Post by Vampirologist on Mar 17, 2004 5:32:02 GMT -5
Confused and sometimes contradictory, "The Vampire Watcher's Handbook" largely comprises of extracts from other books. Hence the psuedonym "Constantine Gregory" ~ a non-existent person ~ because there are any number of sources.
Craig Glenday, a British journalist and ex-editor of the thankfully now defunct "The X Factor magazine," is responsible for what is noted in the margins on each page. These stylised scribblings are Glenday's opinions and seldom are they helpful or accurate. All in all, it makes for a mish-mash of ideas and messages.
Is this book a spoof? Is it non-fiction? Is it fiction (and, if so, why quote so many non-fiction sources and real people)? Why does it mix fiction with non-fiction as if there is no difference? Or is it just a joke? I opt for the latter.
Glenday certainly tends to spoil the project with his inane remarks in the margins. This does not come as any surprise to those of us who have had past experience of him. He proved to be one of the more serious offenders in misleading the public over the Highgate Vampire case when he was editor of "The X Factor" magazine. The magazine, under Glenday's editorship, maligned, misrepresented and libelled Seán Manchester, infringing his copyright in the process by reproducing a stolen picture provided by someone with a long track record of antipathy toward him, before it disappeared for ever, thereby denying any redress.
Glenday did not once bother to check out the misinformation he was being fed by a source he knew to be malicious. Perhaps he went down this route because Seán Manchester refused him an interview for the magazine on the grounds that its publisher also produced magazines that exploited and sensationalised murder cases in a most distasteful manner while elsewhere publishing material sympathetic to the dark occult. This refusal might have prompted Glenday to interview and promote the aforementioned antipathetic source. Though someone like Glenday rarely needs any prompting.
This trend continues with a rip-off of Seán Manchester's "The Vampire Hunter's Handbook" (Gothic Press, 1997) where the author of that work is misrepresented on page 145 of "The Vampire Watcher's Handbook" (Piatkus, 2003) in the margin notes. Glenday then compounds the error by describing Farrant as the person who led the mass vampire hunt on the night of 13 March 1970 when, in fact, it was Seán Manchester. Farrant was not present, and does not claim to have been part of any hunt on that night. His lone attempt came five months later when he was arrested in Highgate Cemetery by police searching for black magic devotees. He was later acquitted of the charge of being in an enclosed area for an unlawful purpose because, by any stretch of the imagination, Highgate Cemetery cannot be described as "an enclosed area."
Farrant did, however, write to Seán Manchester prior to his arrest and during his remand at Brixton Prison, and what he wrote reveals much later revisionist claims to be utterly counterfeit. Moreover, on Gareth Davies' message board on 6 June 2003, Farrant appeared to welcome his prison correspondence being published. His actual words quoted on the message board being that he "would be delighted that such documentation enters the public domain."
The documentation under discussion was the aforementioned material sent to Seán Manchester in August 1970. Perhaps he had forgotten just how damaging these documents would be in the light of his later claims because when they were put in the public domain on an MSN group board earlier this year, someone complained on his behalf and, under threat of closure, the managers of that board were obliged to remove the archive documents.
Glenday describes Seán Manchester as having "killed" a vampire in 1974, when it is widely accepted, not least by the Seán Manchester himself, that vampires cannot be "killed" per se. They are exorcised, ie cast out. But Glenday prefers to employ the more emotive term "killed" to misrepresent what takes place when a demonic entity is expelled from an already dead host.
For more about Craig Glenday and "The X Factor" see page 67 of "The Vampire Hunter's Handbook" (Gothic Press, 1997).
www.gothicpress.freeserve.co.uk/Handbook.htm
For more about the vampire hunt in Highgate Cemetery, 13 March 1970 see page pages 77-79 of "The Highgate Vampire" (Gothic Press, 1991).
www.gothicpress.freeserve.co.uk/Highgate%20Vampire%20Book.htm
Information about the archive documentation the managers of the MSN board were obliged to remove will be posted to anyone requesting it. Send enquiries requesting details to the Vampire Research Society at: vampireresearchsociety@gothicpress.freeserve.co.uk
Craig Glenday, a British journalist and ex-editor of the thankfully now defunct "The X Factor magazine," is responsible for what is noted in the margins on each page. These stylised scribblings are Glenday's opinions and seldom are they helpful or accurate. All in all, it makes for a mish-mash of ideas and messages.
