Vampire Research Society

The Last Highgate Vampire Interview

2011-02-27T06:30:00.000-08:00

Seán Manchester has given his final interview on the Highgate Vampire case. He spoke for over two hours as three cameras recorded the historic occasion for posterity on the forty-first anniversary of the time he first brought to public attention the existence of a contagion at Highgate Cemetery. The Hampstead & Highgate Express, 27 February 1970, filled its front page with his startling revelations, albeit misquoting him and misrepresenting another exorcist, Reverend Christopher Neil-Smith, in their article written by editor Gerald Isaaman. Since then Seán Manchester has contributed to literally hundreds of interviews and television documentaries about his mysterious investigations spanning a period of no less than thirteen years. Now he feels that everything there is to say about the case has been said. He finds himself answering the same questions he was being asked four decades ago, and while Seán Manchester fully understands the enduring fascination the case holds (he wrote his book about his experiences to satisfy this need) the time has now come to draw a line under the topic. He believes enough is enough and wants no longer to talk about it.

In an opening chapter of The Highgate Vampire back in the previous century he wrote:

“The reality I once experienced exists no longer and although its memories are the most potent that I possess, they now seem so far away ─ possibly because next to the hunger to experience a thing, there is no stronger hunger than to forget.”

Vampire enthusiast Kev Demant jumped the gun by two decades with his "Last Highgate Vampire Interview" in Udolpho magazine in 1992. He conducted his interview with Seán Manchester, who was gradually persuaded and hesitatingly consented, in writing. Seán Manchester's schedule prevented a face to face interview, which obliged Demant to ask questions on the magazine editor’s behalf via correspondence and the bishop answering them through the same medium.

“This is certainly a strange way of conducting an interview,” Demant wrote on 20 February 1992. “Jennie sets the questions, you do all the hard work and I get my name to the results! … I hope I can do you justice.” A week later, having received Bishop Seán Manchester's answers, he replied: “You have not balked at the more ‘difficult’ questions.”

When he saw Jennie Gray’s expurgated outcome in print, however, Kev Demant was somewhat less enthusiastic when he wrote on 27 February 1992:

“To be honest, I don’t know what to feel about the article, a somewhat sanitised version of the material submitted. Many of your responses have been truncated while my own contribution has been edited, certain sentences have been rewritten (badly in my opinion and without my consent) and ultimately censored. … I wonder what all these aesthetes, decadents, intellectuals and yuppies who constitute the readership are going to make of it all!”

It did not take long to discover what they made of it all. Within a month all six hundred copies sold out. Publishing editor Jennie Gray ordered an unprecedented extra hundred copies. Her now defunct specialist magazine had reached its peak at this point. On December 14th, Kev Demant wrote to Seán Manchester:

“Somehow I think it is your prestigious interview which had much to do with the favourable response.”

The final interview would actually take place many years later in the following century. Seán Manchester is introduced in the television documentary as "Britain's top exorcist." It can be viewed at 8.00pm Pacific time / 11.00pm Eastern Time on The Conspiracy Show (Vision TV, Canada) on 1 April 20011. Also included in the programme are Rosemary Ellen Guiley, Joe Nickell and Neil Arnold.
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He will still continue to make broadcast contributions where it is in the public interest or where an opportunity to address an injustice arises. He will not, however, be willing to contribute any further media interviews about the Highgate Vampire case he investigated and resolved many years ago.

President and Founder of the Society

2009-02-27T01:37:00.001-08:00

"On the morning of 27 February 1970 I awoke and found myself famous due to a banner headline across the newspapers — 'Does A Wampyr Walk In Highgate?' — quickly followed by appearances on television and in a host of periodicals." — Seán Manchester, (The Highgate Vampire, page 15)

Seán Manchester had informed the public on 27 February 1970 that demonic disturbances and manifestations in the vicinity of Highgate Cemetery were vampiric. Shortly afterwards he appeared on television on 13 March 1970 to repeat his theory. The suspected tomb was located and an exorcism performed in August 1970. This proved ineffective as the hauntings and animal deaths continued. Indeed, they multiplied. All manner of people were by now jumping on the bandwagon; including film-makers, rock musicians and sundry publicity-seekers. Most were frightened off. Some who interloped became fascinated by the black arts with disastrous consequences. In the meantime, Seán Manchester and his colleagues pursued the principal source of the contagion at Highgate until it was properly exorcised in the ancient and approved manner. It was a nightmare journey which took them into a nether region inhabited by terrifying corporeal manifestations.

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“Ever since I became aware that Highgate Cemetery was the reputed haunt of a vampire, the investigations and activities of Seán Manchester commanded my attention. I became convinced that, more than anyone else, he knew the full story of the Highgate Vampire.” — Peter Underwood, The Ghost Club Society, London, England“

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I am very impressed by the body of scholarship you have created. Seán Manchester is undoubtedly the father of modern vampirological research.” — John Godl, paranormal researcher and writer, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

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“Seán Manchester is the most celebrated vampirologist of the twentieth century.” — Shaun Marin, reviewer and sub-editor, Encounters magazine, England

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“A most interesting and useful addition to the literature of the subject.” — Reverend Basil Youdell, Literary Editor, Orthodox News, Christ the Saviour, Woolwich, England

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“The Highgate Vampire will certainly be read in a hundred years time, two hundred years time, three hundred years time — in short, for as long as mankind is interested in the supernatural. It has the most genuine power to grip. Once you have started to read it, it is virtually impossible to put it down.” — Lyndall Mack (aka Jennie Gray), Udolpho (magazine of the Gothic Society), Chislehurst, Kent, England

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“Seán Manchester, the most authentic vampire hunter in the world today, penetrated the very heart of the mystery whose necrogenic setting has such impressionistic power that within the shades of dark ebon the most disbelieving sceptic will witness something spectral in the ghostly whiteness of moonbeams shining on marble tombs.” — Devendra P Varma, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada

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“Seán Manchester is, unsurprisingly, very well read in both classical and more recent sources on vampires and vampirism, and cites them with great authority.” — Joe McNally, contributing editor, Fortean Times magazine, England

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“His lectures at universities and organisations led to my inviting him to address members of the Ghost Club Society which he duly did. We met at that time at the Swedenborg Hall in Bloomsbury and the President of the Vampire Research Society arrived, suitably attired, and gave a memorable and in many ways remarkable lecture. Certainly we had had nothing like it before and have never had anything like it since; not a few members at the crowded meeting revised their opinion on vampires and vampirism after that evening.” — Peter Underwood, President, The Ghost Club Society, London, England

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“One of the most notable figures to visit the haunted site under cover of darkness was Seán Manchester, who has been called one of Britain’s foremost vampire hunters and exorcists.” — Craig Miller, associate editor, Fate magazine, Minnesota, USA

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“I believe Seán Manchester is this country’s only genuine vampirologist.” — Nicole Lampert, journalist, features department, The Sun newspaper, London, England

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“Seán Manchester doesn’t just acknowledge the possibility; he knows that vampires exist.” — Stephen Jarvis, author and researcher of strange pursuits, England

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“First thrust into the public eye in the Seventies after a spate of gruesome reports about North London’s Highgate Cemetery, Seán Manchester is now acknowledged as a serious vampirologist with a God-given mission.” — Frances Hubbard, features’ writer, IPC magazines, London, England
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“Seán Manchester has been called in to investigate ghoulish visitations at former Liberal leader David Steel’s Scottish castle and an old estate in Yorkshire where a dark, demonic spook is terrifying locals.” — Pam Bentley, features’ writer, Sunday magazine, London, England
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“Seán Manchester has spent a significant proportion of his life pursuing reports of vampiric and necromantic activity. His visceral account of his pursuit and termination of a vampire he discovered entombed in Highgate Cemetery’s Egyptian columbarium in the ‘70s, The Highgate Vampire, even includes a photograph of the staked beast in its death-throes.” — Stevan Keane, features’ writer, City Limits magazine, London, England
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“The shadow of a stone angel stole across Seán Manchester’s face as he laid out the tools of his trade: old Italianate crucifixes, holy water ... Traditional instruments of protection. … Risking life and soul is all part of a night’s work for Manchester … the founding president of the Vampire Research Society.” — Beverley d’Silva, features’ writer, Sunday Times magazine, London, England

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“Seán Manchester, billed as ‘Vampirologist and Exorcist,’ pops up in a graveyard [on London Weekend Television’s South Bank Show] with groovy long hair and crucifix of cinematic proportions.” — Suzy Feay, sub-editor, reviewer and critic, Time Out magazine, London, England
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“Seán Manchester’s Vampire Research Society grew out of his previous leadership role in an occult investigation bureau. The society investigates all aspects of ‘supernatural vampire phenomena,’ a task that has led to a variety of research projects, including the famous Highgate Vampire.” — J Gordon Melton, chronicler of vampire topics, Santa Barbara, USA

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Gerald Isaaman, editor of the Hampstead & Highgate Express in those far off distant days, recently recounted his meeting with Seán Manchester in February 1970: "Manchester arrived at the office wearing a black cloak lined with scarlet silk and carrying a cane." He forgot to mention the top hat and tails that were included with the opera cloak and cane. There was also an accompanying young lady, also not mentioned, who was equally formally-attired. It was late in the afternoon and Seán Manchester had no idea how long the interview would take. He and his lady friend were dressed ready to go on to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, from the Hampstead offices of the Hampstead & Highgate Express. He frequently attended the opera in those days and continued to do so whilst he lived in London. The old (now ex-) editor reminisced in Jauary 2009:

"The story of the Highgate Vampire [in a recently published book about London's folklore] is attributed to 1970 reports in the Ham & High, where I was then the editor. It recalled the fantastic events of a few months that year and the following one, which culminated in a TV programme inviting people to decide for themselves what was going on. That resulted in three hundred people, allegedly armed with home-made stakes and Christian crosses, storming the cemetery that night to kill the demon vampire lurking among the decaying tombs."
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The mass vampire hunt at Highgate Cemetery on 13 March 1970, following reports in local and national newspapers, plus a television interview with various witnesses earlier that evening on British television, led to a spate of amateur vampire hunters inflicting themselves on Highgate Cemetery with home-made stakes, crosses, garlic, holy water, but very little knowledge about how to deal with the suspected undead if they encountered it. The president of the Vampire Research Society had made an appeal on the Today programme at 6.00pm to request the public not to get involved, nor put into jeopardy the investigation already in progress. Not everyone heeded his words. Over the following months a wide variety of independent vampire hunters descended on the graveyard — only to be frightened off by its eerie atmosphere and what they believed might have been the vampire. Some were quickly arrested by police patrolling the area. The public were advised that a full-scale investigation was taking place. Individual efforts by those merely seeking thrills, however, served only to endanger all concerned and frustrate the official hunt.

Simon Wiles and John White armed themselves with a crucifix and a sharpened stake, and set off to see if they could locate the vampire’s tomb. Like others who followed in their wake, they were arrested by police who found their rucksack and its contents: an eight inch long wooden stake, sharpened to a point. White later explained at Clerkenwell Court: “Legend has it that if one meets a vampire, one drives a stake through its heart.” He was wearing a crucifix round his neck and Wiles had one in his pocket. They were eventually discharged.

Thus began a trend. A 25-year-old history teacher from Billericay, Alan Blood, also descended on Highgate after seeing the Today report, but he, at least, had the good sense not to enter the infamous graveyard. Though described by the Evening News, 14 March 1970, as a “vampire expert,” Blood, in a later interview given to the Hampstead and Highgate Express, 20 March 1970, admitted that he was no such thing. “I have taken an interest in the black arts since boyhood, but I’m by no means an expert on vampires,” he told them. Following a drink in the local pub, Blood joined a crowd of onlookers outside the cemetery’s north gate, but he did not enter.

The Society's founding president (on the Today programme, 13 March 1970) warned one particular amateur vampire hunter, who had appeared on the same programme as one of several witnesses, to leave things he did not understand alone. Apparently he had received “a horrible fright” a few weeks earlier when he allegedly caught sight of the vampire by the north gate of Highgate Cemetery and immediately wrote to his local newspaper about the experience, concluding with these words: “I have no knowledge in this field and I would be interested to hear if any other readers have seen anything of this nature.” (Letters to the Editor, Hampstead & Highgate Express, 6 February 1970). In the following month he revealed to the media that he had seen something at the north gate that was “evil” and that it “looked like it had been dead for a long time” (as told by him to Sandra Harris on the Today programme). Seán Manchester gave a warning on television that this man’s declared intention of staking the vampire alone went “against my explicit wish for his own safety.”

Police searching the cemetery arrested the amateur vampire hunter five months later. He was found to be in possession of a wooden stake and a crucifix. Charged with being in an enclosed area for an unlawful purpose, he was later released because, in the strict sense of the wording, Highgate Cemetery is not an enclosed area. The lone intruder had made his television debut five months earlier, employing on that occasion the name on his birth certificate. Now he adopted a pseudonym which appeared in many (but not all) of the newspaper reports covering his arrest and court appearance. When the American vampire aficionado Donald F Glut came to write his book True Vampires of History (1971) he referred only to "Allan Farrow who was arrested for trespassing in a London Graveyard." Others also innocently employed the "Farrow" nomenclature until it became clear this was not his real name. Ironically, the genuine surname of the lone would-be vampire hunter of 1970 has the same first four letters as "Farrow" and is, therefore, remarkably similar. "Allan" is not even close to his real forename. Even so, forty years ago, he was known locally by the name "Allan."

There exists a letter on headed prison notepaper from Farrow, prisoner number 087665, which he sent to Seán Manchester. The letter contradicts much later claims made by Farrow whose lone antics heralded worse days ahead for the amateur vampire hunter. It should have ended at that point. Several people had either been cautioned or arrested in the area when discovered to be engaged in freelance vampire hunting. Nothing more was heard of them once they retreated into their former obscurity, but some persisted. Farrow belonged to the latter category. Had he heeded the public warning given by Seán Manchester on Thames Television's Today programme, and also in the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 13 March 1970, he could have probably avoided many of the problems that would blight his life in the following years, including a four years and eight months jail sentence.

The Hampstead & Highgate Express, 13 March 1970, under the headline "The Ghost Goes On TV," reported: "Cameras from Thames Television visited Highgate Cemetery this week to film a programme ... One of those who faced the cameras was Mr [Farrow], of Priestwood Mansions, Archway Road. ... 'It was tall and very dark grey. But it didn't appear to have any feet. It just glided along.' He intends to visit the cemetery again, armed with a wooden stake and a crucifix, with the aim of exorcising the spirit. He also believes that Highgate is 'rife with black magic.' ... Mr Manchester is opposed to Mr [Farrow]'s plans. 'He goes against our explicit wish for his own safety,' he said. ‘We feel he does not possess sufficient knowledge to exorcise successfully something as powerful as a vampire, and may well fall victim as a result. We issue a similar warning to anyone with likewise intentions'."

Farrow's arrest in Highgate Cemetery on 17 August 1970 by police searching for black magic devotees was the beginning of the end for him. What the police discovered was a would-be amateur vampire hunter stalking the graveyard with a crudely fashioned wooden stake and a cross. He was acquitted on this occasion because Highgate Cemetery was demonstrably not an enclosed area, but by the end of the year he had abandoned his predilection for hunting the Devil’s undead and adopted what ostensibly appeared to be the trappings of black magic; entering the graveyard again in 1971 to raise the vampire by conducting what to all intents and purposes was a necromantic occult ritual with a naked female in a mausoleum. Photographs discovered by police who raided his flat led to a long trial at the Old Bailey and a prison sentence of almost five years which included such crimes as tomb vandalism and offering indignities to remains of the dead, as well as making black magic threats to witnesses who had received from Farrow voodoo effigies impaled with pins.
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London Secretary (Deceased)

2009-02-26T02:22:00.000-08:00

Diana Wynne Brewester (née Pryce) was born in Neath, South Wales, on 19 July 1944. She began working as a bank clerk, but was drawn to the performing arts and became proficient in dancing. Her father was a policemen, which gave her an interest in crime investigation that developed into a passion for law. He was also a Freemason and this might have had some influence on Diana’s drift into various aspects of the occult in her early years. In the wake of her father’s death, however, she discovered papers amongst his regalia that gave her pause for thought. What she found disturbed her enough to cause her to apply the brakes to her fascination with occultism. She eventually returned to the Church. This all happened after her arrival in London where she worked as a model for various fashion companies. Diana was quite tall with blonde hair and green eyes. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that she was exceptionally glamorous; an enchantment that remained with her to the end.
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Diana was Seán Manchester's personal assistant and the Vampire Research Society's London secretary throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Seán Manchester felt as close to Diana as any sibling might for a brother or sister. It was the same for her. As their blood relations died off, one by one, they became each other’s family. She grew to know his parents in their last years, and was present at the three most important occasions of Seán Manchester's life: his marriage, his ordination into the sacred priesthood, and his elevation to the episcopate. When the best man’s arrival was delayed at his wedding, it was Diana who immediately stepped in to become “best woman.” A better person on the day could not have been found. Diana’s support was always unflinching. She was undoubtedly one of the most generous people any in the Society have ever met. There was not a mean bone in her entire body. Her love of animals ranged from hamsters to tigers; yet she was afraid of moths. Indeed, the last letter Seán Manchester received from her, dated 21 November 2003, included a reference to this phobia, along with one of her charming drawings of five such creatures; her penultimate sentence being: “Well, ‘looking on the bright side of life,’ at least our cats are moth free, and beautifully bright and shining.” Diana loved her cats.
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Diana also loved the Kenwood Concerts on Hampstead Heath where, on summer evenings with friends, she would take a picnic and listen to the strains of the orchestra across a lake. The one thing that stood out about Diana was her voice. Her spoken voice belonged to a past time when England was far more refined than now. She also sang beautifully, whether singing church hymns or singing along to a piece of music as she cooked. She was a splendid cook, as many of us remember. Her great love of music stemmed from the world of opera. She knew all the arias to Tosca, Madame Butterfly, La Bohème, and many more. She adored Wagner’s music which she listened to ever more toward the end of her life. Religion, too, was an enormous comfort. The one thing that made Diana unique was her sense of humour and ability to effortlessly adapt to any age group and environment. She seldom ever complained about anything; though the worsening air pollution and rise in crime entered her conversation more and more frequently toward the end of the old century. She even spoke of leaving London in the last couple of years. It was not to be. Catholicism became her sanctuary with her sometimes attending Polish Masses for their traditional atmosphere of devotion. Diana would always help people where she could, and in her twilight years she helped her elderly neighbours with errands, and nursing them when they were sick.
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Ironically, she was alone at home when she passed away just before Christmas 2003, having been diagnosed with cancer in the previous September. She restricted this sad news to just three of her loyal friends, and, due to her throat being effected by the cancer, no proper telephone conversation could occur. She could barely speak at all. She allowed none of her friends to visit her during her illness because she was always so glamorous and would not allow anyone to become distressed at seeing her in a bad way. Diana was undergoing radiotherapy treatment until her demise in the third week of Advent. Whatever she suffered, she suffered alone. Yet her letters to her close friends right up to the end were full of good cheer. She looked painfully thin and wan in latter years. But this did not halt her adventures, which included regular visits to Denmark and Germany. In Diana her adopted "brother" found an affinity with someone who shared the same passion for poetry, opera, theatre, art and literature. She accompanied Seán Manchester on a pilgrimage to Newstead Abbey and Hucknall Torkard Parish Church where the poet’s remains are interred. Here was someone who would accompany her closest friends to the ends of the Earth. She was a devoted colleague, a dedicated supporter of the Vampire Research Society and believed totally in the existence of such phenomena. There will never be another like her, and we shall all miss her very much. She has now gone to a place more worthy of her than the one she has left.

Diana Brewester died on 16 December 2003 and was cremated one month later at 11.00am on 16 January 2004 at Islington & St Pancras Cemetery. Father Hubert Condron of St Joseph’s Catholic Church and Seán Manchester of Ecclesia Apostolica Jesu Christi blessed the coffin with holy water during the funeral service as they both took it in turns to address all those present. Panis Angelicus played as the curtains closed.

Honorary Vice President (Deceased)

2009-02-26T01:39:00.000-08:00

The Right Honourable Chevalier Professor Sir Devendra Prasad Varma, Ph.D., Honorary Vice-President of the Vampire Research Society, on his return trip from delivering a scholarly address at The Undiscovered Country Conference on Literatures of the Fantastic at UNC (October 1994), suffered an unexpected stroke and slipped into a coma. Dr Varma finally sustained a massive stroke that took his life on October 24th at 4:30pm New York time. The first of the strokes occurred on October 17th in New York at a colleague's home where he had stopped briefly while returning to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Dr Varma's son, Hemendra, and daughter-in-law, Susan, flew from Canada to New York and were present at his sad passing.

Thus the Vampire Research Sociey lost one of its closest colleagues and one of its most enthusiastic supporters.

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Dr Varma was a retired Full Professor Emeritus from Dalhousie University at Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Born in Darbhanga, a Himalayan village overlooking Mount Everest on 17 October 1923 to landed gentry parents, he eventually became a British/Canadian citizen. He was an internationally acclaimed scholar and the author of dozens of major articles and books in the scholarly discipline of Gothic Studies, making him the pre-eminent scholar in the field. His text The Gothic Flame was his way of picking up the torch from Montague Summers, before the flame passed to Seán Manchester in October 1994.

