Lafayette, Colorado: Vampire Grave

I cannot say that this "attraction" was very scary to me, but I do have a rebuff for the youngster who claims "this didn't even appear until after I was born and I am 17". My husband and I lived in Lafayette, Colorado 5 years before he/she was born and we were told the "vampire legend" by a 40-year old who had been born in the town and lived there his entire life. He first heard mention of it back when he was a teen, so a good 20 years prior to 1986 when we lived there, making this local legend at LEAST 42 YEARS OLD, at a quick guess.

When we were there in the mid-1980s, the site was overgrown with a few bushes and had a tree-like plant (not sure of the species) growing from where the chest area could be assumed to have been. We went both in daylight and dark and didn't find anything overtly creepy, but then we don't scare easily. It was a colorful local story, though, and is worth a stop if you are in the area if you have a curiosity for such things.

When we arrived at the cemetery on June 3, 2008, we began looking for an unkempt grave with rose bushes as described. We could find nothing and so we asked a very nice grounds keeper who led us to the grave. The rose bushes are gone and it now looks just like an ordinary grave next to a tree. We really kind of felt sorry for the guy when we left. It no longer feels like anything other than the final resting place of an elderly man from Transylvania.

I just had to comment that the "Vampire Grave" in Lafayette is utterly ridiculous. It didn't even appear until after I was born, I'm seventeen. There are more interesting graves to see there, like the Savage boys or Thomas Auflick -- a man older than Colorado itself. Or the handful of kids that died along with the Savage boys in what seems to be an epidemic in 1893. And the accusation of the residents being afraid? Hell, it's right next to a main road and a recreation center. It's not like it's out in the middle of nowhere. The grave itself would infuriate travelers if they were even suckered in to go visit it -- it's a slab of concrete with words written on it with a stick, placed strategically next to a tree. I love this cemetery, as I love my hometown's history. The [tips were] poorly written and made my intelligence hurt.

The Vampire Grave headstone is surrounded by trees, on the north side of the graveyard (W. Elm Street), close to the NW corner of the graveyard.

After reading a couple of entries on the web about a Vampire's grave in Lafayette, Colorado, our Paranormal team decided to get into this legend a bit deeper and find out if he was truly a vampire. After over a year of researching everything we could about the grave, and the cemetery itself, we found very little about Mr. Glava (the "vampire"). But we did find quite a bit within the readings on our equipment. Our investigation in that cemetery is a multiple-level ongoing open case for us, since the evidence keeps pouring in each time we go there.

Over the last two years, our team has collected over 100 paranormal photographs, as well as many EVP recordings (Electric Voice Phenomena). One of these EVP recordings, taken right by the vampire grave, clearly asks, "Do you want my stake?" Two of the main instruments used in Lafayette are the EMF reader and the Temperature gauge. The EMF, designed to test electromagnetic energy, almost always reads into the teens and twenties (and on one occasion, up to the sixties). Readings that large and varied are one form of proof that anomalies are taking place, as well as cold spots reaching as low as negative 47 degrees on a night that was otherwise rather mild.

After all this time getting to know the cemetery and all of its occupants, we've become part of the local urban legend. It's easy to get the local residents a bit frightened, considering all that they believe about the vampire grave. Just the flash of a camera or flashlight during a quiet night will send passersby on the sidewalk screaming and running. Young boys dare each other to run into the depths of Lafayette Cemetery and touch the vampire stone. Local police even report in several local newspapers over the years that many odd things have happened because of that grave. Halloween night always attracts people who believe he will rise, as they wait with camera's to capture his awakening. Some even leave voodoo tokens on the stone for good luck or praise.

Although we don't believe he is a vampire, we do know he's active and very much aware he's dead and buried. And perhaps a bit angry over the label of vampire being put on him without grounds ... we'll never really know who or what he might have been. But looking for the answer is proving to be pretty fun and intriguing in and of itself.

Thank you goes out to Roadside America for being the first to bring this place to the attention of us all ... it's been one of the best finds of the century for us Colorado paranormal investigators.