Is this book a spoof? Is it non-fiction? Is it fiction (and, if so, why quote so many non-fiction sources and real people)? Why does it mix fiction with non-fiction as if there is no difference? Or is it just a joke? I opt for the latter.
Glenday certainly tends to spoil the project with his inane remarks in the margins. This does not come as any surprise to those of us who have had past experience of him. He proved to be one of the more serious offenders in misleading the public over the Highgate Vampire case when he was editor of "The X Factor" magazine. The magazine, under Glenday's editorship, maligned, misrepresented and libelled Seán Manchester, infringing his copyright in the process by reproducing a stolen picture provided by someone with a long track record of antipathy toward him, before it disappeared for ever, thereby denying any redress.
Glenday did not once bother to check out the misinformation he was being fed by a source he knew to be malicious. Perhaps he went down this route because Seán Manchester refused him an interview for the magazine on the grounds that its publisher also produced magazines that exploited and sensationalised murder cases in a most distasteful manner while elsewhere publishing material sympathetic to the dark occult. This refusal might have prompted Glenday to interview and promote the aforementioned antipathetic source. Though someone like Glenday rarely needs any prompting.
This trend continues with a rip-off of Seán Manchester's "The Vampire Hunter's Handbook" (Gothic Press, 1997) where the author of that work is misrepresented on page 145 of "The Vampire Watcher's Handbook" (Piatkus, 2003) in the margin notes. Glenday then compounds the error by describing Farrant as the person who led the mass vampire hunt on the night of 13 March 1970 when, in fact, it was Seán Manchester. Farrant was not present, and does not claim to have been part of any hunt on that night. His lone attempt came five months later when he was arrested in Highgate Cemetery by police searching for black magic devotees. He was later acquitted of the charge of being in an enclosed area for an unlawful purpose because, by any stretch of the imagination, Highgate Cemetery cannot be described as "an enclosed area."
Farrant did, however, write to Seán Manchester prior to his arrest and during his remand at Brixton Prison, and what he wrote reveals much later revisionist claims to be utterly counterfeit. Moreover, on Gareth Davies' message board on 6 June 2003, Farrant appeared to welcome his prison correspondence being published. His actual words quoted on the message board being that he "would be delighted that such documentation enters the public domain."
The documentation under discussion was the aforementioned material sent to Seán Manchester in August 1970. Perhaps he had forgotten just how damaging these documents would be in the light of his later claims because when they were put in the public domain on an MSN group board earlier this year, someone complained on his behalf and, under threat of closure, the managers of that board were obliged to remove the archive documents.
Glenday describes Seán Manchester as having "killed" a vampire in 1974, when it is widely accepted, not least by the Seán Manchester himself, that vampires cannot be "killed" per se. They are exorcised, ie cast out. But Glenday prefers to employ the more emotive term "killed" to misrepresent what takes place when a demonic entity is expelled from an already dead host.
For more about Craig Glenday and "The X Factor" see page 67 of "The Vampire Hunter's Handbook" (Gothic Press, 1997).
www.gothicpress.freeserve.co.uk/Handbook.htm
For more about the vampire hunt in Highgate Cemetery, 13 March 1970 see page pages 77-79 of "The Highgate Vampire" (Gothic Press, 1991).
www.gothicpress.freeserve.co.uk/Highgate%20Vampire%20Book.htm
Information about the archive documentation the managers of the MSN board were obliged to remove will be posted to anyone requesting it. Send enquiries requesting details to the Vampire Research Society at: vampireresearchsociety@gothicpress.freeserve.co.uk