Trusting Peter Haining or not

How 'Arnold Paul' became a 'High Duke of Medreigia', I posted about some years ago. Peter Haining was the perpretator behind this curious misrepresentation of the famous 1732 Visum & Repertum. As I noted back then, in my youth I was initially impressed by Haining's prolific production of books, but later on I became increasingly sceptical of his research. Another instance is mentioned in a post under the title Another Haining Fraud on the Wormwoodiana blog, which concludes that 'it has become increasingly apparent that you can’t trust Peter Haining on anything.'

According to an obituary in The Guardian, the incredibly productive author, compiler and editor Peter Alexander Haining (1940-2007) 'was rooted in, and sustained by, a childhood passion for hidden nuggets of terror, witchcraft and crime.'  From 1963 to 1972 he was editor at New English Library, and readers of his books and anthologies - or indeed anyone interested in British paperbacks published in the Seventies - may enjoy watching this video about NEL and its books and authors that includes an interview with Haining himself.

Perhaps a little too High?

I recently mentioned Peter Haining's Dracula Centenary Book as a disappointment, and I suppose I was disappointed because I have enjoyed many of Haining's anthologies, including e.g. his Dracula Scrapbook, but this one really has the feel of an attempt at an early cash in on the centenary of Stoker's Dracula. Well, as I usually say, this blog definitely isn't about Dracula, but many books about Dracula contain chapters on vampires and magia posthuma, and vice versa, so that's why I mention this particular book.

Old friends will perhaps recall that I wrote about it in an article published in a little magazine back in the Eighties, and here I will more or less reiterate that comment :-) That's because the book contains a so-called Checklist of Vampirism, which is a chronological list of vampire cases, and accompanying this text you will find two of the entries in the checklist.

At first glance, here's a case from Hungary anno 1690, and another one from Moravia in 1731. But to those familiar with the famous Medvedja vampire case of 1731-2, it should be quite obvious that both instances of vampirism are actually based on that case which occurred in Serbia - not in Moravia, and not in Hungary! Furthermore, the 'Arnold Paul' mentioned was not a 'High Duke of Medreiga'. 'Medreiga' is simply another way of writing Medvedja, as is 'Mettwett', and there probably never was any 'High Duke' of that village, but Paul (or perhaps rather Pavle) was a hajduk, certainly a title of less rank and nobility!

Haining lists a number of, ahem, highly reliable sources like Basil Copper, Anthony Masters, Montague Summers, and Dudley Wright, but I'm not quite sure how he transformed a hajduk into a High Duke, and Serbia into Moravia, but obviously that's what can happen when you try to establish that 1987, not 1997, was the 'Dracula centenary'!

Click on the illustrations to better read the text from Haining's book.