RRRraising the Stakes

Select Extracts From A Portrait Of The Vampirologist

Written By Katrina Garforth-Bles with an Introduction by Sylvaine Charlet

And through thee I believe

In the noble and great who are gone;

Pure souls honoured and blest

By former ages ~

Yes! I believe that there lived

Others like thee in the past,

Not like the men of the crowd

Who all around me today

Bluster and cringe, and make life

Hideous, and arid, and vile;

But souls tempered with fire,

Fervent, heroic, and good,

Helpers and friends of mankind.

~~~~ ± ~~~~

Seán Manchester, president and founder of the

United Kingdom’s Vampire Research Society.

Introduction

by Sylvaine Charlet

“I send you these tears of most heavenly emotion,

to tell you that now the marvels of poetry have come

as a divine reality into my poor, loveless life. That

life, its ultimate poetry, its finest music, belongs

to you … dispose of it as your own.”

~ Richard Wagner

When I heard about Seán Manchester for the first time, he was in England and I was in France. We were, to quote T E Lawrence, the sort of “dangerous” dreamers who “act their dream” in the awakened state and do not stop until dream becomes reality.

He appeared like the incarnation (in the sense of an idea becoming material) of something imagined, illustrated on paper, played on the piano, written, hoped for?

And, as a matter of fact, this man was (and always is) a personality completely different from all those I have met in my life. I saw him as an outsider, a fool, a poet, a creator, an adventurer, an imaginative spirit, a soul who found himself in the wrong epoch. All his work, indeed, exposed a deep melancholy of a paradise lost.

Who are we to say he is not right to battle the way he does against the ugliness and the evil in the world. All we can admire, with torturing regret inside the heart, is that all his efforts look like a drop in the middle of the infinite ocean. Still he does what he feels he must do. For he believes in “right” ~ not “might.”

So, let us feel gratitude for his existence ~ to be what he is and do what he does. Is he an obsolete figure? Perhaps. Like everyone eager to live with passion for beauty and the higher things. In fact, he belongs to the 19^th century, its values, its aspirations and its aesthetics.

Seán Manchester is a character typical of the end of an epoch. In that sense, he is bound to disappear as fireworks eventually stop illuminating the landscape, leaving behind him an atmosphere, a strong feeling of melancholy, lost for ever ~ and that makes us all die a little.

In future times, it may happen someone shall remember that a man like this existed, against all the storms, in an inadequate century; a hero, in a way, whose trembling light gave a warmth to the heart of those who wanted to live only on poetry, music, beauty and spiritual experiences.

I am not sure that his peers realise who exactly is living among them. They will know and appreciate, as usual, too late.

And the magic continues every time I have news from him, his creativity, his work.

I can say I have in Seán a “brother soul” ~ for nowadays it is quite a luxury to feel less solitary in the world because of him.

Sylvaine Charlet

Author’s Preface

by Katrina Garforth-Bless

“Reports of his death had been greatly

exaggerated; indeed, he was in such

good health that he had been hunting

vampires live on television … ”

~ Fortean Times

(April 1999)

The idea of attempting a biographical portrait of Seán Manchester is daunting enough, but to do so as a friend and comrade of many years, given unlimited access to his files and papers, is positively overwhelming. The ambition sprang chiefly from the distortions I had read time and time again from the pens of individuals who, at best, scarcely knew him, or, as more frequently proved to be the case, never once met nor communicated with him ~ yet were prepared to traduce his character and write reams of invented nonsense, or recycle second-hand conjecture.

Bostonian Carol Page, who devotes to him one fifth of the text of her thankfully now out-of-print Blood Lust, describes his style as florid and compares his appearance to that of a rock singer rather than Lord Byron. He is no doppelgänger for either, but the Byronic resemblance is less easy to ignore. Portraits of Manchester, however, speak for themselves. This rather silly American woman, presumably in the mistaken belief that it supports her comment that “he does not look like Lord Byron,” makes the observation in her book that “his hair is chestnut-coloured, and curly, worn quite long” ~ not realising, perhaps, that this is an exact description of Byron’s hair.

Page met him for barely a couple of hours during her visit to England to meet the “notorious vampire hunter,” as she would have him described, for a book that would attract much opprobrium and harsh criticism from its contributors and readers alike. Blood Lust would be her first and last attempt.

