In the beginning even before the story begins…
Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated with the bizarre the fantastic and of course the dark. When I was introduced to the legend of The Highgate Vampire I was inspired by how it was a modern dark legend, one that had taken hold on the internet and throughout it’s life it had used the media to spread itself – like vampirism is – this legend itself is a virus. In the age of the Internet local folk lore can go viral and grow into something that previously was not possible.
I wanted to create a world not just a story, given the chance I had been given, to write a novel I wanted to expand on the mythology of the vampire and add to its world. When I dug deeper into the Highgate Vampire legend and the areas folk lore, I found that the stories of the undead walking in the Highgate area was not something new, in fact it went back further and further in time.
The area around Highgate woods was once a Roman burial ground and is known to be one of London’s oldest mass grave sites. The area has inspired stores of ghosts vampires and demons for centuries. It’s maybe one of the reasons that Bram Stocker visited Highgate Cemetery for inspiration for his novel Dracula. It’s as if The Highgate Vampire is actually the original vampire. So I took the legend right back in time tracing it through history, digging up a past till it became impossible to tell fact from fiction.
With a cast of modern characters charged with digging up the legend of The Highgate Vampire, I wanted to use my creative license as a fiction writer to create a whole new vampire mythology, to give readers a richer and alternative vampire world.
In the World of Highgate the Highgate Vampire is known by his ancient name of Aliza, who first gained his powers by drinking the blood of Christ. In this way Aliza was given the power of immortality. In these early beginnings of the vampires Aliza became the leader of the first nest of vampires. But as the times passed and the opposed religions of Christianity and Islam rose up the vampires became hidden, down trodden and eventually forgotten. This was the turning point in our vampire history, turning the vampires from God towards anger, malice and eventually the evil that we see today.
