Something Rotten in Highgate Cemetery

"Johnny Rotten recalls in his 1993 autobiography No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs: 'So many people were doing it ... loonies mostly, running around with wooden stakes, crucifixes and cloves of garlic ... it was almost a social club down there." — "Della Farrant" (Haunted Highgate, page 44)

Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, to give the book its full title, is a 1993 autobiography by John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols), co-authored by Keith Zimmerman and Kent Zimmerman. 

In the book, John Lydon expresses condemnation toward former members of the Sex Pistols band, Malcolm McLaren, their manager, hippies, rich people, racists, sexists and the English political system. Unsurprisingly, he also shares his deep hatred for religion. Lydon says: that "A lot of people feel the Sex Pistols were just negative. I agree, and what the fuck is wrong with that? Sometimes the absolute most positive thing you can be in a boring society is completely negative."

That "Della Farrant" feels him worthy of appraising what was going on at Highgate Cemetery half a century ago is revealing in itself. She leaves out something crucial about Lydon, however, ie where he says: “So we go in there with stakes and hammers and you would hear all this rustling and it would be another bunch of vampire hunters.” John Lydon claims to have hunted the Highgate Vampire himself.

The same gentleman also partook in a 1980 British mockumentary film, directed by Julien Temple and produced by Don Boyd and Jeremy Thomas, that was partially shot at Highgate Cemetery. Click on the image at the top and fast forward two minutes to see some stills from that stylised fictional account of the formation, rise and subsequent breakup of the Sex Pistols. Their then-manager Malcolm McLaren can also be seen in the video clip viewed when clicking on the image below.

What would John Lydon know about the goings-on at Highgate Cemetery where a malign supernatural phenomenon was being witnessed (and, of course, pursued in order to exorcise it) by local people? The answer is: about as much as "Della Farrant." 

John Lydon married a publishing heiress from Germany in 1979, lives the multi-millionaire lifestyle in Los Angeles, California, where he has resided since the early 1980s while also keeping a residence in London. He supported the United Kingdom remaining in the European Union during the referendum in June 2016, stating that being outside of the European Union would be "insane and suicidal." What is insane is anyone taking the slightest notice of what John Lydon says about what went on at Highgate Cemetery in the 1960s and 1970s. 

He is someone who constantly revises his position on everything, and now claims that he is not an anarchist despite writing and singing the punk anthem "Anarchy in the UK" back in 1976. The constantly repeated lines from the song, which later featured on the album Never Mind the Bollocks: Here's the Sex Pistols, are:

I am an anti-Christ 

I am an anarchist

We get a far better idea of what John Lydon was really saying about Highgate Cemetery from this article that was published in the Hampstead & Highgate Express two years before Haunted Highgate:

Nothing is out of bounds for Lydon. He recalls the early Pistol years when he would squat in Hampstead, behind the station. “Oh lovely. Squats we have loved,” he laughs. “I had to squat for a long period. Me and Sid, we found this wonderful old block of flats and all manner of people in that period. We were in run-down old derelict buildings really that were viewed by the council as unliveable and they put boards up. But, hello, we had nowhere to live so what we would do was move in and clean the place up and sort out the plumbing and make the toilets work and the council would then come in and take it off you and rent it out.

“It’s a different world now. It’s a lot of upper class toffy kids practising at being slummy. Having a bit of rough. This was a necessity. I couldn’t live at home at that point. I didn’t have any money and yet I was in a band that was notorious. I had to find some hole to crawl into at night – poor old little ratty. So Hampstead, that was where we squatted, we covered the area well. We were just behind the tube station there for about two years.”

“I like the pubs round there too. I ran into many of the Monty Python lot, who were borderline insane, but great fun. And people like Peter Cook, who I really, really respect. Although that was not my class or upbringing, I found that we could get on well with each other. If you are honest about what it is you are in life you will find that you can form very good friendships with all manner of people.”

They also used to go vampire hunting in Highgate cemetery. “There was books out saying a vampire rested there. What a thrill to a young lad. So we go in there with stakes and hammers and you would hear all this rustling and it would be another bunch of vampire hunters.” He laughs before playing with a spot on his face. “I like festering them,” he says. “Sid was fantastic for that. It was his favourite hobby. In fact, his only hobby. Big volcanoes and build up til the final yellowhead eruption in the mirror,” he laughs. “Oh I miss my friend. Stupid rock deaths, too many of them. They don’t understand that drugs are for fun and recreation and you should never take a daily dose.”

At 56 years young (as he puts it), he’s lost a few of those close to him too early. Still, his life goes on, being Johnny on TV, Johnny in the pub, recording in a field in the Cotswolds or performing among the egos of the music crowd. “At festivals, if you have seven acts, it is like the seven deadly sins backstage, all the egos.” He still likes a party, having even got “blindingly drunk” just last night. Will he ever give up and retire? “I’ll work until I’m 100 and think about it. I love what I do and I don’t want to stop.”

