I expect many of you have heard whispers of 'The Highgate Vampire'.
I'd be interested to know what you all make of the story.........
The following article is taken from The Highgate Website..

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 VRS, whose specialist unit within a larger investigatory organisation (now defunct) had opened the case twelve months earlier, established a history of similar hauntings that went back to 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 a “King Vampire of the Undead.”
Seán Manchester led the thirteen year investigation from beginning to end. There was indeed more than one vampire for the VRS to confront. However, in early 1974 he tracked the principal source of the contamination, 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.

Hammy x x x

PS - don't worry Cuffy, I won't let the nasty vampire get you honey

< Puts skeptic head on >

Didn't stories of vampires in highgate cemetary appear round about the time Bram Stoker wrote Dracula? He apparently used Highgate as inspiration for the graveyard where Lucy was interred - only to reappear as a member of the un-dead.
Gross fact for the day: apparently one of Stoker's neighbours was the poet Dante who had second thoughts about burying a manuscript of poetry with his wife's body so he jolly well had her dug up..........7 years later!!!!!!!!....... so that he could get it back again. Her body was amazingly well preserved and funnily enough she was buried in Highgate......Inspiration for Stoker????

Hhhhmmmmmmmmmmm.................

I thought the inspiration behind 'Dracula' was an incident in Ireland......and Whitby harbour.

There is something enduringly erotic about Vampires isn't there...? The thought of a magneticly attractive creature that seduces the living and bites on their necks, draining them of any will.............or is it just me who finds that a turn-on
I suppose it must be the Goth in me

Many different cultures have their own Vampire legends and beliefs. The theory I find most....well..........'believeable' is that of the psychic vampire, a person or negative force who drains energy away. We've all met someone who seems to sap the life out of us havn't we ? (I married one )

Hammy x x x

I agree that vampries are kinda sexy and erotic- it's like they have control and permission to do naughty things.....or soemthing

I thought it was common knowledge that Stoker's inspiration for Dracula was not from an actual vampire ..but from the Carpathian ( or some former eastern European contry ) ruler Vlad the Impalor ( i really cant spell).

erm.............not sure if I believe you Cuffy...........can you prove it

Hammy x x x

Heres an aritcle I found on Vlad Dracula aka Vlad the Impalor. Quite interesting.

Vlad Dracula

that was a great link Lisa,thank you

anyway i got to know this in some site (couldn't remember anymore as it was a long time ago) that this Vlad Tepes actually caught passing rats in a dungeon where he was held captive (forgot where this one happen too ) and sucked off thier bloods.....anyone heard of this before?maybe i'm wrong but i bet i'm really close here...

that's much better...............

Hammy x x x

Engulf, Vlad was known to dring the blood of his prisoners, the people he impaled and animals. He was also known to have feasts whare he would eat bread, dipped in victims blood.

Heres a link with more history on Vlad, and whare he was imprisoned.

Transylvania Castles

The Highgate vampire stories were stirred up in the 60s-70s by the activities of a couple of self-publicists called Manchester and Farrant. The latter, I remember, seemed somewhat unsavoury. There was some scandal in the media about him stalking the blues singer John Baldrey, sending him coffins and black magic paraphernalia etc.

Although I have my doubts about vampires, the place is atmospheric and other accounts suggest that something paranormal is/has been going on there. Time for an investigation?

Vampires are one of my favorite tales. Also I really beleive in them. I know I sound really dumb right now and that's because I'm new. Sometimes secretly I wish I were a vampire!

Here are a couple of relevant links:

Highgate

Lowgate - http://members.lycos.co.uk/Hirudo/manchester.html

If anyone is interested, heres a link to an interview with Sean Manchester, the UK's only 'Vampire Hunter'............... it's worth a look.........but personally I think it's bunkham!

http://mysterymag.com/current/html/sean_ma..._interview.html

Hammy x x x

Quote from Hammy's link: '...when two 16-year old girls saw what seemed to be bodies rising in Highgate cemetary in 1967. 1967 - a lot of odd things were seen that year by some 16-year olds.

hee-hee!!!!
Yes, some pretty weird stuff going on around Highgate wasn't there?

Hammy x x x

“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' book] 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; and author of fifty books on the paranormal.

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 VRS, whose specialist unit within a larger investigatory organisation (now defunct) had opened the case twelve months earlier, established a history of similar hauntings that went back to 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 a “King Vampire of the Undead.”

Seán Manchester led the thirteen year investigation from beginning to end. There was indeed 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, 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." This is a full account ~ with photographs from the case file in a quality hardcover edition with illustrations throughout.

http://www.gothicpress.freeserve.co.uk/Hig...pire%20Book.htm



“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).