Manchester had hoped that the definitive edition of his book about the Highgate case might set the seal on matters as “the last frenzied flutterings of a force so dight with fearful fascination that even legend could not contain it.” Alas, he was obliged to revisit the “haunted ground” once again in his vampirological guide wherein he announced his withdrawal from personal appearances, explaining that his vampire hunting handbook offered a final “opportunity to share with the reader the perils, pitfalls and pernicious scribblings that have confronted” him over the years. He alluded to what might have been his last television appearance. The following year, however, witnessed the appearance of an incomplete book about vampires by self-styled American occultist Leonard Ashley who suggested Manchester was deceased. The publishers refused to withdraw copies leaving the now presumed dead Manchester no choice but to exhume himself “should past acquaintances and old comrades become distressed.”

Fortean Times magazine commented that it was apparently “devastated to learn recently of [Manchester’s] passing,” quickly adding that he “had been hunting vampires live on television as recently as January [1999].” Thus the final transmission of the celebrated vampire hunter actually occurred in May 1999. Manchester featured at the top of a three hour television programme devoted to his subject for the BBC. It gave the lie to rumours triggered by the malicious Ashley tome.

Fortean Times’ associate editor, Joe McNally, reviewed The Vampire Hunter’s Handbook and described its author as “someone for whom the description ‘larger than life’ seems barely adequate … an imposing figure … Britain’s only full-time vampire hunter.”

McNally added that “there is more to the book than vampire hunting.” Indeed, there is ~ and there is also a great deal more to Seán Manchester than his role as vampirologist par excellence ~ the cause célèbre, on the morning of 27 February 1970 (prompting his declaration: “I awoke and found myself famous”) being the mysterious case of the Highgate Vampire which, at its inception, was to be recorded in The Vampire’s Bedside Companion (Leslie Frewin, 1995; Coronet, 1976). The complete and unexpurgated account was eventually revealed in his best selling The Highgate Vampire (British Occult Society, 1985; revised and updated edition, Gothic Press, 1991). The latter book remains available as a quality hardcover edition.

What intrigued me when I set out to write this portrait was the inner man; the part buried and entombed from view largely because this sanctum reflects his most private and intimate self. He is an intuitionist who subscribes to the soul being in revolt against the intellect, but there are other facets of his life that seem to merit further study: his relationships, his youthful assertiveness and Byronic demeanour, his feelings about life and death, and his steady, slow-drip sadness that seems to underscore almost everything he writes. There are, it seems to me, a number of intriguing puzzles. Chief among these, perhaps, are the choices he made, and the way people have been affected by his personality, eg some becoming devotees while others, including some former admirers, becoming adversaries of the most alarming intensity.

Other questions arise, too, along the way: the three females for whom a book was written on each. There is the much-pondered Lusia who fell victim to the Highgate Vampire. Then there is the no less mysterious Carmel. Was she a dream girl, an invention born of too much exposure to the Romantic flame, or a real person met in London during the Summer of Love? If she existed, how much of their story is revealed in Manchester’s novel Carmel ~ A Vampire Tale?

Then there is his last attachment, the elfin Sarah, who joined him in his struggle when it had reached its height ~ when it was most dangerous to do so. Manchester featured her in From Satan To Christ and dedicated his biography of Lady Carline Lamb to her. She is totally dedicated to his cause and still remains at his side. For these females, and others, Manchester is the archetypal symbol of an earlier century person trapped in a later epoch. For another, the actress Catherine Hall, who knew and admired him throughout her early career at the Royal Shakespeare Company, he was “the most Romantic man” she had ever met. Sarah would later comment: “His work always has the authority to inspire because it cannot be judged by conventional codes and canons.”

My lines of biographical enquiry are naturally dependent on Manchester’s unpublished memoirs, journals and other documents. But by no means entirely. There is, of course, a growing exploitation industry that has little regard for truth and accuracy. This has merely served to mask the genuine picture. Its only reference here will be to expose its parasitical element and absurdity as the real figure emerges from the calumny created by the mean-spirited among us. This biography is an attempt to animate certain key moments, or turning points, in Manchester’s life from cradle to premature death notice at the close of the 20^th century. Unlike the miniatures extant where reliance on dubious and unsafe material is manifest, this portrait has the benefit of having the subject sit long enough to ensure the likeness is a good one.

When it became known that I was embarking on this task a number of people contacted me to express their views. An edited sample follows, plus some contrasting remarks already on public record.

What They Wrote …