— Rhiannon Edwards (Hampstead & Highgate Express, 2 August 2012)

A Man Called Welch

"An informal group of vampire researchers, including M J Welch [...] a sprinkling of others and myself had informally organised into a research group at the beginning of the Sixties. [...] The group grew and became a specialist unit within the British Occult Society in 1967 — the year I accepted presidency of that organisation. [...] The unit concerned with vampirology became autonomous in February 1970. It is known as the Vampire Research Society. [...] I remained oresident of the British Occult Society until its formal dissolution on 8 August 1988. It did not engage in the practice of occultism, but existed for the purpose of examing occult and paranormal phenomena. Dr Devendra P Varma and Peter Underwood were both life members. Many other notable authors and scholars were among the esteemed membership. Unfortunately, the nomeclature of the Society was usurped in the early Seventies by a curious individual, known as David Farrant, who was to gain considerable notoriety through his unashamed publicity-seeking and court appearances which culminated in an almost five year prison sentence in 1974." — †Seán Manchester (Introduction, The Vampire Hunter's Handbook, Gothic Press, 1997)

"Acclaimed war photographer Don McCullin and his younger brother Michael were pupils at the [Tollington Park] school, and in 1962 Don composed a very bizarre character portrait of an acquaintance of theirs who lived in Mercers Road, Upper Holloway. The photograph, titled 'The Headhunter of Highgate' or 'Collector of Death,' depicts a man perhaps in his late twenties, holding a bamboo cane in each hand surmounted by a human skull. This man, who strongly resembles a young Charles Manson, had been known to the McCullins since their schooldays. In the early years of their friendship he confessed fairly openly to the boys not only that he was 'heavily into black magic,' but that with a group of similarly inclined deviants he regularly obtained skulls and even whole skeletons in their coffins from Highgate and Kensal Green Cemeteries. According to an interview given in 1980, McCullin and his brother were fascinated by the bones, human hair, bottles of formaldehyde and coffin-opening toolkits which littered the rank-smelling basement flat." — "Della Farrant" (Haunted Highgate, page 29, The History Press, 2014).

"Della" is careful not to name the person referred to by her as "a modern-day body-snatcher" in her written account of 2014, but the following year she not only saw to it that he was identified by name, she had McCullin's portrait of him from the early 1960s projected onto a large screen in front of a paying audience. This leaves her wide open for a libel suit should Welch ever gain knowledge of what she has published in her book, and what she organised to happen at her symposium in 2015. 

Yet "Della Farrant" was not alive when any of these alleged occurrences were supposed to have taken place, and she has certainly not spoken to Welch himself. Indeed, it is in serious doubt that she has spoken to anybody remotely connected to the fabrications told to her by David Farrant. Where did he get the stories from? The man in whose cellar he was living from August 1969 until August 1970.

Welch did not live in "a basement flat," In fact, he has never lived in any kind of flat. In the 1960s he lived with his parents who owned a substantial Victorian house in Mercers Road, which they left in its entirety to their son. Welch was an only child. The man who allowed Farrant to occupy his coal bunker was constantly winding-up his tenant with wild stories of all sorts. They were not true, however, and it should be made abundantly clear that neither this man nor Farrant ever met Welch. Tony Hill, the person whose ground-floor flat's cellar in Archway Road provided a temporary habitat for Farrant, almost certainly learned of the name from an acquaintance of Seán Manchester who would talk about the history of the Vampire Research Society openly with anyone who showed an interest.

Don McCullin did not take his photograph of Welch until two years after Seán Manchester had already made a portrait showing him between two skulls. This was plagiarised by McCullin whom Seán Manchester has tried to contact on numerous occasions down the years to question the defamatory captions used by McCullen. Following the symposium in July 2015, he sent McCullin messages regarding the libellous attributions made by Paul Adams before an audience. Don McCullen did not respond. The simple truth of the matter is that McCullen, Adams and "Della" have all defamed Welch.

Eight minutes and twenty seconds into the video (click on the image to view), Paul Adams, a lackey of "Della Farrant" who organised "The Highgate Vampire Symposium," makes the following allegation:

"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 Welch prior to McCullin. Our concern, however, is the appalling libel committed by Paul Adams' allegation, which is known to be completely false. Moreover, Welch did not give interviews, being someone who valued his privacy. 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." Welch 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 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." 

It was David 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.

 

In the conclusion of the so-called occult section, Paul Adams wraps it up quickly following a brief interaction with the audience who are barely audible and invariably comprise satanic apologists.

