The first sightings of the figure came in the early 1960s. Highgate cemetery was by then over 100 years old and had fallen into disrepair and decay.
Overgrown and sprawling, the gothic Victorian graveyard seemed the perfect setting for the strange and sinister events that would follow.
One night in 1963, a couple were walking home down Swain’s Lane, which passed along cemetery’s north gate. What they encountered was so terrible they were frozen to the spot, transfixed with fear.
They had come face to face with what would later become known as the Highgate vampire. A tall, dark figure, floating behind the railings. Its face was the worst thing — a ghoulish nightmare contorted in horror.