Religion News Blog is a non-profit service providing academics, religion professionals and other researchers with religion & cult news

Religion news articles about religious cults, sects, world religions, and related issues

Navigation:

Search

Self-styled vampire ‘drank blood’

BBC, UK
Oct. 17, 2003
news.bbc.co.uk

ReligionNewsBlog.com • Friday October 17, 2003

A man accused of waging a campaign of harassment against a vicar and his family has told a jury he is a reincarnated vampire who has drunk blood.

But Benjamin Lewis, 25, denied targeting Reverend Christopher Rowberry with co-defendant Scott Bower.

Mr Lewis, a hotel porter, Mr Bower, 26, who is unemployed, and Mr Lewis’s girlfriend, 19-year-old student Natalie Gibson, all of Totton in Hampshire, deny religiously aggravated harassment.

Mr Lewis said he had howled at the vicar only once, because he was angry that he had shone a torch in his eyes as he drove by the vicarage next to his church St Mary The Virgin, in Eling Hill, Totton.

He told the court: “I am not a Satanist. I identify myself with Jesus Christ because he was put on trial because he was different to anyone else.

“I have been interested in blood drinking – I believe in psychic vampirism.

“I read in the Bible that blood is the life.”

Mr Lewis said he was fascinated by vampires, enjoyed visiting graveyards in Hampshire and had tried drinking blood to see what it would do for him.

Mr Lewis told jurors that some of the photos police had found of him and Mr Bower cutting themselves and drinking each other’s blood had been real, although others were staged.

In the raid of his house last December police also found an article he had written for a magazine on the occult called Crimson.

In it he said: “I had great trouble with most mortals because I am beyond their earthly understanding.

“To them I am a curse, an omen, a lost soul, a freak and all because I believe myself to be a reincarnated vampire.

“My soul can never die and the flame within my spirit cannot extinguish.

“I am beyond any mortal and I can offer any fantasy, but humans are too blind with envy to see.”

The prosecution alleges that the three friends religiously harassed Reverend Rowberry, his wife Karen and children Hannah, 17 and Simon, 15.

They are alleged to have made scores of abusive phone calls, set off fireworks at the vicarage and left obscene pictures, including one of a disembowelled Christ, on a church notice board.

Ms Gibson’s mobile phone records showed she made many calls to the vicarage and that a recording made by the vicar was very likely to contain her voice, the court heard.

The case continues.