Richmond Vampire

William Wortham Pool's grave in Hollywood Cemetery

The Richmond Vampire (also called locally the Hollywood Vampire) is a recent urban legend from Richmond, Virginia.

Local residents claim that the mausoleum of W. W. Pool (dated 1913) in Hollywood Cemetery holds the remains of a vampire. Oral legends to this effect were circulating by the 1960s. They may be influenced by the architecture of the tomb, which has both Masonic and ancient Egyptian elements. Because this cemetery is adjacent to Virginia Commonwealth University, the story became popular among students, especially from the 1980s onward.[1] It was first mentioned in print in the student newspaper Commonwealth Times in 1976.[2]

In the past few years, the vampire story has been combined with the collapse of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad's Church Hill Tunnel under Church Hill, a neighborhood of eastern Richmond, Virginia, which buried several workers alive on October 2, 1925. This part of the story was first reported in print in 2007 in Haunted Richmond: The Shadows of Shockoe.[3]

According to this newer story, the tunneling awakened an ancient evil that lived under Church Hill. This brought the tunnel down on the workers. Rescue teams found no bodies of the missing workers, but they spotted an unearthly blood-covered creature with jagged teeth and skin hanging from its muscular body emerge from the cave-in and race toward the James River. Pursued by a group of men, the creature took refuge in Hollywood Cemetery, where it disappeared in a mausoleum built into a hillside bearing the name W. W. Pool.[4]

Gregory Maitland, founder of Night Shift, a Richmond-based group that researched urban legends and oral traditions, and the Virginia urban legend and folklore expert of the Virginia Ghosts & Haunting Research Society (VGHRS), became interested in the Richmond Vampire story. His study of the disaster confirmed that after the tunnel collapsed a living being did indeed escape. It was, however, a big and strong 28-year-old railroad fireman, Benjamin F. Mosby (1896-1925), who had been shoveling coal into the firebox of a steam locomotive of a work train with no shirt on when the cave-in occurred and the boiler ruptured.

Mosby's upper body was horribly scalded and several of his teeth were broken before he made his way through the opening of the tunnel. Witnesses reported he was in shock and layers of his skin were hanging from his body. He died later at Grace Hospital.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Harry Kollatz Jr., "W.W. Pool: Richmond's Reputed Nosferatu", Richmond Magazine, October 30, 2013
  2. ↑ Gary F. Curtis, "Time Flies in 'Perfect Jewel'", Commonwealth Times, April 30, 1976
  3. ↑ Scott Bergman, Sandi Bergman, Haunted Richmond: The Shadows of Shockoe (History Press, 2007)
  4. ↑ Aaron Mahnke, "A Dead End", Lore Podcast: Episode 33 (May 2, 2016)

External links

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