Svalbard Vampyr.

Dr. Jones (head of the New York branch of the ESS) has been traveling as of late.  Well, for the past three months or so.  He was in Japan in January, moving across Vietnam, up through Thailand and China into Kazakhstan.  From there, flying to Finland, trekking into Norway and taking a tiny plane up to Longyearbyen, Svalbard.  The harshest inhabited place on the goddamn globe.

While he was in the land where your eye-balls freeze when you get the morning paper, he did a lot of research into any local myths that might be looked over since it's a tiny island off in the middle of nowhere.  The locals told him to talk to the folks at Polish Research Station Hornsund, at Isbjørnhamna, in the Horsund fjord (aside: I love Nordic names).  They have some interesting stories, apparently.

The research station is populated by eight people (according to Wikipedia) and is south of Longyearbyen.  The people there told Dr. Jones about something they called the Svalbard vampyr.

 

Svalbard vampyr.

On this Dr. Jones writes:  "They said that every few weeks, there would be what looked like lanterns floating down the mountains and along the coast.  The researches claimed that when the lanterns were investigated, they turned out to be animal skulls with eyes glowing like candles.  They had long gnarled death-pale hands and the cloaks were also their shadows (possibly a translation error).  They varied in size, from average adult male to the size of a small cat.  The skulls, which are supposedly sun bleached, are proportional to the body.  Sometimes the skulls are adorned extraneous horns or tattered remains of ears." 

I think I drew the eyes too dark...