“One can’t help admiring Seán Manchester when considering the situations and events he had to endure. That says a lot about him. But we can’t expect less from Lord Byron’s descendant. I hope he continues his holy work for years to come.”

~ Jesús Romera-Garcia

Cadiz, Spain

“Why does a certain publication [Leonard Ashley’s book] refer to Seán Manchester as ‘late’? Is this sick sarcasm? It would seem that the majority of vampire books, magazines, groups etc are repelled by the fact that Manchester actually encountered the undead and banished it. Many will ignore his words and scoff at his experiences, but he should be applauded for his crusade against a darkness that the majority are so blind to recognise.”

~ Neil Arnold

Chatham, Kent

“Seán Manchester’s dedicated, untiring research into better understanding of the unexplained is invaluable and it would have been a sad day if Leonard Ashley’s statement had any credence. You can be assured that we were pleased to have this untruth verificated and that he is still inhabiting this earth.”

~ Marilyn Kenward

Ghost Club Society

Verwood, Dorset

“Seán Manchester is a foremost vampire hunter and champion against evil. A true crusader for Christ who does not water down the Gospel for anyone, but stands firm to the true teaching of Our Lord and the Church.”

~ Brian Gregory

Choppington

Northumberland

“Seán Manchester has ever been an inspiration. One gets the feeling those moments of enlightenment, when the scales briefly fall from one’s eyes, are in fact almost a permanent state of being for him.”

~ Keith Maclean

Tilehurst

Berkshire

“I have corresponded over the years with Seán Manchester. His replies were very kind and patient, and ever since I have always felt him to be a friend I could turn to in any spiritual crisis.”

~ Irene Murray

Nieuwpoort

Belgium

“Joe Fisher and I were planning a trip to the UK to visit our respective families and to promote the UK release of his book ‘Coming Back Alive.’ Joe Fisher died just prior to our arrival and the Fisher family and I are very grateful to know that Seán Manchester offered a service and prayers for the soul of Joe when he heard of his death. … Joe was fascinated by Seán Manchester’s incredible account of the Highgate case and wanted to write an article about it, but we were not disappointed by the decision of Seán Manchester not to give an interview for the commissioning magazine. To be completely honest, I felt that his story deserved a much better publication than the one that was offered to us in the USA. And I expressed that to Joe and he agreed. … Through our research, we were happy to get a small glimpse of Seán Manchester’s life and know of the good work he continues to do, to this day. I wanted to thank him for that on Joe’s behalf.”

~ Stephanie Schranz

Toronto, Canada

“Seán Manchester is as outstanding as the late Fr Malachi Martin. I heard him on coast to coast radio with Art Bell. He spoke so much faith and truth.”

~ Fred Allen Jr

Bakersfield

California, USA

“Much of what Seán Manchester says, such as the obligation to cast out demons etc, really overwhelmed me. It always seemed right that if someone is in holy orders they should take the reins and do something about it. He strikes me as just such a man.”

~ Joel C Denning

South Georgia, USA

“I am a lifelong Catholic, paranormal enthusiast, and big fan of the late Father Malachi Martin. Seán Manchester’s discussion on vampires with Art Bell was simply riveting, and I hope he’ll continue to share his thoughts on coast to coast radio in the future. I believe he is a very wise and eloquent spiritual authority who speaks with integrity and candidness.”

~ Bob McCluskey

Los Angeles, USA

“I really admire Seán Manchester’s courage and strength in facing the supernatural. I will be looking for his books and hope to read them soon. He is doing God’s work.”

Tom Kennedy

Houstan, Texas

USA

“Among the intolerable number of flakes, paedophiles and complete morons we have among the clergy, Seán Manchester is a great shining ray of light and hope. His testimony to the Truth of the Lord Jesus Christ comes through loud and clear.”

~ Louis W Fair

American Orthodox Catholic Church

Pacific Synod, USA

“Seán Manchester’s extensive knowledge, beautifully cultivated sensibility, and remarkable courage radiated across the Atlantic and struck my heart. I didn’t think they made people like him anymore. To hear the disturbing subject of supernatural evil addressed in a rational, measured manner by a keen and insightful witness is indeed rare. Tonight I turned on the broadcast half-expecting to hear a lunatic ~ instead I stumbled upon a holy man. He is so very special. May he stay on the planet as long as he can. I am blessed by his words.”

~ Mizzy Hanley

Wethersfield

Conneticut, USA

“Seán Manchester is someone I have been acquainted with for many years. He possesses an inner serenity which has a soothing effect on all around him, as well as a deep passion for the ideals he holds close. He has a drive which governs his actions, and it is a drive for the forces of good over evil. He also has a sincere purity of heart.”

~ Beverley Mason

Brentwood, Essex

