How Welsh vampires are not like Bram Stoker’s

Glamorgan Star news 07/05/2022

3 minutes read

It seems that Welsh vampire tales may not be as stylish as the Anne Rice version.

By Graham Loveluck-Edwards.

I realise that the ‘Glamorgan Vampires’ sounds like it might be an ice hockey team, but on this occasion, it is the fruit of some recent researching into Glamorgan folklore for a new book.

I have come across a series of articles which amount to Vampire stories set in south Wales during the 18th Century. They are quite unique compared to similar stories from elsewhere at that time and there is a very definite theme to them.

When you think of more famous vampire stories like ‘Count Dracula’ and ‘Nosferatu’, the story is very much about a visible phenomenon. A character with a personality, with a back story and a physical presence. In the Welsh tradition, vampires are not seen, and little is known about who they are (or were). They are also, generally connected to an inanimate object such as an item of furniture, rather than able to wander wherever they like under the cover of darkness. They also do not appear to be put off by crosses and religious paraphernalia.

The following account is fairly typical of the genre and was first published by Marie Trevelyan in 1909.

A large, old farmhouse, on the edge of the Brecon Beacons was taken over by new tenants. They discovered that some old furniture belonging to the previous occupants still filled many of the rooms. This was not really a problem to them as they did not generally use these rooms. But they were dusted down, and a fire lit in the hearth when a pious minister was due to stay as a weekend guest. He was going to be preaching at the local chapel that Sunday.

He arrived on the Friday night quite exhausted from his journey and retired to his chamber early where he sat in an armchair by the window and read from his bible before falling asleep. Through the night he was tormented by bad dreams and when he woke, he spotted that a wound on the back of his hand was bleeding. He wrapped it with a handkerchief and commented to the lady of the house over breakfast that there may be a couple of nails in the armchair that need attention and he showed her his wounds.

She was quite shocked, as a previous visitor who had stayed in that room had complained of the same thing, so she had already had the armchair overhauled by an upholsterer. She went to the room and checked the chair over herself but could find nothing that could have caused the wounds.

The following evening the minister once again fell asleep in the armchair after spending some hours reading his bible. He was awoken by a feeling which he described “as if being gnawed at by a dog”. He had a pain which ran down the whole left-hand side of his body and he felt so weak that he struggled to get to his feet and strike a light. When he finally did, he lifted his shirt to see wounds across his rib cage like those he had seen on the back of his hand. All of them oozing with blood.

On Sunday morning as the congregation were leaving chapel, the minister was introduced to the landlady who owned the farmhouse. He said to her: “Madam, you may or may not know it, but I believe a vampire frequents your house. The dead man who owned the furniture comes to suck the blood from intruders and is probably not pleasantly disposed towards ministers of the Gospels.”

To which she replied: “It has happened to two ministers before you”.

An exorcism was said and when the minister departed the house, he declared that the malignant spirit had been put to rest. But in 1850, a dignitary of the Church of England stayed at the house and reported the same unpleasant experience and could show similar wounds on his left hand, arm, and leg.

I’m no expert on these matters, but surely, just get rid of the chair?

Graham Loveluck-Edwards is an historian and author of ‘Legends & Folklore of Bridgend and the Vale’ and ‘Historic pubs of Wales’. View his videos on local history by visiting his new YouTube channel at youtube.com/user/GrahamLoveluck

🌟 This article first appeared in the printed edition of the Glamorgan Star on 05.5.22.