Urban Vampires: The Highgate Cemetery Vampire and Modern Mythos (Part 1)

When I first set out to explore the topic of urban vampires for Phenomena Case Files, I had no idea how deep and rich this subject would prove to be. What began as a curiosity about the infamous Highgate Cemetery Vampire quickly spiraled into a fascinating journey through folklore, pop culture, philosophy, and even gaming lore. The sheer volume of material—from serious academic treatises on the ethics of immortality to fan-driven deep dives into the intricate factions of Vampire: The Masquerade—was staggering. Add to that the hauntingly beautiful graphic art I stumbled upon, depicting vampires lurking in shadowy cityscapes, and I was utterly captivated. It became clear that this episode had to be split into two parts to do justice to the complexity and allure of urban vampirism.

In this first installment, we begin with the chilling tale of the Highgate Cemetery Vampire, a spectral figure that gripped London in the 1970s. Reports of a towering, dark entity haunting the graveyard sparked mass hysteria, with amateur vampire hunters and curious onlookers descending upon the cemetery. Was it a genuine supernatural phenomenon, a clever hoax, or a reflection of societal anxieties? The case remains one of the most intriguing examples of how folklore can collide with modern urban life.

From there, we shift to the fictional influences that have shaped our perception of vampires in contemporary settings. The late 1990s TV series Kindred: The Embraced, though short-lived, reimagined vampires as sophisticated, power-hungry beings navigating the complexities of modern society. Similarly, the role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade introduced players to a hidden world of vampire clans, each with its own rules, politics, and moral dilemmas. These narratives didn’t just entertain—they reshaped how we think about vampires, transforming them from monstrous predators into complex, even sympathetic figures struggling to survive in a world dominated by humans.

But this episode isn’t just about storytelling. We also delve into the ethical and philosophical questions raised by the idea of immortal creatures living among us. What does it mean to live forever in a world that fears and hunts you? How do vampires reflect our own fears of mortality, power, and the unknown? These themes resonate deeply, whether we’re discussing a centuries-old legend or a modern-day RPG.

As I immersed myself in the research, I was struck by how vampires have evolved from folklore to pop culture icons. They are no longer confined to crumbling castles or remote villages—they thrive in the shadows of our cities, hiding in plain sight. This duality—of fear and fascination, of monstrosity and humanity—is what makes urban vampires such a compelling subject.

I encourage you to join me on this journey into the dark heart of urban vampirism. Whether you’re a fan of gothic lore, a Vampire: The Masquerade enthusiast, or simply curious about the intersection of myth and modernity, there’s something in this episode for you. Tune in to Phenomena Case Files wherever you listen to podcasts, and prepare to see your city in a whole new light.

And stay tuned for Part 2, where we’ll dive even deeper into the world of urban vampires, exploring their cultural impact, their enduring appeal, and what they reveal about the human condition. The night is long, and the shadows are full of secrets. Don’t miss it.

Riverdale Road: The Haunted Highway to Hell

Nestled in the quiet suburb of Thornton, Colorado, lies a stretch of road that has become infamous among locals and paranormal enthusiasts alike. Riverdale Road, a seemingly ordinary thoroughfare, has earned a reputation as one of the most haunted places in the Denver metro area. Dubbed the "Gates of Hell" by some, this road is steeped in eerie legends, ghostly sightings, and tales of the supernatural. But is Riverdale Road merely a fun urban legend passed between teenagers, or is there something more sinister lurking beneath its surface? Let’s dive into the chilling history and spine-tingling stories that make Riverdale Road a hotbed of paranormal activity.

The Legend of the Madman and the Mansion

At the heart of Riverdale Road’s haunted reputation lies a dark and tragic tale. According to local lore, a wealthy man once lived in a grand mansion along the road. One fateful day, he allegedly went mad, murdering his family in a fit of rage before setting the house ablaze and disappearing into the night. The story varies depending on who you ask—some claim this gruesome event occurred in the late 1860s, before Colorado even became a state, while others place it in the early-to-mid 1970s. The inconsistency in the timeline only adds to the mystery.

In my research, I discovered that the mansion in question was real. Known as the Wolpert Mansion, it was built in the late 1800s by one of the area’s first prominent families. The house did indeed burn down, but not under the dramatic circumstances described in the legend. Historical records indicate that the mansion was already abandoned by the time it was destroyed by fire in the 1970s. Despite this, the story of the madman who killed his family and vanished into the night persists, fueling the road’s haunted reputation.

Ghostly Encounters on Riverdale Road

While the origin story of the madman may be more fiction than fact, Riverdale Road continues to generate countless reports of paranormal activity. Visitors and locals alike have shared spine-chilling accounts of ghostly apparitions, unexplained sounds, and an overwhelming sense of dread while driving or walking along the road.

