Don Peek

 

Don Peek is Don Ecker's internet service provider who stepped in to help when Mr Ecker's previous server deleted a cache of stolen images owned by Bishop Seán Manchester. Mr Peek is also the service provider for hate sites such as Net Curtain Lurkers on which libel has been regurgitated courtesy of David Farrant for the anonymous hate-mongers in America who run that site to the delight of other anti-Bishop obsessives such as Anthony Hogg who provides links at every opportunity to the malice and defamation.

Instead of acknowledging legal (DMCA) notices as would any respectable server, Don Peek chose to ignore them and provided the confidential contents (required by law) to the offenders in each case. Thus those in America who were publishing incitements of hatred as well as infringed copyright were given the private address and private telephone number of the complainant by Mr Peek. The anonymous cowards who created Net Curtain Lurkers instantly published most of this information on their hate site.

Don Peek calls his service "Coastland technologies" and describes it as "a profitable owner-operated business that has been in business for over ten years." 

Mr Peek continues: "We own our own servers and we have them collocated.  By owning our own servers, we have complete control of how your site is hosted. We keep our customers happy.  It's not easy to find new customers so it just makes sense to give the best service we can to our current customers. This way they stay with us when it comes time to renew. We have customers who've been hosting with us over ten years.  That must have something to do with it."

Not quite. The real reason customers like Don Ecker and Net Curtain Lurkers stay with Don Peek is because he shares their extreme antipathy towards Bishop Seán Manchester and is willing to break the law by refusing to remove incitements of hatred and infringed copyright material aimed at denigrating and damaging the bishop. Other servers would instantly disable these miscreants' sites, and, moreover, have done so. But not Don Peek who appears to be very friendly towards bullies of the Don Ecker stamp.

Mr Peek's questionable service is located at:

Coastland Technologies
4820 Kiowa Lane NW
Cleveland Tennessee, 37312

United States of America

Rob Brautigam

Rob Brautigam in his Amsterdam flat at a time when he was a

massive fan of Bishop Manchester whose framed photograph

(one of four images) is on the wall (top, left) in the background.

"First of all I would like to express my gratitude to Sean Manchester and a few of his associates. Thank you, Bishop Sean. Thank you Lady Sarah. What else ? Very much obliged (a little more sincerely this time) for your hospitality : Diana Brewster and son. Thank you Brother Keith. Without your help I would never have solved one of the many mysteries surrounding Sean." - Rob Brautigam

Brother Keith commented about the above sarcasm found on Mr Brautigam's website:

In June 1990, Rob Brautigam wrote to Bishop Seán Manchester at the Highgate offices of the Vampire Research Society to apply for membership in that organisation. Mr Brautigam subscribed at that time to a strong belief in the existence of real, ie supernatural, vampires and, moreover, their control. He had not yet embarked upon any newsletter or magazine production of his own; though that would soon alter.

Mr Brautigam wrote: “It has been with the greatest interest and admiration that I have occasionally read about your activities over the years. … It goes without saying that I would very much like to join your Society. So could you please tell me if it is possible for me to be a member?”

Over the following year and a half, Bishop Seán Manchester arranged three meetings with Rob Brautigam. By the second and penultimate rendezvous it was transparent that the Dutchman was not suitable membership material for a serious research society. In the interim Mr Brautigam had launched a home-produced magazine titled International Vampire. He went out of his way to compliment Bishop Manchester on his “truly magnificent The Highgate Vampire,” which the Dutchman described as “a masterpiece of vamirography.” Brautigam continued: “I have been rereading the book ever since I got it. And I am impatiently looking forward to the moment when the revised edition will be on the market” (Correspondence to Bishop Seán Manchester, 22 August 1990).

When the updated and revised edition was published some months later, Rob Brautigam enthusiastically sang its praises in International Vampire and elsewhere. By this time Mr Brautigam had made contact with Kev Demant who also admired the same author’s work. They described themselves as “fans of Seán Manchester.” Mr Demant would later apply for membership in the same research society. His application was also rejected. By his own admission, Kev Demant had nothing to contribute to vampirological research, having hitherto only read fiction on the subject. Despite being refused membership, Mr Brautigam and Mr Demant maintained a regular and amicable correspondence with Bishop Seán Manchester until the end of 1992. Some of this was to solicit contributions for Mr Brautigam’s magazine, but the direction now being taken by the Dutchman witnessed a certain reluctance on Bishop Manchester’s part to provide further material for International Vampire. Thus, by the end of 1992, the relationship had begun to sour.

At the beginning of that same year, Rob Brautigam revealed his increasing interest in a dishevelled character living in a London bed-sitting room who was sentenced to almost five years’ imprisonment in 1974 for desecration and vandalism linked to pseudo-occult rituals at Highgate Cemetery, and sending black magic threats through the post. Mr Brautigam referred to his “growing David Farrant File of Shame” in correspondence to Bishop Manchester, dated 30 January 1972, and thought the publicity-seeker to be no more than a “misguided simpleton” (something he was quickly disabused of despite David Farrant over the years having acquired the nick-name "The Devil's Fool").

The person Rob Brautigam referred to as a "simpleton."

The Dutchman’s exchanges with Bishop Seán Manchester ended abruptly on 20 December 1992 with confirmation that he had entered into correspondence with David Farrant, while also giving the impression that this contact was now over. “As to my brief correspondence with Farrant,” wrote Brautigam, “you can start breathing again, for there is no point now in continuing it any longer. … I still admire you as a most gifted writer, and nothing can ever change that. I will continue to think of it as a privilege that I have had the pleasure of meeting you and corresponding with you” (Correspondence to Bishop Seán Manchester, 20 December 1992).

Bishop Manchester wrote further, but gained no response and was never to hear from Mr Brautigam again. The puzzle was solved some time later when it became clear that Rob Brautigam had entered into an alliance with David Farrant.

The Dutchman started to describe himself as a major vampirologist; indeed “the only vampire expert in the Netherlands,” which to many came as something of a surprise to those who were genuinely expert. This sudden claim, something of a revelation to Bishop Manchester at the time, appeared in the Dutch Sunday tabloid Zondagsnieuws in 1992. Reggie Naus, a Dutch correspondent in contact with BishopManchester, wrote:

“About a year ago he appeared on a Dutch talk show alongside Chorondzon Vanian, a vampiroid in a black tuxedo, wearing sunglasses inside a studio, with long sharp fangs in his mouth. After Vanian told the audience he would live forever, Rob Brautigam told them a vampire would go out at night and ‘drink fresh blood from young virgins.’ I find it rather curious that a ‘vampire expert’ would believe a vampire can only drink the blood of virgins” (Correspondence to Bishop Seán Manchester, 21 March 1996).

Mr Naus would reveal a disturbing development: “Brautigam's website seems to have become a meeting place for vampiroids, with contact advertisements of people claiming to be 450 years old and similar nonsense” (Correspondence to Bishop Seán Manchester, 15 May 1999).

Mr Farrant on "a late night jaunt" in Highgate Cemetery in 1970.

David Farrant's fraudulent claim that he was somehow part of a serious investigation into the supernatural goings on at Highgate Cemetery are exposed to the light of day when anyone who actually knew him at the time is heard. Farrant's first wife, Mary, was certainly around and she gave testimony as a defence witness under oath at her husband's trials at the Old Bailey in June 1974. This is what was recorded in a national newspaper by a court reporter:

“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).

