Mysterious Death of Foxes

Highgate Vampire

"On Friday, 27 February 1970, the front page headline of the Hampstead and Highgate Express asked does a vampire walk in Highgate? There would be no going back. The die had been cast." (Seán Manchester, The Highgate Vampire, Gothic Press, p. 70)

The banner headline "Does a wampyr walk in Highgate?" appeared across the front page of Hampstead and Highgate's most prestigious newspaper in February 1970. The editor himself had written the piece after meeting privately with the president of the British Occult Society and founder of the then fledgling Vampire Research Society. He allowed himself to get slightly carried away by introducing the journalistic embellishment "King Vampire of the Undead" - a term that Seán Manchester did not employ, as stated by him on page 72 of The Vampire Hunter's Handbook, but what else did the editor get wrong that day? Apparently more than you might imagine!

After warning that a vampire might be active in Highgate Cemetery, the article goes on to correctly describe Seán Manchester as a photographer (he had run his own photographic studio throughout the previous decade) and the president of the British Occult Society (a position he held from 21 June 1967 to 8 August 1988 when the BOS was dissolved). He is then quoted accurately enough before reference is made to a King Vampire of the Undead which is not attributed to him in actual quotes but attributed nonetheless.

A very important residence in Highgate somehow manages to transform into a different house in London's West End. For house "in the West End" one should actually substitute Ashurst House, which once stood at the western end of the site now occupied by Highgate Cemetery, as would have been explained by Seán Manchester who told the editor at the time that Ashurst House was sold and leased to a succession of tenants of whom one was a mysterious gentleman from the Continent who arrived in the wake of the vampire epidemic that had its origins in south-east Europe. This is not quite the same as what was reported and, of course, does not have anything like the same sensationalist impact as "King Vampire from Wallachia" which Draculesque adornment the newspaper clearly preferred.

There then follows reference to a group of Satanists attempting to"resurrect the King Vampire." This time the reference to a King Vampire is included in quotes even though the term was not uttered.

Next we are misinformed that the British Occult Society had "no formal membership" but instead corresponded with "50 to 100 interested people." Completely untrue. The BOS had a formal membership of over three hundred people with at least one hundred actively involved in ongoing research and investigation.

Then we learn that the British Occult Society "believes in countering magic by magic" when all that was said is that the supernatural will not submit to scientific methods to measure and prove its existence.

The newspaper correctly states that some BOS members had "spent nights in Highgate Cemetery" which was obviously for the purpose of observing the strange nocturnal goings-on in the place as had been reported by people in the previous decade and was still being reported up to the time of the article.

Readers are then offered in quotes "the traditional and approved manner" by which folk must rid themselves of this hideous pestilence without it being properly clarified that this is how clergy dealt with the problem in centuries past and was not on the agenda as far as the British Occult Society/Vampire Research Society was concerned with regard to Highgate Cemetery.

That Montague Summers' books bore some influence on Seán Manchester's understanding of vampirism is mentioned in tandem with the suggestion that Bram Stoker's novel is based on fact. That Stoker was influenced by genuine cases and read about real vampires before writing Dracula is not in doubt, but the clumsy journalism of the Hampstead and Highgate Express clouds what is trying to be conveyed by the man they are interviewing in the pursuit (presumably) of economising on words for the sake of space.

Finally, we come to a quote attributed to "one of Britain's busiest exorcists, the Rev John Neil-Smith" (they couldn't even get his name right - it was actually Christopher Neil-Smith) by attributing to him the following: "I believe the whole idea of vampires is probably a novelistic embellishment." He said nothing of the sort.

The Reverend Christopher Neil-Smith (1920-1995) was an Anglican priest, originally from Hampstead, most celebrated for his practice of exorcism and his paranormal interests.[1] Like Seán Manchester, whom he knew, Reverend Neil-Smith believed that evil is an external reality and should be treated as such rather than as an abstract concept.

A vicar at St Saviour's Anglican Church at Eton Road in Hampstead, London, he performed more than three thousand exorcisms in Britain since 1949. In 1972, the Bishop of London authorised him to exorcise demons according to his own judgement.[2] Two years earlier, he was misquoted in the Hampstead and Highgate Express, 27 February 1970, saying that vampires are "probably a novelistic embellishment," but, as Seán Manchester subsequently pointed out, Reverend Neil-Smith claimed to have actually exorcised vampires, as confirmed in a book written by Daniel Farson and Angus Hall which records:

"Yet not far from Highgate Cemetery lives a man who takes reports of vampirism seriously. The Reverend Christopher Neil-Smith is a leading British exorcist and writer on exorcism. He can cite several examples of people who have come to him for help in connection with vampirism. 'The one that particularly strikes me is that of a woman who showed me the marks on her wrists which appeared at night, where blood had definitely been taken. And there was no apparent reason why this should have occurred. They were marks like those of an animal. Something like scratching.' He denies this might have been done by the woman herself. She came to him when she felt her blood was being sucked away, and after he performed an exorcism the marks disappeared. Another person who came from South America 'had a similar phenomenon, as if an animal had sucked away his blood and attacked him at night.' Again, the Reverend Neil-Smith could find no obvious explanation. There is a third case of a man who, after his brother died, had the strange feeling that his lifeblood was being slowly sucked away from him. 'There seems to be evidence this was so,' says Neil-Smith. 'He was a perfectly normal person before, but after the brother's death he felt his life was being sucked away from him as if the spirit of his brother was feeding on him. When the exorcism was performed he felt a release and new life, as if new blood ran in his veins.' Neil-Smith rules out the possibility of a simple psychological explanation for this, such as a feeling of guilt by the survivor toward his brother. 'There was no disharmony between them. In fact he wasn't clear for some time that it (the vampire) was his brother.' The clergyman describes a vampire as 'half animal, half human,' and firmly refutes the suggestion that such things are all in the mind. 'I think that's a very naive interpretation,' he says. 'All the evidence points to the contrary'." [6]

The Reverend Christopher Neil-Smith, contrary to editor Gerald Isaaman's false attribution of 27 February 1970 in a local Hampstead newspaper, concluded that there really are such a things as vampires.