Professor Varma was the keynote speaker for such major literary bodies as The Byron Society (where, at some considerable length, he reviewed Seán Manchester’s biography of Lady Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron, Mad Bad and Dangerous to Know) and The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, which granted him the Outstanding Scholar Award. Both the British House of Lords and the Japanese Diet invited Dr Varma for major presentations. His latest book, On the Trail of Dracula, was in preparation at the time of his death. Dr Varma was excited at the prospect of his colleague’s proposed sequel to Dracula (Carmel by Seán Manchester, published in 2000 by Gothic Press). Seán Manchester dedicated The Vampire Hunter’s Handbook, published in 1997 by Gothic Press, to the memory of his good friend and fellow vampirologist.
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Dr Varma was decorated Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Caballero Grand Cruz de la Orden de Nuestra Se-ora de Guadalupe) and Knight Officer of the Holy Sepulchre. He held the Order of the Lion and the Black Rose and was a Fellow of the Augustan Society. He addressed the Conference on Literatures of the Fantastic at the University of Northern Colorado held October 14th-16th. At the time of his major address, Dr Varma was made a full member of Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honour Society. He was truly a great scholar and a real gentleman in the European style.
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Seán Manchester’s tribute to his colleague was first published in the Summer 1995 issue of Udolpho (magazine of the Gothic Society). What follows is an edited and much shortened version of Seán Manchester’s original obituary in Udolpho:
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“The terrible news of the Right Honourable Chevalier Professor Sir Devendra Prasad Varma’s death came upon the light-bearers of the neo-Gothic revival as an earthquake. I received the news by accident whilst glancing through a journal; it could not have struck me with the idea of a more awful and dreary blank in Creation. Few have been held in my affection as the place reserved for Varma. We existed, like Byron and Beckford, in mutual admiration. That admiration reigned for twenty years since it blossomed in 1975 when we were independently published in Peter Underwood’s anthology The Vampire’s Bedside Companion. Varma’s chapter, The Genesis of Dracula: A Re-Visit, was the perfect compliment to my own about the early days of Highgate Cemetery’s vampire infestation. The empathy shared and enthusiasm shown for a world that was already receding was apparent to us. Inevitably, we collaborated on many projects; sadly, few of these ever saw the light of day in terms of being published. But somehow that mattered less than the collaboration itself. The last short story for an anthology to be edited by Varma was proffered at his request around the time of my work on Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know reaching completion. Titled Aurora, the manuscript remains locked away with his private papers and is now unlikely to see the dawn.
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“Yet it was Varma’s enthusiasm for my biography of Lord Byron’s tortured lover which ensured its appearance in print. This I acknowledge at the front of the book. His generous support of my work knew no bounds. He wrote: ‘Your welcome letter brings the best news for the academic world that your book on Caroline Lamb may be out by early 1991.’ In fact, it was published in mid-1992 with much prompting by Varma who remained inspirational throughout the latter days of the project. His review in The Byron Journal the following year was extremely flattering, but there was never anything sycophantic about Varma as anyone who knew him will amply attest. He always spoke his mind. Nevertheless, his loyalty never faltered. Not once. There are very few people about which the same observation could be made.
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“My biography of Lady Caroline Lamb was to be the last my dear mother, an avid reader, was to enjoy before death came as an assassin and as a ferocious wraith two years prior to Varma’s sudden and unexpected departure. The pictures contained within its covers include one of my mother and I at Newstead where we often stayed in those all too distant days. This was the cherry on the cake for her. The book itself she loved and it somehow brought a twinkle back to her grey-blue eyes — those Byronic eyes. Varma proved to be the kindest of individuals during this period. He wrote: ‘Heartfelt condolences on your bereavement! We share your sorrows!’ He then quoted Scott:
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The light of smiles shall fill again.
The lids that overflow with tears,
And weary hours of woe and pain
And promises of the happy years!

There is a day of sunny rest
In every dark and troubled night
And grief may bide an evening guest
But joy shall come with early light.
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“He ended with the words: ‘We have no response for strokes of Fate — only Faith and Resignation.’ Two years later the same fate would clasp poor Varma in its icy clutch.
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“Like Summers and me, Varma subscribed unreservedly to a belief in the existence of vampires, the supernatural variety, as defined in every dictionary and chronicled in ancient tradition. His knowledge of the lore of the undead was impressive and our correspondence on this subject immense, running to several bulging files over the years. But his hand grew shaky and his most recent letters had an erratic quality that was unfamiliar. Nevertheless, his unbridled passion for those things in which we held a common interest burned brightly to the end.
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“His final letter spoke of us meeting at St Etheldreda’s Church in Hertfordshire where Lady Caroline is entombed in the Lamb Family Vault, but a crowded schedule would deny us this last opportunity.
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“My work The Grail Church: Its Ancient Tradition and Renewed Flowering (published on Ascension Day 1995) is dedicated to the memory of my dear mother. My next book will return to the Gothic genre and be dedicated to my late lamented colleague Devendra Prasad Varma whom I shall ever admire. It only remains for me now to recover the fallen torch, so fatefully dropped in October 1994, and guard its sacred flame until I, too, am no more on this old Earth of ours.
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“Fare the well, dear Varma — dear friend ... ”

Life-Member and Fellow Associate

2009-02-25T08:38:00.001-08:00

Peter Underwood was born in Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire, lived for much of his life in a small Hampshire village, and now resides in Surrey. President of The Ghost Club since 1960, and a long-standing member of the Society of Psychical Research, Underwood first entered the Vampire Research Society in 1973, having established a lively correspondence with its founding president Seán Manchester.

Tom Perrott had already invited the VRS president to address members of The Ghost Club in London. On 16 March 1973, Peter Underwood added: “We have a number of members who are deeply interested in the subject of vampires and I feel sure you would find our members kindly, sympathetic and friendly. I knew Montague Summers and members of The Ghost Club include Eric Maple and Robert Aickman who has written some excellent vampire stories. I hope that we may meet one day.” In 1974, he took part in Daniel Farson’s television documentary on vampires.
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Seán Manchester was made a Life-Member of The Ghost Club, and Peter Underwood, along with life-membership, was to become a Fellow Associate of the Vampire Research Society. Underwood was already a member of the British Occult Society which became defunct in 1988. The following year witnessed their collaboration on an anthology that would include the first published account of events in the early days of the Highgate Vampire case. On 14 October 1974, Underwood wrote: “I am pleased to be able to advise you that I have now passed the proofs and I am very pleased with the way the book has turned out. It will be entitled The Vampire’s Bedside Companion and is due for publication early in 1975 [by Leslie Frewin Books].”

On 25 July 1975, Peter Underwood wrote to Seán Manchester: “As you know, I possess a medallion, given to me by Montague Summers, that is reputed to have power over vampires. … I am just wondering whether you happen to know of a current vampire infestation where [the medallion] might be tried [and tested]?”

The Highgate Vampire, of course, had been exorcised a year and a half earlier, but there were other vampires indeed yet to be found. Thus began a comradeship in the field of vampirology that would endure to the present-day. On 15 December 1985, Seán Manchester was invited to give a piano recital of his own compositions on the occasion of Peter Underwood’s quarter of a century service as president of the The Ghost Club, at Berkeley Square, London. Other well-wishers included Dennis Wheatley, Vincent Price, Patrick Moore, Michael Bentine, Sir Alec Guiness and Dame Barbara Cartland — all of whom, with the exception of Patrick Moore, have now sadly passed on.
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In 1990, Peter Underwood retold the events of the Highgate Vampire case (up to the first discovery of the undead tomb in Highgate Cemetery) in his book Exorcism! He commented in chapter six: “The Hon Ralph Shirley told me in the 1940s that he had studied the subject in some depth, sifted through the evidence and concluded that vampirism was by no means as dead as many people supposed; more likely, he thought, the facts were concealed. … My old friend Montague Summers has, to his own satisfaction, at least, traced back ‘the dark tradition of the vampire’ until it is ‘lost amid the ages of a dateless antiquity’.”
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In his earlier book, containing the chapter with photographic evidence from the archive of the Vampire Research Society, written and contributed by Seán Manchester, Underwood wrote: “Alleged sightings of a vampire-like creature — a grey spectre — lurking among the graves and tombstones have resulted in many vampire hunts. … In 1968, I heard first-hand evidence of such a sighting and my informant maintained that he and his companion had secreted themselves in one of the vaults and watched a dark figure flit among the catacombs and disappear into a huge vault from which the vampire … did not reappear. Subsequent search revealed no trace inside the vault but I was told that a trail of drops of blood stopped at an area of massive coffins which could have hidden a dozen vampires.”

And probably did! In the previous year, two schoolgirls had reported seeing bodies rising from their graves at Highgate Cemetery ...

Vampire Children

2009-02-24T07:12:00.001-08:00

Four years ago, a would-be vampire (vampiroid) was arrested in the Ukraine after luring street children into her home for their blood.
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Diana Semenuha, 29, believed that drinking blood could fend off a muscle-wasting condition. She kept the children intoxicated on drugs and alcohol and bled them regularly, selling the surplus to other black magic practitioners. When that weakened them, she dumped them back on the streets and lured replacements with the promise of a place to sleep and a hot meal.

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Police raided Semenuha's apartment in the Black Sea port of Odessa after a tip-off.

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Olga Buravceva, a spokesman, said: "The apartment was painted black, with all the windows covered with thick black cloth to stop natural light coming in. The only light came from black candles, and there was a heavy, sickening odour of some sort of incense in the air."

Detectives found seven drugged children strapped to beds and benches, and a large, black knife and silver goblet engraved with satanic symbols.
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The Ukraine has an estimated 200,000 street children, whose widespread addiction to glue sniffing and alcohol made them easy prey for the woman dubbed the "vampire witch" by local media.
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Semenuha's arrest exposed an occult network in the city. Many claimed to have been taught by Semenuha and said that she would cut herself and let them drink her blood.

One of the children, named only as Andrei, told police: "She gave me vodka and I sniffed some glue. But than she came up to me with a syringe and asked me to stretch out my hand. I didn't feel any pain because I was too scared. She drew the blood with the syringe and a needle and than put it in her silver bowl and drank it, murmuring in some strange language."

Semenuha, who when arrested gave her profession as "witch", has admitted holding the children. "I let them sniff glue, but I paid for it and took a small amount of blood in return," she said. "But there was no violence involved, I also fed them and gave them shelter."
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Police fear that she could escape prosecution for corrupting minors and plying them with alcohol because the seven children found at her home have since escaped from care and gone back on the streets.

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Innocent children are meant to be protected by society, their parents, teachers and by adults generally. Hence when children become the victims of vampires or are displayed as vampires in novels, the reader will invariably squirm. This is even more true when it is an adult vampire preying upon a child victim, which made it all the more shocking when Lucy Westenra drank the blood of children on Hamsptead Heath in the novel Dracula. This is the only early vampire fiction to portray young children victimised by an adult vampire. This is surprising in view of the fact that the vampire of folklore is most likely to attack a close family member first, and that children in their total innocence are more likely to let the familiar, albeit undead, figure into the house and all too easily fall prey to it.
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Vampire children is also an unkind term for children with xeroderma pigmentosum, a genetic disease with such extraordinary sensitivity to sunlight that ordinary sun exposure results in the development of skin cancer at a very early age. Children with xeroderma pigmentosum can only play outdoors safely after nightfall. They have been called midnight children, the children of the dark, the children of the night and, perjoratively, vampire children.

Xeroderma pigmentosum is due to defective repair of damage done to DNA (the genetic material), damage caused by ultraviolet light. Whereas normal persons can repair ultraviolet-induced damage by inserting new bases into the DNA, xeroderma pigmentosum patients lack the normal capacity to repair the DNA damage inflicted by ultraviolet light.
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A person with xeroderma pigmentosum develops severe sunburn and eye irritation within minutes of exposure to sunlight. Other signs of xeroderma pigmentosum include the development of ultradry skin (the word "xeroderma" means extreme dryness of the skin) plus blisters, heavy freckling and dark spots on the skin (the word "pigmentosum" refers to these pigmented areas of skin). Damage to DNA is cumulative; it is additive and cannot be reversed. Recurrent exposure of a xeroderma pigmentosum person to ultraviolet light can cause the rapid development of cancerous and non-cancerous growths on both the skin and eyes. Even children with xeroderma pigmentosum can develop skin cancer. About one in every five xeroderma pigmentosum patients also develops one or more of the following problems: blindness, deafness, mental retardation, poor coordination, spasticity, or retarded physical growth.

The life span of xeroderma pigmentosum patients varies. Those with undiagnosed xeroderma pigmentosum who regularly expose themselves to sunlight may die young of skin cancer. Those with a diagnosis of xeroderma pigmentosum who protect themselves from sunlight may live a long life. The life expectancy of most patients falls between these extremes.
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Diagnosis requires tests on skin or blood samples. Although the disease itself is incurable, patients can maintain their health by: protecting themselves completely from ultraviolet light; getting frequent skin and eye examinations; and having cancerous growths removed without delay.
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Xeroderma pigmentosum is inherited as an autosomal recessive trait (meaning that the gene for xeroderma pigmentosum is on a non-sex chromosome [an autosome] and that a person must possess two doses of that gene to manifest the syndrome). In actuality, xeroderma pigmentosum is not one disease. A number of diseases clinically paint the xeroderma pigmentosum picture. Genes for xeroderma pigmentosum reside in diverse locations including chromosomes 3p25, 9q22.3, 11p12-p11, and 19q13.2-q13.3.

The Life and Death of Stubbe Peeter

2009-02-23T09:33:00.000-08:00

The Damnable Life and Death of Stubbe Peeter

George Bores (London Chapbook of 1590)

A true Discourse.

Declaring the damnable life and death of one Stubbe Peeter, a most wicked Sorcerer, who in the likeness of a Wolf committed many murders, continuing this devilish practice 25 Years, killing and devouring Men, Women, and Children. Who for the same fact was taken and executed the 31st of October last past in the town of Bedbur [Bedburg] near the City of Collin [Cologne, Köln] in Germany. Truly translated out of the high Dutch, according to the copy printed in Collin, brought over into England by George Bores ordinary post, the 11th day of this present month of June 1590, who did both see and hear the same.

AT LONDON

Printed for Edward Venge, and are to be sold in Fleet Street at the sign of the Vine.

A most true discourse,declaring the life and death of one Stubbe Peeter, being a most wicked sorcerer.

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Those whom the Lord doth leave to follow the imagination of their own hearts, despising his proffered grace, in the end through the hardness of heart and contempt of his fatherly mercy, they enter the right path to perdition and destruction of body and soul for ever: as in this present history in perfect sort may be seen, the strangeness whereof, together with the cruelties committed, and the long time therein continued, may drive many in doubt whether the same be truth or no, and the rather fore that sundry false and fabulous matters have heretofore passed in print, which hath wrought much incredulity in the hearts of all men generally, insomuch that now of days few things do escape be it never so certain, but that it is embased by the term of a lie or false report.

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In the reading of this story, therefore I do first request reformation of opinion, next patience to peruse it, because it is published for example's sake, and lastly to censure thereof as reason and wisdom doth think convenient, considering the subtlety that Satan useth to work the soul's destruction, and the great matters which the accursed practice of sorcery doth effect, the fruits whereof is death and destruction for ever, and yet in all ages practiced by the reprobate and wicked of the earth, some in one sort and some in another even as the Devil giveth promise to perform. But of all other that ever lived, none was comparable unto this Hell hound, whose tyranny and cruelty did well declare he was of his father the devil, who was a murderer from the beginning, whose life and death and most bloody practices the discourse doth make just report.