The concensus view four decades ago was that Mr Farrant amounted to nothing more than a lone publicity-seeker in search of a convenient bandwagon to jump on. This opinion was reached due to the plethora of first-hand evidence from his contemporaries who knew his claims to be bogus. His publicity stunts nevertheless landed him in jail with a prison sentence of four years and eight months.

“Farrant was a fool. Fascinated by witchcraft … he couldn’t keep his interests to himself. He was a blatant publicist. He told this newspaper of his activities, sent photographs and articles describing his bizarre activities” (Peter Hounam, Editor, Hornsey Journal, 16 July 1974).

Another newspaper reporting on a court appearance where Mr Farrant had apparently orchestrated his own arrest (this time in a churchyard, where witchcraft had supplanted vampires as his vehicle for publicity) recorded:

“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).

Following his brief six month stint as a lone “vampire hunter,” David Farrant hung up his cross and stake and replaced them with pentagrams, voodoo dolls and ritual daggers. This led to further arrests and a stiff prison sentence. Far from showing any remorse for his behaviour, Mr Farrant has exploited his criminal past to the full in a life devoted to phoney witchcraft, pseudo-occult claims and malicious pamphleteering.

Rob Brautigam, however, states on his Dutch website that David Farrant has been “investigating the phenomena in Highgate Cemetery from the very beginning.” This is impossible, even were it plausible. When the vampiric spectre was first being sighted at Highgate Cemetery, Mr Farrant would have been a mere teenager. He was living on the Continent when the phenomenon reared its head to two convent schoolgirls which brought it to the attention of Bishop Seán Manchester. Indeed, France was where he met his Irish wife, Mary Olden. Newspaper reports, court records, and various interviews on tape at the time, confirm that David Farrant only learned about the rumoured vampire when he drank in local pubs in January 1970. He somewhat unconvincingly claims to have seen it himself around this time, and wrote the following to a local newspaper:

"Some nights I walk home past the gates of Highgate Cemetery. 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. I saw a grey figure for a few seconds before it disappeared into the darkness. The second sighting, a week later, was also brief. Last week, the figure appeared long enough for me to see it much more clearly, and now I can think of no other explanation than this apparition being supernatural. I have no knowledge in this field and I would be interested to hear if any other readers have seen anything of this nature." - David Farrant, "Letters to the Editor," Hampstead & Highgate Express, 6 February 1970.

Mr Farrant wrote to Bishop Seán Manchester prior to his arrest in August 1970 and also during his remand at Brixton Prison. What he wrote is completely at odds with his later claims and certainly supports the recorded facts according to Bishop Manchester, ie that David Farrant was nothing more than a lone, would-be vampire hunter who acted solely to achieve self-publicity in the media; someone who had absolutely no connection whatsoever to the investigation already in progess into the supernatural happenings at Highgate Cemetery.

The last word (as found on his website) goes to the Dutchman:

"Sincere and well-meant thanks to David Farrant, who was willing to discuss and share his information about the case (unlike some). Thank you very much, David." - Rob Brautigam (14 April 2009)

Kev Demant

Kev Demant (while in a pub drinking with David Farrant).

.

"If we have to nominate one single expert in this world who seems to know absolutely everything about the Highgate case, I will definitely put my money on Kev Demant."

- Rob Brautigam (14 April 2009)

The gangly spectre of Kev Demant, “an avowed Seán Manchester supporter,”[1] posted fan mail for three years before turning unpleasant. Much of his correspondence referred to his drab high-rise council block existence in East London’s Whitechapel area, his infrequent excursion to this or that morbid place, failure to catch transmissions of Bishop Seán Manchester on television and radio, and the inane ramblings one might expect from a self-proclaimed obsessive. Mr Demant and his wife, Christine, met Bishop Manchester just twice - each time at a public event where they chatted very briefly before the occasion itself demanded Manchester's full attention. The couple also caught the back of the bishop's head at a third venue during an ecumenical gathering in Westminster Cathedral, but without tickets they could not sit close enough to make contact. Bishop Seán Manchester had no reason to question the Demants’ motives beyond their very obvious enthusiasm shown toward his books. In common with Jennie Gray, the managing editor of Udolpho, and others - including their pal Rob Brautigam - The Highgate Vampire was to become the Demants’ favourite book of all time:

“I am constantly reading books on horror and the supernatural and can quite honestly say that no book has ever had quite the same effect on me.”[2]

When the revised and updated edition was published in the summer of 1991, Mr Demant immediately wrote:

“The definitive edition of The Highgate Vampire now holds pride of place in the Demants 1,200 plus ‘library.’ I hope you will excuse my lapsing into unashamed fandom for a moment to tell you I love the book - an intriguing, beautifully produced masterpiece of the supernatural. Nobody is producing anything like it in the present day - from the cover onward it looks and is unique … I hope I’ve not been too gushy, it is just that I truly admire and respect you and your work.”[3]

Kev Demant at the time he supported Bishop Manchester.

When the Demants met the managing editor of Udolpho, Jennie Gray, in July 1991 at the first get together of Miss Gray’s Gothic Society, the occasion was recorded and transmitted by BBC Radio Four’s Kaleidoscope on the last day of the month. Mr Demant’s voice was picked up, out of those present, to be heard protesting:

“Actually, we’re not really in with this lot; we’re more into Seán Manchester.”

The following week, he described Miss Gray’s society as belonging to an “older age group, very middle class etc. We looked, felt, indeed were totally alien in such surroundings.”[4]

The Demants nevertheless formed an association with Miss Gray and Mr Brautigam, who were already in contact with each other. Bishop Seán Manchester recognised the potential in Christine Demant’s talent for line drawing, and offered to showcase some of her illustrations in a couple of his published works. One of these was his first novel for which the bishop provided photographs to direct and influence the outcome of her drawings; most of which proved to be almost facsimiles of the originals. Her line drawings also feature in the most recent edition of The Highgate Vampire. Most people agree that these two books portray the very best of her work.

The Demants would sometimes sign their correspondence “Kev and Chrissie (friends and fans)” - and their praise was not reserved for merely one topic. Kev Demant proclaimed From Satan To Christ to be “a valuable exposé of present-day Satanism and the charlatans who lure the innocent onto the Left-hand Path.”[5]

This last statement is worth remembering in view of what came to transpire in the period ahead where a complete about turn occurred, and these two books became targets for their vilification.

Not wanting to lose a unique opportunity for her specialist magazine, Jennie Gray commissioned Kev Demant to conduct an interview with Bishop Seán Manchester who was gradually persuaded and hesitatingly consented. Bishop Manchester's schedule, however, prevented a face to face interview, which obliged Mr Demant to ask questions on Miss Gray’s behalf via correspondence and the bishop answering them through the same medium.

“This is certainly a strange way of conducting an interview,” he wrote. “Jennie sets the questions, you do all the hard work and I get my name to the results! … I hope I can do you justice.”[6] A week later, having received Bishop Seán Manchester's answers, Mr Demant replied: “You have not balked at the more ‘difficult’ questions.”[7]

When he saw Jennie Gray’s expurgated outcome in print, Kev Demant was quite obviously less enthusiastic:

“To be honest, I don’t know what to feel about the article, a somewhat sanitised version of the material submitted. Many of your responses have been truncated while my own contribution has been edited, certain sentences have been rewritten (badly in my opinion and without my consent) and ultimately censored. … I wonder what all these aesthetes, decadents, intellectuals and yuppies who constitute the readership are going to make of it all!”[8]

It did not take long to discover what they made of it all. Within a month all six hundred copies sold out. Miss Gray ordered an unprecedented extra hundred copies. Her magazine had reached its peak. On December 14th, Kev Demant wrote: “Somehow I think it is your prestigious interview which had much to do with the favourable response.”