This video is even more tedious than the first part of the session, if that can be imagined; until, that is, someone in the audience asks a question about Welch who had already been libelled by Adams.

Forty-one minutes and thirteen seconds into the video (click on the image to view) the audience were once again treated to Don McCullen's misdescribed photo of Welch on a screen behind the panel.

Forty-two minutes and forty-four seconds into the video, David Farrant states:

"It appeared in a book called The Highgate Vampire which was written by Mr ... [Farrant is suddenly overcome by a fit of seemingly uncontrollable coughing at this point in the proceedings and takes quite a while to recover, sipping from a glass] ... Seán Manchester. Yes, they knew each other."

This time Seán Manchester's name has not been bleeped out on the video. Farrant obviously had what's left of his feathers ruffled by comments made about its censorship in the first session.

Someone unseen in the audience asked something about Don McCullen, but it is so muffled as to be totally inaudible. Indeed, the sound quality throughout is very poor, given the controlled situation. 

Then we hear a discarnate voice ask whether Welch was prosecuted. Paul Adams turns to Farrant:

"Was he prosecuted, David?"

Farrant tersely responds:

"No!"

Seán Manchester, of course, knew M J Welch, as, apparently, did Don McCullen whose back-story to the picture captioned "The Head Hunter of Highgate" was inspired by the fabricated nonsense Farrant was disseminating at the time to journalists such as Roger Simpson, plus all and sundry. 

McCullen's photograph of Welch had various captions down the years. McCullen and Seán Manchester are photographers, and the latter had already photographed Welch in the exact same pose. Welch must have shown Seán Manchester's photographic portrait to McMullen who, more or less, copied it when he posed his subject between two human skulls in precisely the same manner.

Does the picture appear in The Highgate Vampire?

Well, yes and no.

It does not appear in the 1991 Gothic Press edition, but is a minuscule part of a composite of cuttings and images in the 1985 British Occult Society edition. Welch can barely be seen; less than one inch by almost half an inch in the bottom left-hand corner of a picture which fills the entire page.

The Vampire Hunter's Handbook, published a dozen years later, acknowledges at the top of page 10 that Seán Manchester knew M J Welch; so Farrant is hardly the master of revelation he likes to pretend to be. 

Farrant had to admit, when asked by the audience, that Welch has not been prosecuted. How could he have been? Tales about Welch originated entirely with Farrant who acted out the very things he falsely attributed to this associate of Seán Manchester. As we know, David Farrant was prosecuted and found guilty of interfering with and offering indignity to corpses at London's Highgate Cemetery.

What Happened on the Night of Friday 13th March 1970

It began like most days when the cold winter won't go away. The bitterness of former weeks not only intensified as the unseasonal snow refused to melt away, but somehow seemed to be growing worse.

Today is the forty-fifth anniversary of a Friday the 13th that would go down in the annals of history as the largest vampire hunt of the twentieth century. How did it arise? What led up to it happening?

Gerald Isaaman, editor of the Hampstead & Highgate Express in those far off distant days, recently recounted his meeting with Seán Manchester in February 1970: "Manchester arrived at the office wearing a black cloak lined with scarlet silk and carrying a cane." Isaaman forgot to mention the top hat and tails that were included with the opera cloak and cane. There was also an accompanying young lady, also not mentioned, who was equally formally-attired. It was late in the afternoon and Seán Manchester had no idea how long the interview that had been requested of him would take. 

He and his lady friend were dressed ready to go on to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, from the Hampstead offices of the Hampstead & Highgate Express. He frequently attended the opera in those days and continued to do so whilst in London, always preferring the correct dress code. 

The elderly and now ex-editor reminisced in Jauary 2009:

"The story of the Highgate Vampire [in a recently published book about London's folklore] is attributed to 1970 reports in the Ham & High, where I was then the editor. It recalled the fantastic events of a few months that year and the following one, which culminated in a TV programme inviting people to decide for themselves what was going on. That resulted in three hundred people, allegedly armed with home-made stakes and Christian crosses, storming the cemetery that night to kill the demon vampire lurking among the decaying tombs."

In fact, there was considerably more than three hundred people on the hunt that night for Highgate's vampire. They were there because of a broadcast earlier that evening which brought the case to a much wider audience. There was no announcement by the team officially investigating the mysterious happenings at the cemetery that they would be embarking upon a vampire hunt that night even though that was the case. The official hunt had been planned in private for some time.

The night of Friday 13 March 1970 witnessed in England the largest vampire hunt of the twentieth century by members of the public. It bordered on hysteria and led to local police having their leave cancelled to contain it. Just how many were involved would be difficult to estimate, but certainly hundreds. In the preceding weeks, the Hampstead & Highgate Express (a local newspaper) told of unearthly goings-on at Highgate Cemetery. Its February 27th issue ran the headline "Does A Wampyr Walk in Highgate?" The front-page headline of the following fateful week's edition told of the matter being discussed on television that very evening by Seán Manchester who recounts the event in his bestselling book The Highgate Vampire.

