"During our final session of the day, we invited panel and audience members alike to share their questions and perspectives upon the nature of the Highgate entity. We were joined by John Fraser of The Society for Psychical Research and The Ghost Club, founder of ground breaking radio show Mind Set Central Gareth Davies (who flew all the way from Los Angeles!) and esoteric author and co-host of Keeping the Paranormal Friendly Andy Mercer. We were also graced with the presence of two witnesses to the entity, who were brave enough to share their experiences in public before a live audience, and to them we would like to extend enormous gratitude." - Della/Anna (14 February 2016)
Three words describe the line up of speakers at the Farrant organised Highgate Vampire Symposium of July 2015: dull as ditchwater. Even if just one of them had an engaging personality that was likeable, or could entertain those present with some vestige of wit and intelligence, the fact remains that none were blessed with an iota of knowledge about vampires. They were all hand-picked, of course, for precisely that reason, ie their established prejudice against the existence of such things.
John Frazer is a perfect example of this. He is heard blurting his ill-informed nonsense early on in the final part of the symposium on video (which can be viewed by clicking on the images on this page).
Frazer absurdly states that vampires are not part of our culture which would explain, he posits, why the only cases in the British Isles he has ever heard about are the Croglin Grange Vampire in Cumbria and the Highgate Vampire in London. The reason he is not familiar with more cases is due to him not studying or researching vampires. Like the remainder of those chosen to speak at the symposium, he is not a vampirologist or vampire expert, which some might find strange given the topic supposedly under discussion, ie the Highgate Vampire. Needless to say, it wasn't discussed beyond dismissing it out of hand. Everything other than vampirism was tediously trotted out to explain away the occurrences in and around Highgate Cemetery up until the early 1970s.
The English term "vampire" was probably derived (via French vampyre) from the German wampyr, in turn thought to be derived in the early eighteenth century from the Serbian вампир/vampir. The Serbian form has parallels in virtually all Slavic languages: Bulgarian вампир (vampir), Czech and Slovak upír, Polish wąpierz, and (perhaps East Slavic-influenced) upiór, Russian упырь (upyr'), Belarusian упыр (upyr), Ukrainian упирь (upir'), from Old Russian упирь (upir'). Many of these languages have also borrowed forms such as "vampir/wampyr" subsequently from the West; these are distinct from the original local words for the creature. The exact etymology is unclear. Among the proposed proto-Slavic forms are ǫpyrь and ǫpirь. Like its possible cognate that means "bat" (Czech netopýr, Slovak netopier, Polish nietoperz, Russian нетопырь / netopyr' - a species of bat), the Slavic word might contain a Proto-Indo-European root for "to fly." An older theory is that the Slavic languages have borrowed the word from a Turkic term for "witch" (eg Tatar ubyr). Records of vampirism in the British Isles reach back a thousand years, and I would refer John Frazer to Historia Rerum Anglicarum by William of Newburgh (1136-1208) where accounts of the undead who stray beyond their grave in such places as Buckinghamshire and Berwick are given in significant detail.
None of which was of any interest to the organisers and invited speakers at the Highgate Vampire Symposium in July 2015 where the most they could offer was a "ghost" and a phoney one at that!
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