Rob Brautigam at the time he supported Bishop Manchester.
.

Kev Demant had also peaked. Having made innumerable scathing criticisms (some in print - often his correspondence containing the addendum “you can quote me on that”), he launched an astonishing attack out of the blue, and lauded David Farrant whose illicit pamphlet Beyond the Highgate Vampire he suddenly approved and advertised, albeit confessing that he had turned into one of the “quislings” who were “beating a path … to [Farrant’s] door.”[9]

In the same article, Mr Demant now described and promoted himself as “Britain’s premier vampirologist.” This last claim was the most bizarre because it had been apparent throughout his correspondence with Bishop Manchester that neither of the Demants knew anything much about vampirology.

Kev Demant had provided an account of his only “practical” experience to Bishop Seán Manchester:

“I visited St Mary’s churchyard, Harrow-on-the-Hill, last Thursday for the first time in over a decade. The cemetery is still magnificently gloomy and atmospheric, indeed it hasn’t changed at all. When I was a kid my friends and I used to think it was haunted - it certainly looks as though it ought to be. There was a lot of vandalism and spray-painting on the tombstones - and I can’t recall whether it was satanic or not. My friend and I decided to have a look around there after dark, but were unfortunately dissuaded from doing so by the arrival of a bunch of rather ugly looking bikers. So ended my ghost-hunting days. Not exactly Montague Summers, I’m afraid.”

In the same letter, Mr Demant also mentioned Mr Farrant’s Beyond the Highgate Vampire:

“The pamphlet hardly seems to have made a ripple, not surprising really … Having quoted [without consent] those two extraordinary sequences from your book in their entirety I thought he might have given you a few new customers.”[10]

But for the efforts of Kev Demant, Jennie Gray and Rob Brautigam in the years to follow, the home-produced pamphlet of David Farrant's would have sunk without trace.

Rob Brautigam with Bishop Manchester in Highgate Cemetery.
.

Rob Brautigam had now also started to blow his own trumpet without any real justification, describing himself as “the only vampire expert in the Netherlands.” This preposterous claim, something of a revelation to Bishop Seán Manchester, appeared in the Dutch Sunday tabloid Zondagsnieuws in 1992. Reggie Naus, a Dutch correspondent whom the bishop knew, wrote:

“About a year ago he appeared on a Dutch talk show alongside Chorondzon Vanian, a vampiroid in a black tuxedo, wearing sunglasses inside a studio, with long sharp fangs in his mouth. After Vanian told the audience he would live forever, Rob Brautigam told them a vampire would go out at night and ‘drink fresh blood from young virgins.’ I find it rather curious that a ‘vampire expert’ would believe a vampire can only drink the blood of virgins.”[11]

Mr Naus revealed a disturbing development: “Brautigam’s website seems to have become a meeting place for vampiroids, with contact advertisements of people claiming to be 450 years old and similar nonsense.”[12]

Rob Brautigam as he looked in 2010. 

A visit on the internet to Rob Brautigam’s website at the turn of the century revealed links to other sites that were overtly satanic, promoting Aleister Crowley and such like. David Farrant’s squalid pamphlets were now on offer courtesy of Mr Brautigam’s advertising.

Kev Demant and his two associates in “fandom” probably became treacherous and disloyal because they desperately wanted the quick fix of immediate gratification - not unlike the gutter press - whereas Bishop Seán Manchester has always been a very private person, a lesson learned early in life when he awoke and found himself plastered across newspapers. He would always be willing to answer technical queries in response to correspondents; otherwise general fan mail was dealt with by one of the bishop's secretaries. Mr Demant and Mr Brautigam managed to pass through the net. Mr Farrant, meanwhile, courted attention and colluded with absolutely anybody willing to play his game. Perhaps frustrated by Bishop Manchester's aloofness and need for privacy, Mr Demant and Mr Brautigam slowly turned to Mr Farrant for their fix.

 Sylvaine Charlet - a friend of Bishop Seán Manchester.

Just a few of months earlier, Mr Demant had declared: “I’m just somebody who admires you and your work which I think is important and never less than interesting.”[13] He assured Bishop Manchester in private correspondence: “To my mind the best work has been done by Montague Summers and yourself - two Englishmen!”[14]

Kev Demant's correspondence ended abruptly in December 1993. He and Mr Brautigam were now gaining succour for their Highgate Cemetery obsession from Mr Farrant. In the meantime, some observers were becoming aware of anomalies in Jennie Gray’s treatment of Bishop Seán Manchester and his published work in her magazine. Writing under the pseudonym of Lyndall Mack (Peter Mack being her father), Miss Gray described Bishop Manchester in 1994 as an “arrogant Sherlock Holmes of the spirit world … [who] recounts [Farrant’s] ludicrous incompetence with fierce disdain,” adding, “all the rest are fumbling amateurs, mere sightseers, gawping at what they cannot possibly understand.”[15]

The text contained misrepresentation of the facts and potential defamation. Miss Gray’s replies in private were nothing less than polite, but she ignored the falsehoods drawn to her attention: “I think you have entirely missed the point. … The Highgate Vampire as a book [is] an A1 classic which will be read for hundreds of years to come. I think if you had taken better note of the general content of Udolpho you would not have fallen into the error which you have of interpreting the article as a vitriolic attack.”[16]

Three years later, Jennie Gray wrote an article that tells of her childhood in the late 1950s in Highgate, London, before she was relocated in the early 1960s by her parents: “A great deal of the charm of Highgate Cemetery was precisely that it was forbidden territory. I understand entirely why the vampire hunters kept going back there a decade later. … I am only sorry that my family left Highgate too early - and that, as a consequence, I missed the party.”[17]

Missing the party seems to be the bone of contention, source of sour grapes and latent resentment turned malignant evinced by Miss Gray, Rob Brautigam and the Demants. Bishop Seán Manchester felt they should be grateful they missed the “party”: "That truly nightmare scenario is something they cannot possibly begin to comprehend."

Kev Demant, prior to his radical shift in loyalty, published that Bishop Manchester had a “reluctance to suffer fools gladly,” adding, “that he is genuine in his beliefs is, I think, beyond question.”[18]

As the flame of the old century flickered, and first-hand memories of the case dimmed, the hunger to re-invent those times attracted fools like moths to a candle that had almost spluttered its last. Supposed “fans” who later transformed into mean-spirited malcontents have been relatively small in number. The experience of Bishop Seán Manchester nevertheless serves to underline the necessity for a moral agenda. The Demants were not involved in the occult, certainly not at the time of their correspondence with the bishop. They were anarchic members of Class War with an almighty chip on their shoulder against anyone they deemed to be grand. Jennie Gray and Rob Brautigam were fascinated by decadence and subversive behaviour. They failed to recognise their spite - so immersed were they in it - all of which conspired to some small extent to make Bishop Manchester even further remote and inaccessible.

The more they consorted and colluded with David Farrant, the more their material became sick and twisted. Christine Demant turned to producing semi-pornographic and profane illustrations designed to be as unpleasant and defamatory as possible. The only persons interested in her efforts were similarly dysfunctional individuals with an axe to grind. One of her drawings, produced in 1995, depicts the bishop grotesquely bloated in episcopal attire. In the top right-hand corner is an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus revealing a two-fingered gesture. Blasphemy would become her stock-in-trade. Her husband resorted to parodying all that Bishop Manchester represents, and, in a transparent piece of sour grapes in the second issue of a smutty newsletter he was now editing for David Farrant, referred to Sylvaine Charlet as having been included in Bishop Manchester's Highgate account “for the opportunity of regaling us with photographs of himself in the company of a beautiful French superstar” when, in fact, there are no pictures of Sylvaine in the Gothic Press edition.