"... attempts to shoot the interview by the north gate were abandoned and the actual filming took place outside the main gate further down Swains Lane. Some independent witnessed, including several children who had seen a ghostly manifestation, were also interviewed for the programme. One person said: ' Yes, I did feel it was evil because the last time I actually saw its face and it looked like it had been dead for a long time.' Another witness commented: 'It seemed to float along the ground.' One of those interviewed who claimed to have seen the vampire was a certain David Farrant, a pathetic figure whose infatuation with the Highgate haunting was to earn him an undeserved notoriety and send him on a helter-skelter into the abyss of the dark occult. The programme was transmitted at 6.00pm on Friday 13 March 1970: the eve of the proposed vampire hunt. Eamonn Andrews introduced the viewing audience to a report on the Highgate Vampire. Within two hours Highgate was the scene of utter pandemonium as crowds of onlookers flocked to Swains Lane. The number multiplied as the evening progressed. Police on foot and in cars were unable to control the swarming mass of those who had arrived to witness the discovery of a modern-day vampire infestation in their midst. And its eradication! While chaos and frenzy continued to erupt in Swains Lane, a group of hand-picked researchers led by myself, constituting the official vampire hunt, made their way to the catacombs in the inky darkness of the cemetery." ― Seán Manchester (The Highgate Vampire, pages 76-77). 

Seán Manchester appeared on the Today programme (Thames Television) at 6.00pm on Friday 13 March 1970:

The night of 13 March 1970 witnessed scenes of utter pandemonium as people gathered in large numbers along the steep lane running alongside London’s Highgate Cemetery. At 6.00pm a television programme had confirmed that a vampire contagion was evident in the graveyard, and that a vampire hunt was imminent. The crowds multiplied in hopeful anticipation of locating the resting-place of the undead entity. Police were present to control those arriving, but it was an almost impossible task. By 10.00pm an assortment of independent amateur vampire hunters had joined the onlookers. Principal among the freelance brigade was a schoolteacher, fortuitously named Alan Blood, whom Matthew Bunson, as recorded in his The Vampire Encyclopedia (1993), deemed to be an important player in the unravelling case. Bunson, an American who had no contact with Blood, or indeed anyone else contemporaneous to the events at Highgate in the 1970s, relied on yet another American, Jeanne Keyes Youngson of the New York Count Dracula Fan Club aka Vampire Empire who, in turn, depended on second-hand reports amounting to personal speculation from people who were not present and played no part in the investigation.

Youngson’s influence on Bunson initiated the error in his and thereby subsequent accounts. The primary source, however, is the London Evening News, 14 March 1970, front page report “Mr Blood Hunts Cemetery Vampire.” The brief quotes attributed to Blood in this sensationalist report are notably rebutted by Blood himself in a longer interview given to the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 20 March 1970. This latter interview, reproduced in Seán Manchester’s account about the case, has been totally ignored by commentators such as Bunson who seem to have scant regard for the facts in public archives.

An authentic account of Alan Blood’s part, such as it was, in the affair is given in Seán Manchester’s The Highgate Vampire (pages 77-79) from which the following is revealed: “By 10.00pm [on the night of 13 March 1970] the hundreds of onlookers were to include several freelance vampire hunters, including a history teacher, Alan Blood, who had journeyed from Billericay to seek out the undead being.” Blood had seen a report on television some hours earlier that evening and immediately set off for Highgate. On his arrival in Highgate Village, he entered the Prince of Wales pub on the High Street, where he remained until joining the crowd outside the north gate. However, Seán Manchester, featured earlier on the Today programme as the principal investigator, was nowhere to be seen because he was already inside the cemetery with his research team.

Alan Blood in Swains Lane on 13 March 1970. 

Blood eventually left the pub and joined a steadily growing crowd of several hundred people in Swains Lane. It was while in Swains Lane that Blood, wearing a Russian-style hat with his beard, was noticed by an Evening News photographer and a reporter. They spoke to Blood, and also to a 27-year-old Hampstead resident, Anthony Robinson, who had ventured to the cemetery gate “after hearing of the torchlight hunt.” Robinson is alleged to have told the reporter: “I walked past the place and heard a high-pitched noise, then I saw something grey moving slowly across the road. It terrified me. First time I couldn’t make it out, it looked eerie. I’ve never believed in anything like this, but now I’m sure there is something evil lurking in Highgate.” Yet it was Blood, who saw and did nothing, whose photograph was to appear on the front page of next day’s Evening News. He is described at the head of the report as “a vampire expert named Mr Blood who journeyed forty miles to investigate the legend of an ‘undead Satan-like being’ said to lurk in the area.” Alan Blood had not claimed to be a “vampire expert,” and would readily confirm in a more soberly conducted interview with the Hampstead & Highgate Express, that he was “by no means an expert on vampires.”

