AustLit

On the night of Friday 24 September 1954, hundreds of children, armed with rocks and sticks, swarmed between the headstones of a Glasgow cemetery in search of a monster with iron teeth, which had strangled and devoured two little boys - a creature that came to be known as the 'Gorbals Vampire.' There was, of course, no such monster. But once the police had rounded up the children and sent them home, there was little doubt amongst authorities about what ignited such a panic. Michael Scanlan, Glasgow's City Education Officer, singled out American horror comic books as the culprit. 'It is up to the government to ban these comics,' he said. 'We cannot do anything about it, but obviously they caused the scare' (author's abstract).