People slowly become the sum of their choices, and are influenced by what they allow themselves to absorb. Many Bishop Manchester encountered along life’s journey were not aware, or, at least, refused to acknowledge, that they had chosen the Left-hand Path and turned to darkness. The illusion is that theirs is a more exciting and rewarding journey because imaginary evil is "romantic and varied." But evil in reality is gloomy and monotonous, barren and boring.

Kev Demant having a drink with David Farrant.

Sylvaine Charlet has remained a valued colleague and friend of Bishop Seán Manchester with whom exists an affinity that transcends time. Back in the late 1970s they played lead rôles opposite each other for a French film dramatisation that attracted a cult following with art-house audiences[19]. Sylvaine Charlet and the bishop have always remained close friends as well as colleagues; each to the other providing inspiration and encouragement in an increasingly uglier world.

To this day, Kev Demant still continues to publish his pernicious propaganda using hidden subdomains in foreign lands to host illegal material of a defamatory nature peppered throughout with stolen images, some of which are altered and modified to suit his agenda. False attribution and misdirection are the principal stratagems of his ugly vendetta. His anti-Bishop Seán Manchester hate material is reliant on  the input of a compulsive liar (Mr Farrant), a self-proclaimed Satanist (Mr Pope) and a malefic occultist (Mr Medway). Mr Demant, who admits to being an anarchist, is indeed the sum of his choices. He dwells in a depressing world of dark shadows in which he obsesses about a man he met briefly at two public occasions a long time ago; a man whom he feels obliged to malign in the most vicious manner imaginable as some latter-day clone of that original compulsive whose existence is locked in the distant, dismal past: David Farrant.

Anthony Hogg would remark: "Kev Demant and Gareth Medway are better reps for Dave than Dave himself." This is true because the aforementioned have a grasp of the English language and Mr Demant has a dry sense of humour which occasionaly surfaces amidst the venom he spits. Whereas Mr Farrant is totally void of humour, and is yet to discover how to spell and understand the basics of English grammar. Even if he possessed these it would still leave the reader with an ugly and unimaginative narrative creaking at the seams with his predictable obsessions. His writing skills are pretty much non-existant, which makes Mr Farrant a very poor representative of himself when it comes to putting pen to paper. Kev Demant does a far better job at spinning Mr Farrant's badly presented propaganda of unconvincing falsehood about Bishop Manchester. 

__________________________________________

[1] Correspondence to Seán Manchester (Kevin Demant, 8 October 1991).
[2] Correspondence to Seán Manchester (Kevin Demant, 20 May 1990).
[3] Correspondence to Seán Manchester (Kevin Demant, 13 August 1991).
[4] Correspondence to Seán Manchester (Kevin Demant, 5 August 1991).
[5] Correspondence to Seán Manchester (Kevin Demant, 17 February 1991).
[6] Correspondence to Seán Manchester (Kevin Demant, 20 February 1992).
[7] Correspondence to Seán Manchester (Kevin Demant, 27 February 1992).
[8] Correspondence to Seán Manchester (Kevin Demant, 7 September 1992).
[9] “Suspended in Dusk" by Kevin & Christine Demant (Udolpho, Summer 1997, p32).
[10] Correspondence to Seán Manchester (Kevin Demant, 23 March 1992).
[11] Correspondence to Seán Manchester (Reggie Naus, 21 March 1996).
[12] Correspondence to Seán Manchester (Reggie Naus, 15 May 1999).
[13] Correspondence to Seán Manchester (Kevin Demant, 19 August 1993).
[14] Correspondence to Seán Manchester (Kevin Demant, 14 August 1992).
[15] “The Highgate Vampire Revisited” by Lyndall Mack (Udolpho, September 1994, p30).
[16] Correspondence to Seán Manchester (Jennie Gray, 9 November 1994).
[17] “Growing up by the Boneyard” by Jennie Gray (Udolpho, Summer 1997, p6).
[18] The Ghost Story Society Newsletter (issue 7, 1990).
[19] Beren directed by Guy Godefroy (Lancelot Productions, France).

In the Beginning

FROM SEÁN MANCHESTER'S MEMOIR

* * *

Anthony stood alongside a pretty, dark-haired woman, not his wife, who held a baby, not his, in her arms. They wanted the use of my flat for a brief period before going off together to goodness knows where. Anthony referred to the girl’s husband as “Allan,” which, though not his real name, was the name by which he was apparently known amongst friends. The girl, Mary, was someone I vaguely recognised as a barmaid from a pub on Archway Road where I had played saxophone in a jazz group on occasions. Now she and Anthony were asking me to collude in their “elopement.” Put on the spot, I made a split-second decision to resolve the dilemma by declining. Anthony was never quite the same again after that. He failed to return to the studio darkroom after the six months “elopement” ― something he described as the happiest months of his life ― and instead opted to take employment other than darkroom work, including another milkman’s job prior to becoming a newspaper vendor. Mary, now pregnant, returned to “Allan,” but left for the second time, to live with her parents by the late summer of 1969. She eventually filed for a divorce. Anthony returned to his wife and their Highgate flat in Archway Road.

The bizarre twist to this episode is that “Allan,” now having been made homeless following his eviction from a nearby flat, sought refuge in Anthony’s coal cellar. Partial to alcohol, “Allan” would later be arrested and held on remand for shenanigans not entirely unrelated to his drinking in the following year. A handful of months before the arrest, he wrote to his local newspaper, at the behest of Anthony, to declare that he had seen a ghostly figure some nights as he “walked home past the gates of Highgate Cemetery.” Thus he became one of the many people I sought to interview, and was included among those briefly interviewed in the press and on television throughout 1970. There is an obvious flaw in his overture to the press in as much as it is physically impossible to “walk home” from any of the pubs he frequented in Highgate Village and pass by the cemetery gates in Swains Lane. Any map of the area will show that his coal bunker lodgings in Archway Road were located in the opposite direction. But, then, “Allan” was less than serious when he wrote his letter in February 1970. Indeed, the exercise was an attention-seeking prank. To that end, I suppose it succeeded. I learned these facts later from Anthony without too much surprise, but some dismay. "Allan" gave Anthony the pseudonym "Tony Hutchinson" in newspaper and magazine articles.

Revelations later made by Anthony only served to confirm what I had already suspected. It would seem that “Allan” had discussed faking another news story. It was decided to invent a story about the escape and recapture of his macaw, Oliver, now in the care of someone else. This was hardly original. “Goldie” the eagle had escaped from London Zoo in 1965, only to be later recaptured. This became a national news story at the time. “Allan” thought he had found a bandwagon on which to catch a ride. Anthony, unimpressed by the Oliver story, jokingly suggested a fake suicide attempt from Archway Bridge with a no less bogus “rescue.” This, too, was unoriginal because a news story about the actor and comedian Peter Sellers persuading a depressed person (about to jump off Archway Bridge) from committing suicide had also made the headlines.

While “Allan” was thinking about how to go about manufacturing one or possibly both stories, he heard talk of an alleged vampire in Highgate Cemetery on his visits to the Prince of Wales and various other pubs in the area.

