Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #205304 in Books
• Published on: 1991-07-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

Customer Reviews

Yes and maybe.......Up and Down
Despite this book's fascinating account of a 'true to life' battle of good and evil, my opinion is that it's realistic aura fluctuates. To begin with, this book will chill you to the bone, the accounts of witnesses and the black and white stills really feel powerful and you will be drawn into the self-argument of believing or not believing, but there are a few downers here....

Further into the book the dialogue quoted by the author as conversation does not resemble what you would find in a one to one situation, and is expressed more as a boastful flow of Catholic knowledge.

Also, this author uses reviews from other periodicals and newspapers, which is great for the best part of evidence and research. However, when quoting articles from an item such as the Weekly World News - which is known for its stories on 'Batchild', and the 'talking, decapitated head of Abraham Lincoln'- one must question it's place in what is supposed to be a final memoir of a serious and disturbing memory.

No disrespect, this is a good read, but if like me you were looking to further your interest in the subject or prefer knowledge over fiction, this book will read to you like a stereotypical Hammer Horror script.

What to make of this ... ?
Bishop Sean Manchester of the "Old Catholic" (not Roman Catholic) Church is an exorcist and latter-day vampire-hunter. In "The Highate Vampire" he sets out to document the famous haunting in the late 1960s and early 1970s of Highate Cemetary, which has been variously attributed to ghosts, vampires, satanists and a plethora of other phenomena. The main pieces of evidence amassed fall roughly into three categories. The first, the numerous eye-witness sightings of shadowy figures, with or without demonic faces, standing by the disused North Gate of Highate Cemetary along the 14th Century Swains Lane road in Highate. The second, the two cases the author was involved in himself, that of the mysterious illnesses of two Highate girls, their sleepwalking (invariably endng up on Swains Lane or in the cemetary), aenemia and puncture-wound injuries. Finally, during the same period of time, the predatory deaths of a large number of foxes in the cemetary and ultimately the presence of human corpses, including one decapitated.

Both the police and the press were highly involved in investiagting the events and the author was heavily involved with both. Whether supernatural explainations offered were valid or not, the reality of the deaths and the stream of eyewitness reports from frightened members of the public were enough to warrant a serious investigation, and made the Highate case one of the most famous in the world. On a negative side it encouraged all sorts of amateur vampire-hunters to scale walls and desecrate tombs in their search for the Undead.

Manchester begins with a general look at misconceptions in "vampirology"; looking at medical/physiological and psychological conditions, including porphyria, lycanthropy, psychoses, vampire cults and satanism. Rather unfortunately, Manchester is heavily inspired by the late Rev. Montague Summers, whose books on witchcraft and so-called black magic I have always found prejudiced, archaic and uninformed.

The thing that struck me about this book most is the fact that despite being a non-fictional reportage of events and commentary, Manchester relates the report - including interviews and conversations - in a Hammer-esque melodramatic prose. I found this quite baffling, unless all the people involved in the case were thespians. It is clear that despite being serious about his vampirology, Bishop Manchester also loves it; his reports do indeed read like Hammer Horror stories, with him as Dr Van Helsing with his stakes and garlic; and the two girls he was trying to save running out into graveyards at night time in white smocks.

So then what do we make of Bishop Sean Manchester, who to be honest is pivotal to the whole Highate case - is he a nutter with a van-Helsing delusion, preying on the imaginations and fears of young girls ... or is he a genuine but somewhat eccentric (he is after all a descendant of Byron)vampire hunter, in the ilk of the protagonist of the "Fright Night" movies, rather than a real-life Buffy?

Reading his dialogue, one is tempted to think the former, though the rather nasty evidence displayed in photographs (in the first edition; in subsequent editions Manchester has had these replaced by line drawings) and media reports does show that during this time Highate was not a safe place to be, for whatever ultimate reason. As an example, I am not sure at all that the decapitated victim was a victim of vampirism - I am more worried that she may have been the victim of some deluded amateur vampire hunter.

Nevertheless, whether one believes or does not believe that a satanic vampiric force haunted Highate, you can't help but thoroughly enjoy this book. Essentially a factual report - if written-up in high melodrama - on a subject that is difficult to believe and yet compellingly fascinating, "The Highate Vampire" is a collectable tome for any Fortean's bookshelf.

Moving, haunting
Many would shrink from the conclusion that we might live unwittingly amidst a hidden manichaean struggle between good and evil, but if Sean Manchster is to be believed this is indubitably so. The book describes Manchester's pursuit and destruction of two vampires, whose presence had become apparent from atacks that had gravitated from animals to humans, and takes place mostly in the early 1970's. The prose is sometimes redolent of the meticulous, complex style of the C19th, and many of the scenes are gripping and highly evocative of the fear that the vampire hunter and his cohorts must have felt. The conclusion of the book is elegiac and poignant; the protagonists' personal tragedies sound echoes in us all. The Highgate Vampire contains elements of Dracula and even, it must be said, the popular works of Dennis Wheatley, confirming many traditional beliefs about the undead. In that respect it is the vindication of Montague Summers. The book also inveighs in a timely fashion against an unhealthy subculture that has grown up around the concept of the vampire, a theme that has complex social causes. It is indeed strange, but this tale of a vampire and the nimbus of evil it spread serves to highlight by means of contrast the existence and efficacy of the powers of good.