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In the towns of Cperadt and Bedbur near Collin in high Germany, there was continually brought up and nourished one Stubbe Peeter, who from his youth was greatly inclined to evil and the practicing of wicked arts even from twelve years of age till twenty, and so forwards till his dying day, insomuch that surfeiting in the damnable desire of magic, necromancy, and sorcery, acquainting himself with many infernal spirits and fiends, insomuch tat forgetting the God that made him, and that Savior that shed his blood man man's redemption: In the end, careless of salvation gave both soul and body to the Devil for ever, for small carnal pleasure in this life, that he might be famous and spoken of on earth, though he lost heaven thereby.
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The Devil, who hath a ready ear to listen to the lewd motions of cursed men, promised to give him whatsoever his heart desired during his mortal life: whereupon this vile wretch neither desired riches nor promotion, nor was his fancy satisfied with any external or outward pleasure, but having a tyrannous heart and a most cruel bloody mind, requested that at his pleasure he might work his malice on men, women, and children, in the shape of some beast, whereby he might live without dread or danger of life, and unknown to be the executor of any bloody enterprise which he meant to commit.
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The Devil, who saw him a fit instrument to perform mischief as a wicked fiend pleased with the desire of wrong and destruction, gave unto him a girdle which, being put around him, he was straight transformed into the likeness of a greedy, devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like unto brands of fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body and mighty paws. And no sooner should he put off the same girdle, but presently he should appear in his former shape, according to the proportion of a man, as if he had never been changed.
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Stubbe Peeter herewith was exceedingly well pleased, and the shape fitted his fancy and agreed best with his nature, being inclined to blood and cruelty. Therefore, satisfied with this strange and devilish gift, for that it was not troublesome nor great in carriage, but that it might be hidden in a small room, he proceeded to the execution of sundry most heinous and vile murders; for if any person displeased him, he would incontinent thirst for revenge, and no sooner should they or any of theirs walk abroad in the fields or about the city, but in the shape of a wolf he would presently encounter them, and never rest till he had plucked out their throats and tear their joints asunder. And after he had gotten a taste hereof, he took such pleasure and delight in shedding of blood, that he would night and day walk the fields and work extreme cruelties. And sundry times he would go through the streets of Collin, Bedbur, and Cperadt, in comely habit, and very civilly, as one well known to all the inhabitants thereabout, and oftentimes was he saluted of those whose friends and children he had butchered, though nothing suspected for the same. In these places, I say, he would walk up and down, and if he could spy either maid, wife, or child that his eyes liked or his heart lusted after, he would wait their issuing out of the city or town. If he could by any means get them alone, he would in the fields ravish them, and after in his wolfish likeness cruelly murder them.
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Yea, often it came to pass that as he walked abroad in the fields, if he chanced to spy a company of maidens playing together or else a milking their kine, in his wolfish shape he would incontinent run among them, and while the rest escaped by flight, he would be sure to lay hold of one, and after his filthy lust fulfilled, he would murder her presently. Beside, if he had liked or known any of them, look who he had a mind unto, her he would pursue, whether she were before or behind, and take her from the rest, for such was his swiftness of foot while he continued a wolf that he would outrun the swiftest greyhound in that country; and so much he had practiced this wickedness that the whole province was feared by the cruelty of this bloody and devouring wolf.
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Thus continuing his devilish and damnable deeds within the compass of a few years, he had murdered thirteen young children, and two goodly young women big with child, tearing the children out of their wombs, in most bloody and savage sort, and after ate their hearts panting hot and raw, which he accounted dainty morsels and best agreeing to his appetite.
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Moreover, he used many times to kill lambs and kids and such like beasts, feeding on the same most usually raw and bloody, as if he had been a natural wolf indeed, so that all men mistrusted nothing less than this his devilish sorcery.
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He had at that time living a fair young damsel to his daughter, after whom he also lusted must unnaturally, and cruelly committed most wicked incest with her, a most gross and vile sin, far surmounting adultery or fornication, though the least of the three doth drive the soul into hell fire, except hearty repentance, and the great mercy of God. This daughter of his he begot when he was not altogether so wickedly given, who was called by the name of Stubbe Beell, whose beauty and good grace was such as deserved commendations of all those that knew her. And such was his inordinate lust and filthy desire toward her, that he begat a child by her, daily using her as his concubine; but as an insatiate and filthy beast, given over to work evil, with greediness he also lay by his own sister, frequenting her company long time, even according as the wickedness of his heart led him.
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Moreover, being on a time sent for to a gossip of his there to make merry and good cheer, ere he thence departed he so won the woman by his fair and flattering speech, and so much prevailed, that ere he departed the house, he lay by her, and ever after had her company at his command. This woman had to name Katherine Trompin, a woman of tall and comely stature of exceeding good favor and one that was well esteemed among her neighbors. But his lewd and inordinate lust being not satisfied with the company of many concubines, nor his wicked fancy contented with the beauty of any woman, at length the Devil sent unto him a wicked spirit in the similitude and likeness of a woman, so fair of face and comely of personage, that she resembled rather some heavenly Helfin than any mortal creature, so far her beauty exceeded the choicest sort of women; and with her, as with his heart's delight, he kept company the space of seven years, though in the end she proved and was found indeed no other than a she-Devil.
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Notwithstanding, this lewd sin of lechery did not any thing assuage his cruel and bloody mind, but continuing an insatiable bloodsucker, so great was the joy he took therein, that he accounted no day spent in pleasure wherein he had not shed some blood, not respecting so much who he did murder, as how to murder and destroy them, as the matter ensuing doth manifest, which may stand for a special note of a cruel and hard heart. For, having a proper youth to his son, begotten in the flower and strength of his age, the first fruit of his body, in whom he took such joy that he did commonly call him his heart's ease, yet so far his delight in murder exceeded the joy he took in his son, that thirsting after his blood, on a time he enticed him into the fields, and from thence into a forest hard by, where, making excuse to stay about the necessaries of nature, while the young man went forward, incontinent in the shape and likeness of a wolf he encountered his own son and there most cruelly slew him, which done, he presently ate the brains out of his head as a most savory and dainty delicious mean to staunch his greedy appetite: the most monstrous act that ever man heard of, for never was known a wretch from nature so far degenerate.
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Long time he continued his vile and villainous life, sometime in the likeness of a wolf, sometime in the habit of a man, sometime in the towns and cities, and sometimes in the woods and thickets to them adjoining, whereas the Dutch copy maketh mention, he on a time met with two men and one woman, whom he greatly desired to murder, and the better to bring his devilish purpose to effect, doubting by them to be overmatched and knowing one of them by name, he used this policy to bring them to their end. In subtle sort he conveyed himself far before them in their way and craftily couched out of the sight; but as soon as they approached near the place where he lay, he called one of them by his name. The party, hearing himself called once or twice by his name, supposing it was some familiar friend that in jesting sort stood out of his sight, went from his company toward the place from whence the voice proceeded, of purpose to see who it was; but he was no sooner entered within the danger of this transformed man, but incontinent he was murdered in the place; the rest of his company staying for him, expecting still his return, but finding his stay over long, the other man left the woman and went to look him, by which means the second man was also murdered. The woman then seeing neither of both return again, in heart suspected that some evil had fallen upon them, and therefore, with all the power she had, she sought to save herself by flight, though it nothing prevailed, for, good soul, she was also soon overtaken by this light-footed wolf, whom, when he had first deflowered, he after most cruelly murdered. The men were after found mangled in the wood, but the woman's body was never after seen, for she the caitiff had most ravenously devoured, whose flesh he esteemed both sweet and dainty in taste.
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Thus this damnable Stubbe Peeter lived the term of five and twenty years, unsuspected to be author of so many cruel and unnatural murders, in which time he had destroyed and spoiled an unknown number of men, women, and children, sheep, lambs, and goats, and other cattle; for, when he could not through the wariness of people draw men, women, or children in his danger, then, like a cruel and tyrannous beast, he would work his cruelty on brute beasts in most savage sort, and did act more mischief and cruelty than would be credible, although high Germany hath been forced to taste the truth thereof.
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By which means the inhabitants of Collin, Bedbur, and Cperadt, seeing themselves so grievously endangered, plagued, and molested by this greedy and cruel wolf, who wrought continual harm and mischief, insomuch that few or none durst travel to or from those places without good provision of defense, and all for fear of this devouring and fierce wolf, for oftentimes the inhabitants found the arms and legs of dead men, women, and children scattered up and down the fields, to their great grief and vexation of heart, knowing the same to be done by that strange and cruel wolf, whom by no means they could take or overcome, so that if any man or woman missed their child, they were out of hope ever to see it again alive, mistrusting straight that the wolf had destroyed it.
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And here is to be noted a most strange thing which setteth forth the great power and merciful providence of God to the comfort of each Christian heart. There were not long ago certain small children playing in a meadow together hard by the town, where also some store of kine were feeding, many of them having young calves sucking upon them. And suddenly among these children comes this vile wolf running and caught a pretty fine girl by the collar, with intent to pull out her throat; but such was the will of God, that the wolf could not pierce the collar of the child's coat, being high and very well stiffened and close clasped about her neck; and therewithal the sudden great cry of the rest of the children which escaped so amazed the cattle feeding by, that being fearful to be robbed of their young, they altogether came running against the wolf with such force that he was presently compelled to let go his hold and to run away to escape the danger of their horns; by which means the child was preserved from death, and, God be thanked, remains living at this day.
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An that this thing is true, Master Tice Artine, a brewer dwelling at Puddlewharfe in London, being a man of that country born, and one of good reputation and account, is able to justify, who is near kinsman to this child, and hath from thence twice received letters concerning the same; and for that the first letter did rather drive him into wondering at the act then yielding credit thereunto, he had shortly after, at request of his writing, another letter sent him, whereby he was more fully satisfied; and divers other persons of great credit in London hath in like sort received letters from their friends to the like effect.
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Likewise in the town of Germany aforesaid continual prayer was used unto God that it would please Him to deliver them from the danger of this greedy wolf.
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And, although they had practiced all the means that men could devise to take this ravenous beast, yet until the Lord had determined his fall, they could not in any wise prevail: notwithstanding, they daily continued their purpose, and daily sought to entrap him, and for that intent continually maintained great mastiffs and dogs of much strength to hunt and chase the beast. In the end, it pleased God, as they were in readiness and provided to meet with him, that they should espy him in his wolfish likeness at what time they beset him round about, and most circumspectly set their dogs upon him, in such sort that there was no means of escape, at which advantage they never could get him before; but as the Lord delivered Goliath into the hands of David, so was this wolf brought in danger of these men, who seeing, as I said before, no way to escape the imminent danger, being hardly pursued at the heels, presently slipped his girdle from about him, whereby the shape of a wolf clean avoided, and he appeared presently in his true shape and likeness, having in his hand a staff as one walking toward the city. But the hunters, whose eyes were steadfastly bent upon the beast, and seeing him in the same place metamorphosed contrary to their expectation, it wrought a wonderful amazement to their minds; and, had it not been that they knew the man so soon as they saw him, they had surely taken the same to have been some Devil in a man's likeness; but for as much as they knew him to be an ancient dweller in the town, they came unto him, and talking with him, they brought him by communication home to his own house, and finding him to be the man indeed, and no delusion or fantastical motion, they had him incontinent before the magistrates to be examined.
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Thus being apprehended, he was shortly after put to the rack in the town of Bedbur, but fearing the torture, he voluntarily confessed his whole life, and made known the villainies which he had committed for the space of 25 years; also he confessed how by sorcery he procured of the Devil a girdle, which being put on, he forthwith became a wolf, which girdle at his apprehension he confessed he cast it off in a certain valley and there left it, which, when the magistrates heard, they sent to the valley for it, but at their coming found nothing at all, for it may be supposed that it was gone to the Devil from whence it came, so that it was not to be found. For the Devil having brought the wretch to all the shame he could, left him to endure the torments which his deeds deserved.
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After he had some space been imprisoned, the magistrates found out through due examination of the matter, that his daughter Stubbe Beell and his gossip Katherine Trompin were both accessory to divers murders committed, who for the same as also for their lewd life otherwise committed, was arraigned, and with Stubbe Peeter condemned, and their several judgments pronounced the 28 of October 1589, in this manner, that is to say: Stubbe Peeter as principal malefactor, was judged first to have his body laid on a wheel, and with red hot burning pincers in ten several places to have the flesh pulled off from the bones, after that, his legs and arms to be broken with a wooden ax or hatchet, afterward to have his head struck from his body, then to have his carcass burned to ashes.
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Also his daughter and his gossip were judged to be burned quick to ashes, the same time and day with the carcass of the aforesaid Stubbe Peeter. And on the 31st of the same month, they suffered death accordingly in the town of Bedbur in the presence of many peers and princes of Germany.
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This, Gentle Reader, have I set down the true discourse of this wicked man Stub Peeter, which I desire to be a warning to all sorcerers and witches, which unlawfully follow their own devilish imagination to the utter ruin and destruction of their souls eternally, from which wicked and damnable practice, I beseech God keep all good men, and from the cruelty of their wicked hearts. Amen
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After the execution, there was by the advice of the magistrates of the town of Bedbur a high pole set up and strongly framed, which first went through the wheel whereon he was broken, whereunto also it was fastened; after that a little above the wheel the likeness of a wolf was framed in wood, to show unto all men the shape wherein he executed those cruelties. Over that on the top of the stake the sorcerer's head itself was set up, and round about the wheel there hung as it were sixteen pieces of wood about a yard in length with represented the sixteen persons that was perfectly known to be murdered by him. And the same ordained to stand there for a continual monument to all ensuing ages, what murders by Stub Peeter was committed, with the order of his judgment, as this picture doth more plainly express.
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Witnesses that this is true:

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Tyse Artyne.William Brewar.Adolf Staedt.George Bores.
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With divers others that have seen the same.

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Source: Montague Summers, The Werewolf (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1934), pp. 253-259. Spelling has been modernised but grammatical inconsistencies remain unchanged. Montague Summers' source is a black-letter pamphlet printed in London in 1590. Only two copies of this pamphlet are known to exist, one in the British Museum and the other in the Lambeth Library. Peeter (also spelled Peter). Stubbe's family name is variously recorded as Stub, Stubbe, Stube, Stump, or Stumpf.

The Werewolf (as distinct from Vampire)

2009-02-23T09:18:00.001-08:00

A composite portrait of a werewolf can be sketched from centuries of stories. In human form they had bushy eyebrows that met over the bridge of the nose. Their blood-red fingernails were long and almond-shaped; mouth and eyes were always dry and thirsty. Long and narrow ears were laid back against the head. Their skin was rough, scratched and hairy with yellowish, pinkish or greenish cast. In addition to such physical features, the werewolf also displayed certain psychological traits. They generally preferred the night and solitude, had an inclination towards visiting the graveyards and were known to dig up corpses and occasionally feast upon them.

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The transformation was achieved by any of the following methods:

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Curse: An ill fated man could become victim of witchcraft or fall under curse of evil spirits. The person then would involuntary turn into werewolf.

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Bitten by Werewolf: Another common belief was that any one could become one if saliva of a werewolf could find a way into blood stream; perhaps from a bite or scratch.

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Putting on Wolf Skin: The easiest way of becoming werewolf. However, there have been debates concerning effectiveness of the method. An evil minded person could put on the hide of a dead wolf and appear to become a werewolf. In case the complete skin was unavailable, a belt or girdle of wolf hide would supplement it.

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Diabolism: A thoroughly wicked individual could worship the Devil who would grant him the power to become a werewolf. In some cases it could be any evil spirit answering.

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Magic Salve or Ointment: A good number of recorded cases mention a potent salve or ointment with which the potential werewolf would rub their bodies for transformations. The compositions of those ointments were different, but generally contained plant ingredients such as deadly nightshade (belladonna) and henbane. Pig fat, turpentine and olive oil were used as solvent for them. Later, when the distillation of spirits was perfected, alcohol served the purpose.

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Rituals: Evidence of ceremonial rituals are often mentioned in werewolf cases. The rituals were mainly any combination of the voluntary methods of becoming a werewolf. First the afflicted man would locate an isolated place and trace a large circle on the soil. In the centre of that circle he made a fire and prepared his magic ointment. After rubbing his body with the ointment he would wear the wolf hide and concentrate on an evocation to the Devil. At the end of the process the man turned into a wolf and ran in search of prey.

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Montague Summers reveals in one of his books that "the lycanthropist is liable to become a vampire when he dies," and the logic in that can be seen. I would make the distinction, however, between the medical disease of lycanthropy and the affliction of werewolfism in this regard. Men attacked with this madness where they become like ravening wolves are not automatically destined to become vampires. What both vampire and werewolf share in common is the apparent ability to shape-shift.
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The vampire, whether the corporeal host was formerly someone afflicted with werewolfism or not, retains the power of metamorphosis. The vampire can metamorphose as a wolf, but the werewolf is not necessarily doomed to become a vampire. The lycanthropist/werewolf is a living person with a terrible affliction; sometimes hereditary, sometimes acquired; which evinces as a horrible pleasure born of the thirst to quaff warm human blood.

Summers reveals that "a werewolf is a human being, man, woman or child (more often the first), who either voluntarily or involuntarily changes or is metamorphosed into the apparent shape of a wolf, and who is then possessed of all the characteristics, the foul appetites, ferocity, cunning, the brute strength, and swiftness of that animal. This shape-shifting is for the most part temporary, of longer or shorter duration, but it is sometimes supposed to be permanent. The transformation, again, such as it is, if desired, can be effected by certain rites and ceremonies, which in the case of a constitutional werewolf are often of the black goetic kind. The resumption of the original form may also then be wrought at will."

The Devil's Scourge

2009-02-23T09:08:00.001-08:00

The Devil's Scourge: Exorcism During the Italian Renaissance (1576) was reprinted in 2002. Girolamo Menghi's work written in Latin is a worthy addition to the shelves of the Vampire Research Society's extensive library.

Girolamo Menghi (1529-1609) provides the reader with much information about the Devil and the complex rites of exorcism deemed necessary to combat and expel demons. We must never lose sight of the fact, as the preface to this book reminds us, that when Peter blocked the mission of Christ by physically defending him, Our Lord remonstrated: "Get behind Me, Satan! You are an obstacle in My path, because you are thinking not as God thinks but as man thinks." (Matthew 16: 23).

So even our brother may exercise a diabolical function if he sets up an obstacle in our path toward God.
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Menghi opens with the words:

"Devil, evil, sin. These words keep reappearing in our thoughts, our speech, our readings, our experience."

Well might such thoughts have reverberated in sixteenth century Italy. Perhaps if we were more cognisant of them today the world would not so swiftly drift into the darkness of Satan's embrace?

Nosferatu: Origin and Definitions

2009-02-23T08:35:00.001-08:00

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Nosferatu: Romania. Also nosferat. A decidedly lustful species said in local folklore to be the illegitimate child of illegitimate parents. Shortly after its burial, the creature stirs, leaves its grave, and not only sucks blood but also engages in sexual contact with the living. According to some beliefs, the male is thought to be able to impregnate women whose children are destined to become moroii.
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Other definitions of Nosferatu:

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Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror is a German Expressionist film by F. W. Murnau, starring Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok. The film, shot in 1921 and released in 1922, was in essence an unauthorised adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with names and other details changed because the studio could not obtain the rights to the novel (for instance, "vampire" became "Nosferatu," and Count Dracula became Count Orlok).

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In 2007, Kino International released Nosferatu: The Ultimate Edition, derived from a new high-definition transfer of the film. This double-disc collection presents the film with the original German intertitles as well as with newly-translated English intertitles. Accompanying the film is a 52-minute documentary by Luciano Berriatúa which provides a detailed account of the production and explores the film makers' involvement in the occult.

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The original meaning of the word nosferatu is difficult to determine. There is no doubt that it achieved popular currency through Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, and Stoker identified his source for the term as the nineteenth century British author and speaker Emily Gerard who introduced the word into print in a magazine article, Transylvanian Supersitions, 1885, and in her travelogue The Land Beyond the Forest, 1888. Internal evidence in Dracula suggests that Stoker believed the term meant "not dead" in Romanian, and thus he may have intended the word undead to be a calque of it. This idea is demonstrably false, since the word nosferatu in this form has no known meaning (aside from that introduced by the novel and the films) in any historical phase of Romanian.

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Peter Haining identifies an earlier source for nosferatu as Roumanian Superstitions, 1861, by Heinrich von Wlislocki. However, Wlislocki seems only to have written in German, and according to the Magyar Néprajzi Lexikon, Wlislocki was born in 1856 (died 1907), which makes his authorship of an English-titled 1861 source doubtful. Certain details of Haining's citation also conflict with David J. Skal in Hollywood Gothic, 1990 & 2004, so this citation seems unreliable. Skal identifies a similar reference to the word "nosferat" in an article by Wlislocki dating from 1896. Since this postdates Gerard and has a number of parallels to Gerard's work, Skal considers it likely that Wlislocki is derivative from Gerard.

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A leading alternative etymology is that the term originally came from the Greek "nosophoros" (νοσοφόρος), meaning disease-bearing. This derivation could make sense when one considers that amongst Western European nations, vampires were regarded as the carriers of many diseases. F. W. Murnau's classic film Nosferatu strongly emphasizes this theme of disease, and Murnau's creative direction in the film may have been influenced by this etymology or vice-versa.

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However, several difficulties with this explanation should be noted. Gerard clearly identified the word as Romanian and proponents of the "nosophoros" etymology (as well as most other commentators) seem to have little doubt that this is correct, even though Gerard's limited familiarity with the language gives her little authority on that point. If this Romanian identification is taken to be correct, the first objection to the "nosophoros" etymology is that Romanian is a Romance language. While Romanian does have some words borrowed from Greek, as do most European languages, Greek is generally considered to be only a minor contributor to the Romanian vocabulary — absent any other information, any given Romanian word is much more likely to be of Latin origin than Greek. Second, while νοσοφόρος would be a regular compound according to the conventions of Greek morphology, the word itself is not known in any historical phases of the Greek language. That is to say, the word νοσοφόρος simply is not known to have ever existed in Greek, which would seem to make the burden of proof rather high for proposing it to have been the original form of another word in an entirely different language. A single instance of a Greek word similar to νοσοφόρος, νοσηφόρος ("nosēphoros"), is attested in fragments from a second century AD work by Marcellus Sidetes on medicine, but the supporting evidence for a relationship between this apparently very rare medical term and nosferatu is still very weak.

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It is also possible that Gerard's nosferatu was not Romanian at all, but it becomes even more difficult to justify the etymology of a word if its language is not even known. In either case, the glaring difficulty with the νοσοφόρος etymology is that no source has ever presented an argument for it any more substantial than that the two words, one of which may not have even existed, are vaguely similar in sound and meaning. No derivation has been proposed that would accord with a regular derivational process, and no citations of any intermediate forms in primary sources have ever been presented.

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In some versions of the "nosophoros" etymology, an intermediate form nesufur-atu or sometimes nosufur-atu is presented, but both the original source for this and the justification for it are unclear. This form is often indicated to be Slavonic or Slavic, but these terms do not correspond to the commonly recognised names for any language, and it is likely that either Old Church Slavonic or the proto-language Proto-Slavic is intended. As with νοσοφόρος, this supposed Slavonic word does not appear to be attested in primary sources, which severely undermines the credibility of the argument.

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Another common etymology suggests that the word meant "not breathing," which appears to be attempting to read a derivative of the Latin verb spirare ("to breathe") as a second morpheme in nosferatu. Skal notes that this is "without basis in lexicography," viewing all these etymological attempts with similar scepticism.

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A final possibility is that the form Gerard gave is a well-known Romanian term without the benefit of normalised spelling, or possibly a misintrepretation of the sounds of the word due to Gerard's limited familiarity with the language, or possibly a dialectical variant of the word. Two candidate words that have been put forth are necurat ("unclean", usually associated with the occult) and nesuferit ("insufferable"). The nominative masculine definite form of a Romanian noun in the declension to which both words belong takes the ending "-ul", so the definite forms necuratul and nesuferitul are commonly encountered (translatable as "the Devil" and "the insufferable one," respectively).

The Kirklees Mystery (West Yorkshire)

2009-02-23T02:58:00.001-08:00

“It may have been because it was hot and sunny but when I turned into the long drive to Lady Armytage’s home it was hard to believe the green oasis was just minutes away from Huddersfield and the busy M62. The Armytage family had lived on the land since 1565. … The source of the controversy, the alleged grave of Robin Hood, is well hidden in the trees at the top of a hill. … An iron cage was placed around the gravestone in the early 19th century. … In 1989 Lady Armytage was asked to hold a service of blessings and nightly vigils at Robin’s graveside by the Vampire Research Society. Her refusal culminated in rumours of a conspiracy and even an illegal visit to the site.”

— Helen Briggs, Spen Guardian, 15 May 1997

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Due to the distressed cries from so many in the area who sought action over what was perceived to be an urgent situation, Seán Manchester decided to hold a vigil, accompanied by two trusted assistants, close to the seemingly afflicted area. He never once believed there was any "conspiracy" on the part of the Armytage family, and only organised to visit on this one occasion on the 22 April 1990 to discover a means to remedy what the Vampire Research Society had been led to believe was a most urgent dilemma for locals who had been forwarding their reports of all manner of unholy happenings in the vicinity. The above illustration was painted by Sandra Elliott to describe the spectral figure her friend Roger Williams witnessed in 1963 at Kirklees Park. Others have described something similar haunting the area down the years.

Though there is undoubtedly a mystery at Kirklees, which might or might not be vampiric in origin, the Vampire Research Society and its founder now accept that the urgency was partly manufactured by the claims of a tiny number of people who had their own agenda; an agenda, moreover, that the Society does not share. With hindsight the Vampire Research Society does not believe it would investigate any further without proper consent should these same circumstances once again prevail.

But that was then when all hell appeared to be breaking loose and this is now.

The Society and its founder understand why unaccompanied visits to the grave cannot normally be allowed for insurance purposes. It also deeply regrets any anxiety that might have been caused at the time when a certain local Robin Hood society leaked the goings-on and attendant phenomena to the press. This left Seán Manchester no alternative but to set the record straight in a specialist magazine and a book where Kirklees is discussed.

All this took place last century and there have been no urgent developments to warrant the Society doing anything further without the express permission of the new landowner. The Society is nevertheless aware of a pseudo-occult publicity-stunt "ceremony" that was filmed and photographed on the evening of 20 April 2005 by Red Monkey Films in collaboration with the foundress of the aforementioned Robin Hood society. There is little doubt Red Monkey Films (who contacted Seán Manchester two years ago and were met with his refusal to make any contribution whatsoever) think they are going to sell their "occult ceremony" footage of the grave to various outlets, but then injunctions will be taken out by the current landowner to prevent their sale of the programme material to broadcasters globally, as will legal statements of what will happen to any broadcaster who does transmit any material showing the Kirklees Estate or any building on it based on such materials in the possession of this company, their successors, licensees or agents. Before the Robin Hood society's foundress starts screaming that these mechanisms are a conspiracy against her or the result of the Vampire Research Society's interference, she should realise that the entire Armytage family has closed ranks on that small coterie of people with whom she is associated, who have bullied, lied, tormented and tried to publicly humiliate an elderly widow for a quarter of a century. This so-called Robin Hood society can bring nothing into play that can fight the Armytage combined force. Particularly since the law is on the family’s side.