The escaped bird and fake suicide attempt stories were instantly ditched. “Allan” was determined to exploit the three-year-old word-of-mouth reports of a vampire by writing a letter to the editor of the Hampstead and Highgate Express in early 1970, ending with the frank admission: “I have no knowledge in this field and I would be interested to hear if any other readers have seen anything of this nature.” Some readers of the newspaper were apparently able to confirm plenty of sightings. Unfortunately, some of the correspondents had been put up to it by "Allan," whom they were acquainted with.

The Highgate phenomenon was a story about to snowball. This had the unfortunate effect of dragging me into the forefront of something I had decided hitherto to keep a lid on. I felt that it was incumbent upon me to make some sort of statement in view of all the readers’ comments. Thus, on 27 February 1970, following batches of readers’ letters, I appeared on the front page to summarise the view of the British Occult Society and the newly-formed Vampire Research Society. It did not make easy reading. Two weeks later, I featured on Thames Television’s Today programme with the same ambition.

“Allan” also made an appearance on the same transmission, along with several youngsters who had allegedly witnessed a spectre at Highgate Cemetery. Sandra Harris, interviewing “Allan,” asked: “Did you get any feelings from it? Did you feel that it was evil?” Now calling himself David (his given name), “Allan” replied: “Yes, I did feel that it was evil because the last time I actually saw its face and it looked like it had been dead for a long time.” Sandra Harris asked: “What do you mean by that?” “Allan” answered: “Well, I mean it certainly wasn’t human.” That was all he had to say on the Today report, yet its repercussions haunted him thereafter

Captioned “David F——” [his surname is deleted here to avoid awarding him any further publicity], he certainly made no claim to any association with the British Occult Society. Needless to say, “Allan,” or David, was not a member, associate or participant in the activities of the British Occult Society, which existed purely for the purpose of investigating occult and supernatural phenomena. The following year found David fraudulently claiming membership. The claim was instantly and publicly rebuffed by the British Occult Society. He next absurdly claimed to be both “president and founder.” Disclaimers followed press reports whenever he was thus described, invariably with the editor adding the prefix “self-styled.” Tired of being exposed in the press as an interloping charlatan who had hijacked the name of a long extant organisation, along with the title of its current president, in 1983 David altered the name of his “society” by inserting the word “Psychic” in its title. Nobody was fooled. He had spoken to the media about his “thousands of followers” (Hornsey Journal, 23 November 1979), and even went so far as to proffer the notion of a number as high as twenty thousand members (Finchley Press, 22 February 1980). However, in the same report was stated the following: “On Monday, Seán Manchester, president of the British Occult Society, disclaimed any connection between Mr F[——] and the society. Questioning Mr F[——]’s claim to have 20,000 ‘followers,’ Mr Manchester said: ‘I challenge you to find one serious occultist in the whole of the United Kingdom who will support any of Mr F[——]’s claims.’ Mr Manchester believes that Mr F[——]’s activities — including the libel action [which he lost] — have been publicity-seeking.”

This had been my assessment in early 1970 when I first made his acquaintance while interviewing witnesses of the widely reported Highgate spectre. It was also the conclusion of others. Eminent researcher Peter Underwood would comment in a book published five years after David had launched himself in the media: “Publicity of a dubious kind has surrounded the activities of a person or persons named F[——] and his — or their — association with Highgate Cemetery. … a Mr Allan F[——] was caught climbing over the wall of Highgate Cemetery carrying a wooden cross and a sharpened piece of wood. … According to the Daily Mail Allan F[——] saw ‘an apparition’ eight feet tall in the cemetery that ‘just floated along the ground’ when he was on watch one morning waiting ‘for the vampire to rise.’ He believed that there had been a vampire in Highgate Cemetery for about ten years. … Less than a month later a Mr David F[——] was guiding Barry Simmons of the London Evening News on a night-tour of Highgate Cemetery armed with a cross and wooden stake which he carried under his arm in a paper carrier bag. In fact the whole project seems to have been a somewhat dismal and depressing effect — even the cross, created from two pieces of wood, was tied together with a shoelace.” [The Vampire’s Bedside Companion by Peter Underwood, Leslie Frewin Books, 1975, pages 77-79.]

In a home-produced and stapled pamphlet, somewhat unimaginatively titled Beyond the Highgate Vampire, self-published a quarter of a century later, David denied vampire hunting with a cross and stake. He merely wanted to measure out a circle, he unconvincingly claimed, with the wooden stake and a piece of string. Even so, a nine inch tall photograph of him, holding a cross in one hand and a stake in the other, appeared on the front page of the Hornsey Journal, 28 June 1974, beneath a banner headline stating: “The Graveyard Ghoul Awaits His Fate.” The picture’s caption read: “F[——] on a ‘vampire hunt’ in Highgate Cemetery.” The report began: “Wicked witch David F[——], tall, pale and dressed all in black, saw his weird world crumble about him this week. F[——], aged 28, the ghoulish, self-styled High Priest of the British Occult Society [sic], was found guilty by an Old Bailey jury of damaging a memorial to the dead at Highgate Cemetery and interfering with buried remains. … Mr Richard du Cann prosecuting, accused F[——] of ‘terrible’ crimes and at one stage described him as a ‘wicked witch.’ … One of the witnesses for the prosecution was Journal reporter Roger Simpson. F[——] had given him a photograph of a corpse in a partly-opened coffin. Because of the nature of the picture, the paper decided not to publish it, and it was handed to the police.”

The public relations damage inflicted upon the actual British Occult Society by David’s phoney association was due to his incessant manufacture of fraudulent news stories and claims of “occult powers” and “witchcraft ceremonies.” In countless published interviews given by David to the press, he boasted of sacrificing cats, invariably adding that they were “stray cats” and that they were “anaesthetised” before having their throats slit. “We rarely sacrifice animals in rituals but this sacrifice was essential to our belief as we derive power from blood. The power we gain is used for good as against evil,” he told Roger Simpson in an article for the Hornsey Journal, 31 August 1973, adding: “Hundreds’ of years ago a naked virgin would have been sacrificed but obviously we couldn’t do this now so we had to have an animal for the important ritual.”

A headline news story in the same newspaper, 28 September 1973, revealed: “F[——], as the Journal reported, admitted slitting a ‘stray’ cat’s throat at the height of a bizarre witchcraft ritual … in Highgate Woods recently.” There are countless quotes in the press where he describes his animal sacrifice threats and their execution, eg headline of the Hornsey Journal, 7 September 1973: “I will sacrifice cat at Hallowe’en: F[——],” and the same newspaper, 16 November 1979: “Ritual sex act and cat sacrifice,” followed by a report opening with the words: “Self-styled ‘high priest’ David F[——] told a High Court jury this week of the night he performed a ritual sex act in an attempt to summon up a vampire in Highgate Cemetery. He admitted that he had taken part in the ‘sacrifice’ of a stray cat in Highgate Wood.” In another squalid report, where he is interviewed by Sue Kentish for the News of the World, 23 September 1973, he is quoted as saying: “I did not enjoy having to kill the cat, but for one particular part of the ritual it was necessary. The sacrifice of a living creature represents the ultimate act in invoking a deity. I do not see animal sacrifice as drastic as people have made it out to be. … And, at least, I anaesthetised the cat before I had to kill it.”

While serving a four years and eight months prison sentence, David wrote an article for New Witchcraft magazine (issue 4), in which he claimed: “In magic, blood is symbolic of the ‘life force’ or ‘spiritual energy’ which permeates the body and in this context is used in many advanced magical ceremonies. It would not be sacrilegious to compare this to the use of wine as symbolic of blood in the Catholic Communion. Accordingly, at approximately 11.45pm, I drew blood.” His lengthy description of summoning a “satanic force” is nothing short of an admission to his engagement in unabashed diabolism: “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.” Use of the word “temporarily” might have been inappropriate in the circumstances and somewhat premature with hindsight.