None of which would stop American author Matthew Bunson publishing some twenty-three years later: “The focus of the media attention turned to … Allan [sic] Blood, vampire expert who led the search. [He was] convinced that a vampire was sleeping in one of the vaults and were determined to find it and kill it. … As is typical of such incidents, stories based on rumour and on unconfirmed sightings soon spread, and the tabloids and newspapers ran exploitative reports. No vampire was ever publicly discovered.” (The Vampire Encyclopedia, page 121).

Apart from his reference to press exploitation, not a single statement in Bunson’s entry for the Highgate Vampire case is accurate. The focus of the media did not turn to Alan Blood. After 13 March 1970, he completely disappeared off the scene. Blood never stated that he was “determined to find and kill” the vampire. Seán Manchester would add in The Vampire Hunter’s Handbook (pages 66-67): “Interestingly, Jeanne Youngson’s name crops up in Bunson’s acknowledgements as having assisted with this book [The Vampire Encyclopedia]. Why does that come as no surprise? Peter Hough follows in Bunson’s errant footsteps in Supernatural Britain (1995) and repeats the misinformation … whilst ignoring the actual investigation. When contacted through their respective publishers, neither deigned to reply. Their publishers also refused to answer any correspondence on the matter.” This refusal to address significant error placed on record is a matter of concern.

Bunson and Hough are followed by the journalist Tom Slemen whose latter-day paperback Strange But True (1998) claimed that “Alan Blood organized a mass vampire hunt that would take place on Friday 13 March, 1970. Mr Blood was interviewed on television. … The schoolteacher’s plan was to wait until dawn, when the first rays of the rising sun would force the vampire to return to his subterranean den in the catacombs, then he would kill the Satanic creature in the time-honoured tradition; by driving a wooden stake through its heart. … In an orgy of desecration [the crowd] had exhumed the remains of a woman from a tomb, stolen lead from coffins, and defaced sepulchres with mindless graffiti.”

None of which is true. Blood did not “organize a mass vampire hunt.” Indeed, Blood organised nothing. He was an interested onlooker. It was not the “schoolteacher’s plan to wait until dawn.” There was no “orgy of desecration” etc. No damage whatsoever occurred on the night of 13 March 1970. What Slemen is probably alluding to is an entirely different incident that took place five months later, as recorded on the front page of the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 7 August 1970, where the discovery of the headless body of a female and signs of a satanic ceremony were made by two fifteen-year-old schoolgirls as they walked through the graveyard on a sunny August afternoon. Police viewed it to be the work of Satanists and investigated it as such. Some weeks later a man was arrested prowling around the graveyard at night.

These misleading accounts by Bunson, Hough and Slemen contaminated some others that have found their way onto the internet. Sadly, some sites are simply too lazy to do anything more than copy extant error from elsewhere with scant regard for accuracy. Others have an entirely different agenda, which is to distort what really happened. Bunson’s claim that no vampire was found is patently untrue, as originally recorded in Peter Underwood’s The Vampire’s Bedside Companion (Frewin Books, 1975) and The Highgate Vampire (British Occult Society, 1985; Gothic Press, 1991).

Author and exorcist, Seán Manchester, president of the Vampire Research Society.

The tomb of the Highgate Vampire was located by the Vampire Research Society in 1970, as revealed by Seán Manchester in the 24 Hours programme, a  BBC television film documentary, transmitted on 15 October 1970, and later confirmed in Peter Underwood's anthology The Vampire's Bedside Companion (1975) and Exorcism! (1990), plus J Gordon Melton's The Vampire Book: Encyclopedia of the Undead (1994), and Seán Manchester's The Highgate Vampire (1975, 1976, 1985, 1991). Three years and three months after the BBC 24 Hours television documentary, the Highgate Vampire itself was properly exorcised by Seán Manchester with an assistant named Arthur. Several 35mm photographs, some of which are reproduced in The Highgate Vampire book, were taken of the vampire in its final moments of dissolution. These pictures were later transmitted and discussed on various television programmes in the UK.

These are the known and recorded facts about the then 25-year-old schoolteacher Alan Blood who, on 13 March 1970 travelled from Billericay to Highgate in London, having seen a report on television earlier that evening, to satisfy his curiosity. He was not a vampirologist, nor did he ever claim to be. He was one of hundreds who had turned up to see what was happening. After talking to the press he was not heard of again in this or any related context. Yet his name, perhaps understandably given the subject matter and the overwhelming interest it generated, entered a legend all of its own.