References:

1. a b Beeson, Trevor (2006). "The Reverend Christopher Neil-Smith". Priests And Prelates: The Daily Telegraph Clerical Obituaries. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0826481000.

2. Sands, Kathleen R. Demon possession in Elizabethan England. Praeger Publishers. "At around the same time, Father Christopher Neil-Smith, an Anglican priest, received a standing license from the Bishop of London authorizing him to exorcise freely according to his own judgment." 

3. Neil-Smith, Christopher. Praying for daylight: God through modern eyes. P. Smith.

4. Cramer, Marc. The devil within. W.H. Allen. "with the noted exorcist, the Rev. Christopher Neil-Smith, author of an anecdotal book entitled The Exorcist and the Possessed."

5. Spence, Lewis. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology.Kessinger Publishing.

6. Mysterious Monsters (Aldus Books, 1978) by Daniel Farson and Angus Hall. 

Ghostly Walks in Highgate?

(click on images immediately above to view the  BBC television programme)

Paul Adams

Paul Adams in his study at his Luton home in Bedfordshire.

Seán Manchester's comment on Paul Adams' Written in Blood:

"I allowed Paul Adams use of my copyright material concomitant to certain conditions being met. These were laid out to him on 13 December 2013. He showed no objection and, indeed, accepted my stipulations; namely that where photographs had previously been published in other books the relevant book's title would be identified to that effect below his own caption for the image in question. This he did with the photograph of me that was first published in Peter Underwood's Exorcism!(1990). This was done because he clearly did not want to give offence to Peter Underwood.

"The montage picture of press coverage that was originally published in the first edition of The Highgate Vampire (BOS, 1985), however, failed to receive the same treatment by the author ofWritten in Blood who clearly had no qualms with regard to the same offence being meted out to me. His caption merely identifies me as the copyright holder, ignoring the fact that the image originally appeared in the first edition of my own book, as agreed between us in 2013.

"There is much else Paul Adams reneged on in Written in Blood. Certain remarks I had been led to believe had been corrected or deleted mysteriously reappeared in his final draft before there was time to amend it; leaving in unjustified slights and minor errors which were understood by me last year to have been expurgated.

"It was always obvious to me that this was never going to be a level playing field or, indeed, a completely impartial account because what the author was perfectly willing to write about me in earlier drafts he was unwilling to attribute to my adversary when, for example, it was conclusively demonstrated that an incident originally in his draft manuscript concerning something in a television interview applied to the other party even though it had been attributed to me. I provided video footage of the television programme in question, after which the reference to me was deleted. What was telling, however, is that the same material was not printed about my adversary who had behaved exactly as had been attributed by Paul Adams to me. That notwithstanding, I shudder to imagine what the outcome could have been had I not provided my assistance by reading his early drafts and offering significant amendments backed with evidence.

"Curiously enough, despite my having given Paul Adams accurate information on dates, such like and so forth, he still managed to get some of them wrong. There really is no excuse for this. In his book, for example, he gives the year of my ordination (he was actually referring to my episcopal consecration) as 1993. In fact, I was ordained/consecrated as a bishop in 1991. He also misrepresents a character in my novel Carmel (Gothic Press, 2000) in a way I find bewildering, ie he describes a principal character, Lord Mamuciam, as "a swashbuckling bishop" when he is nothing of the sort. Moreover, he offers the date April 25th as the night on which a company of publicity-hungry people engaged in a witchcraft stunt at Kirklees in Yorkshire. It was actually 20 April 2005.

"Had Paul Adams honoured his word on our agreement concerning the montage picture of press coverage I would not be having this conversation, but he did not; just as did not honour his word on what purported to be his final draft forwarded for my perusal, which it was not. The final draft reached me many months later when the book was already at the printers and could not possibly be amended. 

"Written in Blood (The History Press, 2014) could have been so much better if care had been taken with the essential facts; a less sloppy attitude had been adopted toward detail where the Highgate and Kirklees material is concerned; and absolute impartiality meted out to those named in connection with the Highgate Cemetery goings-on. The book, however, is thankfully not malicious."

Bishop Seán Manchester

Satanic Activity

David Farrant being arrested in Monken Hadley churchyard in 1972 alongside

Victoria Jervis. He claimed at the time he was engaged in a necromantic ritual.

"Beyond the Highgate Vampire was the first contemporary account to expose the activities of Satanists in Highgate Cemetery, which may have been responsible for activating - or perhaps re-activating - a terrifying demonic entity which lurked in the environs." - David Farrant (Facebook page where he promotes his stapled pamphlet Beyond the Highgate Vampire)

David Farrant's claim that his pamphlet is the "first contemporary account to expose the activities of Satanists in Highgate Cemetery" ignores the fact that Seán Manchester's book The Highgate Vampire: The Infernal World of the Undead Unearthed at London's Famous Highgate Cemetery and Environs had already exposed the activities of Satanists in Highgate Cemetery some six years earlier, as had an article featuring Seán Manchester in the Hornsey Journal, 28 August 1970, twenty-one years prior to the first appearance of Farrant's self-published Beyond the Highgate Vampire.