In my first unexpurgated account of the Highgate case, I tendered the following opinion: “I have found not a single shred of evidence to suggest that the least of these things are true.” [The Highgate Vampire, British Occult Society, 1985, page 80.]

I slowly became less confident in that view, as his associations with hardcore Satanists like Jean-Paul Bourre grew exponentially. Accordingly I expurgated it from the 1991 edition of The Highgate Vampire. The simple fact of the matter is that I did not know how far he was capable of going. After all, he had broken the law before I ever met him, using two British passports — the phoney one being in the name of “Allan Aden Ellson.” To own this passport meant that he had acquired Crown property through deception by falsifying information on the application form. Had it been known at the time by the authorities, he would have been arrested and charged with a serious offence. He was causing the BOS/VRS a lot of personal inconvenience, and was obviously a compulsive individual. But how sinister, or even satanic, was he really?

Two people who knew him longer than anyone else, Anthony and David’s first wife, Mary, are convinced that his witchcraft and occult stunts were utterly phoney. In that regard I concurred, but I could no longer opine with certainty just how far or not he was willing to go in the pursuit of publicity.

The Sun, 21 June 1974, recorded: “The wife of self-styled occult priest David F[——] 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 F[——] — 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 F[——] 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.”

Shortly before and for a period following his imprisonment in 1974, I attempted to gain David’s confidence in order to discover the truth about his alleged “occult” activities. The conclusions I arrive at are published in The Vampire Hunter’s Handbook, a work that covers this matter comprehensively: “My personal view is that he has become possessed by demonic influences. His behaviour, by any standard, is extremely obsessive.” His self-styled organisation, rarely consisting of more than one member, I deduce “did not have the same appeal [as other witchcraft groups], owing to the ‘high priest’s’ total lack of occult knowledge and contradictory statements.” [The Vampire Hunter’s Handbook, Gothic Press, 1997, pages 55 & 87.]

From the very beginning — when his acquaintances knew him only as “Allan” — to the last moment I spoke to him [a brief meeting, after a gap of five years, which took place in London’s Highgate Wood at dusk on 24 January 1987, as recorded in From Satan To Christ, Holy Grail, 1988, pages 73-74], F[——], in the absence of any corroborating witness, would frequently ridicule witches, occultists and also members of any mainstream religious faith. For him witchcraft and the occult was only a means to an end. My impression was that he actually believed none of it. He saw those who took such things seriously as being only worthy of his contempt. His raison d’être was and remains an agenda where his manufactured publicity stunts masked deep-rooted insecurities that probably stem from childhood. By dabbling in these areas, however, David opened himself to the very thing he privately scorned behind closed doors. He rapidly became the Devil’s plaything.

“I don’t believe in the existence of the Devil,” [quoted from David’s appearance on the Michael Cole Show, UK Living, 20 December 1998] he would protest in later years when interviewed. But, of course, the Devil was more than aware of David — and, moreover, sought to manipulate him.

Barring journalists who will always take advantage of a free meal ticket when a compulsive publicity-seeker offers one on a plate, many of his acquaintances who provided David with succour turned out themselves to be apologists for the diabolist Aleister Crowley and others of that ilk.

Gareth Medway

Medway and Farrant celebrating something diabolical with an effigy of Bishop Manchester's decapitated head.

Gareth Medway with one of several anti-Bishop
Manchester items he and David Farrant promote.

Gareth Medway assists David Farrant’s vendetta on a weekly basis despite having no personal computer of his own (he uses Mr Farrant’s) and has taken the trouble to travel all the way to Bishop Seán Manchester’s private retreat in order to clandestinely take photographs of its exterior for publication in Mr Farrant’s pamphlets in which libellous incitements of hatred against the bishop fill every page. Mr Medway also partakes in the dissemination of malicious merchandise aimed at ridiculing Bishop Manchester. These items are sold to those with an axe to grind against traditional Christians generally and the bishop in particular. 

Mr Medway describes himself as “a priest of The Fellowship of Isis, a historian of the occult and the author of Lure of the Sinister: The Unnatural History of Satanism,” and defends the past actions and current vendetta of his close friend and collaborator David Farrant with vigour.

Gareth Medway with his collaborator David Farrant.

Just to briefly recap on some of Mr Farrant’s actions:

“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)

“The judge [Michael Argyle QC] 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)

“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.” (The Sun, 21 June 1974)

Gareth Medway makes some bizarre latter-day representations on behalf of Mr Farrant in an article published in a self-produced pamphlet by his friend from a series of similarly unpleasant tracts. Mr Medway is the author of Lure of the Sinister, and has also occasionally written for the magazines Fortean Times and Magonia, which makes it all the bizarre when he throws his weight behind a man like Mr Farrant.  Mr Medway is quoted below exclusively from his piece, “The Highgate Affair,” published on page 4 of Mr Farrant’s highly defamatory series of illicit tracts, Man, Myth and Manchester (issue 6) where the sole preoccupation is to malign and libel Bishop Seán Manchester (hence the pamphlet’s title).

MEDWAY: “David Farrant will not disclose his age, going so far as to state that ‘We don’t believe in linear time,’ but he has told me that he was initiated into Wicca by a High Priestess named Helen, in Barnet, north London, in 1964, and, on another occasion, said that at the time of his initiation he was eighteen. He reached the third degree in 1966, and won a reputation as an authority on occultism. So in 1967 he set up the British Occult Society.”

FACT: Mr David Robert Donovan Farrant was born on 23 January 1946 at Shepherds Hill in north London. Dark Secrets, self-published in 2001 by Mr Farrant, claims on page 16 the same period, 1964, for his initiation into wicca (or witchcraft). However, when asked about this matter in interviews given throughout the previous three decades, he invariably told reporters that he had been initiated by his mother at a very young age. The age thirteen was sometimes given. This wavered in the telling to different reporters, but any initiation into witchcraft was obliged to remain prior to 1959 (when he would have been thirteen) because this is the year his mother died.

Mr Farrant married his first wife, Mary Olden, in a Roman Catholic Church in 1967. They had a nuptial mass and papal blessing. This is a strange ceremony to choose if you are a “high priest of witchcraft.” When Mary appeared as a defence witness during his Old Bailey trials in June 1974, she affirmed that she had no knowledge of his interest in witchcraft or the occult. His Highgate Cemetery antics were described by his wife, under oath, as being nothing more than a bit of a laugh and a joke. When Mr Farrant began his pursuit of publicity in early 1970, he was frequently photographed in attitudes of prayer before Christian crosses and images. He posed for photographs wearing crucifixes, rosaries and holding bibles. He was still doing so in August 1970, six years after he was supposed to have been initiated according to the latest date on offer from both him and his ally Gareth Medway.

There is no record anywhere in the public annals of David Farrant having “won a reputation as an authority on occultism,” and there is no evidence anywhere to suggest that he “set up the British Occult Society” in 1967. Until his return to England with his wife-to-be in the summer of 1967, Mr Farrant had been living in France and Spain. He met Mary Olden in Bordeaux from where they went to Spain. Here they remained until their wedding in north London at St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church. The British Occult Society was actually “set up” circa 1860, which might explain why Mr Farrant does not subscribe to “linear time.” Bishop Manchester was its last president, appointed in June 1967, until the formal dissolution of the Society on 8 August 1988. Bishop Manchester’s appearance on Thames Television’s Today programme, 13 March 1970, witnessed the caption beneath his screen image: “Seán Manchester, President, British Occult Society.” Mr Farrant also made an appearance on the same transmission, along with several accompanying witnesses to an alleged spectre at Highgate Cemetery. He was captioned “David Farrant.” He made no claim on BOS membership at this time. Indeed, Mr Farrant has never been a member, associate or participant in the activities of the British Occult Society, which existed purely for the purpose of investigating supernatural and occult phenomena. The BOS did not engage in witchcraft, magical ceremonies, or occult “religious” practices.