The full story of the case can be read in Seán Manchester’s bestselling book, a reliable account by a first-hand witness, participant and investigative researcher with expertise in both vampirology and exorcism. For ordering information, click on the book’s cover:

Spinning Graveyard Vandalism

Desecration of a Highgate Cemetery tomb with satanic symbols. 

"These new tales of a vampire brought nothing but trouble to Highgate; children were afraid to sleep at night, and drunken youths from out of town were jumping over the cemetery gates, staking corpses, then bragging in the local bars about skulls and bones they had 'liberated' from the Victorian coffins. In 1975 the cemetery was closed to the public, and the vandalism eventually died down. It seems that the sole legacy left by this vampire in its fictitious wake was the damage which, even today, dedicated volunteers are still making good." — "Della Farrant" (Haunted Highgate, pages 43-44)

No damage was occasioned at Highgate Cemetery due to vampire hunters. Quite the opposite, in fact; as all the media attention made it next to impossible for the diabolical offenders to continue. Hence vandalism became rare in comparison to previous decades. Such damage that did occur was laid firmly at the door of black magic devotees, not vampire hunters, by the police. Indeed, the only person to be convicted of such crimes during this period was David Farrant who was found guilty of cemetery vandalism and tomb desecration for which he was sentenced to a number of years in prison. The desecration was caused when satanic symbols were drawn on the floor of a mausoleum in which Farrant allegedly participated in a ritual with a naked girl. He was also convicted of making black magic threats against police witnesses in another case against his collaborator in the black arts, John Pope, who would be found guilty of sexual assault on a boy. Prior to these convictions, Farrant had been convicted in a magistrates' court of indecency involving necromancy in a churchyard.

The naked girl photographed by David Farrant.

The cemetery was closed to the public in 1975 because it had passed from the London Cemetery Company to Camden Council to the Friends of Highgate Cemetery (FoHC) who felt the need to prune back all the overgrowth, and repair tombs where tree roots had invaded and, in some cases, passed through coffins, exposing the contents. There were and still are mixed feelings about this manicuring of Highgate Cemetery, as its unique atmosphere depended on its absence of landscaping.

There is no record of corpses being staked, save in one incident in August 1970 involving the the hundred-year-old corpse of a woman where an iron bar was in evidence. The way the corpse was laid out, coupled with the discovery of symbols and spent black candles, left the police in no doubt that the desecration was caused by black magic practitioners. And that is how the media reported it.

FoBSM volunteers are not "still making good" past vandalism. They manage the area in the way any gardener or landscaper would. Volunteers also take people on tours of the West Cemetery. These tours are not inexpensive; extra charges also being made for photography. The cemetery has now become a business, and no longer seems like a place where people quietly pay respect to the dead.

Farrant emerging from a tomb in 1970.

The Spectre of Haunted Highgate

In her "Mistress of Death Interview" of 20 October 2014, "Della Farrant" was asked by Victoria Irwin:

"How do you gather personal stories and historical facts regarding the history of Highgate Cemetery and the surrounding area?"

She answered:

"My website, and that of my husband David Farrant, have generated many leads from witnesses, including people who have moved away from Highgate but never forgotten what happened to them there.   As I mentioned, there is often a degree of apprehension among Highgaters who fear ridicule for discussing their own paranormal experiences.  I have honoured requests to respect confidentiality, and this has resulted in some remarkable stories – usually from people who have never met, and yet have had encounters which are eerily similar.  Many of these have occurred in the same clusters of streets around Highgate and have never made it into the press or into local gossip. And local gossip itself is of course incredibly important!"

In the same section, "Della" somewhat ironically, as would become apparent, offered this gem:

"... as The Smiths sang in Meet Me At The Cemetery Gates  ‘The words you use should be your own : don’t plagiarise or take on loan.’  If one was to just rehash old ghost stories without investigating them personally one would be insulting one’s readers’ intelligence, as well as their book budget."

In Haunted Highgate, page 84, "Della" refers to the Hillcrest Estate on North Hill, Highgate, where "the recession of the early 1970s and 1980s contributed to low morale etc." In the next parapgraph she moves onto an ex-resident of Hillcrest:

"Some seventeen years later, it was a cold, unfurnished top-floor flat in Wavell House which Deborah Meredith found herself relocated to by Haringey Council on, of all days, Hallowe'en, 1996. While the first six months or so of her tenancy at Hillcrest were uncomfortable and slightly unerving, the subsequent two and a half years were the stuff of nightmares."

Two pages in Chapter Five are then devoted to an alleged account provided by the ex-tenant of Hillcrest, having already been exploited on two pages in Chapter One, which is fair enough if all are agreed on everything published. Sadly, as with so much of what "Della" claims, that is not the case.

