The Highgate Vampire

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The UK’s best selling factual vampire book now a special edition in hardcover, completely revised and updated with each copy of this edition carrying the author's facsimile signature.

The Highgate Vampire: The Infernal World of the Undead Unearthed at London's Highgate Cemetery and Environs

Written by Seán Manchester.

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 from 1969-1982.

“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, he knew the full story of the Highgate Vampire.”

~ Peter Underwood, ghost hunter & author, The Ghost Club Society, London, England

“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

“Fascinating in its subject matter and magnificent in the quality of its prose. Seán Manchester’s literary style is refreshingly reminiscent of the Gothic genre.”

~ Paul Spencer Vickers, Dept of English Literature, University College, London, England

“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, Udolpho magazine, Chislehurst, England

Spectres rising from tombs, ghostly manifestations in moonlit lanes, nocturnal attacks on people and animals, corpses drained of blood — almost everyone has heard tales of the Highgate Vampire, and in Seán Manchester’s book the full account be read by the person who led the only investigation to take place into these mysterious happenings. Lavishly illustrated with case file photographs and unique artwork, The Highgate Vampire is an absolutely essential addition to any vampire aficionado’s collection.

The Vampire Hunter's Handbook

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The Vampire Hunter's Handbook: A Concise Vampirological Guide

Written by Seán Manchester, President of the Vampire Research Society. Illustrated with archive photographs.

“This book is not about fictional vampires of the Bram Stoker’s Dracula genre, but real life blood sucking monsters. It should also be pointed out that there is a long tradition of people who hunt down and kill vampires. This book is not for the faint-hearted, or those people who live alone in rambling houses located on deserted moors.”

~ Shaun Marin (Uri Geller’s Encounters magazine)

“Seán Manchester is an imposing figure … he is Britain’s only full-time vampire hunter. Manchester is, unsurprisingly, very well read in both classical and more recent sources on vampires and vampirism, and cites them with great authority while taking the reader through a brief tour of vampire lore and mythology. This is a book I’d recommend to anybody with an interest in Manchester or vampires. The parts which deal with vampires are obviously based on years of substantial research and personal experience. The back cover photograph, showing Manchester apparently fending off an attack from several of the largest bats on the planet, is almost worth the cover price on its own.”

~ Joe McNally (Fortean Times magazine)

Carmel

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CARMEL: A Vampire Tale

The definitive sequel to Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Author: Seán Manchester. This illustrated, large format paperback can be ordered directly from Gothic Press.

“Seán Manchester is the natural writer of any attempt to resume the story of Dracula.”

~ Vincent Hillyer (author of Vampires)

“There is but one person who can write the definitive sequel to Stoker’s original masterpiece . . . one person who will imbue it with the same eerie atmosphere and remain true to the tradition . . . that author is Seán Manchester.”

~ Devendra P Varma (author of The Gothic Flame)

“This vampire tale is a most enchanting read. Seán Manchester’s style, imagination and sensibility makes CARMEL quite a jewel. Stoker has, at last, a literary heir worthy of writing a sequel.”

~ Sylvaine Charlet (author of Lits de Pierres)

“I felt I had to say how much I enjoyed CARMEL ~ easily the best vampire novel I have read since the original DRACULA. Absolutely enthralling. Tremendous atmosphere and a mounting tension that in my experience has only been equalled by Bram Stoker’s masterpiece. Congratulations! Congratulations!”

~ Peter Underwood (author of Exorcism!)

"This is a book that I had been looking forward to for a very long time. There have been so many attempts to conclude the story begun by Bram Stoker, who clearly had a sequel in mind, but till now everything has been so abysmal and so obviously cheap exploitation of what is, after all, a work of genius. Everyone knew that Seán Manchester was an author who had the experience to write from the heart on this subject. And now he has in Carmel. Anyone who enjoyed Dracula will absolutely have a feast with Carmel. This is the definitive sequel and yet, strangely, stands on its own as unique in its own right. American academic Bill Ellis has suggested this author based his earlier work more on Stoker’s Dracula than on vampire folk tradition. But, as Seán Manchester points out in his vampirological guide, Bram Stoker thoroughly researched the tradition and lore of the undead before writing Dracula. Stoker consulted Emily Gerard, Sabine Baring-Gould and many other non-fiction authors of folk tradition. The author of Carmel went one better, of course, having spent three decades investigating vampirism before putting pen to paper for his first novel. Thus the realism of the original is not only maintained, it is enhanced as experience of things familiar spills out on every page like the splashes of blood from a freshly staked vampire in its death throes. Yet there is much more to Carmel than walking in the eerie footsteps of Stoker’s Dracula. Yes, we are transported into that fearful realm of supernatural evil peculiar to vampires as the author skillfully restores those near-extinct elements from yestercentury, but at the centre is a story painfully real. It is the story of the holder of the name of the book’s title. Is this an actual person? Or merely a novelistic embellishment? This is a novel and how much is based on reality is less important to the reader than its effect as a vampire tale; for here is a terrifying exploration into the nether world of the undead where the reader is found wandering betwixt Victorian tombstones as the original contagion spreads its venom in 20th century England. Do not fret ~ Transylvania is not forgotten. Like its precursor, Carmel is the mirror of the mind of its author … Britain’s busiest exorcist!"

