What happened
The story was published by the writer Augustus Hare in the fourth volume of his autobiography “The Story of My Life” (1900), in a journal entry dated 1874. According to Hare, the house of Croglin Grange in Cumberland was let to two brothers and their sister (Hare does not name them – the name Cranswell appears only in later retellings). On a hot summer night (Hare gives no year; the often-repeated 1875–1876 is impossible, since he wrote the tale down in 1874) the sister saw a strange figure with a brown face and flaming eyes outside her window. With a long fingernail the creature picked out the lead around a pane, put its hand through, opened the window, then seized the woman by the hair and bit her throat. Her brothers came running at her scream, but the attacker was gone. After a trip to Switzerland the family was visited again; one of the brothers shot the creature in the leg and tracked it to a vault in the nearby churchyard. The next day they found in an opened coffin a mummified body with a fresh bullet wound – and burned it.
Witnesses
According to Hare – the siblings who rented the house (the name Cranswell was added in later retellings); Hare said he heard the story from Captain Fisher, whose family owned the house.
Explanations and hypotheses
There are no independent sources confirming the events. The writer Charles G. Harper, who visited the area in 1924, found no house called Croglin Grange – only Croglin High Hall and Croglin Low Hall, and there had been no chapel near the latter for a long time. Montague Summers pointed out the striking similarity between the tale and the first chapter of the novel “Varney the Vampire” (1845) and dismissed it as folklore. Most researchers regard it as a literary legend.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
More: Wikipedia (en)