Who is Deborah Meredith? Her name is Deborah Cross née Meredith. She recently became a widow, and now uses the name "Jessica Olly." It transpires she wrote an unpublished manuscript, The Spectre of Haunted Highgate, which she very unwisely shared with "Della Farrant" after having been in contact with her. So far, so good. However, like others who were duped, she regretted what followed, which might explain why she employs the pseudonym "Jessica Olly" on social networks.

Who is She?

"If you are a citizen of the UK you can legally call yourself whatever you wish and use any title so long as you do not attempt to defraud. Titles have no legal reference to sex, gender or marital status. I can call myself Lady Letitia Farrant right this minute via an announcement in the press, then go on to open bank accounts or whatever in that name. Or I can change it online by deed poll for a modest fee in around ten minutes or by statutory declaration at any solicitor's or notary public for a tenner. Really, Della's name or lack of one is irrelevant and it proves nothing about the Farrant's wedding or absence thereof." - Felix Garnet (11 August 2015)

What does prove whether or not a wedding took place, however, is the Public Records Office. There is no record.

But the question still remains: who is the authoress of Haunted Highgate? Who is she really?

One person who claims to have known "Della Farrant" before she became a public figure is Angie Mary Watkins who had already by that time visited David Farrant on various occasions at his bedsit.

These are a few of many comments about "Della" that Angie Mary Watkins has posted on Facebook:

"Her ['Della's'] name is Anna Hinton, and she is an attractive lady with long dark hair.Yet she uses a false name and won't be photographed. And when she is, it's her ...ahem... body parts we see. Lets face it, there is something distinctly dodgy about the whole thing. At first, no one believed he HAD a wife, or girlfriend, because he kept rabbiting on about her 'bear shoulders in the moonlight' and other such crap - and playing the whole thing for laughs! Once, years ago, Farrant's friends were treated to his liaison with a mysterious lady - called, above all things, Veronica Lake. This turned out to be non other than one of his mates [Rob Milne] dressed up! Quite why Farrant pulled this childish stunt was never revealed. Yet pulled it. He said when his liaison with Della was first bought out into the open, 'Why does no one believe I've got a wife?' With his track record, it's hardly surprising." (11 August 2015)

"Well after all her crowing that she didn't want the Bishop following her or doing whatever dastardly deeds she imagined he's going to do, I'll wager he's not even interested? She seems to have this over-inflated opinion of herself that no one else shares. Her real identity, after all the posturing and preening, is of a 'nobody' and a petulant 'nobody' at that. A nobody who is such a silly little twat that she goes mad every time someone does something outside of her circle. Like, for example, befriending those she seeks to smear as her 'enemies'!" (8 August 2015)

"Well, it WAS written, you have to remember, by someone who lived in a complete fantasy world? I got to know the real Della - her real name and quite a good deal of everything else that she chose to tell me about,backwards of 3 years ago. And all I can say is that this person came up with such a lot of rubbish in my chat box, about talking mongooses haunting her home etc, that it was clear to me she was absolutely doolally." (17 June 2015)

"I'll see you all in court! That should see a packed gallery.What I don't get is all this about eating lobsters, acting all refined, with David [Farrant] portraying himself like some kind of posh bloke. The Della I encountered (and I've no reason to doubt that she WAS the same Della) was someone the complete opposite to posh - she had had lesbian encounters, was a single mother who had to move out of her home through lack of money, ate ice cream, had experienced pretty dark things happen in her past, went to the pub, and had an ASBO! Mystery, indeed! With a capital M!" (7 December 2014)

"What was the asbo for? Probably trying any means of attracting attention to herself - when she kept popping up in my chat box - that was the impression I got. That she was the kind of person who just wanted to be noticed. ... In spite of not encouraging her at all she constantly popped up - and each time told a different tale - whether it was about being haunted by a mongoose who lived in her house to things she got up to with women. Not surprisingly, after being fed a diet of this on a regular basis, I got fed up with her and told her to bugger off. Which bought the response 'I'll talk to you in the morning when you are less annoyed'!" (8 December 2014)

A five-page threatening letter was sent by "Della" and David Farrant by recorded delivery to Seán Manchester's private address on 27 April 2015. He was out at the time. Somebody signed for it in his absence. When the envelope was passed to him he knew immediately who had sent it because "it stank of cigarette smoke." 

