CENTREPIECE / The living dead
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Your support makes all the difference.'All my life I have been driven by a respect for, and a fear of, the unknown,' says Simon Marsden. 'I was brought up in a haunted house full of twilight voices in the dark - and since then my presence in these places has acted as a catalyst.' Good credentials for a man who has set himself up as the definitive photographer of things that go bump in the night: witness his image of 'The Naked Knight' (right). 'His body has never decomposed,' enthuses Marsden. 'I saw it when I was a teenager and can never forget the shock, especially as it was the first time that I had ever seen a dead person.'
The eerie cadaver still has teeth, some hair on his scalp, veins beneath the leathery skin and a penis. It can be seen - in the flesh - at the village of Kampehl, about 40 miles north-west of Berlin. And there's plenty more where that came from in Ghosthunter - an exhibition (and book) which showcases the results of Marsden's recent year-long journey among the 'undead', beginning in the wild landscapes of southern Ireland and continuing through the British Isles, France and Germany to the mountainous terrain of Count Dracula's Transylvania.
Marsden matches darkly poetic imagery with deliciously Gothic tales to send shivers down your spine: take the story behind the Naked Knight - one Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz, born 1651 - a tyrannical abuser of women who fathered over 50 children. His speciality was the droit de seigneur - a feudal custom that allowed a lord to sleep with a peasant girl on the night of her wedding. One night, a young virgin dared to resist him and he retaliated by beating her fiance to death. The girl took him to court but von Kahlbutz used his aristocratic powers to escape justice, swearing that if he really was the murderer 'then shall the good Lord never let my body rot'. He died in 1702 and in 1794, during church restorations, his body was unearthed - unblemished, and guilty as sin.
'Ghosthunter' at The Special Photographers' Company, 21 Kensington Park Rd, W11 (071-221 3489) to 26 Nov.
'The Journal of a Ghosthunter' (Little Brown, pounds 16.99) (Photograph omitted)
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