Eight minutes and twenty seconds into the video (click on the image to view), Paul Adams makes the following astonishing claim:
"What we do know in the 1960s is that Highgate Cemetery was being utilised as a source for occult supplies in the form of stolen skulls and other body parts during the period of 1962 at the latest. In that year famous war photographer Don McCullin composed this astonishing photograph [a black and white image of a bearded man between two skulls is shown on the screen] of a local character, a man he knew by the name of Welch. Now according to interviews he's given over the years, Welch was heavily into black magic, and other contemporary sources confirmed that he was also involved in a small and highly secretive body-snatching ring operating in both Highgate and Kensal Green cemeteries."
The image attributed to Don McCullin emulates a photograph Seán Manchester took of M J Welch some time prior to McCullin. Our concern, however, is the appalling libel committed by Paul Adams' public allegation, which is known to be completely false. Seán Manchester found Welch an introverted and unusual person, but he was most certainly not "a source for occult supplies" and most definitely not "heavily into black magic." He would have treated such a thing and anyone involved in it with contempt. He became aware of David Farrant when the latter fed a false story about Welch, a name learned from another party, to a Hornsey Journal newspaper reporter by the name of Roger Simpson. This is where the "occult supplies" and "black magic" fabrications have their origin. The journalist realised he had been led up the garden path by Farrant and no story was ever published. Indeed, it is from this point, partly due to the manufactured nonsense fed to them, that the Hornsey Journal started to gather incriminating evidence against David Farrant.
It should be added that Paul Adams is a close friend and supporter of David Farrant who is seated to Adams' left on the stage in the video. This is the context of the defamation. Farrant, of course, was found guilty of graveyard vandalism, tomb desecration and black magic at Highgate Cemetery in 1974 and, together with other offences, was sentenced to four years and eight months imprisonment.
M J Welch is a name that crops up in The Vampire Hunter's Handbook (Gothic Press, 1997) as someone involved at the outset in an informal group researching strange phenomena in the early 1960s. Welch himself was a sceptic who held no beliefs and dismissed all practices, whether black magic or religious, in equal measure. In other words, he was an atheist who had no time for supernaturalism. He was, however, a student of taxidermy who also studied anatomy and osteology. His collection of preserved animals and bones of all sorts was considerable. His knowledge helped determine whether something was human, animal or other when certain discoveries were made.
Being such a sceptic, and therefore unlikely to be impressionable, was also a useful control to have present when examining alleged haunted areas. Seán Manchester was introduced to him by a mutual friend who was an an enthusiastic researcher with an open mind and part of the same group.
Fifteen and a half minutes into the video, Paul Adams mentions the British Occult Society and falsely attributes its formation to David Farrant. In fact, the British Occult Society were among the first to expose Farrant as a publicity-seeking nuisance from 1970 onward. When Farrant fraudulently usurped the British Occult Society's name in the media the B.O.S. were equally quick to have retractions published. Adams alleges that this "involvement" of Farrant's led to him investigating the remains of a black magic ritualism at Highgate Cemetery. A picture is then screened of a Highgate mausoleum containing strange symbols. This was one of a number of photographs successfully used by the Crown in the summer of 1974 to find David Farrant guilty of tomb desecration and black magic. Farrant is then heard describing the picture as "proof of Satanists using Highgate Cemetery."
Yet it was Farrant who was jailed after the charge was proved to the satisfaction of a jury that he was responsible for this very satanic outrage. A series of further images from the inside of the mausoleum are shown in the video which carefully omits a photograph taken at the same time by Farrant of a completely naked Martine de Sacy in a ceremonial pose before satanic symbols.
Farrant apologist and flunkie Redmond McWilliams attempts to talk about the Highgate Vampire, the British Occult Society and Readers' Letters in the Hampstead & Highgate Express in early 1970. We say "attempts" because the sound quality is so abysmal and McWilliams' reading skills - he is reading from a prepared script so that the audience receive propaganda as though they are attending a cult's indoctrination session - leaves an awful lot to be desired. A worse and more boring speaker would be difficult to imagine. That said, David Farrant would certainly give him a run for his money.
Seán Manchester's name is curiously bleeped out on the soundtrack, but those attending will have heard it clearly enough. That same audience were misinformed about the British Occult Society, an organisation which opposed Farrant's activities from the moment he entered the public arena and distanced itself from him immediately, and the truth about the article "Does A Wampyr Walk In Highgate?" which title Redmond McWilliams predictably mispronounced ("wampyr" sounds phonetically the same as "vam-pyre"). Furthermore, reference is made by McWilliams to letters written to the Hampstead & Highgate Express by readers, but, of course, he fails to mention that Farrant wrote quite a number of them, using the names and addresses of acquaintances and friends.
David Farrant's own letter to the same newspaper is projected onto the screen behind the speakers in doctored form. The very revealing last paragraph of his letter has been expurgated from the text.
A blundering, amateurish start to the so-called Highgate Vampire Symposium where even the sound of Seán Manchester's name sends such shivers down their spines that they felt obliged to censor it.
To view the video, click on the image of Redmond McWilliams at the top of the page.
To read some facts relating to McWilliams' prepared drone of a monologue, click on the image below of Seán Manchester, captioned "President, British Occult Society," from a Thames Television programme broadcast on 13 March 1970, where he spoke about the Highgate Vampire case.
