In all the dark pages of the supernatural there is no more terrible tradition than that of the Vampire, a pariah even among demons. Foul are his ravages; gruesome and seemingly barbaric are the ancient and approved methods by which folk rid themselves of this hideous pest. The tradition is world-wide and of the greatest antiquity. How did it arise? How did it spread? Does it indeed contain some vestige of truth, some memory of savage practice, some trace of cannibalism or worse? These and similar problems inevitably suggested by a consideration of Vampirism in its various aspects are fully discussed in this work which may not unfairly claim to be the first serious and fully documented study of a subject that in its details is of absorbing interest, although the circumstances are of necessity macabre and ghastly in the highest degree. Included in this critical edition are the authoritative text, rare contextual and source materials, correspondence, illustrations, as well as Greek and Latin translations. A biographical note and chronology are also included.

Augustus Montague Summers (1880-1948) was an English author and clergyman born in Bristol. Despite initially studying to work for the Church of England, Summers converted to Catholicism and worked as a teacher of English and Latin. He's well-known for his studies of the supernatural, and his most notable works are History of Witchcraft and Demonology, 1926, and his 1928 translation of the 15th century manual for witch hunters, the Malleus Maleficarum.