Maria Margarete, Lady Armytage, who died 4 April, 2008, aged 81, was the second wife and widow of Captain Sir John Lionel Armytage, 8th Baronet, of Kirklees Park, Brighouse, West Yorkshire. She was born circa 1926, the former Maria Margarete Tenhaeff, daughter of Paul Hugo Tenhaeff, of Bruenen, Niederhein, and married Sir John (whose GB Baronetcy was created in 1738) in 1949. He died in 1983. She leaves a daughter and a step-son, Sir (John) Martin Armytage, 9th Baronet. Lady Armytage lived in historic Kirklees Hall until 1997 at which time she moved to a smaller property in the grounds of Kirklees Park.
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Her ladyship and the Vampire Reserach Society's founder, Seán Manchester, were linked for more than twenty years by the mysterious and sometimes sinister happenings in the vicinity of a ruin tomb on unconsecrated ground at Kirklees Park. It must be admitted that the Society and her ladyship did not always see eye to eye on how best to deal with these occurrences; especially at the beginning. As time passed, however, an understanding developed and the co-operation so absent at the beginning was eventually reached in an atmosphere of mutual respect. We all agreed that nocturnal visits by those immersed in the dark occult was counter-productive and, coupled with the attendant publicity generated by such people, served only to inflame the situation.
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Seán Manchester's final comment, made three years prior to Lady Armytage's death, ended with these words: "Lady Armytage has my complete sympathy and support in this matter. I shall do all I can to help."

A memorial service for Lady Armytage was held on 15 April 2008 at noon in St Peter's Church, Hartshead; having been preceded by a private cremation.

A Powerful Prayer Against Evil

2009-02-23T02:17:00.001-08:00

A powerful prayer (see below in its original entirety), written by Pope Leo XIII in 1888, was incorporated into the Romano Rituali in 1925 (Tit. XI, Cap. 3) with the rubric that it can be recited by bishops or by priests who have received the authority to do so from their Ordinaries. However, this rubric concerns the public prayers of the Church that are contained in the Romano Rituali. The same restriction does not apply to the private recitation of this prayer by any individual priest, or any of the faithful for that matter, as many bishops permitted and encouraged before Vatican II.
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The Church’s traditional teaching concerning the recitation of private exorcism prayers is contained in the Moral Theology manual of Dominicus Prümmer (Vol. II, §463):

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"It is not only clerics who can pronounce an exorcism in a private and secret manner, enjoying a special power over the demons in virtue of the order of the exorcistate, but also the laity themselves. It is in no way forbidden to the laity nor does any inconvenience arise from it. Thus we read in history how several lay persons, such as St Catherine of Siena and St Anthony of the Desert, cast out demons."
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Consequently, it is in no way inappropriate for the laity to recite the exorcism prayer of Pope Leo XIII, provided that they do so privately. It will certainly be powerful in overcoming the temptations and evil snares of the Devil.

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One wonders why it is that post-Vatican II authors have scruples concerning the recitation of this magnificent prayer, stating that since the 1983 Code of Canon Law it is no longer permitted. In fact, the same rule of the necessity of permission for public exorcisms is retained (Canon 1172). There is, however, no determination concerning the private recitation of an exorcism prayer, which is consequently perfectly permissible. Of course, we all know why it is that the modern church has changed the rites of exorcism, done away with the traditional powerful prayers, and discouraged all such commands in the name of Christ against the power of evil: it is that the Devil is henceforth treated more as a mythical figure than as a reality that we must deal with every day.

St Peter teaches: “Be sober and watch: because your adversary the Devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour” (I Peter 5: 8).

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The gravity of sin, the danger of eternal damnation and the personal power of evil that the Devil is able to exercise in this corrupt world, the corruption of the Church, and its infiltration by its enemies, even to the papacy, are so many realities pushed aside by the modernists, but of which we are reminded in this prayer:
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On men depraved in mind and corrupt in heart the wicked dragon pours out like a most foul river the poison of his villainy, a spirit of lying, impiety and blasphemy; and the deadly breath of lust and of all iniquities and vices. Her most crafty enemies have engulfed the Church, the Spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, with sorrows, they have drenched her with wormwood; on all Her desirable things they have laid their wicked hands. Where the See of Blessed Peter and the Chair of Truth have been set up for the light of the Gentiles, there they have placed the throne of the abomination of their wickedness, so that, the Pastor having been struck, they may also be able to scatter the flock. Therefore, O thou unconquerable Leader, be present with the people of God against the spiritual wickednesses which are bursting in upon them: and bring them the victory.

Preparation for Exorcism

2009-02-23T01:44:00.001-08:00

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The priest delegated by the Ordinary to perform this office should first go to confession or at least elicit an act of contrition, and, if convenient, offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and implore God's help in other fervent prayers. He vests in surplice and purple stole. Having before him the person possessed (who should be bound if there is any danger), he traces the sign of the cross over him, over himself, and the bystanders, and then sprinkles all of them with holy water.

After this he kneels and proceeds. Accoutrements includes a crucifix, holy water and the Host, but other less familiar items might be deemed necessary for a particular form of contamination. Exorcism is a solemn and serious matter which cannot begin to be compared to the hysterics witnessed at certain churches operating outside the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church who do not appear able to differentiate between medical conditions and demonic possession.
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The following are selected paragraphs pertaining to the instruction of the exorcist as indicated in the Old Rite — Rituali Romano — Rules of Exorcism:

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(RULE 1): The priest who with the particular and explicit permission of his bishop is about to exorcise those tormented by Evil Spirit, must have the necessary piety, prudence and personal integrity. He should perform this most heroic work humbly and courageously, not relying on his own strength, but on the power of God; and he must have no greed for material benefit. Besides, he should be of mature age and be respected as a virtuous person.

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(RULE 5): Let the exorcist note for himself the tricks and deceits which evil spirits use in order to lead him astray. For they are accustomed to answering falsely. They manifest themselves only under pressure — in the hope that the exorcist will get tired and desist from pressuring them. Or they make it appear that the subject of exorcism is not possessed at all.

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(RULE 6): Sometimes, an evil spirit betrays its presence, and then goes into hiding. It appears to have left the body of the possessed free from all molestation, so that the possessed thinks he is completely rid of it. But the exorcist should not, for all that, desist until he sees the signs of liberation.

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(RULE 10): The exorcist must remember, therefore, that Our Lord said there is a species of Evil Spirit which cannot be expelled except by prayer and fasting. Let him make sure that he and others follow the example of the Holy Fathers and make use of these two principal means of obtaining divine help and of repelling the evil spirit.
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(RULE 20): During exorcism, the exorcist should use the words of the Bible rather than his own or somebody else's. Also, he should command the evil spirit to state whether it is kept within the possessed because of some magical spell or sorcerer's symbol or some occult documents. For the exorcism to succeed, the possessed must surrender them. If he has swallowed something like that, he will vomit it up. If it is outside his body in some place or other, the evil spirit must tell the exorcist where it is. When the exorcist finds it, he must burn it.
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In order for Satan to be driven out of the possessed, the exorcist must be humble. He must rely on God and only God for his answers and direction. Sometimes God forces the demon inside the possessed to reveal truths. However, the exorcist must be careful not to believe all that the demon possessing the victim might say. The demon will reveal exactly what the exorcist wants to hear even though it is not the truth, in order to side track him. The exorcist, out of his own curiosity, should not ask questions to the possessed regarding matters other than the exorcism at hand. Only through much prayer, fasting and humility of the exorcist along with the willingness of the victim, and of course, the grace and Will of God, can the possessed be freed of this affliction.

Opposing the Diabolical

2009-02-23T01:14:00.001-08:00

“Priests in general believe very little in the extraordinary action of Satan. If a bishop proposes to them to do the exorcism, they are frightened, as if they think: 'If I leave the Devil in peace, he will leave me in peace. If I fight him, he will attack me.' This is wrong. The more we fight Satan, the more he is afraid of us.”
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— Father Gabriele Amorth

Priestly Powers

(Taken from the booklet The Truth About the Devil by Father Dominic Szymanski, O.F.M.)

To curb the influence of Satan, Christ has given priests necessary powers ― the powers of exorcism, but in our days they are buried deep in the ground for fear that sometime they may be used. The servant who buried his talent in the parable of the gospel was called a "wicked and slothful servant" by the Master, and he ordered him to be cast into "the Darkness outside where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Every priest is an exorcist by virtue of his ordination. This power must be used, and used very extensively, with firmness and authority, otherwise the enemy creates havoc among the sheep of God, unmolested even by those who have the duty and the obligation to guard the flock of Christ. Priests should exclude the infernal wolves, not by meekly begging them to depart, but by a firm command. "I command you to depart in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ Crucified." The Church does not ordain priests with the power of forgiving sins only, but she gives them the power to exclude the assassin who is the cause of all sin. The civil government maintains a police force and the Church of God also has the authority to cast into the abyss even the princes and powers of hell who are the prime perpetrators of crime against God.

The Priest Should Not Fear

Good priests should not fear to undertake an exorcism ― and by good priests is meant those who habitually live in a state of grace. It is not required that the exorcist be a saint worthy of canonisation, or even close to it. If a priest can stand at the altar and offer the Most Holy Sacrifice with a clear conscience, he can also be a successful exorcist. This work is a spiritual one, and Christ stands ready to help whenever our strength falls short. "Behold, I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and upon all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall hurt you." (Luke 10: 19).

True Horror: Vampires (Discovery)

2009-02-22T07:53:00.000-08:00

Seán Manchester ― True Horror: Vampires

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In a letter dated 10 June 2005, Discovery Networks Europe have explained that the programme-makers of True Horror: Vampires ― October Films ― corresponded with Seán Manchester to apologise to Seán Manchester for describing him as a "self-proclaimed bishop," which description they accept is misleading and inaccurate.
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Discovery Networks Europe directed October Films to re-edit the episode so as to remove this description which misrepresents the ecclesiastically recognised and validly held (canonically and legally) episcopal consecration of Seán Manchester.
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Furthermore, October Films arranged for other edits to take place so as to eliminate the references to "obscure religious cult" and "personalised slaying kit" being always in his possession. It has been accepted that these errors, like the previously identified one, were editorial embellishments made by someone who had no contact with Seán Manchester, and was completely ignorant of his standing and status. It is regrettable, but sadly not as uncommon as it should be in programme making these days, that such damaging errors occurred to the detriment of a specially invited contributor.
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Seán Manchester has accepted these edits, plus the apology tendered by the programme makers, October Films, in a mutually agreed decision not to proceed with the case following a legal challenge made to October Films following the first transmission of True Horror: Vampires at 10.00pm on 17 November 2004. A DVD of the programme has been similarly edited with all the offensive material removed.

Unfortunately, an unedited video of the extract from True Horror: Vampires with all the erroneous references mentioned above ― transmitted in Scandanavia (and, therefore, subtitled) prior to the aforementioned changes taking effect ― can still be viewed on YouTube.

Lord Byron, Polidori and The Vampyre

2009-02-21T10:24:00.001-08:00

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John William Polidori's story, The Vampyre, was published in the April 1819 issue of New Monthly magazine. Much to both his and Byron's chagrin, The Vampyre was released as a new work by Byron who released his own Fragment of a Novel in an attempt to clear up the mess, but, for better or worse, The Vampyre continued to be attributed to the poet. Dismissed by Byron, Polidori returned to England and in 1820 wrote to the Prior at Ampleforth. His letter is lost, but Prior Burgess' reply makes it clear that he considered Polidori, with his scandalous literary acquaintances, an unsuitable case for the monastic profession. In 1821, after writing an ambitious sacred poem, The Fall of the Angels, Polidori, suffering from depression, died in mysterious circumstances on 24 August 1821 at approximately 1:10 pm, probably by self-administered poison, though the coroner's verdict was that he had "departed this Life in a natural way by the visitation of God". Polidori's fate has been to be remembered as little more than a footnote in Romantic history. Reprints of the diary he kept during his travels with Byron are available, yet are rather hard to find.
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Polidori's diary, titled The Diary of John Polidori, edited by William Michael Rossetti, was first published in 1911 by Elkin Mathews (London). A reprint of this book, The Diary of Dr John William Polidori, 1816, relating to Byron, Shelley, etc was published by Folcroft Library Editions (Folcroft, Pa.) in 1975. Another reprint by the same title was printed by Norwood Editions (Norwood, Pa.) in 1978.

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As well as being mid-wife to Frankenstein's monster, he was uncle to Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Rossetti. Three films have depicted John Polidori (whose portrait appears below) and the genesis of the Frankenstein and Vampyre stories of 1816: Gothic directed by Ken Russell (1986), Haunted Summer directed by Ivan Passer (1988) and Remando al viento (English title: Rowing with the Wind) directed by Gonzalo Suárez (1988).

The sixth Lord Byron, parodied as Lord Ruthven by Polidori in The Vampyre (1819), fortuitously crystallised an archetypal image that is centuries strong; yet the poet abhorred the vampire almost to the same extent as his blood descendant (who also happens to be the founding president of the Vampire Research Society). Some time back, Seán Manchester wrote the following:

"A message received from a kind woman in New Zealand whose husband had purchased for her an 1831 edition of The Complete Poetical Works of Byron told of an insertion within, namely an original letter by Byron to the publisher Galignani that was said to have been authenticated by the British Museum. The photocopied letter is identical to one I have in my own collection. The letter is particularly intriguing because it includes Byron's denial that he wrote a work entitled The Vampyre, and he then goes on to add: 'I have besides a personal dislike to Vampires and the little acquaintance I have with them would by no means induce me to divulge their secrets.' The handwriting is certainly Byron's.

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"How could there be two original copies of this letter? Who actually owned the original copy of this letter? I found myself on the trail of vampires and repeatedly bumping up against quirky historical personalities striving to use misrepresentation to advance their own ends.

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"I quickly learned that Byron's 'vampire' letter had been published in the standard collections of Byron's letters by Coleridge and subsequently Marchand with whom I corresponded in the last century. Furthermore, Marchand's notes gave his source as a facsimile in Galignani's edition of Byron's Works. It would appear that these 'autograph letters' had actually been duplicated en masse by the semi-scrupulous Galignani, a man who made his living by putting out continental editions of the British poets without paying a penny for the copyrights. But how could a printer in the 1820s create a facsimile so convincing that it still allows unscrupulous booksellers to pass this letter off as an original? I have subsequently been consulted by many more individuals owning copies of the same letter, which they often believe to be an original in Byron's own hand. One professional artist declared herself absolutely certain that she possessed 'a real letter and not a copy.' Another copy belongs to a man in Denmark who has received assurances from the Danish National Museum that the paper dates from the early nineteenth century and the handwriting is Byron's. I have also heard from a professor in the United Kingdom who thought that perhaps the Galignani facsimiles were copies of an 'early draft' since the letter he had examined in Britain was so convincingly original.

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"It turns out that this letter has a certain amount of fame (or even infamy) in collecting circles. The Encyclopedia Britannica seems to mention it obliquely in its entry on 'forgery' when the editors point out that 'some early editions of Byron's work ... contained a facsimile of an autograph letter of the poet,' adding that 'if such facsimiles are detached from the volumes that they were intended to illustrate, they may deceive the unwary.' Charles Hamilton in his book on Collecting Autographs and Manuscripts warns his readers specifically about this letter along with a handful of others.

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"I have subsequently inspected three copies of it held in the Pforzheimer collection of the New York Public Library. They are indeed impressive. Each is folded up as if ready to be mailed, with the address inscribed on the back of the outer sheet. Nowhere within the table of contents or the preliminary 'Advertisement' in the books themselves is there any indication that a facsimile is included. This omission is all the more notable since the publisher sometimes devotes hundreds of words to brightly blazoning all the minute advantages of his edition. Perhaps Monsieur Galignani would not be too concerned or too surprised if an occasional rural bookseller passed the volume off as containing Byron's original letter ― just the right touch of stature for some wealthy patron's private collection. At the same time, he did mention the facsimile in the general catalogue of his firm included rather obscurely at the end of the 1829 printing of The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore. Discovering that the letter is a facsimile cracked open the door of history and began to whet my appetite for more biographical knowledge.

"Why was The Vampyre originally attributed to Byron? Why did that tale continue to be accepted as Byron's long after his denial? And how was such a convincing facsimile made so early? The genesis of The Vampyre is itself imbued with mystery and deception. The work was written by John Polidori, a bumptious young physician with literary pretensions who had accompanied Byron during the first few months of his exodus from England following Byron's scandalous separation from his wife Anabelle in the spring of 1816. Polidori had been the youngest man ever to graduate with a medical degree from the University of Edinburgh and could be irritatingly vain. He once asked what, besides scribble verses, Byron could do better than Polidori himself. To this Byron icily replied: 'Three things. First, I can hit with a pistol the keyhole of that door. Secondly, I can swim across that river to yonder point. And thirdly, I can give you a damned good thrashing.'

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"While serving as Byron's personal physician, Polidori had been promised a substantial publisher's fee for keeping a journal of his experiences with the famed poet. When Byron found out about this betrayal of confidence, he was naturally outraged and dismissed Polidori ― though he seems not to have felt much personal animosity since he later intervened with the Milanese authorities to help get Polidori released from jail after he had insulted an Austrian military officer.
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"Polidori's subsequent story is a sad one. He returned to England, took up writing, achieved scant success, and eventually committed suicide by drinking Prussic acid. Not surprisingly, it was his connection with Byron that has led to his permanent place in literary history.
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"Polidori was present during the during the 'haunted summer' that Byron, Shelley, Mary, and Clare spent on Lake Geneva in 1816, and the prefatory pages of The Vampyre very cleverly hint not only that Byron told the story of The Vampyre during a contest on writing ghost stories, but also that Byron portrayed himself as the vampire. The "Extract of a Letter to the Editor: From Geneva" which precedes the tale is actually an integral part of Polidori's literary deception. Remember that Byron was still alive and infamous in 1819 when all this was published. The letter is a semi-fictional account by an anonymous correspondent of Byron's stay in Geneva and of the ghost story sessions at Diodati. Note, though, that Polidori creates a fictional character who is worshipful of Byron. This devotee reverentially describes Byron as the equal of Rosseau, Voltaire, Gibbon, and Bonnivard. He inspects the Villa Diodati 'with the same feelings of awe and respect as ... Shakespeare's dwelling at Stratford.'

"Unlike Polidori himself (who seems to have been motivated by jealousy, revenge, and greed), the worshipful narrator can evidently be trusted to portray Byron in a favourable light. He quotes approvingly from the third Canto of Childe Harold where the poet 'like the scathed pine' equates the storms afflicting the Alps with those that have raged about him. He tells of an aristocratic woman who fainted simply because the infamous Byron was about to enter the room, and he records Byron's famous recitation from memory of Christabel and its haunting effect on Shelley, who ran from the room screaming and claiming to have had a sudden vision of Mary's nipples replaced by widely staring eyeballs.
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"All of this is fascinating biographical information about three major writers, but it also serves Polidori's literary purposes. Quite cleverly, Polidori is building a picture of Byron as a superhuman, suffering, slightly Satanic being. Then, in "The Introduction," Polidori recounts the historical basis for belief in vampirism and concludes this section even more cleverly by citing the lines from The Giaour in which the hero (whom Byron has made to resemble himself) is cursed with vampirism. At the time Polidori wrote, the scandals involving Byron's possible incest with his half-sister and his separation from his wife for mysterious causes were fairly well-known in elite circles. Thus, there would already seem to be a fulfillment of the curse in the words quoted by Polidori:
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But first on earth, as Vampyre sent,

Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent;

Then ghastly haunt thy native place,

And suck the blood of all thy race;

There from thy daughter, sister, wife,

At midnight drain the stream of life;

Yet loathe the banquet which perforce

Must feed thy livid living corse . . . .
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"The narrator also provides a discussion of Byron's daily habits which was probably designed to reaffirm the suggestion of vampirism. Polidori records that Byron 'retired to rest at three, got up at two, and employed himself a long time over his toilette; that he never went to sleep without a pair of pistols and a dagger by his side, and that he never eat animal food.' His nocturnal habits and his apparent lethargy are in keeping with a vampire pining for blood. Perhaps in mentioning that Byron declined 'animal food' Polidori wanted to make his readers wonder how Byron did satisfy his natural appetite for red meat.
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"Finally, of course, by giving his vampire the name Lord Ruthven, Polidori firmly reinforces all of these devious innuendoes, for Lord Ruthven was the name that Lady Caroline Lamb had chosen for her fictionalised figure of Byron in Glenarvon. Thus, much of the impact of Polidori's tale springs from the way it teases out the possible connections between its fictional villain and the almost equally fictionalised image of England's most famous poet maudite, Lord Byron.
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"There is also a great deal of ambiguity about who was responsible for the explicit attribution of the story to Byron. Polidori obviously could not publish the tale under his own name, for, as we have just seen, he went to a good bit of trouble to indicate that it was Byron's story and that Byron himself was the vampire within it. In this regard he may charitably be said to have exercised his artistic license, since these dark hints certainly make the story that follows more compelling, but it is also clear that he was exacting a bit of malicious revenge against his former employer while also trying to pump up the potential sales of his slim volume.
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"That said, it is still unlikely that Polidori would have wished the tale to be attributed explicitly to Byron. He was too vain to give up his own status as its author. Most likely, he suggested anonymous publication, and it was either the editor of The Messenger or its publisher who calculated that eventual sales could only be improved by attaching the celebrated name of Lord Byron and pushed Polidori's veiled hints into outright duplicity. Polidori's subsequent explanations of the events - while somewhat confusing ― since he himself may not have known whom to blame - generally support this interpretation.
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"If Polidori used a bit of deception in hinting at his tale's connections with Byron, Byron ironically plays into Polidori's hands when he denies having written the tale while acknowledging an acquaintance with vampires. If Byron really had written The Vampyre and if he really were the vampire portrayed within it, he would, of course, be inclined to deny having done so. And Byron, too, is being a bit duplicitous. Byron did tell a vampire story at the Villa Diodati, and Polidori jotted down the general plot in his journal at the time. In a sense, then, The Vampyre was Byron's story ― at least in outline ― just as Polidori claimed in his introduction. Byron never proceeded far in actually writing out his tale, but the opening pages which he published along with Mazeppa in 1820, support the notion that in a very general way Polidori was working from the story that Byron initially told at Lake Geneva.
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"We can be certain that Byron wrote the now-infamous letter to Monsieur Galignani in large part because he was growing tired of the steady trickle of writers and publishers trying to secure a larger audience by passing off their maunderings as Byron's work. But why did Galignani store the letter for seven years before including it in his 1826 edition of Byron's works? Two answers are possible and the truth may be a combination of both. First, Galignani may have been reluctant to include such a facsimile during Byron's lifetime. It is true that Galignani had published unauthorised editions of Byron's works as early as 1819 (including an edition of The Vampyre attributed to Byron), but it is one thing to ignore a copyright which did not technically apply in Europe; it is an entirely different matter to publish a private letter in facsimile. There was a long tradition of considering letters to be, in some sense, the property of their authors. Gentlemen and gentlewomen regularly returned love letters, for example, at the request of the author. As long as Byron was alive, Galignani may have felt that Byron retained the right to demand return of the letter, and there was, after all, Byron's reputation with a pistol as well as a pen to be considered.
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"Then, too, Galignani may not have known that he could reproduce the letter with enough accuracy to make it appear indistinguishable from the original. Facsimiles were not unknown in the early nineteenth century, but the standard technique required an artist to make an engraving on wood, copper plate, or steel plate. While such facsimiles could be satisfactory, there was almost no chance that they could pass for originals. At the very end of the eighteenth century, though, a Dutch printer named Alois Senefelder invented lithography and published his ideas in the book entitled A Complete Course of Lithography. Senefelder himself had experimented with making lithographic reprints of ordinary handwriting in ink, and his successors soon perfected the process, though it meant the destruction of the original in charging and transferring the ink to the lithographic plate. Paris was the center of lithography in the early nineteenth century, and Galignani may well have been the first to use the new technique to reproduce a famous poet's handwriting. He obviously became aware of an exciting new technology. His situation was a little like that of the earliest people with access to a high-quality colour photocopier. Surely there can be little wrong with photocopying a hundred dollar bill to see if you can do it (though it is against the law unless the copy is enlarged), and there cannot be much wrong with giving one of these facsimiles to a friend to illustrate what the new technology can do. But that facsimile of a hundred dollar bill doesn't have to pass through very many hands before it starts being mistaken for the real thing ― as was the case with Byron's letter. All of this makes it considerably more surprising that Galignani never identifies this letter as a facsimile on the letter itself or in the frontmatter of any of his editions of Byron's works. It is almost as if he wants the confusion to exist.
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"This has been a tale of shaded truths. Polidori shaded the truth a bit in writing The Vampyre, Byron grazed it in denying his part in the story, Galignani bruised it creating his facsimile, and no doubt even I am manipulating it in repeating the story. Such is the slippery nature of truth itself. Over time, however, half-truths become hauntingly compelling. Thus, in such a bestseller as Tom Holland's Lord of the Dead, Byron's reputed vampirism is finding its way into popular culture. Thus, too, Galignani's clever facsimile seems to be more often taken as an original now than in the nineteenth century. Something within us makes us long to believe the fantastic."
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Countess Báthory and Count Dracula

2009-02-21T10:05:00.001-08:00

Countess Erzsébet Báthory (7 August 1560 – 21 August 1614) aka the "Blood Countess" and the "Bloody Lady of Čachtice" was a Hungarian noblewoman who enjoyed torturing her servants and took up an interest in the black arts. Legend has it she was beating a servant girl for some minor infraction when the girl's blood spilled on her arm. Báthory immediately determined that her skin had improved where the blood landed, so she had the girl bled to death and bathed in her blood.
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Although it seems unlikely, Báthory was convinced that this technique was making her young again, and she decided to keep it up. For about ten years she bathed in and drank the blood of kidnapped peasant girls on a regular basis. Eventually, her nobility was her downfall. She decided she needed a better quality of blood (possibly when her continued aging became too difficult to ignore), and started to prey on girls of higher birth. This obviously did not sit well with the nobility. They ordered her arrest.
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More than six hundred and fifty girls (according to one witness) had fallen victim to Báthory's obsession with eternal youth. Her primary servants, the ones in charge of the bleeding, were sentenced to death, but it was considered gauche to try and execute nobles, so Erzsébet Báthory herself was never formally put on trial. In 1610, she was imprisoned in Čachtice Castle where she remained bricked in a set of rooms until her death four years later. Though not tried in a court of law, she was nonetheless convicted on eighty counts in a judicial process common in witchcraft and Inquisition trials. On 21 August 1614, Erzsébet Báthory was found dead in her castle. Since there were several plates of food untouched, her actual date of death is unknown. She was buried in the church of Čachtice, but due to the villagers' uproar over having the "Blood Lady of Čachtice" buried in their cemetery her body was moved to her birthplace at Nagyecsed in the Kingdom of Hungary where it is interred at the Báthory family crypt.
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The Báthory case is perhaps the first real example of the notion that the blood of others will somehow provide eternal youth, but the supernatural vampire itself was popularised in the public imagination with references to folklore by Bram Stoker in Dracula (1897).
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Abraham "Bram" Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish novelist and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London. In London Stoker met Hall Caine who became one of his closest friends. He dedicated Dracula to him. It was in London that Stoker wove together a series of legends and existing vampire lore to define the parameters of the modern vampire, including aversions to silver, garlic, sunlight and the cross, sleeping in coffins and, not least, the vampire exhibiting sharp canines. He attached the "Dracula" name to his story almost as an afterthought, based on the historical Vlad Tepes.
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Dracula, despite its florid verbiage, sometimes almost drowning the awesome visuals and chilling ideas, was still far superior by comparison to the most popular fiction of that era, and it became a bestseller, sending chills down the spine of the repressed Victorian English and rekindling a gruesome interest in all things vampiric.
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The story of Dracula grew by leaps and bounds, and vampires quickly became a staple of Western culture, accelerated by the introduction of cinema. One of the earliest and most influential movies of the silent era was Nosferatu, an "adaptation" of the Dracula story which was sufficiently adapted for Stoker's estate to successfully sue for copyright infringement.
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The official version of Dracula, released in 1931, launched Bela Lugosi on a star-studded career path that would end in heroin addiction and Ed Wood movies. It did more for the urban legend than it did for its leading man, thrusting the concept of the vampire firmly into the forefront of popular thought, where it has stayed ever since.
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The idea of the vampire enflamed the modern mind. It is hardly surprising to discover that people really (a) believe in them and (b) want to meet or even become one to achieve "eternal" life. When Anne Rice penned an insanely popular series of first-person vampire novels beginning in the 1970s, hordes of teenagers and even otherwise non-impressionable adults became fascinated with the idea of vampires all over again. Many found Rice's vision compelling and convincing, and some strongly believed her characters were either real or based on some sort of reality. Rice has denied this, and her version of vampirism is far removed from the lore and legend given due credit in Bram Stoker's gothic masterpiece Dracula.

Ecclesial Recognition of Vampirism

2009-02-21T08:28:00.001-08:00

Curialium, written 1182-92 by the noted ecclesiastical scholar Walter Map (1140-1209) and Historia Rerum Anglicarum, written 1196 by an Augustinian monk by the name of William of Newburgh (1136-1198), contain all manner of tales of the undead, mostly excommunicated, who leave their tombs at night to torment those close to them or to provoke a series of suspicious deaths. When their caskets are opened, their bodies are found to be intact and spotted with blood. The only way to end the demonic pollution was to burn the body after impaling it. Lacking a specific term, the English chroniclers named these undead cadaver sanguisugus, Latin for "blood-sucking corpse." Numerous accounts attesting to the existence of revenants who returned from the dead have been collected since as long ago as the eleventh century, well before the term vampire entered the dictionary or common usage. The Minutes of the Council of 1304 recounts the Bishop of Chartres' report which told of a corpse wandering beyond its grave. A report made by the Bishop of Cahors, a city in central France, in 1031 told of corpses found intact outside their tombs, as recorded in Dictionnaire Infernal (1818). In the second half of the sixteenth century, the Reformation, a movement led by dissenters from Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, contributed to making vampirism official.
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Pope Innocent VIII sanctioned the publication of Malleus Maleficarum (1486) which treatise included the discovery and eliminantion of nocturnal demons and revenants. Many saw this as the Church officially sanctioning the existence of the undead, ie predatory demons able to materialise, demateralise and appear to be the living dead or what we now call vampires. The word vampire did not yet exist and instead the terms incubi and succubi will be found in Malleus Maleficarum. For example, there is reference to "the bewitchment of human beings by means of Incubuc and Succubus devils" which, it is noted, "can happen in three ways." The three ways are those who "prostitute" themselves to demons, those with a connection to demons, and, thirdly, those who are molested by demons against their will.
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Dom Augustin Calmet and other high-placed clergy also conferred on vampirism what in effect amounted to official recognition. Such is the case with both Archbishop Guiseppe Davanzati (1665-1755) in his Dissertation on Vampires (1744) and, perhaps unintentionally, Pope Benedict XIV in Book IV of the second edition of the voluminous On the Beatification of the Servants of God and on the Canonisation of the Beatified (1749).

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Demonologie (1597) by King James is a treatise expressing a particular point of view and not one shared by everybody that vampiric spectres are not the souls of the dead but demons masquerading as the deceased. The Vampire Research Society tends to hold the view that the two possibilities are not necessarily mutually exclusive if the person who had led an exceedingly wicked life devoted to the black arts dies in a state of mortal sin as a result of demonic interference. The trapped soul and demonic presence might very well occupy the same metamorphosed shell (corpse). Some take the view that those who become vampires were never truly deceased in the first place, ie not God's true dead but the Devil's undead, masquerading under the appearance of the "resurrected" dead. However, these are areas about which we can only speculate.

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Only dissenting traditionalists within the Catholic and Protestant Churches continued to openly subscribe to the existence of vampires from the "Age of Enlightenment" onward. Individual priests and bishops nevertheless remained vigilant even though the Western Church appeared (to the outside world, at least) to now refute revenants and the undead. The Eastern Churches, particulary the Orthodox Churches, remained openly convinced of the existence of them, however, throughout and after the so-called "Age of Enlightenment." Many Eastern Churches still accept this pestilence to be real and in need of exorcising.
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Liberal clergy and modern philosophers in the eighteenth century started to condemn belief in vampirism in the name of logic and "common sense" without considering too deeply that most of what the Church teaches (eg the Resurrection, completely defies all logic).
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In 1852, Voltaire, in his Philosophical Dictionary, wrote: "You will find stories of vampires in the Jewish Letters, 1738, whom the Jesuits have accused of believing nothing. It should be observed how they triumph in the history of the vampire ... how they thanked God and the virgin for having at last converted this poor d'Argens. ... Behold, said they, this famous unbeliever, who dared to throw doubts on the appearance of the angel to the holy virgin; on the star which conducted the magi; on the cure of the possessed; on the immersion of two thousand swine in a lake; on an eclipse of the sun at the full moon; on the resurrection of the dead who walked in Jerusalem; his heart is softened, his mind is enlightened: He believes in vampires."
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The Age of the Romantics witnessed a renaissance in vampire belief, culminating with Victorian society which took a lively interest in all things supernatural, not least the cult of the vampire, but it was Montague Summers in the early twentieth century who truly restored vampirological interest with his classic works The Vampire: His Kith & Kin (1928) and The Vampire in Europe (1929).

Simple Exorcism for Priests and Laity

2009-02-21T07:21:00.000-08:00

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The following is a simple exorcism prayer that can be said by priests or laity. The term “exorcism” does not always denote a solemn exorcism involving a person possessed by the Devil. In general, the term denotes prayers to “curb the power of the Devil and prevent him from doing harm.” As St. Peter had written in Holy Scripture, “your adversary the Devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5: 8).

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The Holy Father exhorts priests to say this prayer as often as possible, as a simple exorcism to curb the power of the Devil and prevent him from doing harm. The faithful also may say it in their own name, for the same purpose, as any approved prayer. Its use is recommended whenever action of the Devil is suspected, causing malice in men, violent temptations and even storms and various calamities. It could be used as a solemn exorcism (an official and public ceremony, in Latin), to expel the Devil. It would then be said by a priest, in the name of the Church and only with a bishop's permission.

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Prayer to St Michael the Archangel

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In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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Most glorious Prince of the Heavenly Armies, Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in “our battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places” (Ephesians 6: 12). Come to the assistance of men whom God has created to His likeness and whom He has redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the Devil. Holy Church venerates thee as her guardian and protector; to thee, the Lord has entrusted the souls of the redeemed to be led into heaven. Pray therefore the God of Peace to crush Satan beneath our feet, that he may no longer retain men captive and do injury to the Church. Offer our prayers to the Most High, that without delay they may draw His mercy down upon us; take hold of “the dragon, the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan,” bind him and cast him into the bottomless pit ... “that he may no longer seduce the nations” (Revelation 20: 2-3).
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Exorcism

In the Name of Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, strengthened by the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God, of Blessed Michael the Archangel, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and all the Saints. (and powerful in the holy authority of our ministry)*, we confidently undertake to repulse the attacks and deceits of the devil.

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* [Lay people omit the parenthesis above.]

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Psalm 67

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God arises; His enemies are scattered and those who hate Him flee before Him. As smoke is driven away, so are they driven; as wax melts before the fire, so the wicked perish at the presence of God.

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V. Behold the Cross of the Lord, flee bands of enemies.

R. The Lion of the tribe of Juda, the offspring of David, hath conquered.

V. May Thy mercy, Lord, descend upon us.

R. As great as our hope in Thee.

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[The crosses below indicate a blessing to be given if a priest recites the Exorcism; if a lay person recites it, they indicate the Sign of the Cross to be made silently by that person.]

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We drive you from us, whoever you may be, unclean spirits, all satanic powers, all infernal invaders, all wicked legions, assemblies and sects. In the Name and by the power of Our Lord Jesus Christ, + may you be snatched away and driven from the Church of God and from the souls made to the image and likeness of God and redeemed by the Precious Blood of the Divine Lamb. +
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Most cunning serpent, you shall no more dare to deceive the human race, persecute the Church, torment God's elect and sift them as wheat. + The Most High God commands you, + He with whom, in your great insolence, you still claim to be equal. “God who wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (I Timothy 2: 4). God the Father commands you. + God the Son commands you. + God the Holy Ghost commands you. + Christ, God's Word made flesh, commands you; + He who to save our race outdone through your envy, “humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death” (Philippians 2: 8); He who has built His Church on the firm rock and declared that the gates of hell shall not prevail against Her, because He will dwell with Her “all days even to the end of the world” (Matthew 28: 20). The sacred Sign of the Cross commands you, + as does also the power of the mysteries of the Christian Faith. + The glorious Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, commands you; + she who by her humility and from the first moment of her Immaculate Conception crushed your proud head. The faith of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and of the other Apostles commands you. + The blood of the Martyrs and the pious intercession of all the Saints command you. +
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Thus, cursed dragon, and you, diabolical legions, we adjure you by the living God, + by the true God, + by the holy God, + by the God “who so loved the world that He gave up His only Son, that every soul believing in Him might not perish but have life everlasting” (John 3: 16); stop deceiving human creatures and pouring out to them the poison of eternal damnation; stop harming the Church and hindering her liberty. Begone, Satan, inventor and master of all deceit, enemy of man's salvation. Give place to Christ in Whom you have found none of your works; give place to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church acquired by Christ at the price of His Blood. Stoop beneath the all-powerful Hand of God; tremble and flee when we invoke the Holy and terrible Name of Jesus, this Name which causes hell to tremble, this Name to which the Virtues, Powers and Dominations of heaven are humbly submissive, this Name which the Cherubim and Seraphim praise unceasingly repeating: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord, the God of Hosts.

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V. O Lord, hear my prayer.

R. And let my cry come unto Thee. V. May the Lord be with thee. R. And with thy spirit.

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Let us pray.

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God of heaven, God of earth, God of Angels, God of Archangels, God of Patriarchs, God of Prophets, God of Apostles, God of Martyrs, God of Confessors, God of Virgins, God who has power to give life after death and rest after work: because there is no other God than Thee and there can be no other, for Thou art the Creator of all things, visible and invisible, of Whose reign there shall be no end, we humbly prostrate ourselves before Thy glorious Majesty and we beseech Thee to deliver us by Thy power from all the tyranny of the infernal spirits, from their snares, their lies and their furious wickedness. Deign, O Lord, to grant us Thy powerful protection and to keep us safe and sound. We beseech Thee through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.
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V. From the snares of the Devil.

R. Deliver us, O Lord.

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V. That Thy Church may serve Thee in peace and liberty.

R. We beseech Thee to hear us.

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V. That Thou may crush down all enemies of Thy Church:

R. We beseech Thee to hear us.

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[Holy water is sprinkled in the place where we may be.]

Vampiroidism aka False Vampirism

2009-02-21T04:12:00.001-08:00

"I love vampires, and know a handful both in mortal life and spirits."
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The above quote from an unidentified vampiroid is not describing vampires in the true sense and accepted meaning of that word. Furthermore, vampiroids (those she claims to know in "mortal life") are not vampires. Some actually believe themselves to be vampires, but, of course, they are not. How could they be when the definition of a vampire, upon examination, is revealed to be a dead body that issues forth from its tomb in the night to quaff the warm blood of the living, whereby it is nourished and preserved? Vampiroids, therefore, cannot be re-animated corpses with an awful supernatural existence beyond the grave. People who either believe themselves to be vampires, or want to become vampires and affect what they construe to be vampiristic lifestyles, even when this is taken to extremes, are invariably vampiroids.

But it is not even as simple as that because there are various categories of vampiroid, ranging from harmless poseurs to dangerous psychopaths. The former may be benign, but the latter are capable of murder. Thus the vampiroid is not a supernatural being, but a human who embraces what he or she assumes to be a lifestyle commensurate with vampirism as largely depicted in fictional films and literature. Whereas the true vampire partakes of the dark natures and possesses the terrible qualities of both apparition and demon, assuming the form of a dead body to suck the blood of the living.

Vampiroids identify with the imagery of the vampire and become totally seduced by its mythology, having almost no regard for what is fact and what is fantasy. The more extreme examples of vampiroidism, known as ultra-vampiroids, have no problem with the fact that in reality vampires are biocidal and destroy all life-forms. Hence, within the supra-individual level of the psyche, they respond utterly to the vampire archetype.

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Despite the very high percentage of relatively harmless poseurs in most vampiroid clubs, there can nevertheless occasionally be found a small number of extreme types. These can vary in levels of psychotic behaviour from proto-vampiroids, eg the UK’s David Austen, a self-confessed Satanist and sexual deviant of many years, to ultra-vampiroids like America’s Rod Ferrell, who committed two gruesome murders and is now awaiting execution as the youngest person on death row. Both have belonged to vampiroid clubs.

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By no means are all vampiroids enmeshed in diabolism and murder. In fact, the majority are definitely not. However, the clubs produce literature that feeds certain beliefs and obsessions. These undoubtedly compromise the dynamics of any benign vampiroid philosophy, such as it can be deduced from those within these groups. The crude and splenetic expression of their views points to an irrational pathological prejudice rather than a coherent philosophy. Some of this prejudice is similar to malefic occultism with an anti-Christian bias. Personality problems obviously plays a part in the opinions expressed by many, but vampiroidism per se is no freak display of Gothic Romanticism at its most decadent. It is, in fact, anti-Gothic and anti-Romantic. At its cutting edge its raw materials are concepts usually allied to destructive beliefs and an acute ethnocentric identification with the archetype in forms that are mostly allegorical.

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Anti-social behaviour is nonetheless evinced in acts of blood-letting and mutilation, blood-drinking and, occasionally, profanity towards sacred things, especially Christian images. Tribalism and morbidity play an enormous role, despite the fact that most vampiroids are frequently found to be introverted loners. It is the epiphenomenon of the vampire cult and spans a quite wide spectrum, but the fundamental ingredients of blood, death, fear and evil remain constant. However, even mimetic-vampiroids frequently evince narcissistic personality disorders as well as schizotypal disorders. These relatively harmless representatives of the subculture display imitative “vampire” behaviour indicative of theatrical posturing, eg Carole Bohanan (pictured above), ex-president of the now defunct UK Vampyre Society that was based in Croydon.

Ultra-vampiroids, thankfully very much fewer in number than their mimetic counterparts at the other end of the spectrum, often belong to extremist sects who espouse diabolism and vary in their degree of fanaticism. Rod Ferrell convinced several teenagers to drink his blood and join a vampiroid group in Florida, USA.