Further reading:


"The Highgate Vampire" that formed a major part of Peter Underwood's "The Vampire's Bedside Companion" (1975 & 1976) is out of print and unavailable.

"The Highgate Vampire" first edition published in 1985 is out of print and unavailable.

"The Highgate Vampire" (ISBN 1 872486 01 0) is a quality hardcover edition, illustrated with photographs and line drawings, revised and updated, published in 1991 by Gothic Press, and still in print.

http://www.gothicpress.freeserve.co.uk/Hig...pire%20Book.htm

"Carmel" though presented as a novel is nevertheless based on some real incidents (ISBN 1 872486 03 7). A generously illustrated large format paperback, this book offers the wider picture as actual experience mingles with a familiar history. Much can be revealed in the guise of a novel, of course, that could not otherwise be told. Published by Gothic Press in 2000, and still in print.

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

"The Vampire Hunter’s Handbook" also revisits Highgate in some of its chapters; while exposing many of the false attributions made by certain journalists, authors and even academics ~ some of whom were too young to remember the events at the time. (ISBN 1 872486 02 9). Illustrated with photographs, published by Gothic Press in 1997, this popular work remains very much still in print.

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

Archive recordings that include the voices of very early witnesses can be heard on "The Highgate Vampire Cassette" (as advertsied on the webpage below). There is also an earlier cassette with the same title where comments from a wider selection of people can be heard, and more material from the actual book is read by its author. The BBC Nicki Campbell interviews are heard on this tape. Both cassettes come highly recommended. To request the older of the two, refer to the 1998 recording (as opposed to the one compiled in 2001).

http://www.gothicpress.freeserve.co.uk/Hig...%20Cassette.htm

I have The Highgate Vampire book.......very creepy and very entertaining, but surely everyone MUST know that it is a work of fiction?

and I LOVE vamps.......all dark & broody & sexy & bitey....*drifts off into daydream*

Hammy x x x

"dancin'hamster" can speak for him/herself, but surely he/she cannot speak for anyone else, much less "everyone"? By what authority does he/she proclaim The Highgate Vampire to be a "work of fiction"?

There now follows authorative and informed comment about the definitive account of the UK’s best documented contemporary vampire case written by the man who led the only investigation into the spectral hauntings, nightly visitations, demonic disturbances and blood lettings at Highgate Cemetery and its environs, including the Great Northern London Cemetery, from 1969-1982.


“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


“Seán Manchester is to be congratulated on this fine piece of research work which I confess to enjoying to the extreme.”

~ Professor Devendra P Varma, vampirologist & author, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada


“Seán Manchester is the most celebrated vampirologist of the twentieth century.”

~ Shaun Marin, reviewer and sub-editor, Uri Geller’s Encounters magazine, England


“A most interesting and useful addition to the literature of the subject.”

~ Reverend Basil Youdell, Literary Editor Orthodox News, Christ the Saviour, Woolwich, England


“This book 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


“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


“Britain’s only full-time vampire hunter, … [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


“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


“One of the most notable figures to visit the haunted site under cover of darkness was Seán Manchester, whom Green has called one of Britain’s foremost vampire hunters and exorcists.”

~ Craig Miller, associate editor, Fate Magazine, Minnesota, USA


“I believe Seán Manchester is this country’s only genuine vampire hunter.”

~ Nicole Lampert, journalist, features department, The Sun newspaper, London, England


“Dr [Seán] Manchester doesn’t just acknowledge the possibility; he knows that vampires exist.”

~ Stephen Jarvis, author and researcher of strange pursuits, England


“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


“Seán Manchester, descendant of Lord Byron, scourge of the undead and Britain’s number one vampire hunter.”

~ Michael Magenis, freelance journalist and researcher, London, England


“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. … He is descended from the romantic poet - his great, great, great grandfather was the son of a housemaid Byron got pregnant.”

~ Pam Bentley, features’ writer, Sunday magazine, London, England


“Seán Manchester, a self-confessed Vampire Hunter [who] knows they exist, … 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


“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, fat white bulbs of garlic and sharpened wooden stakes. 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 spends four or five nights a week out hunting.”

~ Beverley d’Silva, features’ writer, Sunday Times magazine, London, England


“Britain’s foremost vampire hunter [is] Seán Manchester.”

~ Len Markham, author and researcher of the paranormal, Yorkshire, England


“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. Is he for real?”

~ Suzy Feay, sub-editor, reviewer and critic, Time Out magazine, London, England


“Seán Manchester’s Vampire Research Society grew out of his previous leadership role in [the British Occult Society] 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 and the Kirklees Vampire projects.”

