Not the Vampire Theory (Part 2)

(Click on image to view video)

The second part of the Symposium's supposed coverage of the vampire theory descends into a tissue of lies from the onset with Paul Adams coaxing David Farrant to tell all about an early witness recounted in Peter Underwood's anthology The Vampire's Bedside Companion by Seán Manchester and in even greater detail in The Highgate Vampire by the same author, Seán Manchester. An image of the witness, Elżbieta Wojdyla, published illegally at the Symposium for the audience but not in the video, can be seen below. Farrant's rambling, unsubstantiated claims are interspersed by rebuttals.

One minute and forty seconds into Part 2 of what is really not the vampire theory, Farrant alleges:

"I needed the girl's address that appeared in Peter Underwood's book, The Vampire's Bedside Companion, I can never pronounce her second name. Is it 'Wojdyla'? She's Polish. So I got this [unidentified] friend of mine to 'phone up her parents and it was either the mother of the father, I can't remember which way 'round it was. She said she wanted to speak to Elizabeth. For example, suppose it was her father, he said 'I can't speak English' and passed her to Elizabeth's mother who spoke really good English. And said, 'I'm sorry but I'll give you her work [telephone] number."

FACT: Elżbieta Wojdyla's father spoke excellent English. Indeed, considerably better than Farrant's stammered assault on English grammar. Her mother was not English. Neither was she Polish. Her accent was quite strong; probably stronger than that of her husband. They were warned about Farrant when they were both alive and were asked if anyone had ever contacted them as Farrant describes. (He has made this claim in the past). They stated unequivocally that they had not been contacted.

"My friend 'phoned and actually spoke to Elizabeth - she was very surprised - and said 'I'm looking for the address of Seán Manchester.' Elizabeth said, 'I'm sorry, I don't know. He used to live not many streets away from me, but I don't actually know the address.' And my friend said, 'Well, I thought you might do because I saw a picture of you, and I contacted the publishers and managed to trace your address. That's how I got your 'phone number and your mother gave me your work address'."

FACT: At the time that Seán Manchester and Elżbieta Wojdyla lived as close as anything being attributed in this fabricated conversation she visited him at that address and would have obviously known it. At the time Farrant claims her parents were contacted by his unnamed friend, Elżbieta Wojdyla was not living with them and her actual address was some distance away from where they lived. The publishers (Leslie Frewin Books and, later, Coronet) had absolutely no information about Elżbieta Wojdyla and could not have possibly disclosed her telephone number. Even Peter Underwood did not have any personal details of this kind about her. Only Seán Manchester did. It should also be added that Elżbieta Wojdyla's parent's telephone number was unlisted (ex-directory).

"[Elizabeth] said she hadn't seen Peter Underwood's book, and when it was described to her, and the caption read out, she burst out laughing. My friend asked her, 'What about those vampire marks on your neck?' [Elizabeth] said, 'Oh that was Seán just playing a joke."

FACT: When the paperback edition appeared in the year following the first edition's publication, Elżbieta Wojdyla was spoken to by a national newspaper when they reviewed the vampire anthology. She supported what had happened to her, as she did when interviewed much closer to the time. 

Click on the book in question (below) on which cover her image from the 1960s is visible, and listen to her own testimony in person, fifty-five seconds into the video True Horror: Evidence of Vampires:

One minute and thirty-seven seconds into the same video, Elżbieta Wojdyla can be heard saying:"One day I woke. I went downstairs, and there were two lumps on my neck. They weren't lumps. They were like pin holes." In the full interview recording (available on CD), Elżbieta Wojdyla tells of nightly visitations and specks of blood appearing on her pillow after such nightmarish experiences. Her brother even asked if she had been bitten by a vampire when the marks became more prominent; indeed, developed into open punctures.

Farrant claims she told his "friend" that the marks were Seán Manchester "just playing a joke." Listen to the brief extract from Elżbieta Wojdyla's recorded testimony from 1969 again. Then decide whether it was "just a joke."

Seven minutes into the video we hear from Patricia Langley who collaborates with Farrant's fabrications to the point of making up ones of her own. She is frequently described by Farrant as the "secretary" of his "British Psychic and Occult Society," which he invented circa 1983 after being repeatedly exposed in the media as having fraudulently hijacked the nomenclature of the British Occult Society, one of the first organisations to publicly expose Farrant as an inveterate charlatan and  impostor.

"About 2003 to 2004, when I began researching this case, I had a friend, I still have him, I still know him. His name is Roger [surname bleeped out on the video], and he is a computer scientist. In the 1960s [when Patricia Langley herself was a young child; she was barely ten when the case first hit the headlines in the following decade], he was studying computer science at the University of London and my friend Roger was into the vampire scene, the vampire sphere. And the sphere, the whole paranormal was something he was into and is still into. And he came into contact with Mr Manchester and became a good friend of his. And Roger, in 2004, told me when I was researching, 'Do you know about the film that was made?' And I said, 'Well, I know of it. Can you tell me about it?' And he said, 'Well, yeah, I can tell you about it because he invited me and a few other students that were studying at the University of London to go to a screening at his house one Saturday evening and this Jacqueline was there laying on a few nibbles, and drinks and things, and they settled down to watch this film, The Vampire Exhumed."

