Can Such Things Really Be?

“Dare we risk ignoring a force whose strength lies in the fact that no one will believe in its existence?”

~ Seán Manchester (Quoted from The Highgate Vampire, editions 1985 & 1991).

“The dark, blood-curdling vampire superstition is not quaint folklore of eastern Europe alone. The vampire is of dateless antiquity. … The vampire stories have a hideous ring of realism. … Public records reveal that in 1732, in Serbia and Wallachia, vampirism spread like a pestilence causing numerous deaths. There had been a notorious case of vampirism near Belgrade in 1731. As the century drew to its close, reports of dead returning from the grave multiplied alarmingly. … Complex rituals for protection against vampires … were garlic, the Cross and Communion Wafers.”

~ Devendra P Varma, Honorary Vice-President, Vampire Research Society

(Quoted from The Vampire’s Bedside Companion, 1975).

“To many people, perhaps the majority, vampires are creatures of legend and fantasy with no reality, today, or at anytime, outside the covers of books. To others who have studied the folklore of many countries and examined the existing reports of apparent vampirism that have appeared over the years and still occasionally appear (in England and on the continent in particular) there would appear to be a considerable amount of evidence that such creatures not only once existed but may still do so. Belief in vampires is by no means dead.”

~ Peter Underwood, Life-Member, Vampire Research Society

(Quoted from The Vampire’s Bedside Companion, 1975).

“Too many people spend too much energy attempting to deny something they claim does not exist in the first place. Most ordinary people in the UK do not believe in the existence of vampires anyway. Why, then, do certain writers, publishers and groups feel threatened by the Vampire Research Society when it uncovers evidence that contradicts this apparent non-belief? It is to do with the identification of the existence of dark forces. These forces are meant to be hidden. Evil exists as an external reality, not merely a lack of something. It is an effective agent, a living spiritual being, perverted and perverting, mysterious and frightening.”

~ Seán Manchester, President, Vampire Research Society

(Quoted from The Vampire Hunter’s Handbook, 1997).

The Vampire Research Society holds the view ~ and with good reason ~ that vampires of the supernatural kind, as defined elsewhere on this site, definitely exist. Some of those who appear to go out of their way to deny the existence of this disturbing phenomenon obviously have an agenda for doing so, whether it be attention-seeking coupled with fear and a dark obsession or, at the other end of the spectrum, sophisticated government interference. Regarding the latter, the VRS president reveals in his work The Vampire Hunter’s Handbook that an American authoress (who visited him in 1990 to write a substantial amount about him in her book) was later suspected of being an Aviary operative working for a United States intelligence department. The purpose of the Aviary is to ridicule and undermine certain research organisations whilst attempting to infiltrate them. Her contacts were persons identified as CIA operatives. When the book was published in 1991 it misrepresented the Vampire Research Society and its president. The same book was dedicated to another woman who runs a misinformation campaign from her New York base. This person heads a superficial and puerile vampiroid club that has done more to bring the genre and its bona fide manifestation into disrepute than any other group. She has published pamphlets of such asininity and absurdity that they could only appeal to the simple-minded among us. In The Vampire Hunter’s Handbook, the author poses the question whether or not what appears to all intents and purposes to be an infantile club is a front for a clandestine working group intent on ridiculing and undermining any serious research like that being carried out by the VRS.

Undoubtedly, the majority of people react with disbelief and scepticism towards the subject of supernatural vampirism. Yet have they not been conditioned to react with scepticism by institutional and media influences? Most people have built in “slides” that short circuit the mind’s critical examination process when it comes to certain sensitive topics. “Slides” is a CIA term for a conditioned type of response which dead ends a person’s thinking and terminates debate or examination of the subject at hand. For example, any mention of the word “vampire” often solicits a “slide” response with many people. Seán Manchester affirms in the introduction to his best selling book, The Highgate Vampire: “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all argument, and which cannot fail to keep man in everlasting ignorance. This principle is contempt prior to examination.” Those who are most vehement in their denial of the existence of vampires are invariably those who have not taken the time to study and investigate this mysterious phenomenon. Ignoring the vampire has nevertheless failed to ensure its departure, as we shall see in the case of the Highgate Vampire on the next page. Meanwhile, a pre-production picture from the proposed film about the Highgate Vampire case appears below ~ followed by a quote from that other major vampirologist of the 20th century.

“Whether we are justified in supposing that cases of vampirism are less frequent today than in past centuries, I am far from certain. But one thing is plain ~ not that they do not occur, but that they are carefully hushed up and stifled.”

~ Montague Summers (Quoted from The Vampire in Europe, 1929).