Sean Manchester - Vampire Hunter

"Primate" by the way is generally used in church ranks to donate the Bishop that is the first (I know surprising!) - either in matters of ceremony or authority. So a Bishop designated "Primate" may have other Bishops that are subordinate to them. However it is typically nothing more than an honorific these days.
 
Darat said:
"Primate" by the way is generally used in church ranks to donate the Bishop that is the first (I know surprising!) - either in matters of ceremony or authority. So a Bishop designated "Primate" may have other Bishops that are subordinate to them. However it is typically nothing more than an honorific these days.
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Thanks Darat, what is O.S.G. if you know?
 
Thanks for that transcript Mr Farrant; very interesting. Highgate is thankfully in a much better state these days; I did the guided tour a couple of years back. It would have been nice to see something of the catacombs/vaults, but access is (quite rightly) limited. Unlike the old days!

Kensal Green and Brompton are apparently well worth a visit, both having (I think) accessible underground vaults.
 
fowlsound said:
That's an interesting and not all surprising anecdote. Forgive me, but without secondary sources I have to stick to sourceable anbecdotes. I definitely appreciate the story tho.


One other question I have is:

It was said in his books Manchester has pictures of corpses, how were these made? Did Manchester dig up a corpse and stake it? Or is there accounts that someone posed for them?

I'm interested to know if Manchester ever actually dug up anyone's grave in the name of his vampire hunting. I can't seem to find much on google about that specificality.
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The photos here certainly look real enough to me. Catherine/Barbara have implied that it was a corpse, (Charles Edward Wace according to this forum thread) from the Wace family vault (I asked about surviving descendants).
 
fowlsound said:
So the implication is that he has dug up corpses for the photographs. Did he actually stake the corpses? Do we have verification he actually did do any of this?
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No idea I'm afraid. It would be tough to prove despite his staking admissions and claim that the photo is of the thing he staked. It's circumstantial and anecdotal evidence at best, and there were many more people pulling out bits of corpse in those days; it was a bit of a free-for-all for proto-goths and drug-addled students. It's not quite the same thing as actually exhuming a body; once the vaults were broken into the bodies would have been far more accessible than in a typical graveyard. Not that that's an excuse, but you know the depths of human depravity as well as I do, I'm sure. I've certainly met people who claim to have desecrated graves/vaults for their own morbid excitement.

ETA - It's pretty clear that the photos of the corpse at the upper right of this page are the same image, appearing three times. One is unaltered, showing one of many damaged corpses from the Highgate tombs, and the other two have had what does appear to the the remains of hair, drawn or painted in. Likewise the beard and black jacket. Someone's had some pre-Photoshop fun with what could be a photo of any of the corpses then accessible in the cemetary. They need not even have interfered with it, nor "staked" it, or any other of the corpses. So accusations of "grave robbing" or whatever aren't really worth pursuing. The page, and presumably the book, claim that the tomb in question was sealed up (see the photo of a bricked-up tomb) as a direct result of having been broken into at the same time as Manchester's little "foray". He's been naughty, but no more so than the other reprobates mooching around Highgate in the 1960s-70s.
 
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Big Les said:
No idea I'm afraid. It would be tough to prove despite his staking admissions and claim that the photo is of the thing he staked. It's circumstantial and anecdotal evidence at best, and there were many more people pulling out bits of corpse in those days; it was a bit of a free-for-all for proto-goths and drug-addled students. It's not quite the same thing as actually exhuming a body; once the vaults were broken into the bodies would have been far more accessible than in a typical graveyard. Not that that's an excuse, but you know the depths of human depravity as well as I do, I'm sure. I've certainly met people who claim to have desecrated graves/vaults for their own morbid excitement.
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Fair enough. Anecdotal is not acceptable for this purpose I fear, so let us move on to things we can obtain evidence for.

I was hoping someone could clear up the problem of his credentials I noticed.
 
Clu said:
To anyone with an interest here's a link to a message board dealing with Manchester and Farrant from Manchester's point of view
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Yep, that's the one I linked to above re the "identity" of the vampire and the tomb that was broken into.

IIRC, Manchester claimed that he "staked" the "vampire" in an unspecified nearby house (a thinly disguised Carfax Abbey substitute - Manchester's writing seems to me to be lifted wholesale from popular fiction), not in the tomb in question - that was just part of his "investigation".
 
Oh you actually read the whole thing... I just managed a few passages before my :bs: reached its limits...
 
Can't blame you for that! But did you notice the similarity in posting style (and Manchester-worship), between "Vampirologist" on that board and our very own "Myth Buster"?

If those two identities aren't in fact Sean Manchester himself, I'll eat my stake.
 
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Clu said:
To anyone with an interest here's a link to a message board dealing with Manchester and Farrant from Manchester's point of view
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On that board obviously Vampirologist = Manchester or one of his "agents". Much the same as his other sites - Farrant et al are amateurs - he of course is the genuine "professional" Vampire Hunter


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 British Occult Society (Manchester) had made an appeal on the Today programme at 6.00 pm to request the public not to get involved, nor put into jeopardy the investigation already in progress. Not everyone heeded his words.
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http://highgatevampire.proboards22.com/index.cgi?board=case&action=display&thread=1065353447
 
Well 'Myth' might just have read it a whole buch of times.... Yeah that seems highly unlikley to me too (just as likely in my humble opinion that mr M. has staked or 'exorcised' any vamps)
 
Clu said:
dealing with Manchester and Farrant from Manchester's point of view
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Very... err... yes... :boggled:

Anyway under Primary Publications which supposedly contains Published material about the Highgate Vampire case that can be relied upon, the only material is written by and appears to be published by Manchester himself.

The administrator Vampirologist, while referring to Manchester in the third person and correcting any minor misuse of his title, definitely seems to be the Bish' himself and is obsessively secretive about his vampire photos and incredibly mercenary as well.
 
This is a direct quote from the V.S.R webpage:

"
Nota Bene:
The Saxon law that was introduced for the disinterment of suspected vampire graves, allowing any such bloodsuckers discovered therein to be legitimately transfixed with a wooden stake, was repealed in England in 1823. The Vampire Research Society does not countenance impalements without legal authority in consecrated burial grounds. Hence when the VRS president discovered an undead in a mausoleum at a cemetery in 1970, having gained permission from the owners to enter and offer a spoken exorcism, he desisted from employing the traditional stake. When discovery was made in early 1974 of a vampire within the bowels of a derelict mansion, however, he impaled and cremated it."

This seems to refute the claim made by 'Myth' that mr M never claimed to have staked a vamp doesnt it? :D
 
Thanks to fowlsound and David Farrant for the transcripts!

Is it me, or does the "corspe" and Manchester have the same haircut?
 
Here is a link to an on-going parrallel investigation---have been told not to post it, its msn called did a wampyr walk in highgate, so you'll have to find it yourself or send me a pm

There is a B side to the Highgate Vampire with an equally silly story about Robin Hoods Grave, but you are all doing very well.

We have all asked those kind of questions before, but you never get any answers, only diverted off onto another track, well maybe thats enough from me..I am worried about breaking a rule now

greenwych
 
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