Ironically, Farrant has not only stated a great many times that he does not accept the existence of vampires but also that he totally rejects the existence of demons. He has also admitted in recorded interviews (The Devil's Fool CD) that he would be perceived by most people to be a Satanist. 

Farrant said about Satanism that he was "neither one thing or the other," but has openly worshipped Lucifer, as seen four minutes into this video clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlCSrqSsaJw

The naked female is Colette Sully aka Colette Gee whom Farrant married soon after his release from prison in 1976. She became his second wife. They eventually divorced and he did not remarry.

In the summer of 1970, both vampiric and satanic outrages were occurring at London's Highgate Cemetery, culminating in the press learning of Seán Manchester's secret exorcism of a tomb:

Such exorcisms were not uncommon and a theory about Satanists summoning an erstwhile dormant vampire had already become established in some quarters. This exorcism was reconstructed two months later by the BBC for their television documentary programme 24 Hours, 15 October 1970.

"The best advice I can give is to avoid involvement in the dark occult, ie Left-hand Path occultism, and do not seek the malign supernatural. Leave well alone. The Devil can tempt us, but he cannot touch us directly unless we open the door and let him in. We should not fear Satan and his demonic horde, but neither should we look for him in the day to day happenings of our life. There are positive aspects of the supernatural such as healing, miracles and visions. Phenomena that once existed with regard to places on any proposed Highgate Vampire tour list no longer afflict those places today, and all one can do is visit areas where something is alleged to have once occurred in the past, and very well might have done so back then. But nothing vampiric or demonic remains today.

"This is certainly true of Highgate Cemetery where a demonic contamination was in evidence over forty years ago, but no longer is there evidence of that manifestation at any of the places associated with the case which was finally closed in 1982. The neo-Gothic mansion was demolished back in the 1970s, and Highgate Cemetery has been regularly maintained and patrolled by the Friends of Highgate Cemetery (FoHC) since the graveyard was relinquished by the private owners, the London Cemetery Company, during the time of the terrifying supernatural occurrences. These reached back many years. The eleven acre woodland graveyard that once comprised part of the Great Northern London Cemetery where a secondary contagion occurred, linked to Highgate, was built on by property developers soon after the unearthly incidents and exorcism of same took place. Little remains to visit and certainly nothing directly associated with the infestation itself."

(Seán Manchester, from his writings regarding the occult.)

Symposium

There is a fourteenth century saying that "opportunity makes the thief," and David Farrant saw his opportunity in the early 1970s and stole other people's identities, titles and the name of an extant organisation (the British Occult Society), but he was found out and punished with a significant term of imprisonment. However, subsequent generations who know little if anything about Farrant's infamous history of opportunistic publicity-seeking and theft might be forgiven for knowing no better when confronted with an endless stream of pernicious propaganda from Farrant and his flunkies.

One month ago witnessed what Farrant believed to be his coup de grâce. It might have proven to be his undoing if anyone could have bought tickets to put questions openly to him. But he was never going to allow that to happen. Not only are all the speakers his hand-picked acquaintances, but every one of them support his derision and discrimination against the traditionalist Christian exorcist Seán Manchester.

Parasites have always been a phenomenon where the Highgate Vampire case is concerned, but those who don't believe in demonology or vampirology holding a Symposium to exploit Seán Manchester's work and then devoting less than 15% of the time to a debate about the vampire itself while only inviting Seán Manchester's detractors to contribute to the event is laughable, or, at least, it would be if it wasn't so pitifully predictable.

What we had on July 19th was a bunch of self-proclaimed and self-styled "experts" discussing something they don't believe in and know absolutely nothing about. And that cost those attending £12.00 per ticket per person.

The word "symposium" means "a conference or meeting to discuss a particular subject."

But the Highgate Vampire was not the subject under discussion. Those invited to contribute to the Symposium were exclusively individuals who dismiss out-of-hand the very existence of vampires!

A sizeable percentage of those invited to talk were witches, mediums, spiritualists etc who do entertain the existence of ghosts, and most of the discussion concentrates on various ghost tales and theories.

Less than 75 minutes was given to discussing the Highgate Vampire in a Symposium lasting in excess of seven hours - and the remainder, when not debunking the supernatural via the ostension route, was more or less devoted to propping up the idea of some sort of ghostly apparition that we happen to know in Highgate's case was a hoax.

The one person definitely not heard talking about the Highgate Vampire at the Highgate Vampire Symposium was Seán Manchester, the author of The Highgate Vampire (British Occult Society, 1985; Gothic Press, 1991) and the man who led the investigation of the case from start to finish; someone, indeed, who has talked many times about the case on radio and television, and featured in scores of professional documentary films made over a period of four decades. His bestselling book is currently optioned for cinematic treatment, and, now into his seventies, he still shares his expertise with academic audiences at private venues.

