The true story behind the Gorbals Vampire a monster from Glasgow folklore

In September of 1954, the schoolchildren of Glasgow swarmed the Southern Necropolis in search of the ‘Gorbals Vampire’. Rumour at the time had it that Glasgow was home to a terrifying monster that loomed over the city’s schoolchildren at seven feet tall, flashing its nasty iron teeth at anyone unlucky enough to meet him.

Despite attempts from parents, police and teachers to quell the hysteria around the Gorbals Vampire, the story continued to make its way around the rumour mill, with some even claiming that two young boys had been murdered and drained of their blood in Glasgow.

But rather than cowering inside tenement closes as you might expect, hundreds of kids across the Gorbals got together armed with sticks, crosses, stakes, and accompanied by dogs to hunt the scary creature lurking in Glasgow.

As night fell, kids began to pour into the graveyard, traversing a thick fog to check under benches and behind headstones. If no adult would believe them, then the children would take on the vampire themselves.

The Southern Necropolis is a massive cemetery which opened in 1840 to provide an affordable and respectable place of burial for the people of the Gorbals and the surrounding areas. More than 250,000 individuals have been buried within the grounds.

The atmosphere was certainly spooky, with the steelworks at the back of the Southern Necropolis casting a dark plume of smoke that blocked out any moonlight. Flames from the towers at the works licked at the garden graveyard, casting dark shadows over graves and casting faint flickers of light in what was already a haunting evening.

The mist shrouded the schoolchildren as they searched, leading to many false alarms as the kids ran to and from figures emerging from the dense fog. Eventually that first night’s hunt came to a close in typical Glasgow fashion when the rain came on - pushing the young ones back into their homes.

Not to be deterred, the kids came back the night after that, and the night after that as well. As no sightings were confirmed by reputable sources - kids began to drop off of the hunt - although the belief that the vampire of Gorbals was still out there continued to instil a certain amount of fear in school populations.

The story was picked up by the national press. The children vigilantes’ campaign even reached parliament, where it was raised by Alice Cullen, Labour MP for the Gorbals, during a debate on the 1955 Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act being passed - an act which still stands today. The Act specifically banned the sale to minors of publications portraying 'incidents of a repulsive or horrible nature'.

Who was the Gorbals Vampire?

There was never any evidence of a Gorbals Vampire existing - apart from the testimony of schoolchildren who describe barely escaping his grasp. Similarly, there were never two young boys found half-eaten by a Glaswegian vampire in the early 1950s.

Several theories have been posited as to what drove the moral panic around the Gorbals Vampire - at the time there was an American comic book called ‘The Vampire with the Iron Teeth’ which is a likely culprit.

Another passage from the Bible, Daniel 7:7 reads:“Behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth” - which would have been taught in schools.

The children may also have been inspired by ‘Jenny wi’ the Iron Teeth’, an old woman said to haunt Glasgow Green in the early 19th century.