FACT: Seán Manchester wrote a manuscript, later a screenplay, in 1979 that he gave the title The Vampire Exhumed. A French art house film was made soon afterwards with an independent director, starring the French film actress Sylvaine Charlet who was a very close personal friend of Seán Manchester. The film was titled Le Vampire Exhumé. This was made professionally by a French production company at the turn of the 1980s. Seán Manchester did not meet a computer scientist by the name of "Roger" and had no contact with any students at the University of London. Nor did he entertain this mythical "Roger" and his student friends, or indeed anyone else, in the way described.

"And this Vampire Exhumed was the story of a vampire hunter who chases out a vampire, seeks out a vampire, in Highgate Cemetery. Made in colour, but it had no sound. It was full colour, but it didn't have any sound. Mr Manchester on film was playing both the vampire hunter and the vampire. And so I said, 'Well, this is the second independent case of the film actually having been seen by someone other than David [Farrant]  who saw it with others, and for which Mr Manchester categorically denied it. And Roger then revealed some quite good technical details about the film. He said, or he offered to me, details about the decaying scene of the vampire. What it was, Mr Manchester covered himself in flour, wet flour on his face, let it dry and after a little while it dried and fans were used and a hot breeze was used to blow the flour from his face so it looked as if his skin and the muscles and everything of the vampire's face and body was disintegrating. And I knew at that time Mr Manchester was a very good photographer. Very adept in technical effects of this kind. And Roger told me that this is how the effects of the vampire decomposing were achieved."

FACT: This is the steadily evolving account that owes its origin entirely to David Farrant who has even claimed that images of the vampire corpse in The Highgate Vampire were taken from this non-existent film. "Roger," of course, will never come forward to be identified because he does not exist. Langley claims that she "knew at that time" that Seán Manchester was "a very good photographer"and "very adept in technical effects of this kind." In fact, Seán Manchester was a portrait photographer with his own studio and a permanent staff of five people, but he did not have any expertise in ciné film, much less technical effects using ciné film. How would Langley know such a thing? She would have been practically a babe-in-arms at the time. Farrant is her exclusive source.

"When I put this to Mr Manchester in my research - it wasn't just David I interviewed, I did eventually ask for an interview with Mr Manchester and I did put these points to him in 2004 - not only did he categorically deny that this film exists, existed, but [he] told me I was all wrong, a complete liar, that I was a member of Farrant's evil cabal, and so on."

FACT: Seán Manchester has never spoken to Patricia Langley and has never discussed anything to do with the Highgate Vampire case with her. She did not interview him. The whole thing is fabricated. Langley was born in 1960, and was therefore still in junior school when the Highgate Vampire case first hit the headlines. She is a self-proclaimed witch, spiritualist, medium and number one fan of Farrant whose phoney witchcraft and pseudo-occultism has been exposed many times by investigative journalists and the law courts. The latter saw fit to sentence him to a term of almost five years’ imprisonment for crimes associated with his publicity-seeking behaviour at Highgate Cemetery in the early 1970s where he threatened witnesses in the case of his demented and perverted associate John Pope, a self-proclaimed Satanist found guilty of sexual assault on a boy.

What Langley describes as her “casebook” comprises fifty or so stapled pages bearing Farrant’s address and self-styled imprint “British Psychic and Occult Society” as the work’s publisher. The publishing address is Farrant’s attic bed-sitting room in London’s Muswell Hill Road. The copy we have seen bears a front cover containing a stolen image, as does the rear cover which displays a copyright protected photograph of Seán Manchester. Inside (on page 47 near the pamphlet’s conclusion) is another stolen image reproduced without consent from page 182 of Seán Manchester’sThe Highgate Vampire. No photograph can be found of Langley, who opts to be known as “Patsy.”

Farrant apologist Gareth Medway provides the Introduction to Langely’s stapled effort. He is the only person willing to lend his name to the printed pages and quickly runs out of steam reprinting the same invective we have seen dozens of times before in Farrant’s malicious tracts that concentrate on pursuing his principal obsession. Medway, an apologist for Left-hand Path occultists and sundry diabolists, also has an axe to grind with Seán Manchester. Like Patricia Langley, he has never had contact with Seán Manchester, but is a very close friend of Farrant with whom he has conducted publicity stunts involving an illicit, albeit phoney, “occult ritual” over a private grave in April 2005.

Patsy Langley’s little “casebook” is a clear attempt to make money off the success of Seán Manchester’s The Highgate Vampire, and she is reliant on an ex-convict waging a personal vendetta.

Twenty minutes and twenty seconds into the video, David Farrant makes the following claim:

"A person also on the programme [Today, Thames Television, 13 March 1970], being interviewed by Sandra Harris stepped forward and he said, 'No, it's definitely not a ghost. It's a vampire. And, as if to emphasise this point, as he said that he pulled a large wooden stake out of his trousers and produced a very large silver-plated crucifix."

FACT: No such words were uttered by Seán Manchester, as examination of the transmission will confirm, and no "large wooden stake [came] out of his trousers." Nor did he at any time "produce a very large silver-plated crucifix." At least, not in the Today programme of March 1970. Farrant did, however, produce a large cross and stake from inside his trousers, as confirmed four minutes and forty seconds into a video of him reconstructing for BBC the night in August 1970 when he went vampire hunting. Seán Manchester was also asked to demonstrate a Christian exorcism, as had taken place earlier in the year at Highgate Cemetery, and elucidate on the ancient practice of impalement, which he did by revealing a small wooden stake. Click on image below to view video: