In 1969, a witness said he'd seen a strange shadowy figure, inside the cemetery. Soon others began to tell about their encounters with this being. When dead animals began to show up all around the neighborhood, people began to say there was a vampire in the graveyard. One man claimed to have killed the blood sucker by driving a stake through its heart. The body was burned destroying his evidence. For years the story of the Highgate Vampire appeared in newspapers and on TV.