof that he was born in Northumberland in 1760. A few paranoid locals believed he was a French spy, but most recognised that the man was an honest authority on the Occult, and vampires in particular. The local people around Bere Forest offered a small reward to Jonathan in return for laying the vampire of Jack Savage to rest, but he declined the prize money and reassured the frightened people of the region that he would destroy the fiend. Around this time, the young gypsy girl that Savage had attacked made a complete recovery thanks to a herbal medicine formulated by the intriguing and brave vampire hunter. Many men and women of all ages volunteered to be of assistance to the vampire-killer, but he refused all help and instructed everyone to stay indoors on the designated night when he would hunt down the parasitic fiend and eradicate it so not a trace of the creature remained. Jonathan made an inspection of Jack Savage’s grave by daylight and found the coffin empty, which meant that he had a lair. By some supernatural means which may have involved dowsing, the vampire hunter traced his sinister quarry to an ancient hollow tree where the unholy leech could be heard faintly snoring. Jonathan hammered an iron spike through the trunk so it emerged on the other side of the bark, and the vampire let out a bloodcurdling high-pitched scream, because the spike had pierced its heart. The huntsman of the undead then tore a canopy of intertwined leaves from the side of the trunk where the creature entered and left its arboreal sanctuary, and the sunlight shone onto the right side of the writhing vampire, vaporising the flesh from half of its face and its right hand. The left eye of the vampire had been shot out by one of the soldiers guarding the farmstead some time before, and the remaining eye turned red and began to bleed because of exposure to ultraviolet light from what the creature regarded as the accursed sun. The vampire hunter then hurled a bucket of highly-inflammable liquid which was said to be “Greek Fire” onto the trapped and impaled creature. Greek Fire, once a closely-guarded secret of the chemists of Constantinople, cannot be extinguished with water, which instead serves to intensify the flames, and so when it began to rain, the fire flared up and not only burnt the vampire to ash, it also consumed the dead hollow tree containing the creature. By dawn, the local people saw nothing but charred bones among the smoking embers of the tree, and these skeletal remains of the vampire were systematically destroyed in a blacksmith’s fire until they were turned to powder. The vampire of Jack Savage never prowled southern Hampshire again and Jonathan, the mystifying vampire hunter later left the area with a convoy of gypsy caravans and was heard from no more.
Mr Sphinx
One stormy evening at Woolton Hall - a beautiful Grade II listed stately home in Lancashire - in 2003, I gave an illustrated talk on the subject of the supernatural, which included several tales about local vampires. After the talk, Susan, a distinguished-looking woman of eighty, approached me and told me how much she had enjoyed the stories and slide show pictures. She then related an intriguing story of her own that was as good, if not better, than any of the tales I'd been telling to people that evening. This is the account she gave. Susan was born in Northumberland in 1923, and her mother, a teacher of English and Latin, brought Susan to Liverpool in 1933. Susan's father had deserted her mother just before the girl's birth. In the leafy lanes of suburban Aigburth, ten-year-old Susan and her mother settled into a beautiful house on Waverley Road. However, the rent for the fine residence was barely covered by the money Susan's mother brought in from her job as a private tutor.
In the autumn of 1933, a tall, smartly-dressed stranger with coal-black hair and penetrating green eyes called at the house, and told Susan's mother, in a foreign accent, that he would like to learn how to speak English. The man's name, Raymond Sphinx, struck Susan as being rather odd to say the least. Susan's mother explained that many foreigners choose their own names to replace their real, exotic-sounding surnames, in order to blend in to the country they are living in. Mr Sphinx was quite handsome, and as Susan related this tale, she recalled.how her mother seemed totally mesmerised by the debonair foreigner, who seemed to be about thirty-five years of age. He was so courteous and sophisticated, and must have been an excellent student, as he was soon speaking with a fine, mellifluous English accent.
Children are very perceptive and discerning when it comes to seeing through the pretensions of adults, and young Susan thought there was something decidedly uncanny about Mr Sphinx. He seemed to appear out of nowhere whenever he visited for his lessons, and throughout the early summer of 1934, Susan watched him walk out on to a veranda - and when she followed, he had vanished. When she mentioned this to her mother, she was accused of having an overactive imagination.
Some time later though, Susan's mother said she too had seen Raymond walk on to the veranda and then seemingly disappear into thin air. She even mentioned the incident to him on the following day, but he just smiled his enigmatic smile and said that he had slipped past her but she hadn't noticed him. Susan's mother said nothing, but knew that simply had not been the case at all.
Mr Sphinx continued to come to the house, long after he needed to, as he now spoke English as perfectly as Susan's mother. Then it slowly dawned on Susan that her mother was romantically involved with the foreigner, and on many nights she would listen to him as he sat at the piano in the drawing room, bringing forth soul-stirring concertos of Mozart and Beethoven. Some of the other, unknown melodies sounded mysterious and romantic, and they brought tears to the eyes of Susan's mother.
The multi-talented Mr Sphinx was also an amazing storyteller, and on winter evenings he would sit before a blazing coal fire with Susan by his side and tell her tales of kings, queens, and ordinary people of long ago. He would al
so describe the daring missions. quests and crusades of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and a saga about two young lovers on opposing sides during the Wars of the Roses. Raymond told these stories with such skill, that his listeners almost believed they were actually there, in the midst of the romance, danger and intrigue.
