Shortly before midnight on 8 June 1993, over a thousand people turned up at a cemetery in Pisco, Peru, in the hope of witnessing the resurrection of an alleged vampire named Sarah Ellen Roberts.
Local historians and officials from the British Embassy had recently been shocked to learn that the corpse of Mrs Roberts had been brought to Pisco from Blackburn, England, by her husband John Roberts in 1913, because British authorities refused to let him bury his wife in England, as they believed her to be a vampire.
Mr Roberts dismissed the refusal as an absurdity, but subsequently bought a lead-lined coffin for his deceased wife, and allegedly roamed the world for four years, seeking out a country that would allow him to bury her. Finally, Mrs Roberts came to Peru, where he was allowed to inter his wife at Pisco for the sum of five pounds.
The vampires
Shortly after the ad hoc burial service, Mr Roberts boarded a ship for England and was never heard of again. Then the news from England reached Pisco; Sarah Ellen Roberts had been bound in chains and shut up in the lead-lined coffin after being found guilty of witchcraft, murder and vampirism. Just before the lid of the coffin was screwed down, the Lancashire witch had screamed she would return from the grave to seek vengeance.
The Peruvian peasants in the town trembled at the news. Eighty years later in June 1993, people visiting a grave in the Pisco cemetery were terrified when they witnessed a large crack appearing in the headstone of the Blackburn woman's grave. That night, over a thousand excitement seekers and occultists descended on the graveyard when the word went round that the vampire would rise from her grave at midnight. Hundreds of local women left the town 'to prevent the vampire being reincarnated in their new-born children', and cloves of garlic and crucifixes festooned the front doors of almost every house in the region. When midnight arrived, the vampire mania reached a peak, and police had to be called in to controll the hysterical crowds. Shots were fired in the air, and slowly the crowds dispersed. A small group of local witch doctors were apparently allowed to stay at the controversial grave, where they splashed the cracked headstone with holy water and sprinkled white rose petals around. The English vampire did not rise, and the witch doctors later celebrated their 'success' at laying the undead woman to rest.