“The memories crowd in: his commanding lectures and television appearances; his ready and valuable co-operation in literary labours of love; his admiration for mutual friends such as Montague Summers, Dennis Wheatley and Dr Devendra P Varma; his dealing with not always complimentary publicity; his piano playing and music compositions; his abiding interest in unearthly subjects and his enduring publications ~ the list goes on and on.”

~ Peter Underwood

President, Ghost Club Society

Whitehall Place, London

“He was on a programme on Sky at one in the morning a few night’s ago, dressed in his … robes, with an Exorcist’s book in Latin, Holy Water … and a hell of a lot of crosses.”

~ Steven Cummings

Swiss Cottage, London

“I was in Highgate not long ago, to take a look at Coleridge’s resting place. I hope it remains safe from the depredations of David F[——] and his ilk. … I wrote a retrospective little piece referring to Seán Manchester’s ‘Central Weekend Live’ reference to Montague Summers a few years back; the only time perhaps Summers has been mentioned on television, other than in showings of ‘The Spy Who Came In From The Cold,’ where he is referred to in the context of an occult library.”

~ Roger Dobson

Ghost Story Society

Oxford

“Anyone who is seriously trying to do good in this world will invariably suffer abuse etc. I will always support Seán Manchester ~ no matter what ~ he is a wonderful man. He is humble and strong. A true servant of God and the Light ~ an upholder of the good and enemy of the dark forces. I also know him to be an extremely gifted and versatile man in the truest Pre-Raphaelite manner.”

~ Anonymous

West Hampstead

London

“A biography of Seán Manchester is a source of great anticipation. However, not having met him I would not presume to pass serious judgement on his work. I have followed his career since the days of ‘The Vampire’s Bedside Companion’ with great interest.”

~ Robert Milne

Aberdeen, Scotland

“Love him or loathe him (and there are plenty of subscribers to both camps), anyone who prides themselves on their knowledge of writers on vampirism cannot ignore Seán Manchester. Those who support his crusade against the powers of darkness have absolute faith and admiration in him.”

~ Jennie Gray

The Gothic Society

Chislehurst, Kent

“I took a lengthy train ride to a London suburb … where he was supposedly exercising his horse, although sometimes he referred to his ‘horses.’ He was concerned that one of his many enemies might injure the animals. At any rate, he met me dressed in full riding regalia. He does not look like Lord Byron. His hair is chestnut-coloured, and curly, worn quite long, and, minus the sexiness, he reminded me more of Robert Plant, the great rock vocalist, than of chubby-cheeked, full-lipped Lord Byron.”

~ Carol Page

“Blood Lust”

Boston, USA

“What a treacherous bunch some of his detractors are! Practically kneeling at his feet one minute and stabbing him in the back the next! Yet he went out of his way each time to help these miserable little creeps. One wonders who is next to betray him? I can only say good about Seán Manchester. He is the best ‘brother’ anyone could have.”

~ Diana Brewester

Highgate Byron Society

Highgate, London

A Byronic Legacy

“Manchester’s handsomely produced book … [about

Lady Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron] … is the

result of intensive research into family archives.”

~ The Byron Journal

(1993)

Born towards the end of a nightmare that reduced much of Europe to a vast wasteland of rubble, Manchester found himself shielded from those monstrous times ~ encapsulated in another world, one belonging to a Romantic past set in the midst of a vast forest the very appearance of which seemed frozen in time; not swaying, nor even fluttering in the night winds and ravages of war.

The thunder clouds gathered on the horizon at midday. One hour later a mighty storm erupted. It was the fifteenth day of the seventh month of the penultimate year of World War II. The zodiacal influences ~ not that he would ever subscribe to them ~ all moved to one particular hemisphere. The astrological significance was deemed to be the sign of a person of influence coming into the world.

Dorothy, his mother, was born at a time when the previous world conflict grew tired in the spring of 1918. Her parents resided close to Newstead Abbey in the Abbey Park. Newstead would become young Manchester’s sanctuary. The Gothic Abbey had once been the home of Lord Byron and Manchester would quickly learn that the famous poet’s only male offspring, courtesy of a favourite housemaid, Lucy, was his own great, great grandfather. Later in life he would return with the Byron Society whose honorary director, Elma Dangerfield OBE, remarked upon the astonishing resemblance between Manchester and the poet. In his biography of Lady Caroline Lamb, the poet’s lover, Manchester acknowledged Byron scholar Professor Leslie Marchand “for his help and comments in private correspondence about the ‘records of births and deaths of the lower (servant) class in those days’ when trying to establish facts about the poet and Lucy.” The barbed comments of such exploitative writers as the Carol Page and Leonard Ashley mould would have no effect on him. He knew on the best authority where he originated and to whom he was connected by blood. He also knew because he was who he was ~ and he, as none other could, felt it with a passion.

