Rumours of vampires on campus sent Boston Latin School into a fright this past week, reports the Boston Globe. What is stranger is that the school’s administration actually issued a notice assuring the staff, students and their parents that “rumours involving vampires” were nothing more than just that. Headmaster Lynne Mooney Teta declared that there were no vampires at the school, and adamantly offered assurances that no one at the school had been hurt, arrested—or bitten. The rumours of such bloodlust were reported to be causing anxiety and disruption among the students.

There is a certain monstrous reality to this story: while vampires may not be lurking those hallowed halls, bullies certainly are. Police explained that a group of girls had been teasing another student who dressed in gothic apparel, and had spread a rumour that the student was a wannabe vampire, who had cut someone’s neck and sucked the person’s blood. Thus sending the school into a tizzy with batty rumours.

To suggest that the whole thing sprang from an ill-advised double bill of Heathers and Twilight would be grossly irresponsible, but it might be worth noting Boston’s relative proximity to a little town called Salem. Massachusetts has a history of social brutality in the form of supernatural rumour.

(While the ghoul in the picture has no relation to Boston Latin School, he is an authentic Beantown vampire, and member of the Boston Direct Action Project. He was photographed by Justin McIntosh while protesting the World Bank in Washington D.C., in 2005.)