Tell Me Strange Things

On 15 December 1985, I was invited to play some of my own compositions at the Savage Club, Berkeley Square, London, to commemorate Peter Underwood’s twenty-five years as president of The Ghost Club. It was a delightful occasion which allowed me the opportunity to meet his wife, Joyce, and present Peter with a signed copy of my recently published book The Highgate Vampire. Sadly, Peter Underwood’s wife passed away close to his eightieth birthday in May 2003. She was a wonderful lady and gave joy to all who came into contact with her. She is greatly missed by everyone. She was able to celebrate Peter’s birthday party which is a wonderfully touching facet and somehow encapsulates the lady. Joyce Elizabeth was a source of immense strength to him in his writing and paranormal research; a constant companion in every aspect of his long life. On their first date they went to see the film The Hound of the Baskervilles. Joyce naturally features a lot in her husband’s autobiography No Common Task. It is dedicated to her and the family “with love.”

Peter Underwood was an Honorary Associate and Life Member of the Vampire Research Society. 

Peter Underwood was one of the world’s leading authorities on paranormal and occult matters, and a renowned researcher for more than half a century. He was also the author of over fifty books, took part in hundreds of television and radio programmes, and in 1987 was elected and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. His integrity and dedication are an inspiring example for all who work at the edge of the unknown. In his own words: “An open mind is necessary for careful, truthful and objective observation, reasoning and conclusion, and if I have not always achieved such aims, at least I have tried … if I have succeeded in opening only one closed mind just a fraction … then my journey into these difficult regions will not have been in vain.” Peter Underwood knew Montague Summers well enough to have been presented with a vampire protection medallion by him. Summers’ fame as an occult expert and scholar began in 1926 with the publication of his History of Demonology and Witchcraft followed by other studies of witches, vampires and werewolves; notably The Vampire: His Kith and Kin (1928) and The Vampire in Europe (1929). He also introduced to the public, as an editor, along with many other works, a reprint of The Discovery of Witches by the infamous Matthew Hopkins, and the first English translation of the classic fifteenth century treatise on witchcraft, Malleus Maleficarum. In later life he also wrote influential studies of the Gothic novel, another lifelong enthusiasm; notably The Gothic Quest: a History of the Gothic Novel (1938), and A Gothic Bibliography (1940). Much of Montague Summers’ life remains in obscurity, however, as so many of his personal papers were lost. He left an autobiography, The Galanty Show, published over thirty years after his death, but it is only the first of two or possibly three volumes that were not yet written when he died, much less were they published. The first volume reveals little about the vampirologist, as it deals with his young days and will invariably disappoint the researcher.

The Rt Rev Montague Summers

(portrait in oils by †Seán Manchester)

Alphonsus Joseph-Mary Augustus Montague Summers, in whose memory I would dedicate my most popular work in print, entered the Old Catholic priesthood, having been diaconated in 1908 in the Church of England, and becoming ordained into the diaconate of the Roman Catholic Church just one year later. He was episcopally consecrated for the Order of Corporate Reunion on 21 June 1927 by Dominic Albert Godwin, and was later consecrated sub conditione on 21 March 1946 by Roger Stephen Matthews and appointed Nuncio for Great Britain. His biographer is the late Roman Catholic Carmelite Father Brocard Sewell (using the nom de plume Joseph Jerome) who shared Summers' fascination with Gothicism and the supernatural.

Montague Summers died of a heart attack in 1948. His mantle awaited the arrival of such as myself via Peter Underwood and D P Varma. When Sandy Roberston launched The Summers Project in 1986 to raise money for a tombstone to be laid on Summers’ hitherto unmarked grave in Richmond Cemetery, then known only as plot 10818, it was to me that he turned for support. The simple stone, bearing the legend “Tell me strange things,” was erected on 26 November 1988. Summers invariably opened his conversation with those words when people visited him. He yearned to hear strange things. In 1950, two years after his death, Summers’ longstanding friend, Hector Stuart-Forbes, joined him in the then unmarked plot at Richmond Cemetery. This Old Catholic bishop’s work in the field of demonology, not least its sub-category vampirology, is unparalleled. 

It was when I studied this spectrum of the supernatural in my teenage years that I first came across the voluminous works of Montague Summers. They proved invaluable. My appreciation of Summers’ work is apparent, but I have no real knowledge of his private life, or his degree of involvement in esotericism about which rumours abounded in his lifetime and still fester to this day. I do not question his ordinations, as have some commentators, but I am not qualified to judge him beyond his published works. I have grown more than accustomed to misrepresentation and cheap jibes myself, or indeed against anyone vaguely knowledgeable as a demonologist/vampirologist.