One of the most famous legends is that of the haunted hitchhiker. Drivers have reported picking up a mysterious figure, only for them to vanish without a trace moments later. Others have encountered the "Lady in White," a spectral figure said to wander the road, her presence often accompanied by an eerie silence. Some claim to have heard the howls of invisible hound dogs, their barks echoing through the night despite no animals being in sight.

Another haunting tale involves the ghost of a woman who perished in a fire. Witnesses have reported seeing her apparition near the site of the Wolpert Mansion, her figure flickering like flames in the darkness. The sound of footsteps with no visible source is another common occurrence, leaving visitors with the unsettling feeling that they are not alone.

The Gates of Hell: Fact or Fiction?

Riverdale Road’s ominous nickname, the "Gates of Hell," adds another layer of intrigue to its haunted reputation. Some believe the road is a portal to the underworld, a place where the veil between the living and the dead is unnaturally thin. This theory is bolstered by the sheer volume of paranormal activity reported along the road, as well as its eerie, isolated atmosphere.

Skeptics, however, argue that the legends surrounding Riverdale Road are nothing more than urban myths, perpetuated by teenagers looking for a thrill. They point to the lack of concrete evidence and the inconsistencies in the stories as proof that the road’s haunted reputation is overblown. Yet, even the most hardened skeptics have a hard time dismissing the countless firsthand accounts of strange occurrences.

Exploring the Paranormal Hotspot

For those brave enough to explore Riverdale Road, the experience can be both thrilling and unnerving. The road itself is relatively unremarkable during the day, lined with trees and open fields. But as the sun sets and darkness falls, the atmosphere changes. The shadows grow longer, the air feels heavier, and the sense of isolation becomes palpable. It’s no wonder that so many people have reported feeling an unseen presence or hearing unexplained noises.

Paranormal investigators have flocked to Riverdale Road in search of evidence to support the legends. Some claim to have captured ghostly voices on audio recordings, while others have photographed strange lights and shadowy figures. Despite these findings, the true nature of the road’s paranormal activity remains a mystery.

The Enduring Allure of Riverdale Road

Whether you believe in the supernatural or not, there’s no denying the enduring allure of Riverdale Road. Its blend of history, mystery, and spine-tingling stories has cemented its place in local lore. For some, it’s a place to test their courage and seek out a thrill. For others, it’s a reminder that there are still mysteries in this world that defy explanation.

So, is Riverdale Road truly haunted? Is it the "Gates of Hell," or just a fun urban legend? The answer may depend on who you ask. But one thing is certain: the legends of Riverdale Road will continue to captivate and terrify those who dare to explore its shadowy depths. Whether you’re a skeptic or a believer, one thing is clear—this road is not for the faint of heart.

If you find yourself in Thornton, Colorado, and you’re feeling brave, take a drive down Riverdale Road. Just be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the Lady in White, listen for the howls of invisible hounds, and, whatever you do, don’t pick up any hitchhikers. You never know what—or who—might be waiting for you in the darkness.

Bigfoot Days - Estes Park ‘24

If you’ve ever found yourself turning down the lights on a lazy Saturday to watch a Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, you might have gone down the horror-fan rabbit hole about that eerie hotel, then found out the hotel was inspired by the Stanley Hotel at Estes Park, Colorado. 

So, it may come as a surprise this little mountain town has been running a festival dedicated to what is, perhaps, America’s favorite cryptid—the legendary Bigfoot.  

Making my way through the winding mountain roads of Highway 36, I found myself drawn to what amounts to a home-grown festival that, at first glance, resembles more a farmer’s market than a cryptid festival until you get closer and spot a giant, happy-faced inflatable Bigfoot effigy. 

It’s a light, jovial atmosphere within the town’s festival enclosure, rock-Irish-fusion blasting from a stadium nearby and vendors’ tents peddling their wares, that meets the senses.  All of this with a scenic mountain backdrop that, on a chilly spring, was sprinkled with the lightest snowfall and a Rocky Mountain breeze. 

It’s a family affair, a goofy, toothy, light-headed (especially if you happen on to the Twisted Griffin’s beer on tap) mini-romp in the park.  Yet, for a state which is not readily known for strong Sasquatch associations –unlike, say Oregon, the Eastern Board or even the Southwest, this is a welcome lean-to; a sweet, pillowy meetup with the farcical side of the paranormal. 

I enjoyed the levity, the respite from the seriousness that I found contrasted in the Bigfoot-Celebrity-Hunter-twenty-dollar-per-autograph-photo-booth –which is a great feat, in and of itself, considering we can’t really point to any trophy-head Bigfoot hanging over the lodge of a bearded mountaineer –and thank the deep-woods gods for that! 

Yes, missing from this festival, and perhaps others too, was the gravitas that the sacred lore of the Wildman should evoke and does, indeed, exist in Amerindian oral traditions.  Instead, as you graze through vendor tent to vendor tent, you happen on children’s versions of Bigfoot. This is no exaggeration –there was an author whose work was dedicated to rendering the mystical giant from the forest to a Scooby-doo cartoonish figure not a stone’s-throw away from Bigfoot and the Hendersons. 

It's all fair, really—and as a legitimate a part of the spectrum of how we process, how gawk, how we celebrate, and share our imaginary foray into this creature’s realm.  But, I’d like to see a pivot, a place, a little corner, even, where the spiritual and mythical connections to this land and its First People’s intersect. 

In this little corner of the internet, this Phenomena Case Files, we’ll see our way through all these phases of the Bigfoot conundrum ­–sightings, witness accounts, anthropologist’s take, the Native American perspective, and the wandering festival-goer, too, of course. 

As far as the Estes Park Bigfoot Days goes, it’s a great kickoff to my own ventures into the festival season. You come along, too, as I make my ways into previously unexplored terrain, walking on egg-shells (for the time being) around the mighty personalities who visit and who sell their wares at these paranormal festivals.

Making the Colorado Swarm Lights Episode

03.31.24

Launching a podcast about esoterica —particularly paranormal Americana, has been a years’ long yearning. It all started with curiosity, with passing the time early on back in 2014. I was in a new city, trying to feel at home in a then empty apartment, and listening to podcasts —probably for the first time, as I emptied moving boxes and took brief breaks to eat pizza (the only food available in an otherwise empty fridge).

I started to take an interest in the UFO phenomena, casually listening to podcasts by who, though lacking almost any basic technical prowess, managed to get fascinating interview guests on a weekly basis. Though I had grown up with sci-fi classics like Star Trek and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I still believed that most likely we’ve never been visited. But, as fiction, the idea of alien technology and intergalactic species making a pit-stop on our little old blue planet, it all seemed a thrilling prospect.

Yet, as time went by, it became apparent to me that there was at root something quite more profound happening. Having grown up in the Southwest and Mountain West, UFO and cryptid lore was bountifully available to me. Colorado, even just ten years ago, was and still is a remote region of the U.S. —I was astounded by how outsized this region’s connection to so many supernatural and unexplained phenomena.

Jumping in time a full ten years from 2014 and I find myself realizing a dream —becoming part of the conversation surrounding the mysteries which abound upon this Western land. I see connections to its past, to its present, and to its far-flung, barely imaginable future. I picked this little episode in the long catalog of events this region has experienced in baffling events because it is fairly recent, made headlines, and was really close to where I live (the Denver-Metro area).

It’s really only the tip of the iceberg –this Colorado Swarm Lights episode, and I hope to launch myself into the fray of investigation and research which will involve field work, travel, interviews, and communion with those who have experienced or wish to deepen their understanding of what could be one of our civilization’s most paradigm-breaking events: The very real circumstances of a much more complex and other-worldly visited planet.

I call this venture peeking behind the veil. The veil is, if we allow it, if we’re perceptive enough, lucky or unlucky enough, thicker or thinner in some places, some fleeting instances, and around some people.

If you’re reading this, I aim to bring you along. I invite you to follow this blog, the podcast, and the writing these experiences have inspired and share with you, as I hope you do with others, what we learn, what astounds us.

The Colorado Swarm Lights

03.07.24

It was 2019, one week before Christmas, when witnesses spotted an array of slow moving lights in the night sky over the snowy plains northeast of Denver.  They hovered low, ominously soundless, Like me, you might have missed them, had you not been outside in the cold of winter, perhaps driving out in the rim of the metro-Denver area just beyond the cities of Thornton and Northglenn, Colorado.  In fact, the mysterious, low-flying, nighttime invaders droned on in groups as large as 17 while some say they spotted as many as 30 across the skies over Washington County, Colorado and even as far as western Nebraska and Kansas. 

Whatever they were, they flew in a synchronized group without identifiers, without any visible human controller, without transponders, without any heads up to the FAA or local authorities– After chasing the lights driving as fast as 70 miles an hour, one thing witnesses could all agree on was:

“It’s more unnerving than anything.”

–Chelsea Arnold to NBC News affiliate December 2019.