The following year found Mr Farrant fraudulently claiming membership of the BOS. The year after that he falsely stated that he was the “president and founder” of the BOS, all of which was hotly denied by the BOS itself. When Mr Farrant appeared at the Old Bailey in 1974, he again described himself this way. He was quoted thus, but invariably with the prefix “self-styled” to make clear that his claim was not supported by anyone other than himself. Tired of being exposed in the press as an interloping charlatan who had hijacked the name of an already extant organisation, along with the title of its current president, in 1983 he altered the name of his “society” to the “British Psychic and Occult Society.” Nobody was fooled. He had spoken to the media about his “thousands of followers” (Hornsey Journal, 23 November 1979), and even went so far as to proffer a number as high as 20,000 (Finchley Press, 22 February 1980). In the same report, however, was stated the following: “On Monday, Seán Manchester, president of the British Occult Society, disclaimed any connection between Mr Farrant and the society. Questioning Mr Farrant’s claim to have 20,000 ‘followers,’ Mr Manchester said: ‘I challenge you to find one serious individual in the whole of the United Kingdom who will support any of Mr Farrant’s claims.’ Mr Manchester believes that Mr Farrant’s activities — including the libel action [which Farrant lost] — have been publicity-seeking.”

This had been Bishop Seán Manchester’s assessment of David Farrant years earlier when he made his acquaintance through interviewing alleged witnesses of the widely reported Highgate phenomenon in 1970. Mr Farrant was residing at that time in an Archway Road coal cellar beneath the flat of someone, given the name “Hutchinson” by Mr Farrant, who would later reveal some damaging facts about his tenant. It would seem that Mr Farrant had wanted to fake a news story as early as 1968. He discussed this with “Hutchinson” (real name Tony Hill) again the following year and it was decided to do a fraudulent piece about the supposed escape and recapture of Mr Farrant’s macaw named “Oliver.” This was hardly original. “Goldie” the eagle had escaped from London Zoo and had been recaptured. It made the news worldwide, however, and Mr Farrant saw a bandwagon he could jump on to gain media attention. “Hutchinson” was unimpressed by the “Oliver” story, and suggested a fake suicide attempt from Archway Bridge where Mr Farrant was “rescued.” This, too, was unoriginal because a news story about Peter Sellers talking a depressed person out of committing suicide by jumping off Archway Bridge had also been in the headlines. While Mr Farrant was thinking about this new suggestion, he happened to hear about rumours of a vampire in Highgate Cemetery when he visited the Prince of Wales pub, and decided to hoax a ghost. Nobody was interested Mr Farrant’s claims of seeing a ghost, however, and it was only a matter of weeks before he found a bandwagon that would catapult him into the limelight.

“Hutchinson” was less keen on pursuing the vampire story and felt that a ghost story would be far easier to manufacture. Mr Farrant did this by writing to a local newspaper, the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 6 February 1970, with his infamous “Some nights I walk past the gates of Highgate Cemetery” letter, ending with the statement: “I have no knowledge in this field and I would be interested to hear if any other readers have seen anything of this nature.”

“No knowledge in this field”? This does not quite tally with Mr Medway’s misleading claim of the year 1966 when Mr Farrant “won a reputation as an authority on occultism.” Mr Farrant was not even in the country in 1966! He was roughing it, picking fruit to stay alive, on the Continent where he eventually met Mary Olden who would become his wife.

MEDWAY: “Farrant was in addition accused by the press (though not by the courts) of sacrificing cats. … During 1973 more stories about cats being sacrificed in the Highgate area appeared in the press, and this time Farrant’s name was used. He now [thirty years later] thinks that he should have tried to deny these reports. … He supposedly confessed to sacrificing a cat, but this was incongruously juxtaposed with remarks like: ‘The power we gain is used for good as against evil.’ In fact, of course, sacrificing a cat would be totally against Wiccan ethics. Conceivably people might call themselves Wiccan and nevertheless perform blood sacrifices, but it would be exceptional. … No criminal charges ever arose from this allegation, even though the following year he would be prosecuted for everything from interfering with a corpse to stealing bedlinen. And, naturally, he denies ever having sacrificed any animal.”

FACT: In countless published interviews given by Mr Farrant to the press during the Seventies and early Eighties, he openly admitted to sacrificing cats, invariably adding that they were “stray cats” and that they were “anaesthetised” before having their throats slit. The one cited by Mr Medway, ie Roger Simpson’s interview with David Farrant in the Hornsey Journal, 31 August 1973, quotes Mr Farrant directly from his taped conversation as saying: “We rarely sacrifice animals in rituals but this sacrifice was essential to our belief as we derive power from blood. The power we gain is used for good as against evil.” There is nothing “incongruous” about this juxtaposition. It is what you would expect him to say. Aleister Crowley, for whom Gareth Medway also has a soft spot, would never describe his animal sacrifices as being for evil, even if the rest of the world saw them as utterly wicked and depraved, which, of course, they did. Mr Farrant also gave a radio interview to the BBC in 1973 where he confirmed his policy to sacrifice cats in witchcraft ceremonies. Mr Farrant’s diabolical collaborator — John Russell Pope — in a recorded interview with Bishop Seán Manchester on 18 October 1987 (copies of which are available), confirmed: “Yes, David Farrant believes it is all right to kill cats.” Mr Pope, who had run the United Temples of Satan during the Seventies, was described as “Britain’s leading black magician” in Reveille magazine, 21 November 1975. The article quoted Mr Pope as saying: “I am going to form a coven that will rule the world.” Not a coven of witches, of course, but a coven of Satanists.

John Pope believed in ritual human sacrifice provided this was possible without legal penalty. Similar sentiments had been echoed by Mr Farrant two years earlier in his interview with Roger Simpson (Hornsey Journal, 31 August 1973) where he states: “Hundreds’ of years ago a naked virgin would have been sacrificed but obviously we couldn’t do this now so we had to have an animal for the important ritual.” In a front page headline story in the same newspaper, 28 September 1973, the following is found: “Farrant, as the Journal reported, admitted slitting a ‘stray’ cat’s throat at the height of a bizarre witchcraft ritual … in Highgate Woods recently.” There are countless quotes in the press where Mr Farrant describes his animal sacrifice threats and their execution, eg the headline in the Hornsey Journal, 7 September 1973: “I will sacrifice cat at Hallowe’en: Farrant,” and the same newspaper, 16 November 1979: “Ritual sex act and cat sacrifice,” followed by: “Self-styled ‘high priest’ David Farrant told a High Court jury this week of the night he performed a ritual sex act in an attempt to summon up a vampire in Highgate Cemetery. He also admitted that he had taken part in the ‘sacrifice’ of a stray cat in Highgate Wood.” In a truly revolting report, where David Farrant is interviewed by Sue Kentish for the News of the World, 23 September 1973, he is quoted as saying: “I did not enjoy having to kill the cat, but for one particular part of the ritual it was necessary. The sacrifice of a living creature represents the ultimate act in invoking a deity. I do not see animal sacrifice as drastic as people have made it out to be. … And, at least, I anaesthetised the cat before I had to kill it.”

