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.