In Seán Manchester's Carmel and Bram Stoker's Dracula, there are naturally comparisons to be made because Seán Manchester's work of fiction, though rooted in fact (ie much hitherto unrecorded matter from the Highgate case), is an attempt to resolve the loose ends apparent in Bram Stoker's gothic masterpiece.
It should be remembered, too, that Stoker's work was also rooted in some fact. Dracula was thoroughly researched using works of non-fiction about folklore and vampirism. He also visited Highgate Cemetery on innumerable occasions where he took tea in the afternoon. He would have been aware of tales of ghosts and demons that abounded in the years prior. Not surprsingly, perhaps, he somewhat fortuitously set the Westenra Tomb in the Western Cemetery at Highgate ~ the very section that was later identified as having a vampire contagion.
However, truth is invariably stranger than fiction, as Stoker undoubtedly knew. Hence Stoker's greatest novel has become one of the most read books in the world.
There might well be a link between the names "Wilhelmina" and "Elizabeth" regarding Seán Manchester's none-fiction book The Highgate Vampire. There is certainly a link between the names "Elizabeth" and "Lusia" as the latter is the Polish nomenclature for "Elizabeth." That is just one of many odd coincidences in the Highgate Vampire case. Elizabeth Wojdyla, however, is the correct name of the convent schoolgirl who, along with Barbara Moriarty, witnessed the vampiric apparitions in early 1967 at Highgate Cemetery. "Lusia," on the other hand, is not the correct name of the person referred to in the text of Seán Manchester's book as he made clear in its first edition, published in 1985: “Among the many people who contacted me,” he recounted in the first complete account of the case, “was the sister of a beautiful twenty-two-year-old woman, whom I shall call Lusia.”
Lusia is someone who has never been identified ~ a photographic model, and much later an actress, portrayed Lusia in reconstructions of her in the case. This was due to the tragic outcome, and a need to preserve her identity in perpetuity. There has been a great deal of speculation about her because, in the aftermath of the Highgate exorcism, her story evolved into one of the more extreme metaphysical outcomes that will not surprise the trained and seasoned demonologist, but is certainly a difficult area for most others.
Seán Manchester's initial discovery of her was one of sheer delight tinged with a terrible sadness that grew stronger until it finally eclipsed her. Within the sombre tones of an apt piece of music wherein she became enshrouded, he wrote: “Her cascading flaxen tresses caught the dull illumination of the moonlight in their pale reflection. Somewhere, in the background, I could hear the dying pulses of Strauss’ solemn orchestral work, Metamorphosen. It haunts me to this day.”
Lusia entered the author's life as an attractive young female virgin of Nordic extraction, living in north London, who, being touched by what lies beyond earthly confines, became part of the nightmare of hideous visions and visitations associated with Highgate at that time. He glimpsed an indistinct figure toward the end, a figure swathed in a white cerement, her face the colour of marble save for her mouth, which seemed full and wanton. This was not the Lusia he had first known. It was something else. A shade of something that had been sucked dry of life.
Regarding any comparison between Stoker's and Seán Manchester's work, both, of course, deal with an identical area of supernatural evil where the focus becomes Highgate Cemetery (referred to as "Kingstead Churchyard" in Dracula) and Hampstead Heath (which identity remains unchanged in Dracula). Ashurst House, whose gardens later became Highgate Cemetery, was sold and leased to a succession of tenants, one of whom was a mysterious figure from the Continent who arrived in the wake of a vampire epidemic that had its origins in south-east Europe.
It is, therefore, hardly surprising that comparisons are made because both Stoker and Manchester are examining the same reality that they deal with in different ways. Emily Gerard observed in 1888 that the exorcism requires “opening the grave of the suspected person and driving a stake through the corpse [The Highgate Vampire p34].”
Bram Stoker had not yet written Dracula, much less had a film been made of his vampire novel. Stoker did, however, consult Gerard’s work along with a number of other non-fiction resources concerned with the tradition and lore of the undead. Comparisons, needless to say, could be drawn between these and Stoker's later work.