The highly derogatory and abusive rant was signed by "Della Farrant" and David Farrant. Though the envelope was postmarked 27 April 2015, and the correspondence within was likewise headed with the same date, the senders dated each of their signatures as having taken place on 27 February 2015. Probably a Freudian slip! For it was on that day and in that month in 1970 that Seán Manchester first came to prominence on the front page of the Hampstead & Highgate Express, prompting him to remark: "I awoke and found myself famous." This was quickly followed by television appearances and coverage in a host of periodicals. David Farrant caught a brief ride on his coat-tails before quickly turning toxic with an addiction to meaningless self-publicity for its own sake.

"Della Farrant," Anna Hinton or whoever she is, was, of course, not yet born. That would be some years away.

This is how the five-page threatening letter to Seán Manchester, 27 April 2015, signed off: 

Seán Manchester didn't want to touch it, much less read it, and had somebody copy and forward it for the archive. He either filed it away or disposed of the original, but not before making a copy available for publication.

The five-page letter includes allegations which, in truth, apply to David Farrant, eg copyright infringement, defamation and harrasment etc, and once again reveals the true face of these people. The correspondence is deeply offensive and insulting. David Farrant and "Della Farrant" clearly object to the fact that they can't exploit Seán Manchester's work and abuse him in the process with impunity. He will take action if necessary.

Here is an example to give their hypocrisy some sort of context. A single thread on a Fascist blog, believed to have a direct connection to Farrant's chum and collaborator Kevin Chesham, finds Farrant posting over thirty comments from February to April where Seán Manchester is personally attacked, abused, threatened, defamed and quite obviously harassed to a degree seldom experienced by anyone on the internet. The incitement of hatred is quite unbelievable and many of Farrant's comments are copy and pasted rants, each running into hundreds of words. There is not one rebuttal from Seán Manchester (or anyone sympathetic to Seán Manchester) to the onslaught of comments from Farrant who is joined by anonymous cronies such as Redmond McWilliams.

Every time Farrant is interviewed on a podcast, programme or video he attempts to smear Seán Manchester who has only once mentioned Farrant in a transmission, and that was on 13 March 1970 on Today (Thames Television), which was to warn against him unwisely venturing into Highgate Cemetery at night, something Farrant proposed to do, as intimated in the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 6 March 1970. Farrant did not heed Seán Manchester's advice and consequently lost his liberty when he was arrested and held on remand at Brixton Prison after police searching for black magic devotees found him around midnight in Highgate Cemetery on 17 August 1970.

Ever since "Della Farrant" first manifested in the public consciousness in 2010 she has been posting disparaging, derogatory and defamatory comments about Seán Manchester; especially on other people's websites, but also on her own blog. She and David Farrant are believed to be the creators of a Facebook page called "Bishop Bonkers" where, together with the familiar anti-Seán Manchester brigade of assorted stalkers and trolls who are also listed, they subscribe to libellous incitements against the man she is now hyprocritically issuing a complaint against. In fact, libel against Seán Manchester has become her stock-in-trade. A perfect example would be Steve Genier's "Nocturnal Frequency" podcasts where she and David Farrant have repeatedly been given a platform to malign and misrepresent the author of The Highgate Vampire. 

Ironically, the threatening letter sent in April 2015 refers to "mental health issues" and "psychiatric reports" and a "pattern of behaviour which spans decades." What is being witnessed is a classic case of transference. Both "Della" and her mentor Farrant are thought to have mental health issues. Back in 1970, David Farrant was the subject of psychiatric reports when he was examined by two psychiatrists who could not agree on his state of mind. One declared him insane while the other felt he was fit to appear in court and face criminal charges.

David Farrant has evinced a pattern of behaviour since 1970 (when he first came into contact with Seán Manchester) that can truthfully be described as obsessive, compulsive, harassing, deceitful, abusive, cruel, vindictive and malicious. He has admitted sending voodoo death dolls to total strangers he took against, and there have been others he knew personally who received his "curses" and threats.

David Farrant and his colluding sidekick are now trying to play the victim, but it will not wash.

Decades of abusive and threatening material from David Farrant is on record, including illegal uploads and copyright theft on a monumental scale. His stream of self-published pamphlets, booklets and books include stolen material lawfully owned by Seán Manchester. This is the tip of a massive iceberg that would sink their boat if they ever tried to seriously launch any attempt to silence those who provide an honest alternative to their lies.

What Farrant and his latest collaborator are trying to achieve by way of intimidation is the censoring of any individual who knows the truth; those who were around in Highgate circa half a century ago and remember what really happened, and those who today authoritatively raise questions Farrant cannot answer, and would definitely not want mentioned, much less talked about openly in public.

The image (below) reveals the normally secretive "Della Farrant" photographed by Polly Hancock in a local newspaper, the Hampstead & Highgate Express, at Hallowe'en 2013. One year later Haunted Highgate was published. In July 2015, she organised "The Highgate Vampire Symposium." 

Then the person calling herself "Della Farrant" faded back into the shadows from whence she came.