TELL ME STRANGE THINGS: The Priest Who Believed In Vampires and Werewolves

He dressed like a 17th-century priest, translated witch-hunting manuals, and believed vampires and werewolves were terrifyingly real — Montague Summers was a priest and scholar who took the supernatural deadly serious.

As heard in this Weird Darkness podcast episode:

Augustus Montague Summers was born on April 10, 1880, in Clifton, a pleasant neighborhood in Bristol, England. He was the youngest of seven children in a respectable, religious family. His father, Augustus William Summers, a banker and local judge, was traditional. Montague had always had a curiosity about things that others did not talk about as an inquisitive boy.

Montague was a bright young boy who liked to read and ask difficult questions. While other children played outside, he could often be found with his nose in a book about ghosts, monsters or old myths. He became interested in spooky stories and folklore most of all, so at his fancy school, Clifton College, he studied languages and religion.

In 1899, he entered Trinity College at Oxford University to study religion. He received his college degrees in 1905 and 1906. Montague went to Lichfield Theological College to be trained as a priest in the Church of England after graduation. He was made a deacon in 1908 and served briefly in a church near Bristol. But his Church of England career ended after allegations of misconduct. While he was acquitted of the charges, the rumors damaged his reputation.

Montague Summers | Photo credit: Unknown

Montague began undergoing a major transformation in 1909, when he converted to Roman Catholicism and began referring to himself as a Catholic priest, although there is no evidence he had ever been formally ordained to the Catholic Church. He awarded himself the grandiose title “Reverend Alphonsus Joseph-Mary Augustus Montague Summers” and wore his clothes like a 17th-century priest. In his long black robe, wide-brimmed hat, a flowing cape, and glasses, he looked pretty impressive.

Montague earned his living teaching Latin and English, but his passion was reading old plays from the 1600s. So good was his work on these plays that he was invited to join the Royal Society of Literature in 1916. But this was not his sole interest.

By the 1920s, Montague had become very interested in witches, vampires, and werewolves. What distinguished him from other scholars was that he codified these creatures as real-genuine beings! And while most people read on subjects of this nature as mythology or folklore, Montague insisted that it was history.

He published a book in 1926 titled The History of Witchcraft and Demonology. In the book, Montague argued that witches did exist, and that many of those on trial for the crime of witchcraft in the past had actually committed the crime. He opposed modern scholars who argued that witch trials were little more than mass panic or a means to repress women unfairly. Instead, he thought Satan was using real witches.

Montague translated an early volume, the “Malleus Maleficarum,” (the Hammer of Witches), a guide to witch-finding and witch-punishing, which dates back to the 1440s. This was the first time this book was ever translated into English. Whereas most scholars would have viewed this book as a historical document, Montague took it as a useful instruction manual on combating evil in the modern age.

That year, he also published “The Vampire: His Kith and Kin”; the following year, “The Vampire in Europe.” These were books that gathered tales of the supernatural vampires from around the world. Montague considered these stories proof that vampires existed. He wrote about burial practices, means of spreading vampirism, and methods of destroying vampires like he was drafting a science textbook.

In 1933 he published “The Werewolf,” which examined those who supposedly metamorphosed into wolves. Again, he did not view werewolves as imaginary creatures but as a genuine condition caused by demons. His books contained details and strong opinions; he saw himself as both a researcher and a crusader against evil.

Most professors laughed at Montague’s ideas, but he found many readers interested in the supernatural. He corresponded with people interested in occult studies in Britain, but he mocked contemporary spiritual practices and magical rituals. Unlike other occult figures such as Aleister Crowley, Montague styled himself as someone who was traditional — defending the old belief that evil existed, that witches served Satan and the undead walked among us.

Montague never married and generally lived alone, but was widely known in Richmond, Surrey, where he had settled late in life. He was frequently spotted at the Richmond Library, requesting rare books or borrowing books from his own extensive collection. Visitors to his house sometimes would observe his strange ways but also how philanthropic and passionate he was about knowledge. His home was filled with rare books — more museum than house.

Montague, for all his theatrical getup, was deadly serious about his work. He viewed himself as waging a spiritual war in a contemporary world that had ceased believing in a supernatural world. Not believing in monsters and magic was not being smart to him — it was being blind to the truth. His mission was not to amuse people, but to alarm them.

Montague Summers died at his house in Richmond, suddenly, on August 10, 1948. And his death — like much of his life — was somewhat controversial. The local Catholic church would not hold a public funeral service for him because they did not know whether he was a priest. Instead, a private ceremony was conducted and he was interred in Richmond Cemetery. For years, his grave sat without a headstone, nearly forgotten.

It was not until the late 1980s that fans of the occult, Sandy Robertson and Edwin Pouncey, erected a proper headstone for him. The words they had chosen for his grave could not have suited Montague Summers better: “Tell me strange things.” It was a fitting tribute to someone who devoted his life to finding — and sharing — strange, spooky and obscure stories lurking in the shadows. Come to think of it, when it comes time to chisel my headstone, “Tell me strange things” would probably apply to me as well.

Today Montague Summers has an unusual place in the history of the occult. Some write him off as kooky, but others hail him as a trailblazer. Whatever you think of him, he was certainly invested in the world he thought was out there — a world of witches casting spells and vampires stalking the countryside, a world where the ancient struggle between good and evil was playing out right beneath the fabric of ordinary life.