Divided right down the middle by the majestic Rocky Mountain range, Colorado is a mysterious state. The centennial state is replete with urban lore stemming from World War II era secret projects, numerous sightings across the infamous 37th parallel, all the way up to the secretive construction said to be part of the Denver International Airport. Continuously inhabited, perhaps as far back as 30,000 years, the state has a long history of natural and, some say, supernatural phenomena. As recently as in the last few years even the aurora borealis was visible for the first time in this writer’s memory. Yes, the state, skirted by its equally enigmatic neighbors, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Kansas, is a rich playground to those who seek to investigate the unexplained.

The Colorado swarm lights, dubbed so by local and national media outlets, was only one of many strange happenings in a long catalog of baffling events that defied explanation. Witnesses from the rural outskirts beyond the north-eastern plains of the Denver metro area described their ordeal in the evening hours as low-flying groups of lights with a south-to-southeast heading as they descended from the borders of the Colorado-Wyoming border. Drones certainly were already widely in use by this year, but these hovering flying objects, if they were drones, had wings that spanned six-to-seven feet by most eyewitness descriptions. These were certainly not the kinds of drones mere amateurs could conceivable pilot or maneuver remotely, especially in the large groupings described that night, according to aviation experts and local model-plane and drone enthusiasts.

FAA regulations of the time did not yet require–and probably still don’t, advanced notice from the military. This is noteworthy as the area wherein the swarm was said to have ominously flown is sandwiched by both the F.E. Warren Air Force Base a mere 30-to-40 miles near Cheyenne, Wyoming, and the newly constructed Buckley Space Force Base on the eastern plains of the city of Aurora, Colorado. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Denver International Airport (DIA) is only about 15 miles north-east of the Space Force base. Indeed, the area seems to be teeming with both legitimate and possibly more covert commercial and military flying operations.

Besides the obvious culprits, some speculative, rogue amateurs flying drones over the Front Range plains, or a quiet military exercise, what makes this occurrence meaningful was the effect it had on those who experienced it, the mum’s-the-word from federal entities, and the complete left-out-of-the-loop by stumped local authorities from county sheriff offices, state patrol, and local police. The whole event harkens back to Cold War era secrecy and public vexation.

Given the lack of transparency about that night of the swarm lights, it is no wonder reporters and curious minds swarmed to the area, converging on any number of hypothetical explanations all sharing a common denominator: unsubstantiated conjecture. But, what is one to do in the absence of reliable information and lack of official notification before or after the fact?

Yet, this is what makes this event so fascinating –if, in fact, the military or some commercial operation had been responsible for the rogue light show, why wouldn’t these entities simply notify the public in advance? Alternatively, who ever piloted these untagged, unidentifiable flying objects could have “managed” the story after the fact, providing some plausible explanation local authorities and news media alike are usually only so happy to accept and pass on. But, that didn’t happen either. Nor did any local authorities issue an intent to investigate the matter as a possible criminal matter.

Blaming a disconcerting bad actor –maybe some teenagers out on a night of beer drinking and hijinks, somehow orchestrating an elaborate hoax, might have been the perfect scheme to cover up the real culprits. Though, that might have still left that nagging question unanswered: What teenager, what rascal out there would have had the funds to own and deploy 17-to-30-something commercial/military-grade drones, let alone the piloting expertise to pilot them? Pilot them at high velocity speeds and withdraw them swiftly and quietly into some unseen hangar in an area, though rural, sandwiched and well-patrolled by any number of local, FAA and military operatives within a forty-to-fifty miles radius?

Instead, we were left with few answers. Those wishing to point to the suspicious presence of some low-to-high level conspiracy, are not standing on terra firma either. You only have to think, as pointed out above, that if a conspirator were to have deployed these drone-like lights over the plains, he or they would have to be seriously incompetent in the business of conspiracy and/or covert operations. A virtual flunkee of the art of spy-craft could execute a better sleight of hand than what occurred on that night over Washington County, Colorado.

Still, questions lead to more questions, and, in turn, those questions spur the story-making-machine that is mankind. So, we end up with whispers and contrition over rumors, hearsay and confabulation. The story got big– bigger than it should for what is still news from a sparsely populated and remote Western state. So big, that national news picked it up and later even a local Broomfield-based filmmaker produced a thought-provoking documentary about it. Equally maligned as admired, the 2020 documentary Lights in the Sky by Krista Alexander, cast a bright shining light over the swarm lights of unknown origin. The Colorado Swarm Lights did add something, after all, to the lore of the Mountain West, and maybe that is all we can ever hope for.

Though headlines sometime later appear to point a tacit finger to military actors as those who might have quietly owned up, albeit behind doors, to the eerie nighttime fly over, the American public is well-used to the expectation of feeling shut out from relevant details, all, as ever, under the auspices of national security.