What does the beginning of WWI, anti-immigrant sentiment, and a vampire have in common? Oddly enough, a small dilapidated cemetery located in Park Hills, Missouri. Due to decades of neglect and vandalism, most of the headstones in the Gibson cemetery have been broken and tossed around. The trees and brush have taken over, and if it weren’t for a few headstones poking through the dead leaves you might not even realize that you were standing in a cemetery at all.What helps to make the story of this cemetery even more strange is that there’s an urban legend of a vampire being buried here. A vampire that would lure children to his home and then eat them. I received a research request asking me to see what I could find out about the Gibson cemetery and its legend. What I found was pretty intriguing, and harkens back to a time with some interesting history.
