For decades, parents have told their children to be home before dark in Lafayette, Colorado. The reason being that local lore tells of a vampire rising from his grave in the cemetery. But who exactly was the man behind the story, buried under the tombstone?
In the 1950s, parents told a strange thing to their youth in Lafayette, Colorado, an old coal mining place in Boulder County. They said that there was a vampire buried in the cemetery and they had to be home before dark, as the vampire rose from his grave and hunted for prey at night.
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The legend of the Lafayette vampire evolved and more details were added to the growing legend of the local vampire. It even travelled and from the 90s and today, visitors from across the U.S. visit the grave, leaving little trinkets like flowers, bubble gum and toys at the grave. Once, dirt from the suspected gravesite of the vampire was offered up for auction on eBay. If it really was the dirt from the grave or not is not known, but city officials were notified of the eBay posting and eventually eBay took down the posting.
The grave in question at the Lafayette Cemetery the vampire story is linked to is a grave found in the pauper’s grave section, about 20 feet south of the paved road/exit from Lafayette’s Bob Burger Recreation Center. The final resting place of a man from Transylvania.
The Real Man Behind the Vampire Legend
Teodor Glava was a coal miner from Transylvania, Romania who died in 1918. His name has been spelled a lot of different ways, and many know his legend under the name Fodor Glava as well. This was from a time when Lafayette was a booming town with two banks and four hotels. Then the Spanish Flu hit and people died across the country, one of its victims being him. .
According to the story, the locals were suspicious after he died and strange things had started to happen. They dug him up and drove a stake through his heart. That wooden stake was said to grow into a tall juniper tree that now dominates his grave site. It is also said that Glava’s fingernails grew into a “blood red” red rose bush that covered the grave until the early 2000s. It is true that rose bushes grew there, although they were yellow roses.
The legend started to grow from its first tales to keep children home after dark. In blog posts and newspaper articles from the late 1980s added more haunting to the story and stories about a tall, dark figure with red eyes lurking near the grave started to spread.
One of the versions was retold in an article in the Rocky Mountain News in 1993. An amateur folklorist had looked into the legend and the 19 year old Douglas Rowan claimed he had heard this from old ladies in the area. “The story goes that he moved here from Transylvania with his wife, but was bitten by a wolf or something, and it turned him into a vampire. He killed his wife, and a neighbor buried her and cornered him in a barn and drove a stake through his heart. A tree always grows from a vampire stake. It’s what keeps him in the ground. They say that when there’s full moon his soul will rise and wander around.”
The True Grave of Teodor Glava
So there are a lot of legends spanning across decades. But who was Glava, and was it really something strange going on at his grave when he died?
Teodor Glava was a Romanian coal miner who immigrated to the U.S. around 1914. He was from Lesnic, Romania, a mining community in the Transylvania Region of The Austro-Hungarian empire. He was described as of medium height, medium build, brown eyes and black hair.
Born in 1877, Teodor probably worked in the marble mines near his Lesnic residence. He was married to his wife Sofia and had a daughter named Victoria. He left them both in Lesnic and went to America for work. He landed first in Gary, West Virginia, then Canfield, Colorado west of Erie. Estate records show that Glava worked in Lafayette but lived in Canfield and rented a room for $1.12 per day from a Mr. and Mrs. Nick Mack.
He did start working and making money, but after a few years, the Spanish flu hit the community, and he was infected. His newspaper obituary transcribed by Teresa from the Lafayette Leader dated 12-6-1918 reads: “Theodore Glava, an Austrian miner, employed at the Simpson mine, died suddenly Wednesday morning, following an attack of influenza. He had so far recovered as to be up town the evening before his death, but suffered a relapse. He was aged 43 years and is survived by his wife, who is in Austria. Buaial (Burial) will be made this afternoon.”
Glava is buried in his own grave plot, adjacent to fellow Romanian John Trandafir, who was also a coal miner and died two days after Glava. Because of his name meaning rose, the two graves have often been conflated to one and both have been a part of the same vampire legend. They were not related, but were probably friends and colleagues.
Although he was buried in a pauper’s grave, he had money that would have given him a more proper burial. However, the money he had made was instead sent back to his wife and daughter.
A Legend Takes Shape
How then was the grave of Glava connected with vampire legends? There are actually cases of mob mentality of people going after people’s graves in the US after illnesses take a huge portion of the population.
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But there is not much info that there actually was such a mob going after and digging up his grave. Could it really be as simple that the man was from Transylvania? Researchers looking into the story found the earliest mention of the vampire in the cemetery comes from Eleanor (Sanchez) Montour. She recalled that when she was a child in the late 1940s, her mom Alicia Sanchez warned her about the Transylvanian in the cemetery and that she should “get home before sundown so that the vampire doesn’t get you.
The premise of a Transylvanian buried in the cemetery was followed by “he’s a vampire” in the 1950s and it seems like this is were the details started to be added to the lore. The stake to his heart seems to have been introduced in the 1960s. The stake turning into a tree seems to coincide when the Christopher Lee vampire movies started hitting the regional drive-in movie theaters, although no one can say for sure.
The rose bush and fingernail details seem to have started in the 1970s, followed by the mysterious man sitting on the headstone or walking in the cemetery in the 1990s. Where the legend will go further is unsure, but at least, it seems that the poor miner never actually was dug up by an angry mob and staked through the heart.
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References:
Lafayette, Colorado – Wikipedia
https://nb.findagrave.com/memorial/22218684/theodore-glava