"Although the programme makes this clear anyway, there is only one session which deals with Seán Manchester's narrative. ... I am aware that you are especially interested in Seán Manchester's version of events, and to avoid disappointment I should point out that the primary focus of the day is not Manchester. There will be debate about social and psychological angles on the Highgate phenomena, but not focussed upon the Manchester narrative." - Della Farrant (26 April 2015)

David Farrant was a figure of fun in and around Highgate in the late 1960s and the early 1970s up until his incarceration when his attention-seeking got out of control. Nobody viewed his publicity stunts as anything more than foolishness to attract attention to himself. There was only him. He had no members and only one associate in the form of John Pope from October 1973. Pope was the self-styled head of the Temples of Satan and successor to Aleister Crowley who, along with Farrant, attempted to raise demons when not delivering voodoo death dolls to people in the vicinity on Farrant's behalf. Though also a publicist and feeble-minded, Pope was genuinely involved in the occult on a depraved and demented level. Farrant was not and never has been. 

Farrant's modus operandi has always been to set into motion a circular set of circumstances and then step back as it gathers momentum under the steam of others who buy into it. Those contributing to the Symposium are some of these others who, wittingly or not, have entered into a pact with Farrant. The reward is publicity for what ever it is they want to be disseminated. Even though a pagan/witchcraft/occult bias can influence the more naive, it is largely the desire to step onto a publicity bandwagon which draws these people towards Farrant. What else could it be? You would have to be exceptionally dim to actually believe his paranormal claims, which he revises and contradicts from one year to the next. Those seriously engaged in witchcraft or the occult found him an extreme embarrassment during the period prior to 1982 when Farrant claimed to be both a "high priest of witchcraft" and an occultist, but only in the sense that he emulated each in a theatrical way.

People are generally fascinated by the Highgate Vampire case, but some want to take their interest to another level. Seán Manchester, who wrote his book The Highgate Vampire thirty years ago, is definitely not a publicity-seeker, avoids generating unnecessary sensation, and certainly provides no merry-go-round for obsessives and attention-seekers to board. Also, those who have exploited or written about the case in a book of their own will get no mileage out of Seán Manchester in the publicity stakes. He helped Paul Adams as a favour to Peter Underwood who pulled out of the project (Written in Blood). That, at least, prevented the work being less inaccurate as it might otherwise have been, and, as Seán Manchester has noted, there was nothing malicious in Adams' book, even though the final manuscript arrived too late for crucial corrections to be made. Paul Adams eventually threw in his lot with Farrant largely because he wanted the sort of sensationalist attention for his product that Farrant appears on the surface to offer. Paul Adams was chosen to compère the Symposium.

Apparent straight away is the hostility every one of the invited contributors harbour towards Seán Manchester. Some, eg Farrant lackey Redmond McWilliams, stalk and troll Seán Manchester daily.

David Farrant lights the fuse and then runs away when the sensationalism explodes, having achieved the publicity he craves. He acted like a vampire hunter during the months from March to October in 1970, which brough him coverage in local and national newspapers, television programmes and other people's books. This was largely due to his orchestrated arrest in August of that year. After which he disclaimed ever having believed in or hunted vampires. Two years later, he performed necromancy in a Barnet churchyard with Victoria Jervis and, again, arranged to be arrested with a local newspaper journalist at hand to take photographs of the arrest. Even the prosecution stated that he probably had the police alerted. The following year he raised demons with John Pope (pictured below with Farrant) and was arrested while in the process of summoning Pan alongside a naked Pope.

The incongruousness of John Pope standing in the altogether while Farrant, attired in an old mackintosh, waves a ritual dagger about in the air was completely lost on him. Police had nevertheless been alerted and the pair of them ended up in court with the guarantee of massive press coverage. By now Farrant had overstretched himself and the police had realised they were being used to bring him the sort of publicity only an arrest and court appearance would achieve. 

While in prison on even more serious charges, including threatening people with black magic (something Farrant did not deny), he wrote an article in 1975 for New Witchcraft magazine, issue 4, in which he boasted of summoning Satan in the dead of night at Highgate Cemetery. The naked girl assistant, believed to be Martine de Sacy, was never properly identified. A brief extract from Farrant's unedited and unaltered article follows:

"The intrinsic details regarding this part of the ceremony however, must remain secret; suffice it is to say here that the entity (in its now omniscient form) was to be magically induced by the ritual act of blood-letting, then brought to visible appearance through the use of the sex act. ... I disrobed the Priestess and myself and, with the consecrated blood, made the secret sigils of the Deity on her mouth, breast, and all the openings of her body. We then lay in the Pentagram and began love-making, all the time visualizing the Satanic Force so that it could - temporarily - take possession of our bodies."

Today Farrant denies he ever partook in Satanism, necromancy, black magic, and Left-hand Path occultism. Even so, it is interesting to examine the Symposium participants. Among them is someone who describes himself as a chaos magician (he spells it the Aleister Crowley way, ie"magickian") and necromancer; someone who describes himself as a monster-hunter and folklorist; someone else who describes himself as a Theosophist and initiated Gardnerian witch who lectures on shamanism and esoteric studies; an assortment of spiritualists who believe they are in touch with the dead; and somebody else who apparently researches and writes about The Friends of Hecate.*

* (In September 1981, the body of Jillian Matthew, a homeless schizophrenic was discovered, having been raped and strangled. In their 1987 book The Demonic Connection, authors Toyne Newton, Charles Walker and Alan Brown claimed the woods were used for rituals by a satanic cult calling itself The Friends of Hecate.)

It is difficult to imagine that anyone actually takes David Farrant seriously, but some obviously find him useful in a perverse sort of way, a sinister catalyst for getting ripples to appear on an erstwhile tranquil pond; thus enabling their own project to have a publicity platform. However, the very fact that Farrant is involved invariably acts as a double-edged sword and the damage his name will inflict on a project or a person far outweights any potential benefit.

