CARMEL - A VAMPIRE TALE - Highgate Magick Occult Satan

Carmel

A Vampire Tale

by Sean Manchester

with an introduction by Peter Underwood

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Rare 2000, First Edition

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This is a book 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 when he wrote Dracula, 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 - A Vampire Tale.

Anyone who enjoyed Dracula will absolutely have a feast with Carmel. This is the definitive sequel and yet, in a strange sort of way, stands on its own as unique in its own right. Professor Bill Ellis accused this author of basing his earlier work more on Stoker's Dracula than on vampire folk tradition, but, as Seán Manchester points out in his vampirological guide (The Vampire Hunter's Handbook), 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 researching and investigating vampires before putting pen to paper for his first novel. Thus the realism of the original is not only maintained but is enhanced as experience of things familiar spill 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?

We are nevertheless obliged to remind ourselves that 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 who just happens to also be Britain's busiest vampirologist and exorcist!  

This book also includes thinly veiled references to the real-life HIGHGATE vampire case

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OUT OF PRINT

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Published by Gothic Press, GB, 2000

128 pages. Large format softcover.