“On the night of 26th November 1996, after hours of devil worshipping and drinking each other’s blood, five members of the cult ― including Heather [Wendorf] and Ferrell ― drove to her parents’ house in Eustis, Florida. … Ferrell bludgeoned her parents to death. … Detectives raided her bedroom and found drawings of demons, a video of Interview with the Vampire and handwritten letters revealing how she loved to drink blood before sex. In one she told a friend that Ferrell was her saviour.” (The Sun, 5 March 1998)

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Vampiroid leaders such as Ferrell are extremely controlling and, in the view of many, evil. Judge Jerry Locket, sentencing Ferrell to die in the electric chair, told him:

“There is genuine evil in the world. There is a dark side and a light side competing in each of us and there is little doubt on which side you went.”

A UK example of ultra-vampiroidism would be the vampiroid cult leader Wayne Phelps of Dorset who lured and defiled schoolgirls across Britain in satanic ceremonies. He made his members sign “death pacts” where they swore upon their own blood to sacrifice their own lives, if need be, for the cult. Phelps “slashed a rusty razor blade into his own chest [imitating Stoker’s Count Dracula] ― then forced a 15-year-old sex slave to feed on his blood. As crazed followers bowed at his feet and clapped with joy the twisted devil worshipper brutally thrust his schoolgirl victim’s lips deep into the gushing wound, in the shape of an inverted crucifix.” (News of the World, 17 November 1996)
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To make this vampiroidic spectrum more comprehensible certain specialist terms need to be understood:

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Aetiology: the study of the causes of illnesses and diseases, including vampiroidism.
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Anomie: an acute sense of meaningless and loss of identity usually precipitated by personal upheavals.
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Archetype: a symbol or myth whose affective power lies in the resonance it has within the supra-individual level of the psyche. Vampiroids respond to the vampire ethos.
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Biocidal: tending to the destruction of all life-forms, human or non-human. The vampire is biocidal.
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Diachronic: analysing phenomena, including vampiroidism, in a way which represents their chronological development and historical particularity.
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Epiphenomenon: the side product of a more fundamental reality.
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Ethnocentrism: placing one’s own kind at the centre of all value judgements.
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Faustian: expressing the myth of Faust who was driven to make a pact with the devil in order to transcend ordinary human experience. Vampiroids are exceptionally Faustian.
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Fissiparous: tending constantly to divide up into smaller groups. Most vampiroid clubs have shown this tendency which has resulted in a proliferation of mainly small groups, rather than a monolithic force.
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Immanentisation: making something into an intrinsic part of historical time. Vampiroidism is largely an international phenomenon of the last dozen or so years. They feel that now is their time.
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Mimetic-Vampiroidism: purely imitative vampire behaviour, usually based on fantasy exploitation films etc.
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Para-Vampiroidism: a form of vampiroidism that adopts the external trappings of the cult while rejecting its ethnocentric pathology as evinced in diabolism and blood-drinking.
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Philo-Vampiroidism: predisposed to become a fellow-traveller or supporter of the vampiroid subculture.
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Proto-Vampiroidism: a form of paligenetic ultra-vampiroidism that lacks any subtlety whatsoever.
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Ultra-Vampiroidism: a form incompatible with mimetic and para-vampiroidism that is highly dangerous.
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Little can be learned by studying the propaganda of vampiroid literature because, like its diabolical counterpart, it misrepresents the facts and offers false promises. Claims made by such groups are frequently absurd, but it is on such absurdities that they rely to attract members to their cult. Some might initially feel a sense of “belonging” and “purpose” when they enter these groups, but it does not last, just as the groups themselves do not last but break-up and proliferate with the exception of a tiny handful.
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Vampiroid Syndrome and Ultra-Vampiroidism are each afforded a chapter in The Vampire Hunter’s Handbook which cannot be recommend enough to those wanting to sift the wheat from the chaff. There is also a chapter in The Highgate Vampire, titled "Vampires, Vampiroids and Satanists," which makes a clear distinction between “an accursed body which cannot rest in the kindly earth” and those who “want to emulate the undead … [as] more and more misguided individuals … live vampiric lifestyles ― some with the ambition of ultimately becoming undead when their earthly existence expires.”

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On 7 June 2000 the small Italian town of Chiavenna was rocked by the discovery of a gruesome murder in one of its quiet back lanes. The blood-soaked victim, who had been struck with rocks and smashed against a wall before being stabbed nineteen times, was later identified as Sister Maria Laura, the much-loved Mother Superior of the local convent. The brutality of the killing shocked townspeople, and attracted widespread media attention: and with no obvious motive for the murder, rumours soon started to fly. Satanic signs and slogans were found nearby and the killing was blamed on devil worshippers striking a blow against the Catholic Church. However, on 28th June 2000 three popular teenage girls were arrested. They were vampiroidic fans of the depraved “entertainer” Marilyn Manson, a member of the Church of Satan, whose lyrics are too blasphemous, hate-filled and obscene to quote on this site. At first the girls’ attitude was arrogant and cold. They refused to speak to the police. But when they eventually began to speak it became apparent that their appalling crime was a premeditated act. Milena, one of the girls, admitted that they had met outside the church one night and cut their hands, drinking the blood while they pledged an oath of eternal loyalty to each other. “We decided to go for a nun,” Veronica, another of the three girls, told her interrogators, “because she was the opposite of us. We believe in Satan.” The third girl is named Ambra. They beat the nun into unconsciousness with a tile and by beating her head against a stone wall. When that failed, they took out knives and stabbed her to death. But throughout her ordeal, Sister Maria Laura had prayed for her attackers, and promised them that God would forgive them even as she did herself. Armed with these confessions, the carabinieri searched the girls’ homes and found diaries testifying to their obsession with Satanism, and with the lyrics of the degenerate performer and singer Marilyn Manson who cashed-in on the tragedy when touring Italy in February 2001. Manson said: “If having your own opinion makes you evil, then I am evil. … All I say is don’t feel guilty for having emotions like lust, greed and hate ― because you are going to have them.” On 9th August 2001 Ambra had the case against her dismissed on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and was sentenced to three years’ rehabilitation. The other two girls, Milena and Veronica, were found guilty of first degree murder and were each sentenced to eight years and six months. There is a move in Chiavenna to have Sister Maria Laura, who had taught in the town for more than thirty years, beatified. (The Devil Made Me Do It, C4 Television, 21 August 2001; The Universe, 26 August 2001)

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A German woman accused of taking part in the ritual killing of a friend says she became a Satanist in Britain. Manuela Ruda and her husband Daniel Ruda were tried for the murder of former workmate Frank Hackert at their flat in Witten, Germany. They say they killed him on orders from the Devil. She told a court in Bochum, Germany, that she got a taste for vampirism and the occult while in London and Scotland. German police said that any evidence pointing to other possible crimes or a satanic ring in Britain will be sent to the relevant authorities. Mr Hackert, who was 33, was hacked to death with a machete before his head was crushed with a sledgehammer. He had sixty-six knife wounds to his body. They then carved a satanic pentagram into the victim’s stomach and dumped his body in a silk-lined oak coffin which Manuela usually slept in. They also slit Mr Hackert’s veins to drink his blood. When police broke into the flat, they found the body beneath a banner saying, “Satan lives.” They also found imitation human skulls, and, of course, the coffin. Born into a working class family, Manuela dropped out of school at fourteen and later tried to kill herself with an overdose. She said she had been introduced to ultra-vampiroidism while working at a club in north London. On her return to Germany, she started to mix with people who frequented graveyards at night. “We’d have a perfectly normal chat and drink some blood,” she said.

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Manuela, 23, whose head was partly shaven to reveal tattoos of an upside down crucifix and a target, told the court about drinking blood from volunteers contacted via the internet. She said: "I was in England and Scotland, met people and vampires [sic] in London. We went out at night, to cemeteries, in ruins and in the woods. We drank blood together from willing donors. I had implanted pegs put in ― the teeth which were pulled out were replaced with fangs. I also slept on graves and even allowed myself to be buried in a grave to test the feeling. I signed over my soul to Satan two-and-a-half years ago." The couple denied responsibility for killing Mr Hackert in July 2001, on the grounds that Satan had influenced their actions, although they both admitted to carrying out the gruesome act itself.

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The couple showed no remorse in court and provoked outrage by rolling their eyes maniacally, making gestures, and grinning at journalists. As sentence was passed on 31 January 2002, in the court at Bochum, near Dusseldorf, the pair laughed aloud, casting mocking glances at their victim’s tearful mother. Daniel, 26, was ordered to be incarcerated for fifteen years and Manuela for thirteen years in secure mental prisons. This is the second big Satanism case in Germany in recent years. One of the couple’s idols is Hendrik Moebus, who in 1993, aged 17, strangled a classmate because he was “bothering” Moebus’ group, the Children of Satan. Experts estimate that 7,000 people, the majority adolescents, engage in satanic rituals in Germany. However, many more do so in the UK and USA.

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In 2002, 17-year-old art student Matthew Hardman sent ripples of revulsion through society for the horrific murder of 90-year-old widow Mabel Leyshon in Wales, United Kingdom. Obsessed with vampires, the teenager cut out his victim’s heart and drank her blood from a saucepan, in a bizarre bid to become an undead. This disgusting act of ultra-vampiroidism shocked the quiet Welsh community in which it occurred.

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Sinister cults attract people from every belief system and from all social classes. No group is immune. Most cults have arisen since the late 1960s. Since the 1980s, however, vampiroid cults have flourished and continue to do so. Many hundreds of people have been lured by their false promises of fulfilliment. The reality is emptiness, isolation, manipulation, discord, lies and hatred. Cult members undergo a profound change. Family and friends witness a change for the worse, but cult victims are programmed to feel good about the change. They are no longer able to critically evaluate to the degree that was possible prior to recruitment into their new lifestyle. Tell-tale signs may include sudden drastic personality transformations; appearing distant (as trance states are common); seeming detached; being withdrawn and secretive; appearing to be cold or emotionless to family and friends; physical deterioration and a loss of critical ability.
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Demonical Possession

2009-02-21T03:44:00.001-08:00

A human who has become inhabited or taken over by a demon and who cannot, consequently, exercise his own will is noted in the New Testament, specifically in Mark 5: 12. Josephus also mentions a method of exorcism prescribed by Solomon, which had "prevailed or succeeded greatly among them down to the present time."

There is little doubt that cases of possession do seem to crop up from time to time, and mainstream churches do (sparingly) perform exorcisms. Some historians of times past believed that there were cycles during which demonic activity increased, and used this theory to explain various occurrences, much in the same way as today's economic historians might explain historical events in terms of trade, productivity and other factors. These older historians saw a rise in demonic activity accompanying such occurrences as the destruction of Jerusalem, the fall of Rome and the French Revolution, and would in all likelihood also have viewed the demonic theory at work in relation to the rise of Communism and the Second World War.
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Man is in various ways subject to the influence of evil spirits. By original sin he brought himself into "captivity under the power of him who thence [from the time of Adam's transgression] had the empire of death, that is to say, the Devil" (Council of Trent, Sess. V, de pecc. orig., 1), and was through the fear of death all his lifetime subject to servitude (Heb., ii, 15). Even though redeemed by Christ, he is subject to violent temptation: "for our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places" (Eph., vi, 12). But the influence of the demon, as we know from Scripture and the history of the Church, goes further still.

He may attack man's body from without (obsession), or assume control of it from within (possession). As we gather from the Fathers and the theologians, the soul itself can never be "possessed" nor deprived of liberty, though its ordinary control over the members of the body may be hindered by the obsessing spirit (cf. St. Aug., "De sp. et an.", 27; St. Thomas, "In II Sent.", d. VIII, Q. i; Ribet, "La mystique divine", Paris, 1883, pp. 190 sqq.).
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According to the doctor of Louis XV, Monsieur de St André in his "lettres au sujet de la magie, sorcellerie et des sorciers" in 1725, it was believed that somebody displaying the following signs was convinced of being possessed by the Devil:

People being able to levitate without any exterior help or art.

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People being able to speak foreign or unknown languages (glossolalia) without any prior knowledge of them.

Inquisitors used to ask questions in foreign languages and expected answers in the same language.

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People being able to inform about events occuring in distant places or in the future.

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People being able to discover hidden things without any knowledge of them.

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People being able to guess thoughts and feelings that are not expressed to them.

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Other visible signs of possessions include contortions, unnatural body movements, insults, blasphemies, stigmata or wounds that vanish as quickly as they appear.

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The expulsion of an evil spirit by a command, ritual or prayer is referred to as exorcism. At the root of exorcism lies belief in the power to transfer a spiritual being from place to place by ritual acts and words. Exorcism may have originated from old rituals of propritiation dating back from the Hittites of Asia Minor who transmitted to the early Romans. The Romans before the final assault against a hostile town carried out the evocation. It was a solemn ritual of calling the gods of the enemy. The gods were invited to join Rome with promises of worship and good treatment if they did. Josephus also mentions a method of exorcism prescribed by Solomon, which had "prevailed or succeeded greatly among them down to the present time." Unfortunately, Josephus does not describe the method used.

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In ancient times, and to a minor degree in recent times, demonology remained important as an influence on criminology. Demons can be defined either under an Old Testament version as fallen angels or under a New Testament version as malignant spirits. Many of them, for which names are known, are involved with various temptations toward lust, mischief, and crime. The key research question in demonology was whether demons work by temptation or possession.

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Asmodeus was believed to be the most active demon, and he could take male or female form to fill people with an insatiable lust and desire for adultery, buggery, and child molestation.

Belphegor, identified in the Jewish Kaballah, operated much the same way, but concentrated on breaking up romances and about-to-happen marriages.

Beelzebub was believed to be associated with murder, cannibalism, and anything to do with dead bodies (because of the flies he attracted). His favourite sin was gluttony whereas

Lucifer's was pride.

Sammael, the bat-winged demon, was also associated with the joy of taking life, or murder.

Rakshasas, the vampire demon known mostly in India, also was associated with murder, lust, reanimation of dead bodies, and perverting the holy.

The Catholic Church has turned the gift of exorcism as bestowed upon the apostles into a discipline acknowledged and respected by members of other branches of Christianity. That said, not many priests actually come into clear-cut cases of demonic phenomena, and so are unprepared for the horrors it has in store.

The Lone Vampire Hunter Interviews

2009-02-21T02:51:00.000-08:00

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The inherent contradictions concerning issues raised by the self-styled lone vampire hunter turned revisionist, then and now, have never been adequately addressed by him. In the 1970s he boasted to the media that he was vampire hunting with a cross and wooden stake. He refers on these archive recordings to two occasions in 1970 where he entered Highgate Cemetery with the clear intention of impaling a vampire if he found it. There is no ambiguity in these interviews from the 1970s.
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Today he claims that he was not vampire hunting.

Today he denies that he ever believed in vampires or went in pursuit of the Highgate Vampire with the intention of impaling it with a wooden stake.

These latter-day counter-claims, however, are seriously compromised by the interviews he gave to Thames Television's Today and BBC Television's 24 Hours in 1970 from which transmission the image of him above is taken as he demonstrated for the camera what he was doing on the night of his arrest in the previous August. Moreover, his denials are confirmed as false when listening to the long interview he gave to the Vampire Research Society in which he confirms everything attributed to him in The Highgate Vampire (1991) written by the Society's founding president where the lone vampire hunter's part at the periphery of the Highgate case prior to his imprisonment for related crimes is covered in a chapter titled "Amateur Vampire Hunters."

Interviews where this man talks at length about his vampire hunting exploits and all that followed are available on a compact disc titled The Devil's Fool.

There is also another CD titled The Black Witch Project which concentrates on his black magic proclivities and indeed activities in the company of John Pope, an unapologetic Satanist, who is also heard being interviewed.

The Devil's Fool disc provides clear evidence of the many contradictions over his publicly declared and disingenuous intentions in connection with the Highgate Cemetery matter at the time and, of course, subseqently.

Thirty-two tracks cover as many years of his recorded comments. They leave the listener in no doubt about this man's inconsistency.

Click here for further information about The Devil's Fool CD

Watch a video of the lone vampire hunter turned "Luciferian Guru" on YouTube:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ezDZBOZZcVQ

The Highgate Vampire Recordings

2009-02-21T02:38:00.000-08:00

These archive recordings on two discs unravel some of the frightening evidence from the period 1967 to 1974, as the listener trespasses upon the old ground of Highgate Cemetery ― an evil, unholy domain where supernatural terror once reigned. Author and exorcist Seán Manchester introduces the case at its inception ― and concludes with the lore and tradition of the undead, effective antidotes ― and the only effective remedies. Also heard are interviews with Elizabeth Wojdyla, Keith Maclean, and a would-be amateur vampire hunter turned diabolical self-publicist, plus others at the periphery. Truly rivetting material for those fascinated with this 20th century case.

CLICK HERE FOR ORDERING DETAILS

Encounters with the Highgate Vampire

2009-02-20T07:40:00.000-08:00

“Ever since I became aware that Highgate Cemetery was the reputed haunt of a vampire, the investigations and activities of Seán Manchester commanded my attention. I became convinced that, more than anyone else, the president of the Vampire Research Society knew the full story of the Highgate Vampire which is probably the most remarkable contemporary account of vampiric activity and infestation ― and cure. Can such things as vampires really exist? The evidence seems to be overwhelming and the author [of The Highgate Vampire] is to be congratulated on his knowledgeable and lucid account of the case which is likely to become one of the classic works on this interesting and mystifying subject.”

― Peter Underwood, President of the Ghost Club Society; Life-Member of the Vampire Research Society; author of over fifty books on the paranormal.

In 1990, Peter Underwood retold the events of the Highgate Vampire case (up to the discovery of the suspect tomb at Highgate Cemetery in August 1970) in his book Exorcism! (1990). He commented in chapter six:

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“The Hon Ralph Shirley told me in the 1940s that he had studied the subject in some depth, sifted through the evidence and concluded that vampirism was by no means as dead as many people supposed; more likely, he thought, the facts were concealed. … My old friend Montague Summers has, to his own satisfaction, at least, traced back ‘the dark tradition of the vampire’ until it is ‘lost amid the ages of a dateless antiquity’.”

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An encounter is alleged by Brian as early as July 1965. Brian claims the following:
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"At the time I was residing in Islington, and I'd been invited along to a student party. I was dubious as to whether to attend or not as I was worried how the hosts' several cats would react to my dog, an aged Lurcher, but assured that this presented no problem - if needs be the cats could be locked away - and lured by the promise that a girl I was set on would be putting in an appearance, I decided to give it a try. I parked my car at The Flask public house at around 8 o'clock and set off along Swains Lane with my dog. It was a beautiful, warm summer's evening, but as we proceeded along the cemetery's outer wall, I became uncomfortably aware of a curious silence. All the birds had suddenly stopped singing. The silence ... the only way I could describe it is that it was rather like being enveloped in a large woolly blanket. This should have given me some apprehension, but my mind was on the girl at the party and I just disregarded it. I was ten yards from the North Gate when I happened to look across at it. What I saw was what appeared to be black treacle flowing down and running over the wall. It touched ground and actually flowed like a big black pool of liquid into the centre of the path about six feet before me. There was an icy coldness which grew more intense with the passing seconds, literally an Arctic cold. The hairs on my neck, for the first time in my life, actually stood on end. With dusk falling full on the perimeter wall, the path was in shadow, but there was a shadow discernible within that shadow. I thought 'What am I watching ? What the f**k is this ?'. The most horrible part was - and I still have nightmares about it, still wake up in a cold sweat - it reared up. I'd estimate its height at between seven or eight feet. I'm five feet eight inches tall and it towered over me. It was enormous! It was neither solid nor transparent. My overall impression was that it was a black figure wearing dark garments which flowed and stirred in the wind - but there was no wind. The edges of what it was wearing were moving. No face. Where eyes would have been if it were human, there were just two red pits, red glows, and I was very conscious that it was looking at me. At that point I realised that I was up against an entity that was both powerful and malignant. It was radiating evil, that's the only way I could describe it. This wasn't a ghost, this was an entity. There was nothing remotely human about it. It simply was not human. As an ex-Army Officer I'd come up against life threatening situations, but faced with that thing the fear was worse than anything you could imagine. I tried to do a banishing pentagram, tried to pronounce a Latin incantation to repel evil. I could do neither. I couldn't move. My limbs were like lead. My dog was a placid old thing. It never growled as a rule, but it did on that occasion and it was ... indescribable. The growl of a wolf. But it had no effect on the entity whatsoever. The next thing I can recall, I found myself up against the wall at the top of Swains Lane. The dog had beaten me there. Its fur was actually standing on end. I've no recollection of running, but I must've done. I made my way to The Flask. The first thing the landlord said as I entered was 'No dogs'. I really needed that. I tied the poor dog up, had a couple of brandies, but I was still shaking. Eventually, I called my friend on the pub phone and asked him to pick me up. I wasn't in much of a party mood by then. I think what should be emphasised is the incredible speed with which events took place. The appearance of the entity was very swift and from the time I first saw "the treacle" to the time it was in front of me could only have been seconds ... although it seemed longer at the time. I am unable to canvass my dogs views on the subject as it returned to 'The great kennel in the sky' a few weeks after the incident. Whether this was coincidence or not I feel is conjectural. But it did become ill a couple of days after the incident, and died not much later. From old age, according to the vet. The dog was eight years old! And the girl ? She called around to ask why I hadn't attended. Not wishing to ruin my street-cred with her I told her I 'wasn't well'."

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In his anthology, The Vampire's Bedside Companion (1975), which contains a chapter with photographic evidence from the Vampire Research Society, written and contributed by Seán Manchester, Peter Underwood wrote:

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“Alleged sightings of a vampire-like creature ― a grey spectre ― lurking among the graves and tombstones have resulted in many vampire hunts. … In 1968, I heard first-hand evidence of such a sighting and my informant maintained that he and his companion had secreted themselves in one of the vaults and watched a dark figure flit among the catacombs and disappear into a huge vault from which the vampire … did not reappear. Subsequent search revealed no trace inside the vault but I was told that a trail of drops of blood stopped at an area of massive coffins which could have hidden a dozen vampires.”