Recommended reading:

David Farrant

"Beyond the Highgate Vampire was the first contemporary account to expose the activities of Satanists in Highgate Cemetery, which may have been responsible for activating - or perhaps re-activating - a terrifying demonic entity which lurked in the environs." - David Farrant

Farrant's claim that his pamphlet is the "first contemporary account to expose the activities of Satanists in Highgate Cemetery" ignores the fact that Seán Manchester's book The Highgate Vampire: The Infernal World of the Undead Unearthed at London's Famous Highgate Cemetery and Environs had already exposed the activities of Satanists in Highgate Cemetery some six years earlier, as had an article wriiten about Seán Manchester's exorcism at the graveyard in the Hornsey Journal, 28 August 1970, a massive twenty-one years prior to the first appearance of Farrant's self-published Beyond the Highgate Vampire pamphlet in 1991.

Ironically, Farrant has not only stated a great many times that he does not accept the existence of vampires but also that he totally rejects the existence of demons. He has also admitted in recorded interviews that he would be perceived by most people to be a Satanist. 

He has openly worshipped Lucifer, as seen four minutes into this video clip (the naked female is Colette Sully aka Colette Gee whom Farrant married soon after his release from prison in the 1970s. She was his second wife. They divorced after a short marriage. He did not remarry): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlCSrqSsaJw

Born on 23 January 1946, David Robert Donovan Farrant came to prominence in February 1970 when he wrote a letter to his local newspaper claiming to have had three sightings of a ghostly apparition as he passed by the gates of London's Highgate Cemetery.

Yet he told Andrew Gough (Arcadia, 12 December 2009); "For a start, my letter to the Ham and High in 1970 badly misquoted myself (not deliberately I concede). I did not say that I had seen the figure (ghost) ‘on three occassions’: I was describing a figure that I said ‘had been seen on at least three occasions’. This is true – it had. But on these occasions, the witnesses were other people whom I had witnessed by this time."

Is it really plausible that Farrant's letter was so monstrously altered by the editor of a highly respectable newspaper to mean something quite different to what he had actually written? Is it likely that Farrant would not have insisted on having such a tampered version corrected in the following week's issue if this had really happened? There is no record of him having asked for any such correction. There is no record of an amendment appearing even though his contact with that newspaper remained extant for the next few weeks. There are records of Farrant sticking with his personal "three sightings" account until October of that year at which point it suddenly reduced to "two sightings." Decades later it became just "one sighting."

This is what David Farrant actually wrote in the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 6 February 1970:

"On three occasions I have seen what appeared to be a ghost-like figure inside the gates at the top of Swains Lane. The first occasion was on Christmas Eve. The second sighting, a week later, was also brief. Last week, the figure appeared, only a few yards inside the gate. This time it was there long enough for me to see it much more clearly."

The next month Farrant stated to Today interviewer Sandra Harris on British television: "The last time I actually saw its face." Does this not suggest there was a time previous to the one he is referring to in that interview? Then there is the BBC's 24 Hours interview transmitted on 15 October 1970. Laurence Picethly’s interview with Farrant for BBC television was sandwiched between footage of the President of the British Occult Society that had been filmed at the society’s north London headquarters and on location at Highgate Cemetery. The man representing the British Occult Society was obviously not Farrant even though the latter would fraudulently adopt that title two years later. In fact, the British Occult Society had distanced itself from everything Farrant was doing as far back as March 1970. The interview Farrant gave in late 1970 is important, however, because there are no editors for him to blame for allegedly "altering" what he alleged. In the 1970 24 Hours programme the words are heard from his own mouth and there is no escaping them.

Laurence Picethly: “On August the seventeenth, Allan [known locally as ‘Allan’ - his correct name being ‘David’] Farrant decided to pay a midnight visit to the cemetery to combat the vampire once and for all. At the cemetery, Farrant was forced to enter by the back wall [footage shows Farrant entering via the rear of the cemetery], as he still does today. He armed himself with a cross and stake, and crouched between the tombstones, waiting. But that night police, on the prowl for vandals, discovered him. He was charged with being in an enclosed space for an unlawful purpose, but later the Clerkenwell magistrate acquitted him. Now, in spite of attempts by the cemetery owners to bar him, Farrant and his friends [no friends were discovered by the police or subsequently identified by Farrant] still maintain a regular vigil around the catacombs in hope of sighting either the vampire or a meeting of Satanists.”

David Farrant: “We have been keeping watch in the cemetery for … [pauses] … since my court case ended, and we still found signs of their ceremonies.”

Laurence Picethly: “Have you ever seen this vampire?”

David Farrant: “I have seen it, yes. I saw it last February, and saw it on two occasions.”

Laurence Picethly: “What was it like?”

David Farrant: “It took the form of a tall, grey figure, and it … [pauses] …seemed to glide off the path without making any noise.”

Farrant's interview ends at this point. It is reproduced above in its entirety. He was acquitted of the charge that had led to his arrest, it being that he was found in an enclosed area for an unlawful purpose. Highgate Cemetery is obviously not “an enclosed area” and that is all he was charged with in August 1970. The BBC report then returned to the President of the British Occult Society who had strongly advised against the behaviour which led to Farrant's arrest on an earlier television programme transmitted on 13 March 1970.