When Carol Page met him in November 1989 she accorded him the appearance of a “dissipated-looking man sitting in his riding clothes, with soft pink fingers peeking out from a pair of unravelling gloves” who also carried with him “a red leather briefcase, which contained a large silver cross … and several short wooden stakes, about a foot long, with a cross etched into the top of each.” He had, prior to his meeting with Page, just dismounted and stabled his horse. However, Rosemary Ellen Guiley, meeting him a handful of months later, recorded in her book Vampires Among Us: “Manchester [was] handsome and genial … [having] always cultivated a striking Romantic appearance.”

Guiley, like anyone else who profiles Manchester having met him, save Page, was unable to escape the Byronic connection and includes in her book that “he grew up in Newstead Abbey Park in Sherwood Forest.” He dedicated his own first complete account of The Highgate Vampire in 1985 to “the Memory of Lord Byron (my illustrious ancestor who abhorred the vampire yet ironically has ever since been its literary archetype).” The revised second edition of the same book in 1991 carried a dedication to Montague Summers whose mantle had by then clearly passed to Manchester who was elevated to the episcopate and made a lord bishop in October of that year. In the past his detractors had mocked him as “Lord Manchester.” Now their noses were seriously put out of joint as the lords spiritual welcomed him amongst their ranks. The irony was not lost on him.

A Perilous Quest

“I was soon to embark upon the central mission of my life.

A quest that would take me into strange and unchartered

regions of the occult underworld. … I have encountered

many dangers and persistent opposition.”

~ From Satan To Christ

(1988)

Two incidents occurred by the north gate of Highgate Cemetery, London, in early 1967. The first was the encounter of the undead by two convent schoolgirls as they made their nocturnal journey down Swains Lane. The second was an alarming face to face encounter with the vampire by a newly engaged couple as they walked home one night. The hideous spectre dissolved into the inky darkness of the graveyard as the couple remained petrified by what they had seen behind the gate’s iron railings.

Thus began a journey into the unknown that would eventually pass into legend. In the spring of 1968 Manchester was hundreds of miles from Highgate as he visited the island monastery of Snagov ~ staying at the village of Arefu where locals crossed themselves and disappeared, avoiding all conversation about vampires ~ before moving on to stay at Capatineni where mention of nosferatu was only met with horrified looks and the occasional blessing. This was the last village before he began the climb to the accursed ruins perched upon a jagged mountain peak; ruins that commanded a panoramic vista of a land of dark forest whose inhabitants had feared the supernatural terror of vampirism for many centuries.

In his journal Manchester wrote: “The study of those hidden phenomena which seem equally to concern the physical and psychical sides of human nature have a dark side which manifests in vampirism. My colleagues in England apply themselves to the understanding of the hidden forces in nature and to the laws of another world. The vampire, it would seem, trespasses upon the worlds of the living and the dead. Tomorrow I shall reach the castle and shall see if any strange atmosphere remains from its bloody past.”

He found the castle in ruins, isolated on a precipice of granite cliffs with a sheer drop of a thousand feet on three sides, but was surprised to discover the atmosphere to be less malevolent than that at Highgate Cemetery. He entered in his journal: “I fear whatever evil pestilence once inhabited this land exists in some measure from whence I hail.”

Manchester made the precarious descent from Castle Agrish and spent several days in Curtea-de-Arges to bring all his notes up to date. Before returning to England ~ leaving behind the endless bands of roving gypsies and cloaked shepherds ~ he visited those regions of central and northern Transylvania where most of the authenticated cases of vampirism were reported: the Black Cris district, the Fagaras, Bihor, Hunendoara, Oradea, Deva, Mures, Metes, Turda, the Hateg and the Borgo Pass.

Returning to Highgate where a vampire infestation was already in progress, Manchester prepared for strange and terrible days ahead. Each participant of the unfolding drama was on a pilgrimage of sorts. For some it was a journey that descended into total darkness; while for others it was a watershed, an opportunity to discover the Right-hand Path ~ perhaps an enlightenment of the spiritual kind. Whatever the outcome, nobody sucked into that whirlpool of events would ever be the same again once it was over. Manchester turned his back on an easy life and took to doing other things that enabled him to concentrate on what had already become his central mission. He prepared for the minor orders of Ostiariate, Lectorate, Exorcistate and Acolytate ~ accepting that Providence had chosen him to fulfill a uniquely perilous quest.

Raising the Stakes

ã Katrina Garforth-Bles, 2002