SHE'S a white witch dressed in black, loves embattled bats, and she's making a real go out of Gothic

Melanie Metcalfe (above), 29, whose Gothic shop Noctule came to life in Gillygate, York, with the help of a £2,000 loan and a lot of cape-swirling, top-hat doffing finesse, is pitching for the North Yorkshire Livewire title.

Noctule, by the way, is a kind of bat, reflecting Melanie's status as a fully-licensed bat worker who runs a small "bat hospital" facility at her home in Leconfield for the East Yorkshire Bat Group. White witches are sorcerers for good rather than their broomstick-bearing evil sisters.

When she isn't tending to wonky-winged pipistrelles, she is hard at work marketing and selling the kind of black Victorian-style Hammer Horror flowing dresses, frock coats and velvet, silk-lined capes which are food and drink to voguish well-garbed Goths.

She also sells pointed boots, tight black trews, crinolines, and hooped corsets (which use steel rather than whalebone) along with jewellery and accessories hinting at pagan and alternative sub-cultures

It is exactly a year since she set up shop - she celebrated Noctule's birthday on Saturday - and it is the culmination of a dream she has had ever since she was a child when she admired her sister who dressed in 1980s groovy Goth style. "She shed it, I didn't," says raven-haired Melanie who admits to being auburn.

Now Melanie's five-year-old daughter, Josephine, is showing definite signs of becoming a Goth-ling. "She loves the style," she says.

Updated: 10:46 Tuesday, February 26, 2002