Three things are of significance in that BBC television interview from October 1970. The reconstructed footage of what Farrant was doing on the night of 17 August 1970 clearly shows him hunting a vampire with a rosary around his neck, a large cross in one hand and a sharpened wooden stake in the other hand. There is no ambiguity about what led to his arrest in this report where he is featured reconstructing what he was doing at the time of his arrest around midnight in Highgate Cemetery. The image above is taken from the 24 Hours programme as Farrant went through the motions of the actions which led to his arrest. The second thing of significance is that when Laurence Picethly asked whether Farrant had ever seen the vampire, Farrant did not attempt to correct the person interviewing him by saying it was something other than a vampire. Nor did he say that he did not believe in vampires, or that what he witnessed was not a vampire. Indeed, this section of the 24 Hours programme was titled Vampires. The third thing of significance is that when asked if he had seen the vampire Farrant responded: “I have seen it, yes. I saw it last February, and saw it on two occasions.” He clearly stated that he had two sightings of the vampire in early 1970, but in the interview he gave Andrew Gough he states that he had only one sighting and that this was in December 1969, not February 1970 as stated by him in his BBC television appearance some four decades prior.

Having seen Farrant's letter when it was published in the Hampstead & Highgate Express, Seán Manchester agreed to meet this correspondent at Highgate Cemetery so that Farrant could point out the spot where he allegedly sighted the supernatural phenomenon mentioned in his published letter. Seán Manchester was not impressed by Farrant, a scruffy individual who harped on about potential media coverage of the alleged "ghost" he claimed to have seen. Seán Manchester took the opportunity to warn against antics such as Farrant was considering when he was interviewed on Thames Television's Today programme, 13 March 1970, saying that the investigation of the phenomenon should be left to those who knew what they were doing. In his published letter of 6 February 1970, Farrant proclaimed: "I have no knowledge in this field and I would be interested if any other readers have seen anything of this nature."

Seán Manchester demonstrated on the television programme how such manifestations were traditionally despatched according to vampire lore and tradition. Five months later, ignoring the public warning issued by him that individuals should not take matters into their own hands in this way, Farrant was arrested at midnight in Highgate Cemetery by police who found in his possession a Christian cross and wooden stake. Farrant was alone and claimed to be in pursuit of the legendary vampire said to haunt Highgate Cemetery. Although he originally pleaded guilty, he later changed his plea to one of not guilty after being held on remand at Brixton Prison for the remainder of that month. Charged with being in an enclosed area for an unlawful purpose, he was eventually acquitted and released as Highgate Cemetery does not qualify as being an "enclosed area." The Daily Express, 19 August 1970, reported that Farrant told the police (as read out in court from his statement): "My intention was to search out the supernatural being and destroy it by plunging the stake [found in his possession when arrested by police on the night in question] in its heart."He later reconstructed what he was doing on the night of his arrest for BBC television's 24 Hours. While inside prison, Farrant had written to Seán Manchester to request support from the British Occult Society to which Farrant owed no connection. He was visited while on remand and told that the Society could not countenance his behaviour. Soon afterwards, Farrant began to falsely associate himself with the BOS, which immediately led to rebuttals appearing in various newspapers. It was only a matter of time before David Farrant began to fraudulently describe himself as the"president of the British Occult Society."

Readers letters to the Hampstead & Highgate Express in early 1970 included reports of a ghost wearing a top hat that had been seen in Swains Lane and just inside the gates at Highgate Cemetery. With the benefit of hindsight we now know that some of these letters bore the names and addresses of friends and acquaintances of Farrant. Phoney letters were sent to the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 13 February 1970, using the names and addresses of Farrant's friends Audrey Connely and Kenneth Frewin. Farrant wrote those letters in order to give his hoax some credibility. He used the names and addresses of friends with their consent. He used his close friend Nava Grunberg's address in Hampstead Lane, but her name was changed to a pseudonym. He also used Nava Grunberg, now adopting the nom de plume "Nava Arieli," when she used an address in Rosslyn Hill, Hampstead, belonging to a friend of hers. Residents and passers-by might have witnessed Farrant in his familiar black mackintosh pretending to be a ghost. It has since been confirmed that he wore an old grey topper and ghostly make-up to convince local people that the cemetery was haunted. Then Farrant heard tales of the legendary vampire in pubs he frequented and decided to board what he perceived to be a publicity bandwagon. The rest is history. The vampire sightings and experiences by others were genuine enough. Farrant was not. His part in the saga was utterly fraudulent. He pretended to be a "vampire hunter" for the next few months before turning his attention to malefic pseudo-occultism which guaranteed a far bigger return in the publicity stakes. This quickly led to criminal convictions which included indecency in Monken Hadley churchyard under the Ecclesiastic Courts Jurisdiction Act 1860. Victoria Jervis was also found guilty. Her revelations under oath when called as a witness during Farrant's Old Bailey trials two years later are damning, to say the least. This is what she said:

"I have tried to put most of what happened out of my mind. The false letters I wrote to a local paper were to stimulate publicity for the accused. I saw him almost every weekend in the second half of 1972 and I went to Spain with him for a fortnight at the end of June that same year. I was arrested with him in Monken Hadley Churchyard. That incident upset me very much. Afterwards, my doctor prescribed tranquillisers for me."

Facing David Farrant in court to address him, Victoria Jervis added:

"You have photographed me a number of times in your flat with no clothes on. One photograph was published in 1972 with a false caption claiming I was a member of your Society, which I never was."

On another occasion, she recalled, how she had written pseudonymously to a local newspaper at Farrant's request "to stimulate publicity for the accused."

Back in 1972 during the indecency case, "Mr P J Bucknell, prosecuting, said Mr Farrant had painted circles on the ground, lit with candles, and had told reporters and possibly the police of what he was doing. 'This appears to be a sordid attempt to obtain publicity,' he said." (Hampstead & Highgate Express, 24 November 1972).

