History & local legend
Erie Cemetery, established in 1851, contains an unmarked hillside tomb known locally as the Vampire Crypt. The legend says a vampire rests there during the day. In one version reported by the Erie Reader in 2015, a boy entered the crypt and stole a ring from the corpse. He later awoke to find his own ring finger torn away.
The nearby Scott mausoleum has a different kind of disturbing history. In February 1911, visitors discovered that it had been broken into and its coffins disturbed. Early reports claimed that Anna McCollum’s body had been stolen; later accounts said it had been moved to another crypt within the mausoleum.
The investigation produced its own scandal. The family received threatening letters demanding money, and two detectives involved in the case were eventually convicted of mail fraud connected with those letters. Who originally broke into the mausoleum remained unresolved.
Historian Anna Foll included the Vampire Crypt and Scott mausoleum in the cemetery’s Ghosts and Legends tours described in a 2023 interview. One stop offered a supernatural revenge tale; the other recalled a real intrusion into the burial place of one of Erie’s prominent families.