~ Katrina Garforth-Bles (author of Raising the Stakes)

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know

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Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know: The Life of Lady Caroline Lamb

A Biography by Seán Manchester.

Of all the affairs that shook an epoch notorious for its scandals there was none more tempestuous than the liaison between Lady Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron. There can be little astonishment, then, why the subject of Lady Caroline Lamb continues to fascinate. Seán Manchester’s unique biography sheds much light on a life that, together with Lord Byron’s, dazzled and dismayed London’s high society at the height of the Romantic Age in nineteenth century England. Gothic Press is, therefore, delighted to make available a quality hardcover edition of this splendid work, illustrated throughout – including many portraits of Lord Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb – that, by individual request, will be signed and dedicated by the author who is directly related to Lord Byron owing to the poet’s only son being his great, great grandfather.

“The author and the topic he writes about are made for one another which should come as no surprise for Seán Manchester is directly descended from the poet Byron and played as a child amid the sombre trees of Newstead Abbey Park where lived his grandparents and where stands in semi-ruin the Gothic abode of his illustrious ancestor.”

~ Diana Brewester, Highgate Byron Society, London, England

“Seán Manchester’s welcome biography of Lady Caroline Lamb brings the best news for the academic world. I feel that he is the only scholar who can write a revealing book on such a personality.”

~ Dr Devendra P Varma, International Byron Society, Canada

“I was very interested to read of Seán Manchester’s progress in discovering about Caroline’s strange activities.”

~ Lady Brocket, Brocket Hall, Welwyn, Hertfordshire, England

“This handsomely produced book, written with ardour, is the result of intensive research into family archives. Well documented, with extracts from letters and a valuable bibliography, the narrative recreates the spirit of the times and the character portrait of Caroline Lamb emerges vibrant with life. The author evokes the atmosphere of the very chamber in Brocket Hall which Caroline had turned into a shrine to Lord Byron, and where she penned her letters, wrote poems or played upon the harpsichord. As time effaced the memory of Caroline, several uncanny incidents continued to occur at the Hall. There were hauntings by a pale apparition of a woman in rustling robe playing Chopin on the piano as the chandelier swung from the carved roof. At other times a tinkling music resonated like angelic notes of a harpsichord at dead of night wafting on the wind from afar. This biography reproduces her image as a pensive young girl, ‘fascinating’ according to Byron, an untamed gazelle, delightful although impossible, delicate and daring, naïve yet witty, unstable but extreme in everything.”

~ Review extract from The Byron Journal, The Byron Society, England

Illustrated with unique photographs, including Lord Byron’s coffin in its vault, and Lady Caroline’s forgotten resting place, this hardcover edition is the last breath of the Romantic Movement — the only biography of its kind.

The Grail Church

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The Grail Church: Its Ancient Tradition and Renewed Flowering

Written by Seán Manchester.

Hardcover edition with photographs and line illustrations.

“Many will have heard the legends concerning Jesus visiting Glastonbury and St Joseph of Arimathea bringing to that sacred place the Holy Grail. This book provides the evidence. It also addresses the systematic erosion of belief in our times and provides disturbing reasons why even some ‘Christians’ no longer accept a personal God or the existence of the devil.”

~ Melvyn Willin
(reviewing The Grail Church in Society News)

“Fascinating reading for anybody interested in Jesus’ wilderness years and history of the Apostolic Church of the Holy Grail in Britain from its birth through its disappearance for twelve centuries ~ and then its rebirth in April 1973.”

~ Shaun Marin
(reviewing The Grail Church in Encounters)

“The Holy Grail is identified with the chalice drunk by Christ at the Last Supper, which was then used to collect some of His blood at the Crucifixion. Afterwards the chalice disappeared. … The Grail’s mysteries are held to transcend life and death, and its awesome power brings dire misfortune upon anyone who betrays its secret. … Many of these ideas can be discerned in [Bram Stoker’s] Dracula.”

~ Clive Leatherdale
(Dracula: The Novel & The Legend, 1985)

A spiritual Odyssey unfolds alongside the story of the coming of the Grail to England — plus the birth, death and resurrection of a pure branch of early Christianity.

From Satan To Christ

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This is the true account of an attractive young woman born into an English 'shire family, who left university, went to London and was drawn into what ostensibly appeared to be a witchcraft coven which slowly revealed itself to be a satanic cult that engaged in every profanity and depraved act imaginable: devil worship, live sacrifice, demon raisings, blood rituals, death curses, black masses etc.

Her story is written by the man who rescued her, helped her recover, and promised to protect her. The guilty have not been protected. Her disclosures unveil frightening facts behind today’s rising tide of Satanism. Recent polls in the UK indicate that those who subscribe to the dark occult and “alternative” belief systems, including witchcraft and Satanism, now far outnumber Christians in Great Britain.

From Satan To Christ blows the lid off the black magic and devil worship taking place right amongst us. The secrets of the Satanists are laid bare as the depraved leaders are identified and their loathsome cult is exposed with sensational photographic evidence of the occult underworld. The frightening facts behind some of today’s covens are revealed by someone who was inside the cult.

Her near-destruction could be anyone’s story; anyone, that is, who dabbles with witchcraft and is drawn to Left-hand Path. It is a story of mind control, deception, bizarre initiations and degrading rituals. With the ever increasing appearance of groups dedicated to one or another form of malefic occultism, in a world drifting further towards materialism, greed and violence, this book comes as a timely warning ...