The Gorbals Vampire hunt, Southern Necropolis, Glasgow

Glasgow, 1954. The Gorbals was one of Europe's worst slums after the war. On its edge lay the Southern Necropolis, known locally as "the City of the Dead", with about 250,000 burials. Beside it, the furnaces of the Dixon's Blazes ironworks lit the sky with fire and smoke.

That September, a story went round the playgrounds. A vampire lived in the graveyard. It was seven feet tall. It had iron teeth. It had killed and eaten two local boys. Some children called it "the Man with the Iron Teeth". Kenny Hughes remembered how the fear "built up and built up until it basically became mass hysteria."

Thursday, 23 September 1954. After school, the children went to the cemetery. They were between 4 and 14 years old, and some were "just able to toddle". They carried knives, sharpened sticks, homemade tomahawks, wooden stakes, crowbars, shovels, stones, crucifixes and axes. Some brought dogs.

Tam Smith was there. "The red light and the smoke would flare up and make all the gravestones leap. You could see figures walking about at the back all lined in red light." The shouts went up. "There he is!" "No, he's there!" In the flickering glow, the vampire seemed to jump from place to place.

Bob Hamilton knew the plan. "We didn't have Christopher Lee to explain you had to put a stake through the heart to kill him. We were just going to cut the head off, end of story."

PC Alex Deeprose answered the call and found the children searching among the graves. The police could not clear them. Accounts differ on what finally sent them home. Rain, a headmaster's telling off, or a constable. Ronnie Sanderson, aged 8, ran home to his mother. "I've seen a vampire," he told her. He got a clout round the ear for his trouble.

They came back on the two following nights, in dwindling numbers. On the second night the gates were locked. A large crowd climbed over the walls. There were no reports of missing children. On 26 September the Sunday Mail declared "Vampire With Iron Teeth is 'Dead'".

The adults had a culprit ready. American horror comics. Alice Cullen, Labour MP for the Gorbals, said she would tell the children "It's a lot of hooey." John Rankin, MP for Tradeston, declared that "Every type of depravity is created in these American comics". In February 1955 a Glasgow MP cited the hunt in the House of Commons. That spring, the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act 1955 was passed.

The comics theory never quite fitted. No EC Comics title featured an iron toothed vampire. Horror comics were hard to get in Scotland. None of the former children interviewed remembered reading them. Others looked closer to home. Jenny wi' the Airn Teeth, a 19th century poem by Alexander Anderson taught in schools. The beast with "great iron teeth" in Daniel 7:7. Comics historian Martin Barker saw children passing stories among themselves, and called the adult reaction a "wasted opportunity".

In 2010 the former hunters told their story to the BBC. In 2016 the Citizens Theatre staged The Gorbals Vampire by Johnny McKnight, with an original hunter among the cast, and a mural appeared on St Luke's Place. Ronnie Sanderson never wavered. "I was there. I was in the graveyard when I was eight years old."