Speaking at the April 1996 Fortean Times Convention, Maureen Speller commented: "The programme came up with ‘His investigations had far reaching and disturbing consequences’ which I said meant he’d been arrested a lot. Strangely enough, this is more or less what he said. God, I felt old being the only member of [my] group who could remember this nutter being arrested every few weeks.” 

“The wife of self-styled occult priest David Farrant told yesterday of giggles in the graveyard when the pubs had closed. ‘We would go in, frighten ourselves to death and come out again,’ she told an Old Bailey jury. Attractive Mary Farrant — she is separated from her husband and lives in Southampton — said they had often gone to London’s Highgate Cemetery with friends ‘for a bit of a laugh.’ But they never caused any damage. ‘It was just a silly sort of thing that you do after the pubs shut,’ she said. Mrs Farrant added that her husband’s friends who joined in the late night jaunts were not involved in witchcraft or the occult. She had been called as a defence witness by her 28-year-old husband. They have not lived together for three years.” (The Sun, 21 June 1974).

“All he talked about was his witchcraft. He was very vain.” (Julia Batsford, an ex-girlfriend quoted in the Daily Mail, 26 June 1974).

"Au pair Martine de Sacy has exposed the fantasy world of David Farrant, self-styled high priest of British witchcraft, for whom she posed nude in front of a tomb. Farrant was convicted last week by a jury who heard stories of Satanic rites, vampires and death-worship with girls dancing in a cemetery. Afterwards, 23-year-old Martine said: 'He was a failure as a lover. In fact, I think his trouble was that he was seeking compensation for this. He was always after publicity and he felt that having all these girls around helped. I'm sure the night he took me to the cemetery had less to do with occultism than his craving to be the centre of something.' ... While Martine told her story in Paris, customers at Farrant's local — the Prince of Wales in Highgate, London — chuckled over the man they called 'Birdman.' One regular said: 'He used to come in with a parrot on his shoulder. One night he came in with photos of Martine in the nude. We pinched one, and when she next came in, we told her he was selling them at 5p a time. She went through the ceiling.' ... Farrant called his estranged wife Mary, in his defence. She said: 'We would go in the cemetery with my husband's friends when the pubs had closed. We would frighten ourselves to death and come out again. It was just a silly sort of thing that you do after the pubs close. Nobody was involved in witchcraft or the occult'." (News of the World, 30 June 1974).

“I cannot believe for one moment that he is a serious student of the occult. In fact I believe him to be evil and entirely to be deplored.” (Dennis Wheatley, Daily Express, 26 June 1974).

“I think he’s crazy.” (Canon John Pearce Higgins, Daily Express, 26 June 1974).

“But for the results of his actions, this scruffy little witch could be laughed at. But no one can laugh at a man who admits slitting the throat of a live cat before launching a blood-smeared orgy. Or at a man who has helped reduce at least two women to frightened misery.” (Sue Kentish, News of the World, 23 September 1973).

“The jury were shown folders of pictures of naked girls and corpses, and told about a black-clothed altar in Farrant's flat with a large drawing of a vampire's face. When questioned, Farrant said: 'A corpse was needed to talk to spirits of another world'.” (George Hunter & Richard Wright, Daily Express, 26 June 1974).

“The judge said any interference with a corpse during black magic rituals could properly be regarded as a ‘great scandal and a disgrace to religion, decency and morality’.” (The Sun, 26 June 1974).

“Judge Michael Argyle QC passed sentence after reading medical and mental reports. He said that Farrant — self-styled High Priest of the British Occult Society [sic] — had acted ‘quite regardless of the feelings of ordinary people,’ by messing about at Highgate Cemetery.” (Hornsey Journal, 19 July 1974).

In the summer of 1974, David Farrant was convicted of malicious damage in Highgate Cemetery by inscribing black magic symbols on the floor of a mausoleum; offering indignities to remains of the dead via black magic rites in Highgate Cemetery where photographs were taken of a naked female accomplice amidst tombs; threatening police witnesses in a separate case where his black magic associate was subsequently found guilty of indecent sexual assault on a young boy. His associate, on his website, describes himself as a “master of the black arts.” Farrant was also convicted of theft of items from Barnet Hospital where the offender worked briefly as a porter upon his release from Brixton Prison where he had been on remand in August 1970. He was further convicted of possession of a handgun and ammunition kept at his address, which also contained a black magic altar beneath a massive mural of a diabolical vampiric face that had featured in various newspapers, not least full front page coverage of the Hornsey Journal, 28 September 1973.

Farrant received a prison sentence of four years and eight months. Two libel suits brought by him resulted in the News of the World (who had quoted his girlfriend's claims that his publicity-seeking antics were compensation for him being a failure as a lover) failing to produce their principal defence witness due to Farrant making sure she remained in her native France, and him losing against the Daily Express (who had accused him of being a black magician and also of being insane) where £20,000 court costs were awarded against him. He had also brought suits against Canon Pierce Higgins and Dennis Wheatley (who sadly died prior to the case) that failed. In the News of the World action, which he won on a technicality, he was awarded the derisory sum of £50 and ordered to pay costs. The newspaper’s star witness who failed to appear for their defence was Martine de Sacy, his ex-girlfriend who had been identified as the naked female in the infamous “nude rituals trial” at the Old Bailey in June 1974. He persuaded her not to make an appearance at court causing the newspaper to lose its star witness. 