~ J Gordon Melton, chronicler of vampire topics, Santa Barbara, USA


Questions about this case and others may be put on the VRS message board at:

http://groups.msn.com/TheCrossandTheStake

oops - forgot to say 'go and have a read of my Winsford Vampire' thread!
It's very compelling.

It goes without saying that everyone is entitled to their opinion, but what you actually said is "surely everyone MUST know that it is a work of fiction?" You might regard the case as fiction, as will others, but many more besides regard it as true.

Those involved in or affected by the case clearly regard it as authentic, and definitely not fiction.

What would the Vampyre Society know about the case? Were its members even alive when the incidents were happening? Probably not. The Vampyre Society doesn't recognise the existence of supernatural vampires, being itself more concerned with vampiroidism, ie dressing up, drinking blood, and pretending to be vampires.

See: http://www.gothicpress.freeserve.co.uk/Vam...m%20Defined.htm

The fact is that most people today believe in very little at all, much less vampires!

The friends I was referring to are in 'a' Vampire group - not The Vampyre Society. And yes, they are old enough to remember the Highgate case (although they certainly won't thank me for divulging it! ).
The group is made up of people who like pretending to be Vamps, and others who really believe they exist and go haring around the globe to find them.

Hammy x x x

Is it possible for this vampire group's name to be disclosed, or does it have a secret identity? And, if the latter, why does it need to be secret?

Part of the problem when people talk about vampires is understanding what a vampire actually is, so that we are all singing from the same songsheet. According to the VRS definition of a vampire you need go no further than Chambers’ Twentieth Century Dictionary which offers the following: “An accursed body which cannot rest in the kindly earth, but nightly leaves its grave to suck the blood of sleeping men [and women].”

Witney’s Century Dictionary concurs that the vampire “maintains a semblance of life by sucking the warm blood of living men and women while they sleep.”

Webster’s International Dictionary confirms that the vampire is a “re-animated body of a dead person … believed to come from the grave and wander about by night sucking the blood of persons asleep causing death.”

The Oxford Dictionary agrees with all the above, describing an undead as “a ghost that leaves his grave at night and sucks the blood of sleeping persons.”

Finally, Sir James Frazer in the second volume of his work The Fear of the Dead in Primitive Religions (1934) is in no doubt that vampires are “malicious ghosts who issue from their graves to suck the blood of the living, and stringent measures are deemed necessary to hinder or arrest this horrible proceeding.”

So are the vampire hunters you refer to as "haring around the globe" seeking out the vampire as described above, or something entirely different?

Thank you for your private message explaining the group. Actually there are a number of vampiroid groups that attend Whitby, eg the London Vampyre Society, Velvet Vampyre and other remnants of the original late 1980s Vampyre Society founded by Carole Bohanan (retired). Many more groups besides attend, of course, but I am unaware of them harbouring members who subscribe to the existence of real vampires, much less travel the world on a search and destroy mission.

Needless to say, the Vampire Research Society does not countenance amateur vampire hunting at any level. 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, unfortunately 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. Seán Manchester, president of the British Occult Society, having discussed the investigation already in progress, made an appeal on the Today programme at 6.00 pm to request the public not to get involved, nor put into jeopardy that investigation. 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. However, individual efforts by those merely seeking thrills 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.

There is a chapter covering amateur vampire hunters in Seán Manchester's book The Highgate Vampire, about which information may be found on the link below:

http://www.gothicpress.freeserve.co.uk/Hig...pire%20Book.htm

The Vampire Research Society (founded on 2 February 1970) grew out of the British Occult Society (defunct since 8 August 1988) to become a globally recognised organisation to be consulted on all matters pertaining to vampires and vampirism. Its founding president has been featured throughout the last thirty-three years of the society's existence on innumerable television and radio programmes. He ceased giving media interviews in 2002, however, but continues to provide talks and lectures at private seminars for college and church establishments.

Dear Readers,
I am a serious journalist and am doing research into vampires at the moment. Recently I saw a programme on ITV where it was mainly about youngsters who go around believing that they are vampires. I would like readers views as to wheither or not they think vampires are real or are they fiction. I have found various weblinks which may be of interest to readers but will post these up at a later date.

Thank you for your time in reading this. Keep your opinions posted.

Yours Siincerely
Rodney Davies

Rodney Davies saw a programme about vampiroids, but vampiroids are not vampires. Some actually believe themselves to be vampires. 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.

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.

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.

http://www.gothicpress.freeserve.co.uk/Vam...h%20Society.htm