Enter David Farrant

"Cemeteries and graveyards are largely unhaunted." — Alan Murdie (Foreword, Haunted Highgate)

"Only one ghost haunts Highgate Cemetery, and his name is David Farrant." — †Seán Manchester

David Farrant, when arrested on the night of 17 August 1970, gave the police and later the magistrate's court the name "Allan Farrow" which he continued to use throughout his stay on remand at Brixton Prison until his release. Hence prison correspondence from Farrant being in the name of "Farrow." He had not yet attempted to hijack the name of the British Occult Society. That would come later, but when he was contacted by the BBC to discuss his arrest and reconstruct events leading up to it, he told them he was associated with the BOS.

For the record, David Farrant (aka Allan Farrow) has at no time in his life been associated or otherwise connected to the British Occult Society, and many times the BOS was obliged to publish retractions following his fraudulent claims in that regard. He persisted with them for the rest of the decade, first claiming to be a member, then its president, then its founder, and, even more bizarrely, its high priest. He was not taken seriously, but when he used these titles during his appearances at the Old Bailey in the summer of 1974, court reporters were obliged to quote him exactly as he described himself, albeit with the prefix "self-styled," by which time he had long since ditched the curious pseudonym of "Allan Farrow."

Farrant has provided on YouTube a video interview with a certain Redmond McWilliams, who, though not knowing Farrant for very long, regards him as one of his "dearest friends."

The final part of the interview finds Farrant rewriting history over his BBC television appearance on 15 October 1970 where he pulled out a wooden stake and a cross from within his trousers and went about reconstructing his pseudo-vampire hunting antics on the night in question when he was arrested by police patrolling Highgate Cemetery at midnight in search of black magic devotees. They instead stumbled across Farrant with his cross and stake.

In his interview with his close friend McWilliams, Farrant claims his appearance on the BBC was not a reconstruction (when the narrator makes it absolutely apparent that it was), but instead something the BBC asked him to do. He also claims that the stake was not for the purpose of hunting a vampire, but to use to inscribe a circle with a piece of string. He fails to explain why he needed a cross for this purpose, or why a witch, as he later claimed to be, would have need of a Catholic rosary suspended around his neck. He also claims that he was misrepresented in the press and that the police set him up and fabricated his statement where he openly admitted to hunting a vampire when they arrested him. Quite what the BBC, the press or the police would have to gain by misrepresenting him in this way is not explained other than everyone was supposedly out to get him. Such paranoid deflections were not evident back in 1970 when Farrant boasted to the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 6 March 1970: "The odd thing is there was no outward sign of how they died. Much remains unexplained, but what I have recently learnt all points to the vampire theory being the most likely answer. Should this be so, I for one am prepared to pursue it, taking whatever means might be necessary so that we can all rest." Now Farrant says he was just "humouring" the newspaper and has never in his life believed in such things.

Click on the newspaper cutting from October 1970 at the top of this page to hear Farrant completely revise his activities during that year. Jump to the timeline 20:44 of the thirty-four minutes' video to view original footage of Farrant pulling a cross and stake out of his trousers on the BBC programme, and listen to him evade McWilliams' question, blame the police for "framing" him and then have the audacity to claim that the only reason he was filmed vampire hunting during the reconstruction was because that is "what they wanted." There was no string attached to the stake, as he now claims, adding that the police removed it, and in a series of extracts from interviews spanning many years he can be heard admitting to the very thing he now denies. These interviews are available on a CD titled The Devil's Fool where relevant excerpts from broadcast and private interviews can be heard.

Was there a conspiracy to frame Farrant, or was he jumping on a bandwagon for the sake of his own self-aggrandising publicity in a pathetic attempt to emulate those seriously engaged in the pursuit of the vampiric presence haunting London's most famous cemetery? After all these years is he suffering from delusional paranioa, or is he still churning out claims and statements he knows to be false? Or could it be an alternating mixture of both deluson and lies? Whatever the case, a polygraph test is something he has so far avoided.

Apart from some publicity stunts arranged by David Farrant, sometimes involving the self-proclaimed "master of the black arts" John Pope-de-Locksley, there is no such group as the "British Psychic and Occult Society." It was completely invented by Farrant in 1983. It does not exist.

When interviewed at the time, ie February and March 1970, Farrant made no claim of belonging to a group. He made it quite clear he was alone when he had three sightings of the "ghost" (as stated in his published letter in February 1970). This reduced to "two sightings" by the time he was interviewed for Thames Television in the following month. Much later, it became only one sighting. Throughout all the early 1970 interviews, Farrant made clear that he was acting alone and had "no knowledge in this field."

Some of the people who wrote to a local newspaper in early 1970, claiming to have seen a "ghost" similar to Farrant's alleged phantom, were known friends of Farrant. Most have admitted that he put them up to it; albeit he tended to use their names and addresses while writing the "ghost sighting" letters himself.

When Farrant learned about the Highgate Vampire from conversations he had with people in local pubs in and around Highgate Village, he opined in the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 6 March 1970, that the death of foxes in the cemetery was probably caused by a vampire; moreover, that he would do everything he could to track it down and destroy it, "taking whatever means might be necessary."

Seán Manchester warned on Today, Thames Television, 13 March 1970, against Farrant's plan to pursue the vampire "because he did not have sufficient knowledge" and was acting alone. His warning and advice was also published in the Hampstead & Highgate Express on the same day. Farrant ignored that warning, and less than a handful of months later, on August 17th, he was arrested in Highgate Cemetery at midnight by police searching for black magic devotees.

David Robert Donovan Farrant aka Allan Farrow was held on remand at Brixton Prison. Thus began a history of attention-seeking charlatanry, arrests and prison sentences. It also began his immense resentment toward Seán Manchester with attendant falsehood, fabrication, defamation and vendettas.