Farrant's blatant exploitation was a parody aimed at garnering maximum publicity. It fooled nobody, but, unfortunately, his concocted claims gave the press something sensational, ie "naked virgins," to write about. This is what an article in the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 15 October 1971, recorded:

"Despite a warning from police that he could be prosecuted, occultist David Farrant said this week he might return to Highgate Cemetery to 'exorcise a vampire' and fight a black magic sect. In the early hours of last Friday Mr Farrant, who is founder of the British Occult Society [sic], performed an exorcism ceremony involving six other young men and two naked girls at a chapel in the cemetery. After the ceremony, one of the girls claimed she saw a shadowy figure which Mr Farrant said was the cemetery's vampire, 'the king of the undead.' ... Armed with a crucifix, a bible, herbs such as camomile, dill and garlic, and holy water taken from St Joseph's Church in Highgate Hill, and accompanied by six other society members, he had climbed over the cemetery wall just before midnight ... etc."

Later in the article one of the alleged naked females is identified as Farrant's girlfriend Martine de Sacy. The newspaper reported: "He denied the ceremony involved sexual practices." Then it quoted Farrant explaining: "That's black magic, which involves getting your rewards before you die — wealth, prosperity, sex. Christian belief is that you get your reward after death. The elaborate things involved in the exorcism were purely symbolic, the most important thing was to have people present who believed in God and the bible. The girls were naked as symbols of purity — they were virgins."

This, at least, is what he had told the Hampstead & Highgate Express in October 1971. Four years later, however, he told readers of New Witchcraftmagazine, issue #4, something far removed from the supposed exorcism with naked girls which he had stated did not involve sexual practices, as had been told by him to the Hampstead & Highgate Express. When describing the same ceremony is an unedited article penned at the behest of the magazine's editor from his prison cell, David Farrant now claimed:

"The intrinsic details regarding this part of the ceremony however, must remain secret; suffice it is to say here that the entity (in its now omniscient form) was to be magically induced by the ritual act of blood-letting, then brought to visible appearance through the use of the sex act. ... I disrobed the Priestess and myself and, with the consecrated blood, made the secret sigils of the Deity on her mouth, breast, and all the openings of her body. We then lay in the Pentagram and began love-making, all the time visualizing the Satanic Force so that it could — temporarily — take possession of our bodies."

On his 1975 article, Farrant later recalled (to his friend and collaborator Kevin Demant): "When I had time to spare I wrote a few articles. I sent one to New Witchcraft which was used, and I mean, every single word was used. It was written on old scraps of paper, anything I could get together because obviously, they wouldn't have given me official writing paper to do that, apart from which, it would have been stopped anyway. That was smuggled out and used. I also wrote one for Penthouse, because ... they'd played up the sex angle in court and all the papers were implying ... I thought, well, it's a magazine, they could be half-serious. I mean, bloody hell, it was sold in W H Smiths!"

At this point, Farrant had contrived an infamous persona where necromantic diabolism overshadowed his earlier attempts to mimic Seán Manchester. He adopted a phoney form of witchcraft where he manufactured quasi-satanic stunts for the benefit of the media, principally newspapers. These cost him his liberty and he ended up being sentenced to four years and eight months imprisonment in 1974. Though similar publicity stunts ensued upon his release, he would never again catch the attention of the media in the same way as he did prior to and during his notorious trials at the Old Bailey, and slowly returned to the bandwagon he originally boarded in 1970. Once again, David Farrant began to impersonate Bishop Seán Manchester, having publicly eschewed the trappings of manufactured devilry. In May 2011, he published pictures of himself dressed as a Christian priest carrying a bible. Such impersonation, needless to say, is illegal in the United Kingdom.

David Farrant was arrested in December 2002 and charged with the harassment of Seán Manchester, Sarah Manchester, Diana Brewester, and Keith Maclean. The Crown Prosecution Service did not proceed with their case, however, due to him taking great care to stagger the frequency of incidents so that they fell just outside the remit for the minimum number of offences required per month for a case to be successfully prosecuted via the precise charge brought under the section of the Protection from Harassment Act invoked. This was confirmed by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. Had the police merely charged him with sending malicious mail, Farrant would have undoubtedly been found guilty but his punishment could only be a fine. Whereas the actual charges for harassment brought by the police were more serious, and if the CPS had allowed the case to be taken to trial it could have resulted in a custodial sentence.

Diana Brewester sadly died of cancer in December 2003, having been harassed and libelled by Farrant in her latter years. Farrant invariably sends his malicious pamphlets to his victims. One such item contained Diana Brewester's private address which he published and circulated viathe pamphlet. He also published false and disgusting claims about her private sexual life, none of which were true. Farrant has absolutely no regard for the way he maligns people, steals, lies and causes grief to whomsoever he pleases. Throughout his life he has not shown any remorse for his behaviour and crimes. Indeed, he has always sought to capitalise on them; bragging to the press and regurgitating them in self-published pamphlets crammed with libel and copyright infringement. His entire life has been predicated on the execution of grievances, vendettas and depraved pranks. Apart from a week or two as a porter in late 1970, he has received state benefits throughout his entire life. Yet this is the man who has incredibly managed to hoodwink some latter-day academics, writers and journalists.

Wendy Jane Paterson is the CEO and Founder at House of Isis (2003 to the present) and speaks from her own personal experience. Her observation appeared on Facebook (16 January 2014):

"David Farrant is nothing more than a silly alcoholic. I've met him on numerous occasions and he is a drug infested alckie. As for Della, their flat is flea ridden pit of filth."