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In the previous year, two schoolgirls had reported seeing the spectre rise from its tomb. Two seemingly unconnected incidents occurred within weeks of one another in early 1967. The first involved two 16-year-old convent girls who were walking home at night after having visited friends in Highgate Village. Their return journey took them down Swains Lane past the cemetery. They could not believe their eyes as they passed the graveyard’s north gate at the top of the lane, for in front of them bodies appeared to be emerging from their tombs. One of these schoolgirls later suffered nightly visitations and blood loss. The second incident, some weeks later, involved an engaged couple who were walking down the same lane. Suddenly the female shrieked as she glimpsed something hideous hovering behind the gate’s iron railings. Then her fiancé saw it. They both stood frozen to the ground as the spectre held them in thrall. Its face bore an expression of basilisk horror. Soon others sighted the same phenomenon as it hovered along the path behind the gate where gravestones are visible either side until consumed in darkness. Before long people were talking in hushed tones about the rumoured haunting in local pubs. Some who actually witnessed the spectral figure wrote to their local newspaper to share their experience. Discovery was made of animal carcasses drained of blood. They had been so exsanguinated that a forensic sample could not be found. It was only a matter of time before a person was found in the cemetery in a pool of blood. This victim died of wounds to the throat. The police made every attempt to cover-up the vampiristic nature of the death.

Seán Manchester informed the public on 27 February 1970 that the cause was most probably a vampire. He appeared on television on 13 March 1970 and repeated his theory. The Vampire Research Society, whose specialist unit within a larger investigatory organisation (the British Occult Society which formally dissolved on 8 August 1988) had opened the case twelve months earlier, established a history of similar hauntings that went back to a time before the graveyard existed. A suspected tomb was located and a spoken exorcism performed. This proved to be ineffective. The hauntings and animal deaths continued. Indeed, they multiplied. By now all sorts of people were jumping on the vampire bandwagon, including film-makers and rock musicians. Most were frightened off. Some who interloped became fascinated by the black arts with disastrous consequences. Meanwhile, serious researchers considered the possibility that a nest of vampires might be active in the area. Yet there seemed to be one principal source which the media had already dubbed from the onset as a “King Vampire of the Undead.”

Seán Manchester led the thirteen year investigation from beginning to end. There was seemingly more than one vampire for him and the Vampire Research Society to confront. However, in early 1974 he tracked the principal source of the contamination, which had already become universally known as the Highgate Vampire, to a neo-Gothic mansion on the Highgate borders. Here he employed the ancient and approved remedy. No vampire has been sighted in or near Highgate Cemetery and its environs since that time. The exorcised remains of the Highgate Vampire appear on page 144 of his bestselling book The Highgate Vampire.
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Is it Real? (National Geographic)

2009-02-20T02:45:00.000-08:00

Is it Real? - Vampires

Seán Manchester featured in National Geographic Television’s Is it Real? series talking about all things demonic and those predatory wraiths more commonly known as vampires. The transmission went out at 9.00pm on Tuesday, 31 October 2006. It has been reshown many times. Archive material from the Highgate Vampire case made a vital appearance courtesy of the Vampire Research Society and its founding president.

Most Haunted Live in Transylvania

2009-02-20T02:06:00.000-08:00

Most Haunted Live in Transylvania

Most Haunted Live was filmed abroad for the first time ever, choosing the most notorious of all vampire haunts, Transylvania, as Yvette Fielding, psychic David Wells, and the regular Most Haunted crew searched for the legend of Dracula and examined the history of Vlad Tepes. A sensational three-night special event, transmitted live and exclusive on LIVINGtv, began from Friday 23 February 2007. It was introduced by Seán Manchester, revealing vampire lore and legend, how to protect yourself using antidotes and repellents ― and the only to exorcise vampires.

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Hunedoara and Corvin Castle in Transylvania set the scene for this Most Haunted Live transmission. They unwisely (in Seán Manchester's opinion) attempted to make contact with the spirit of "Vlad the Impaler," thought to be the inspiration behind the legend of Dracula.

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Yvette Fielding and her team spent each of the three long nights exploring different areas of the infamous medieval castle, where Vlad is said to have been imprisoned for over seven years, and is believed now be home to other "invisible" inhabitants which roam the castle.

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Originally known as Vlad Dracula, the horrors of this legendary characters cruelty to other human beings gave him the name "Vlad the Impaler." It was up to Yvette Fielding and the camera crew to search the castle in the hope of finding out more about his life including his birth in this vast open country, discover more about the devastating cruelty he inflicted on others, his imprisonment at the castle and finally his death in the wars against the Ottoman Empire.

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There is much factual information about "Vlad the Impaler," of course in Seán Manchester's novel Carmel which some consider to be the definitive sequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Real Vampires (Discovery Channel)

2009-02-20T01:48:00.000-08:00

Real Vampires

At 9.00pm on Wednesday, 31 October 2007, Seán Manchester featured in a Discovery Channel documentary that embarked on a global quest to discover the origins of the vampire legend in an effort to try and find out why these creatures continue to have such a hold on our imaginations. The two-hour special Real Vampires ― where Seán Manchester was filmed on location ― also included archaeologist Timothy Taylor and anthropologist Kathryn Denning. They embarked on a journey which took them from the mountains of Transylvania and the jungles of Brazil to the vampiroid covens of present-day New York, plus a vampire haunt in England, in an attempt to find out if there is a dark reality lurking behind the legend of the undead. Their investigation into this chilling subject led them to some recent and horrifying cases of modern-day vampirism.

Links:

Seán Manchester's television appearances Autumn 2006 - 2007

Vampires

Vampire Antidotes and Repellents

2009-02-19T04:07:00.000-08:00

Items considered by some as useful antidotes and weapons in the pursuit of vampires are no substitute for serious study and painstaking research, and the following list is by no means comprehensive.

Aconite (Aconitum Napellus): There is little, if any, mention of this in the anecdotal or folkloric literature. There is a reference in the 1931 film Dracula made at Universal Studios. Aconite is poisonous for humans.

Bullets: While there are several references to bullets and silver bullets, shooting at vampires will not prove remotely effective. A silver bullet is the legendary method of killing werewolves. Making home-made bullets is dangerous, unless you know what you are doing. Hot metals can cause injury and attempting to melt silver may be hazardous.

Decapitation: "The only certain method of destroying a Vampire appear to be either to consume him with fire, or to chop off his head with a grave-digger's shovel, or drive a wooden stake through his heart," according to Montague Summers. He does not say that another method of decapitation would not suffice and probably only mention's a sexton's spade in the assumption that the exorcism is taking place in a graveyard and that such an instrument would be something nearby which could be used. Almost confirming his anticipation of a cemetery environment, Summers advises: "Saturday is the day of the week on which the exorcism ought by right take place, because the spirit then rests in the tomb."

Fire: Cremation is usually best left to professional undertakers. However, it is the most effective way to purify a contaminated environment and/or corporeal shell inhabited by a demonic entity.

Garlic: There is no harm in garlic. It is actually very good for you. It nevertheless has a long tradition for warding off evil spirits, including vampires. It was recognised as a powerful antidote by the Ancient Egyptians and also the Israelites.

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Knives: Ineffective against vampires or any other supernatural manifestations. Montague Summers nevertheless reveals that in Dalmatia and Albania the wooden stake is sometimes, probably unwisely, sustituted with a dagger blessed by a priest.
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Mirrors: Not much folkloric support for the use of mirrors exists. They are nonetheless effective as a repellent for reasons explained on page 28 of The Vampire Hunter's Handbook.

Saint John's wort (Hypericum perforatum): Christians began placing Saint John's wort, perhaps the most powerful herb for this purpose, in doorways to repel demons. Christian priests have also used this herb to cast away evil. The name St John's wort apparently refers to John the Baptist, as the plant blooms around the time of the feast of St John the Baptist in the summer. St John's wort has been used for centuries to treat mental disorders and nerve pain. The frequency and severity of side effects with St John's wort extract are clinically insignificant, especially when compared to the well-known side effects of tricyclics and other antidepressants. There have been no deaths due to St John's wort toxicity, a stark contrast to the thirty-one deaths per one million prescriptions produced by synthetic antidepressants. It has also been used as a sedative and a treatment for malaria, as well as a balm for wounds, burns, and insect bites. St John's wort is used nowadays by some for depression, anxiety, and/or sleep disorders. The flowering tops of St John's wort are used to prepare teas and tablets containing concentrated extracts. St James' wort (not to be confused with St John's wort) or Ragwort (Senecio jacobeae) is a common native British Plant named after the saint. Research has shown that a very significant amount of Ragwort is required to kill. This can be several stone in weight. St James' Wort is not a poison of any consequence to humans and the plant and poses no serious risk to people. There are no cases that have every been reported where poisoning to human beings has been found to have been caused by St James' Wort which tastes so bad that animals are repelled by it. The amount that would need to be consumed by a person to damage them would be enormous. It is only mildly poisonous and there is no serious risk of liver damage from handling the plant, from its pollen or from being contact with it in any way. There are mild toxins present which can be absorbed in minute amounts through the skin but these do not pose any significant risk to the public. There are many more dangerous substances present in other plants and alcohol consumption is a far bigger risk to the livers of the general population.

Salt: On pages 60, 87 and 180 of The Highgate Vampire, the author readily attests to the efficacy of salt as a barrier against demons. Yet it was only one of numerous repellents employed throughout that case. While salt was one of the important components of liturgical exorcism (Dölger 1909: 92–100; Böcher 1970: 235–238; Schneider 1987: 348–353), the saints hardly ever used it. An interesting example of salt usage can be found in the Vita of Pope Leo IX (ca 1050–1060). Once, when Leo IX was praying, a local peasant, whose daughter had been taken over by demon, came to him and addressed him. On the peasant’s intense request the Pope agreed to heal the girl. He found a grain of salt nearby, blessed it and put it in the girl’s mouth: at this very moment the girl’s mouth started to bleed and she was freed of the demon. Salt, with its preservative properties, had always been treasured as precious in the ancient world, and seen as a symbol of incorruption and wisdom. Its use was commanded by God: Leviticus 2: 13-14 ~ "Whatsoever sacrifice thou offerest, thou shalt season it with salt, neither shalt thou take away the salt of the covenant of thy God from thy sacrifice. In all thy oblations thou shalt offer salt. But if thou offer a gift of the firstfruits of thy corn to the Lord, of the ears." It was seen by God, as recorded by Moses, to act as a symbol for that which can't corrupt: Numbers 18: 19 "All the firstfruits of the sanctuary which the children of Israel offer to the Lord, I have given to thee and to thy sons and daughters, by a perpetual ordinance. It is a covenant of salt for ever before the Lord, to thee and to thy sons." Its first recorded sacramental use was by Eliseus (Elisha) to restore waters of a well: 4 Kings 2: 19-22 "And the men of the city, said to Eliseus . Behold the situation of this city is very good, as thou, my lord, seest: but the waters are very bad, and the ground barren. And he said: Bring me a new vessel, and put salt into it. And when they had brought it, He went out to the spring of the waters, and cast the salt into it, and said: Thus saith the Lord: I have healed these waters, and there shall be no more in them death or barrenness. And the waters were healed unto this day, according to the word of Eliseus, which he spoke. And, of course, there is Our Lord's calling His people 'salt of the earth' and warning of salt that loses its savour (Matthew 5:13, Mark 9, Luke 14)," and there is St Paul's warning in Colossians 4: 6 to "Let your speech be always in grace seasoned with salt: that you may know how you ought to answer every man." Salt is used in two main ways in the Church. In Baptisms: like the baptismal waters, salt is blessed and exorcised. Then it is put on the tongue of the catechumen during the Baptismal Rite. Also, salt is used in the preparation of holy water and for the use of the faithful. Regular salt is exorcised and blessed and is used in the preparation of holy water. It is also given to the faithful for their everyday use, eg for sprinkling around rooms, doorways and yards, to protect against evil etc. Because of its exorcism and blessing, it is a powerful repellent in keeping away demons. To obtain blessed salt, just take ordinary salt to your priest and ask him to bless it. Regular salt, ie not blessed, is also used to purify the priest's fingers after Unction. Salt was considered so valuable that Roman soldiers were paid, at least in part, by salt, or "sal" in Latin. This is the root of our word "salary."

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Silver: Holding a silver object or cross is an antidote. However, various liquid and powdered silver compounds are dangerous. Melt down silver into bullets and you are liable to inhale toxic fumes and be contaminated with silver poisoning. This is equally toxic if you plan on playing with silver nitrate, nitrite or any one of a hundred silver compounds. Silvering of mirrors is also toxic. Acetone and the various chemicals used can permanantly stain your skin blue-gray, or burn your human skin off.

Silver Colloid: This is a tricky subject, as silver has been used for hundreds of years as an antibiotic/antiparasitic. Taking colloidal silver internally for weeks on end will nevertheless make you sick, as most things would if you took them every day. Colloidal silver is also tricky because there is a delicate and specific process of making it. There are plenty of really tainted products out there about which you need to be aware.

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Impalation: Impalation through the heart with a sharpened wooden stake, according to folklore, is an effective remedy for vampirism.

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Wolfsbane: see Aconitum Napellus.

The pungent herb Allium Sativum (wild variety: Allium Vineal), better known as garlic, is deemed by many to be effective as a repellent against evil spirits. In 450 BC, Herodotus, the Greek historian, in Euterpe: Concerning the History of Europe, remarks about an inscription inside the Cheops pyramid at Gisa, built circa 2900 BC, that attests to the value of garlic’s arcane properties. It was invariably employed to ward off evil spirits. Garlic has been grown and used for five thousand years. It lowers blood cholestral and reduces the risk of clotting, and is an effective food-remedy for almost every condition known to man. It aids digestion and maintains and improves health, being antibacterial and a powerful antibiotic. It increases the assimilation of vitamins, and itself contains vitamins B and C, calcium, phosphorous, iron and potassium; though it is not a sanctified item in the struggle against the Devil.

Holy water, of course, is a sanctified item in the struggle against the Devil. The use of holy water in the earliest days of the Christian Era is attested by documents. In the earliest Christian times water was used for expiatory and purificatory purposes. As, in many cases, the water used for the Sacrament of Baptism was flowing water, sea or river water, it could not receive the same blessing as that contained in the baptisteries. On this particular point the early liturgy is obscure, but two recent discoveries are of very decided interest. The Pontifical of Scrapion of Thumis, a fourth-century bishop, and likewise the "testamentum Domini," a Syriac composition dating from the fifth to the sixth century, contain a blessing of oil and water during Mass. The formula in Scrapion's Pontifical is as follows: "We bless these creatures in the Name of Jesus Christ, Thy only Son; we invoke upon this water and this oil the Name of Him Who suffered, Who was crucified, Who arose from the dead, and Who sits at the right of the Uncreated. Grant unto these creatures the power to heal; may all fevers, every evil spirit, and all maladies be put to flight by him who either drinks these beverages or is anointed with them, and may they be a remedy in the Name of Jesus Christ, Thy only Son."

As early as the fourth century various writings, the authenticity of which is free from suspicion, mention the use of water sanctified either by the liturgical blessing just referred to, or by the individual blessing of some holy person. St Epiphanius records that at Tiberias a man named Joseph poured water on a madman, having first made the sign of the cross and pronounced these words over the water: "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, crucified, depart from this unhappy one, thou infernal spirit, and let him be healed!" Joseph was converted an subsequently used the same proceeding to overcome witchcraft; yet, he was neither a bishop nor a cleric.

It is known that some of the faithful believed that holy water possessed curative properties for certain diseases, and that this was true in a special manner of baptismal water. In some places it was carefully preserved throughout the year and, by reason of its having been used in baptism, was considered free from all corruption. This belief spread from East to West; and scarcely had baptism been administered, when the people would crown around with all sorts of vessels and take away the water, some keeping it carefully in their homes whilst others watered their fields, vineyards, and gardens with it.
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However, baptismal water was not the only holy water. Some was permanently retained at the entrance to Christian churches where a clerk sprinkled the faithful as they came in and, for this reason, was called hydrokometes or "introducer by water," an appellation that appears in the superscription of a letter of Synesius in which allusion is made to "lustral water placed in the vestibule of the temple". This water was perhaps blessed in proportion as it was needed, and the custom of the Church may have varied on this point. Balsamon tells us that, in the Greek Church, they "made" holy water at the beginning of each lunar month. Pope Leo IV ordered that each priest bless water every Sunday in his own church and sprinkle the people with it: "Omni die Dominico, ante missam, aquam benedictam facite, unde populus et loca fidelium aspergantur." Hincmar of Reims gave directions as follows: "Every Sunday, before the celebration of Mass, the priest shall bless water in his church, and, for this holy purpose, he shall use a clean and suitable vessel. The people, when entering the church, are to be sprinkled with this water, and those who so desire may carry some away in clean vessels so as to sprinkle their houses, fields, vineyards, and cattle, and the provender with which these last are fed, as also to throw over their own food." The rule of having water blessed for the aspersion at Mass on Sunday was thenceforth generally followed.

There are two Sundays on which water is not and seems never to be blessed: these are Easter Sunday and Pentecost. The reason is because on the eve of these two feasts water for the baptismal fonts is blessed and consecrated and, before its mixture with the holy chrism, the faithful are allowed to take some of it to their homes, and keep it for use in time of need.
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But by far the most powerful repellent against evil, not least vampires, is the Host, the Body of God.

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"The laws of most counries invariably look upon exhumation as a most serious offence and no longer is it permissible to disinter a suspected vampire with view to carrying out the necessary exorcism. ... The more courageous exorcist, wearing protective measures, might want to confront the vampire as it leaves its tomb and attempt to end its pollutions by quickly employing methods already described. This last procedure should not be attempted under any circumstance without a minimum of two, similarly protected and armed, steadfast colleagues in attendance to lend support. There is no stronger defence against the snares and onlsaughts of this unspeakable evil than the Most Holy Sacrament, the Host, which should be handled by a person in holy orders where possible. The invocation of the Lord's Most Holy Name disarms and crushes the devil [demon]. The most powerful safeguard against demoniacal outrage lies in the protection of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."
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(The edited quote regarding exhumation and the Host is taken from page 25 of The Vampire Hunter's Handbook.)

Incubi/Succubi and Vampires

2009-02-19T03:49:00.000-08:00

These incorporeal sexual energy feeders, mistakenly described by some as a type of incorporeal vampire, known as incubi (singular: incubus), and in a feminine form, succubi (singular: succubus), are two forms of demon not subtle about the purposes of their nocturnal visits which might explain false vampire syndrome.

The incubus descends on sleeping persons at night, oppressing that person, causing nightmares. The succubus is thought to sometimes have sexual intercourse with sleeping persons. A single demon can manifest in both forms. Nightmares, under classic and probably outdated Freudian analysis, may relate to anxiety or sexual repression, or, at least, so we are told. But in the Middle Ages, visions of demons in the night who visited one's bed chamber were unquestionably the work of the incubus and succubus.

The incubus/succubus was invariably a demon who attacked a human during sleep. (Could this be an early manifestation of the modern-day belief in "alien abduction"?) The night creature paralysed the victim (read this as sleep paralysis) and sometimes engaged in sexual relations with the victim, against the human's will. Attempts to explain away this belief in night demons is a rationalisation of sexual repression from the oppression and guilt, according to modern psychology.

The vampire is similar to the incubus/succubus, except the vampire will drink the blood of a victim instead of engaging in relations with the victim. Some say the female succubus was essentially a gorgeous but demonic shape-shifter who assumed the female form and whose goal it was to mate with a male human. Others say the succubus would turn into an incubus after having relations with a male human, then as a new incubus it would pursue a female human, and so on.

The incubus/succubus was usually associated with witchcraft. A book from 1584 called Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot discussed incubus/succubus, and stated that in one case witnesses saw an incubus on the bed of a woman. However, in other cases he attributes the demon to the imagination. Basically someone would be very reluctant to claim to have had relations with an incubus/succubus in past centuries for fear of being labelled a witch. It is also interesting to note that people believed there were different classes of demons, some more exalted than others. The incubus/succubus was at the bottom; it was the low-life in the pecking-order of demons.

Vampires, eg the Russian upir and the Greek vrykolakas, were those who practiced witchcraft and were thus particularly susceptible because they had already given their soul to the Devil in life. Once the undead corpses rose from the grave they would terrorise the community, feeding on the living. By many accounts these undead corpses were required to return to their grave to enter into a torpor. When people believed that someone had become a vampire, they would exhume the corpse and try to exorcise the evil spirit. They would try a formal ritual, but more often they would destroy the corporeal form. This might entail cremation, decapitation preceded by the driving a wooden stake through the heart. Bodies might also be buried face-down. Some families secured stakes above the corpse so it would impale itself if it tried to escape. This was a rather naive attempt to prevent a demonic agency with supernatural powers.

The vampires in Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania (now part of Romania) were commonly called strigoi (the singular form is strigo). Strigoi were usually considered to be spirits who had returned from the dead. Unlike the upir or vrykolakas, the strigoi would pass through different stages after rising from the grave. Initially, a strigo might be invisible, tormenting its living family members by moving items of furniture and stealing food. After some time, it would become visible, looking almost like the person did in life. Again, the strigo would return to its family, stealing cattle, begging for sustenance and bringing disease. Strigoi would feed on humans, first their family members and then anyone else they happened to encounter. In some accounts the strigoi would sometimes suck their victims' blood directly from the heart.