Susan's mother's liking for Mr Sphinx must have waned, because she became involved with another man in 1936, and Raymond decided to leave but, before he went, he produced a single blood-red rose, backed with maidenhair fern and gave it to thirteen-year-old Susan, who was heart-broken at the idea of him leaving her life. Raymond whispered the word 'Zuzana' - an old Slavic word for the rose -and said that he would return one day when she was older, and declared that his love for her was undying. He said that the rose he had given her would never die, just like the affection he felt for her. With a tear in his eye, he said, "Remember me," then left, and Susan began to sob. She begged her mother to leave her lover and to resume her relationship with Raymond, but to no avail.
The rose which Mr Sphinx had given to Susan refused to wilt, and she kept it in a special box. World War Two came and went, and still the red rose and maidenhair fern looked as fresh as the day he had given them to her.
In 1948, at the age of twenty-five, Susan married a thirty-one-year-old man named Ralph, and moved with him just around the corner from her mother, to live over the grocery shop he owned. Susan's mother was ill at this time, and her condition was exacerbated by the anger she felt towards Susan for "marrying beneath herself" as she put it, and the heartbreak she was enduring because her lover had deserted her for a much younger woman.
Weeks later, Susan's mother died from pulmonary complications, and only Susan, Ralph and a doctor were at her bedside. About a fortnight after the funeral, Susan went to the cemetery alone to place flowers on her mother's grave, and during the visit she had an encounter that initially shocked her. A tall man dressed in black was already standing at the foot of her mother's grave. He turned as Susan approached. It was Raymond Sphinx, and he looked as if he hadn't aged a day since she last saw him in 1936, twelve years ago. He stood there with a faint smile on his lips; his arms outstretched to embrace Susan. He hugged and kissed her, and offered his deepest condolences. He assured her that her mother had merely shed her physical body, and that her soul had gone on to another plane of existence, where every person ends up when earthly life ceases.
Susan felt an intense physical and romantic attraction to Raymond, and she asked him to accompany her to her late mother's home on Waverley Road. At the house where Raymond had first met Susan as a child, she showed him the box containing the undying rose. Raymond embraced Susan and kissed her passionately. Not long afterwards they were making love, and throughout the act, Susan felt all her energy steadily draining away.
When the couple had finished making love, Susan felt numb and empty, and so listless, she could hardly make the effort to draw breath. A strange thought crossed her lethargic mind: had Raymond somehow siphoned off the very essence of her life force? Her lover leaned on his elbow beside her, and scanned her face, then put his palm on her forehead. Susan felt a distinct sensation of something in flux passing between his hand and her mind. Energy flowed down her spine and a strange cold tingling sensation coursed down her arms and legs.
After a while, Raymond removed his palm and then kissed Susan's cheek. She raised herself up and asked him what had just happened. She was more fascinatec than afraid. She had never experienced such intense electric pleasures when her husband had made love to her. What Raymond told her shocked her to her core. Sphinx explained that he was a "type of vampire". He was nothing like the Dracula character of the Bram Stoker novel. He didn't suck blood, but he did "feed" off the life force of people - 'prana'.
Susan found herself putting on her dress without bothering to put on her I underwear first. She trembled as Raymond sat at end of the bed with his head bowed and knew that he wasn't mentally unbalanced. She also knew he wasn't just trying to frighten her - he was telling the truth - she could tell by that look of sincerity in his green eyes.
"Please don't go, Susan," he said meekly.
The everlasting rose flashed into her mind. Of course! - now it all made sense. All those tales of long ago that Raymond had told around the fireside when she was a child. No wonder he had been able to make them sound so realistic - he must have been walking the earth for hundreds of years! Was he some kind of devil?
Susan didn't stop to look back as she hurried out of the bedroom in a panic, clutching her shoes. She walked barefooted down the road and only put the shoes on once she had turned the corner, from where she walked in shock back to her home above the greengrocer's. Ralph didn't even notice that her hair was in disarray, her lipstick smudged and her clothes dishevelled. Susan didn't return to her former home on Waverley Road until the next day, and when she did, she made sure that a friend went with her. She need not have worried - Raymond had gone.
In 1977, at the age of fifty-four, Susan was out shopping in Liverpool city centre when, just as she was leaving Binn's department store, she came face to face with Raymond. He still looked around thirty-five, with not a single wrinkle on his handsome face, or grey hair on his head. His green eyes sparkled as keenly as ever. He didn't recognise her at first, and he walked on past - but then he hesitated, and turned around. Not a word was spoken for a frozen moment in time. Then, as if he hadn't seen Susan for just a few days, he asked her how she was, and reached out for her hand - but Susan pulled away. He then suggested going to a nearby cafe, but Susan resolutely shook her head. Raymond seemed to sense that she was worried over something, and asked if her husband was well. Susan didn't answer. Instead, she turned and walked away, as Raymond shouted her name three times. She resolutely ignored him and walked away towards the safety of the crowds milling in and out of Woolworths.