Gareth Medway would have us believe that all these reports have been invented by journalists, and that, at worst, Mr Farrant just let them publish whatever they wanted. There is a fatal flaw in Mr Medway’s hypothesis, and that is that most of Mr Farrant’s interviews were tape-recorded. When interviewed by Bishop Seán Manchester, soon after Mr Farrant’s release from prison, the entire conversation was tape-recorded (copies of which are available) with Mr Farrant’s full knowledge and approval. Mr Medway has heard parts of this interview, including those parts where Mr Farrant unequivocally states that animal sacrifice is a vital part of his witchcraft practice. Moreover, whilst in prison, Mr Farrant wrote an article for New Witchcraft magazine (issue 4), wherein he states: “In magic, blood is symbolic of the ‘life force’ or ‘spiritual energy’ which permeates the body and in this context is used in many advanced magical ceremonies. It would not be sacrilegious to compare this to the use of wine as symbolic of blood in the Catholic Communion. Accordingly, at approximately 11.45pm, I drew blood.” Farrant’s lengthy description of summoning a “satanic force” is nothing short of diabolical necromancy: “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.”

The word “temporarily” might have proved to be incorrect in view of all that has followed. Some people, including Bishop Seán Manchester, take the view that Mr Farrant remains possessed.

MEDWAY: “At the end of 1969 Farrant heard reports of a mysterious spectral figure being seen in the vicinity of Highgate Cemetery, the north gate of which was only a hundred yards from his favourite pub, the Prince of Wales in Highgate Village. He went there after closing time on the night of the 21st of December and was rewarded with the sight of a seven-foot tall dark shape, which he felt to be malevolent, gazing at him. He repeated a Kabbalistic invocation and it vanished. … The rumour got around that the spectre was in fact a vampire.”

FACT: The “rumour” had been around since 1965. Two years later, in early 1967, two convent schoolgirls witnessed what they believed to be a vampire through the bars of the north gate. Innumerable other passers-by and residents also saw a vampire-like spectre in Highgate Cemetery, but refrained from seeking self-publicity in the press. Peter Underwood, president of the Ghost Club and member of the bona fide British Occult Society, was also aware of the Highgate Vampire long before Mr Farrant got wind of it. Mr Underwood, a celebrated author of over fifty books on the paranormal wrote: “In 1968, I heard first-hand of such a sighting,” adding, “Publicity of a dubious kind has surrounded the activities of a person or persons named Farrant and his — or their — association with Highgate Cemetery, in search of vampires. In 1970 a Mr David Farrant of Archway Road, Highgate, said, during the course of a television interview, that he planned to seek out the vampire in the cemetery and put an end to it by driving a stake through its heart.” (The Vampire’s Bedside Companion, Leslie Frewin, 1975, pages 76-77).

The “Kabbalistic invocation” was curiously overlooked by Mr Farrant in his recounting of this incident at the time; possibly because he was found wearing a Catholic crucifix and carrying a wooden stake when arrested in Highgate Cemetery by police searching for black magic devotees on the night of 17 August 1970. When Farrant appeared in the press that year, and in a BBC interview on October 15th, he posed holding a large cross while brandished a wooden stake.

However, in his pamphlet Beyond the Highgate Vampire, self-published some quarter of a century later, he totally denied vampire hunting with a cross and stake. He merely wanted to measure out a circle, it is unconvincingly claimed by him, with the stake and a piece of string. Even so, a nine inch tall photograph of Mr Farrant, holding a cross in one hand and a stake in the other, appeared on the front page of the Hornsey Journal, 28 June 1974, beneath a banner headline stating: “The Graveyard Ghoul Awaits His Fate.” The picture’s caption read: “Farrant on a ‘vampire hunt’ in Highgate Cemetery.” The report began: “Wicked witch David Farrant, tall, pale and dressed all in black, saw his weird world crumble about him this week. Farrant, aged 28, the ghoulish, self-styled High Priest of the British Occult Society, was found guilty by an Old Bailey jury of damaging a memorial to the dead at Highgate Cemetery and interfering with buried remains. … Mr Richard du Cann prosecuting, accused Farrant of ‘terrible’ crimes and at one stage described him as a ‘wicked witch.’ … One of the witnesses for the prosecution was Journal reporter Roger Simpson. Farrant had given him a photograph of a corpse in a partly-opened coffin. Because of the nature of the picture, the paper decided not to publish it, and it was handed to the police.”

Gareth Medway has nothing more to say about his friend’s “vampire hunting” in his article “The Highgate Affair,” which is hardly surprising. The facts do not stack up in Mr Farrant’s favour, and the more anyone digs the more they will exhume lies, contradictions, deception and false claims.

So why would Mr Medway want to spread Mr Farrant’s disinformation propaganda? It surely casts him in a very poor and indeed questionable light, and makes anything he erstwhile has to say, not least in his book Lure of the Sinister, significantly less credible.

Mr Farrant, of course, has been branded a liar by the courts and by every journalist who did his homework without relying on nonsense fed to him by the subject. Mr Medway clearly has another agenda; one that is pro-Crowley and antipathetic toward the Christian Church and representatives of it like Bishop Seán Manchester who took holy orders after having worked as an exorcist.

That earlier collaborator, “Hutchinson,” assures that not only is Mr Farrant a phoney witch, but a phoney everything else. “He believes in nothing except his own self-publicity,” said “Hutchinson, when asked about David Farrant. “Behind these witches’ and occultists’ backs, he ridicules them. Farrant believes in none of it, and hasn’t a sincere bone in his body. He just wants to be the centre of attention, and will do and say almost anything to achieve it.”

So is Satanism a cocktail of sheer deception and depravity and nothing else? Bishop Seán Manchester believes it does comprise of traditional devil worship, and this is backed up by Mr Farrant’s admission in a recprded interview that he worships Lucifer.

What about Mr Medway who publishes so much apologia on behalf of Satanists such as David Farrant and John Russell Pope? Mr Medway’s correspondence is invariably “care of” other peoples’ addresses either in London or in Liverpool. He stays virtually anonymous, unreachable and unaccountable for what he says and publishes. It is, therefore, nigh impossible to serve him with a writ or summons.

In one of his many offending pamphlets, Mr Farrant publishes the private address in full of an elderly lady who lived entirely on her own. She was a close friend and London Secretary of Bishop Seán Manchester, which is why her private whereabouts were not revealed. When Mr Farrant published her address, she lived in fear of some deranged person calling on her in the last year of her life until she died painfully of cancer. She was included on the list of persons who had complained to the police of harassment that led to his arrest under the Protection from Harassment Act in December 2002.

In the same pamphlet self-published by Mr Farrant, preceded by the exact location of another private residence, is found the following from Mr Medway: “The exact location of the ultra-confidential, elusive as the door to fairyland, more highly classified than Roswell, top secret private home of … etc.” And on the facing page is a photograph of the private house in question. Such are the depths David Farrant and Gareth Medway are prepared to stoop in order to execute their vindictive vendetta against whomever they dislike; not least Bishop Manchester, a man Mr Medway does not know personally and has never met.

Yet the description of a residential address as an “ultra-confidential” location, which it patently is not, is surely more applicable to Gareth Medway’s own whereabouts, which he goes to great lengths to protect.

Gross hypocrisy, therefore, is never too distant from the venomous pen of the author of the Lure of the Sinister, which is worth bearing in mind next time his name crops up.

Gareth Medway with close associate David Farrant.