Strigoi are reanimated corpses that prey on the living. Initially, a strigo needed to return to the grave regularly, just like an upir. If people suspected someone had become a strigo, they would exhume the body and burn it, having driven a stake through it. But after seven years, if a strigo was still around, it could live wherever it pleased. It was said that strigoi would travel to distant towns to begin new lives as ordinary people, and that these clandestine vampires would gather. In addition to undead strigoi, referred to as strigoi mort, people also feared living vampires, or strigoi viu. These were cursed living people who were doomed to become strigoi mort when they died. If a strigoi mort living among humans had any children, the offspring were thought to carry the curse of the undead strigoi after life. When a known strigoi viu died, the family would destroy its body to ensure that it would not rise from the grave.

In other parts of eastern Europe, strigoi-type creatures were known as vampir, or wampyr, most likely a variation on the Russian upir. Western European countries eventually picked up on this name, and "vampyr" (later "vampire") entered the English language. In the 17th and 18th centuries, vampire hysteria spread through eastern Europe. People reported seeing their dead relatives walking around, attacking the living. Authorities dug up scores of graves, burning and staking the corpses. Word of the vampire panics spread to western Europe, leading to a slew of academic speculations on the creatures, leading to the case of the infamous Highgate Vampire.

The V.R.S. on Montague Summers

2009-02-19T03:26:00.000-08:00

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Montague Summers (1880-1948) was a fascinating character without whom vampire research would be very much the poorer. Throughout his life he was described by acquaintances as kind, courteous, generous and outrageously witty; but those who knew him well sensed an underlying discomfort and mystery. In appearance he was plump, round cheeked and generally smiling. His dress resembled that of an eighteenth century cleric, with a few added flourishes such as a silver-topped cane depicting Leda being ravished by Zeus in the form of a swan. He wore sweeping black capes crowned by a curious hairstyle of his own devising which led many to assume he wore a wig. His voice was high pitched, comical and often in complete contrast to the macabre tales he was in the habit of recounting. Throughout his life he astonished people with his knowledge of esoteric and unsettling occult lore. Many people later described him as the most extraordinary person they had ever known.

His successor in the annals of vampirology, and founder of the Vampire Research Society, was barely an infant when Summers died. Curiously, Seán Manchester (whose initials are the same as Montague Summers’ initials reversed) began in the Church of England and converted to Roman Catholicism before entering holy orders in the Old Catholic Church ― as, of course, did Summers. Both were ordained within the context of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church and, as Old Catholic Bishops, led autocephalous jurisdictions that held authority in Great Britain.

Summers entered the Old Catholic priesthood in 1913 and, towards the end of his life, was elevated to the episcopate by Hugh George de Willmott Newman, Archbishop of Glastonbury ― an Office and See currently held by Seán Manchester. Summers was episcopally consecrated for the Order of Corporate Reunion. Despite his cherubic demeanour and affability some people found Montague Summers sinister, a view he delighted in encouraging. Although in everyday life he was kind and considerate, when engaged in academic debate Summers was furiously intolerant.

There were also rumours that in his youth Summers had dabbled in the occult. Curiously enough, the same rumours, albeit unfounded, persist about Seán Manchester. If true, the only effect seems to have been to Summers completely against such meddling. He may have been fascinated, even obsessed by witches, vampires and the like but the tone of Montague Summers’ writings is consistently hostile towards them. Ditto goes for Seán Manchester who is believed to have infiltrated occult groups in order to later expose their depraved goings-on. Summers was a contemporary of the notorious Satanist Aleister Crowley with whom he was acquainted. Likewise, Manchester is a contemporary of two infamous Crowley devotees of a later generation whom he met and interviewed during the 1970s and 1980s.
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Montague Summers grew up in a wealthy family living in Clifton, near Bristol. Religion always played a large part in his life. He was raised as an evangelical Anglican, but his love of ceremonial and sacraments drew him to Anglo-Catholicism. After graduating in Theology at Oxford he took the first steps towards holy orders at Lichfield Theological College and entered his apprenticeship as a curate in the diocese of Bitton near Bristol. A year or so later he converted to Roman Catholicism. He had been made a deacon within the Church of England in 1908, and was diaconated again within the Roman Catholic Church, but it was not until he embraced the Old Catholic Church that he was ordained into the priesthood. He celebrated Mass publicly when travelling abroad, but at home in England he only performed this sacrament in private. This was probably due to the fact that he was ordained into the priesthood outside the regular procedures of the Church. Old Catholic holy orders, albeit valid, are irregular in the eyes of Rome and Canterbury (the latter, of course, being the Church of England, is not accepted as being remotely valid by Rome).
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None of his close friends doubted the sincerity of his religious faith. Dame Sybil Thorndike wrote of him: “I think that because of his profound belief in the tenets of orthodox Catholic Christianity he was able to be in a way almost frivolous in his approach to certain macabre heterodoxies. His humour, his ‘wicked humour’ as some people called it, was most refreshing, so different from the tiresome sentimentalism of so many convinced believers.”

For a living, Summers was able to draw on a modest legacy from his father, supplemented by spells of teaching at various schools, including Hertford Grammar, the Central School of Arts and Crafts in Holborn, and Brockley School in south London where he was senior English and Classics Master. He described teaching as: “One of the most difficult and depressing of trades, and so in some measure it must have been even well-nigh three hundred years ago when boys were not nearly so stupid as they are today.” In practice though, he was both entertaining and effective as a teacher once he had overcome initial problems with discipline, and was popular with both pupils and colleagues despite making it plain his real interests lay elsewhere.
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From 1926, when he was in his mid-forties, Summers' writings and editing earned him the freedom to pursue full time his many enthusiasms and love of travel, particularly in Italy. The bulk of his activity then was related to English Restoration drama of the seventeenth century. Beginning in 1914 with the Shakespeare Head Press, Summers had edited a large number of Restoration plays for various publishers, accompanied by lengthy critical introductions that were highly praised in their own right, and did much to rescue that period of literature from oblivion.

Not content with editing and introducing these plays, Summers helped in 1919 to found the Phoenix Society whose aim was to present them on stage in London. The venture was an immediate success and Summers threw himself wholeheartedly and popularly into all aspects of the productions, which were staged at various theatres. This brought him a measure of fame in London society and invitations to the most select salons, which he dazzled with his wit and erudition. By 1926 he was recognised as the greatest living authority on Restoration drama. Some ten years later he crystallized his knowledge in The Restoration Theatre and The Playhouse of Pepys which examined almost every possible aspect of the London stage between 1660 and 1710.

Summers' involvement with the theatre presents a curious parallel with his near contemporary Bram Stoker, who for most of his working life was business manager to Sir Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre in London. There is even a suggestion of some jealousy in the grudging praise Summers gives Bram Stoker's Dracula, leading to his conclusion that the novel's success owed more to Stoker’s choice of subject than any authorial skill. One cannot fail to suspect that Summers felt he might have written the definitive vampire novel himself, only better. Notwithstanding this conjecture, Stoker’s Gothic masterpiece remains a work of sheer genius. It was left, almost inevitably, for Seán Manchester to tie up the lose ends left flapping about at Dracula’s conclusion in a sequel titled Carmel. The thought must have surely occurred to Summers, but it was to be Summers’ successor who executed the deed.

In his introduction to Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto Summers articulated the appeal of Gothic novels, and perhaps also the appeal of all the dark mysteries that fascinated him: “There is in the Romantic revival a certain disquietude and a certain aspiration. It is this disquietude with earth and aspiration for heaven which inform the greatest Romance of all, Mysticism, the Romance of the Saints. The Classical writer set down fixed rules and precisely determined his boundaries. The Romantic spirit reaches out beyond these with an indefinite but very real longing to new and dimly guessed spheres of beauty. The Romantic writer fell in love with the Middle Ages, the vague years of long ago, the days of chivalry and strange adventure. He imagined and elaborated a mediaevalism for himself, he created a fresh world, a world which never was and never could have been, a domain which fancy built and fancy ruled. And in this land there will be mystery, because where there is mystery beauty may always lie hid. There will be wonder, because wonder always lurks where there is the unknown. And it is this longing for beauty intermingling with wonder and mystery that will express itself, perhaps exquisitely and passionately in the twilight moods of the romantic poets, perhaps a little crudely and even a little vulgarly in tales of horror and blood.”
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Montague Summers died of a heart attack in 1948 and his mantle awaited the arrival in London of Seán Manchester who would there establish himself as the other celebrated vampirologist of the twentieth century. In 1991 an updated and enlarged hardcover edition of Seán Manchester’s best selling The Highgate Vampire was specially dedicated to the memory of Montague Summers.

Brocard Sewell and Montague Summers

2009-02-19T02:44:00.001-08:00

Father Brocard Sewell’s Montague Summers: A Memoir (1965) is a model of how to build bricks without straw. There are profound mysteries and gaps in Summers’s life and personality, yet despite the book’s slightness, Brocard was able to present a rounded portrait of the controversial priest and demonologist. Brocard always argued that Summers was in possession of valid holy orders ― even if they were obtained irregularly. He wrote in Tell Me Strange Things: A Memorial to Montague Summers (The Aylesford Press, 1991): " ... as he says at the beginning of his will, 'I, Montague Summers, Clerk in Holy Orders ...', there is no getting away from that. Anyone who says that Montague Summers was not in holy orders is just saying that which is not, and is talking about something that he doesn’t understand."

As he wrote in the Review (Summer 1966): "Would that [Summers] were here today to lash with his vitriolic pen (as it could be on occasion) those in the Latin Church who are busily engaged in dismantling the liturgical heritage of a thousand years."

It is stated in the obituary of Father Brocard Sewell ― the "Literary friar who challenged the authority of the Pope," as The Times characterised him ― that he died in London on 2 April 2000, aged 87. The Carmelite scholar, theologian, biographer, editor, printer and publisher was a great advocate of "minor literary figures," as the anonymous Times obituarist pronounced.

The Times obituarist struck a sour note, suggesting that the Review’s "eclecticism reflected Sewell’s own tastes, which ranged widely if uncertainly." Evidently his passion for Machen, Summers and Gray was misplaced! (These writers are admittedly not household names, but so much the worse for our households.) The Times also indulged in a little guilt-by-association innuendo. Father Brocard championed Henry Williamson when the writer was condemned for his fascist leanings: "His friendship with Henry Williamson led him into some dubious territory, since, like Williamson, he was an admirer of Sir Oswald Mosley." Father Brocard claimed never to have voted Conservative. In an obituary notice written for The Independent Brocard’s friend the artist Jane Percival quoted his views on Mosley: "Sir Oswald is a greatly misunderstood man, but I feel that he is partly himself to blame for this. The turning point came, I think, when he was released from prison in 1944. He should then, in my judgement, have retired from politics."

A key to Father Brocard’s tolerant personality can be found in Jane Percival’s assessment: "He had an entirely non-judgemental attitude. He hardly ever criticised others and if he did it was with some subtle epithet which would be hard to interpret and which could hardly give offence to anyone." Montague Summers was elevated to the episcopate within the Old Catholic succession in his latter years and died of a heart attack in 1948. His vampirological mantle awaited the arrival of Seán Manchester.

Seán Manchester on Montague Summers

2009-02-19T02:15:00.000-08:00

Extract from Stray Ghosts by Seán Manchester:

“Without some would - be Parsifal … could there be any re-discovery of the Holy Grail? And what about Christ’s own preference for the company of publicans and sinners? Oh there were a lot of riddles like bats or broomsticks flying around at night!"

~ Nicholas Mosley (Efforts at Truth, 1994)

Alphonsus Joseph-Mary Augustus Montague Summers, in whose memory I would dedicate my most popular work in print, entered the Old Catholic priesthood, having been diaconated in 1908 in the Church of England, and later becoming ordained in the diaconate of the Roman Catholic Church a year later. He was episcopally consecrated for the Order of Corporate Reunion on 21 June 1927 by Dominic Albert Godwin, and was later consecrated sub conditione on 21 March 1946 by Roger Stephen Matthews and appointed Nuncio for Great Britain. His biographer is the late Roman Catholic Carmelite Father Brocard Sewell who, like this author, knew Sir Oswald Mosley. This acquaintance, in my own case, came about due to me being a professional photographer. I also met Lady Diana Mosley, Sir Oswald's wife.

Interest in Mosley as a subject stemmed from certain parallels between the fascist leader and Byron. Both were of noble lineage; they were each drawn to the classical worlds of antiquity; each supported despots whom they eventually turned against (Mussolini influencing Mosley ― not Hitler as often imputed ― while Napoleon gained Byron’s admiration); each felt a romantic impulse to lead ultra-nationalistic causes (Mosley’s “Greater Britain” prior to his internment in 1940 and “Europe a Nation” after the Second World War; Byron’s a miserable death at Missolonghi for the cause of Greece). Both limped due to a lame right foot that required a specially made shoe. Last but not least, they were each serial womanisers, and both shared a penchant for the company of the lower echelons, joining them for a drink and a chat. This contrasted with those at the other end of the political spectrum, whose leading lights were invariably middle class and out of touch with the ordinary people.

I met and came to know Mosley at the turn of the 1960s. Much later, I came into contact with Fenner Brockway (who personally supported my campaigns around the time of Sir Oswald's death at the age of eighty-four in 1980) and Tony Benn whom I would meet at various rallies and during the making of a television programme for Channel Four. The former was Lord Brockway, and the latter had been Viscount Stansgate before renouncing the title. These, and others on the far left, I would discover, unlike Sir Oswald Mosley, frequently lacked the common touch. Anomalies such as this were curious, but noneless true.

It has been assumed that Father Brocard Sewell and I were well acquainted. This is not the case, however; though a robust correspondence between us was occasionally entered upon; one might even say erupted. The topic of Montague Summers and, indeed, vampires was never too distant.

My colleague and good friend Peter Underwood knew Montague Summers well enough to have been presented with a protection medallion by him. Summers’ fame as an expert on the occult began in 1926 with the publication of his History of Demonology and Witchcraft followed by other studies of witches, vampires and werewolves; notably The Vampire: His Kith and Kin (1928) and The Vampire in Europe (1929). He also introduced to the public, as an editor, along with many other works, a reprint of The Discovery of Witches by the infamous Matthew Hopkins, and the first English translation of the classic fifteenth century treatise on witchcraft, Malleus Maleficarum. In later life he also wrote influential studies of the Gothic novel, another lifelong enthusiasm; notably The Gothic Quest: a History of the Gothic Novel (1938), and A Gothic Bibliography (1940). Much of Summers’ life remains in obscurity, many of his personal papers have been lost; yet he left an autobiography, The Galanty Show, that was published over thirty years after his death.

Montague Summers died of a heart attack in 1948. When Sandy Robertson launched The Summers Project in 1986 to raise money for a tombstone to be laid on Summers’ unmarked grave in Richmond Cemetery, then known only as plot 10818, he turned to me for support. The simple stone, bearing the legend “Tell me strange things,” was erected on 26 November 1988. Summers invariably opened his conversation with those words when people visited him. He yearned to hear strange things. In 1950, two years after his death, Summers’ longstanding friend, Hector Stuart-Forbes, joined him in the then unmarked plot at Richmond Cemetery. This Old Catholic bishop’s work in the filed of demonolatry, not least the specific area of vampirology, is unparalleled in the twentieth century. It was when I studied this spectrum of the supernatural in my early teenage years that I first came across the works of Montague Summers. They were to prove invaluable.

My appreciation of Summers’ work is a matter of public record. Yet I have no knowledge of his private life, or his degree of involvement in esotericism about which rumours abound. I do not question his ordinations, as have some commentators, but I am not qualified to access him beyond his published works. I have grown more than accustomed to misrepresentation and cheap jibes against anyone vaguely knowledgeable of vampirism and demonaltry. The only other information I have been privy to regrading Summers relates entirely to his ordinations and episcopal consecration within autocephalous jurisdictions of the Old Catholic Church.

Genesis of the Vampire Research Society

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The Ghost Club Society is the world's oldest and most prestigious society devoted to the serious and impartial investigation, study and discussion of subjects not yet fully understood or accepted by science. The current president is Peter Underwood (pictured above).

1851 ~ The Ghost Club Society founded in Cambridge. Members include E W Benson, later Archbishop of Canterbury and Arthur Balfour, later Prime Minister.

1862 ~ The London Ghost Club. Members include the Hon A Gordon, Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick: a Canon of Westminster and the Registrar of Cambridge University.

1882-1936 ~ First revival. Members include Sir William Crookes, Sir William Barratt, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Oliver Lodge, W B Yeats and Harry Price.

1938-1947 ~ Second revival with Harry Price as Chairman. Members include Lord Amwell, Algernon Blackwood, Mrs K M (Mollie Goldney, Sir Ernest Jelf, K E Shelley QC, Sir Osbert Sitwell, Dr Paul Tabori and Peter Underwood FRSA.

1954-1993 ~ Third revival with Peter Underwood as President. Members include K E Shelley QC, Dr Christabel Nicholson, Dr Paul Tabori, Donald Campbell MBE, Peter Sellers, Dennis Wheatley, Dr George Owen, Lord Dowding, Ena Twigg and Sir Julian Huxley. Honorary Life Members include Dennis Bardens, Mrs Michael Bentine, Colonel John Blashord-Snell, Miss Sarah Miles, Miss Jilly Cooper, Dr A R G Owen, Miss Dulcie Gray, Sir Patrick Moore, Mr Uri Geller, and the Right Reverend Seán Manchester OSG. Peter Underwood is Life President and Colin Wilson is vice-President of the Ghost Club Society.

At times there was membership cross-fertilisation between the British Occult Society and the Ghost Club Society. In 1988 the British Occult Society was formally dissolved under the leadership of its final president, Seán Manchester.
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The British Occult Society was originally formed as an umbrella organisation circa 1860. Much of its activities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century are shrouded in mystery. It came out of the closet, however, in the mid-twentieth century before finally disappearing in 1988. During that period it was presided over by Seán Manchester who placed emphasis on investigating the claims of the occult and the study and research of paranormal phenomena. Out of this history sprang the Vampire Research Society, founded by the president of the British Occult Society who first appeared on British television on 13 March 1970 (see photograph above).

The Society is functioning as effectively today as ever it did in years past. In 1990 it was decided by the Executive Committee that membership of the Vampire Research Society should only be available via invitation, usually upon the recommendation of an existing member who has a proven track record. It had never been a subscription club of any sort prior to this, and the majority of those "joining" at the close of the 1980s were patently unsuitable. Moreover, the "invitation only" rule was introduced due to a clear compromise to the Society's security by the media and certain others with, to quote Seán Manchester, "motives hidden in the darkness of the absurd."

The Vampire Research Society actually originated in 1967 as a specialist unit within the British Occult Society (an organisation for paranormal and occult investigation). Seán Manchester was responsible for the vampire research unit becoming a self-governing body on 2 February 1970 by which time he had already initiated, as president of the British Occult Society, a full-time investigation into the Highgate Vampire case. It would last thirteen years. The first published account of the case (including the initial discovery of the suspect tomb and a spoken exorcism) was given in The Vampire’s Bedside Companion* (Leslie Frewin, 1975; Coronet Books, 1976). The first complete account was published in the best-selling The Highgate Vampire (British Occult Society, 1985; Gothic Press, 1991). The current Gothic Press edition is completely revised, enlarged and updated with new illustrations. Final comment on the Highgate case in print appeared in The Vampire Hunter’s Handbook (Gothic Press, 1997) while Carmel ~ A Vampire Tale (Gothic Press, 2000) draws on real experience that is based on the mysterious happenings in and around Highgate Cemetery. These works contain photographs and graphics from the Vampire Research Society's case files.

The purpose of the Vampire Research Society is implicit in its name. Sadly, it is found necessary today to distinguish the dictionary and folkloric definition of the word "vampire" from curious individuals who seek to emulate what they construe vampires to be, but who are clearly human beings merely pretending to be vampires. The vampire, in truth, is a supernatural entity, which traditional understanding of the accepted meaning of the word "vampire" the Society studies, researches and occasionally investigates. People who consider themselves part of a "vampire subculture" are generally referred to as vampiroids. More about this can be found at: http://www.gothicpress.freeserve.co.uk/Vampiroidism%20Defined.htm

Many lessons have been learned over the decades, most particularly the importance of avoiding all involvement with the media and kindred forms of publicity in advance of any given case's resolution. An example of this is the case of the Kirklees mystery where matters were taken out of the Vampire Research Society's hands by others in 1989 when reports of the ensuing investigation started to appear in local and national newspapers and even on some television and radio programmes. The Society could hardly deny that an investigation was in progress, but this certainly put it at odds with the owner of the suspect area which is on private land. Relations have healed during the intervening period and these mysterious investigations remains on the Society's casefile. But they will not be discussed beyond what was published in the previous decade unless the case is satisfactorily resolved and the file permanently closed.

The supernatural vampire of folklore as defined in dictionaries, encyclopedias and non-fiction works is the matter of the Society's research and pursuit. To the Christian, Jew, Muslim and those of some other faiths (possibly the Hindu), the vampire is defined as a predatory demonic entity or wraith. To others it might be seen as a parasitic negative force.

* The Vampire’s Bedside Companion is out of print. Remaining titles are available from Gothic Press at:

http://www.gothicpress.freeserve.co.uk/Bookshop.htm