| Revision as of 10:44, 4 July 2006 editSimpsonworthing (talk | contribs)175 editsNo edit summary← Previous edit | Revision as of 10:46, 4 July 2006 edit undoSimpsonworthing (talk | contribs)175 editsNo edit summaryNext edit → | ||
| Line 83: | Line 83: | ||
| Underwood, Peter. ''The Vampire's Bedside Companion'' (1975; revised ed., 1976 | Underwood, Peter. ''The Vampire's Bedside Companion'' (1975; revised ed., 1976 | ||
| Ellis, Bill. ''The Highgate Cemetery Vampire Hunt'' Folklore 104 (1993), 13-39. | |||
| Ellis, Bill. ''Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions and the Media'' (2000), 215-38. | |||
Revision as of 10:46, 4 July 2006
The Highgate Vampire was a supernatural being that allegedly haunted Highgate Cemetery in London.
A contemporary vampire report
Over the past 36 years, many popular books on ghosts have mentioned a vampire which allegedly haunted Highgate Cemetery in the early 1970s. It is a fascinating example of modern legend-building, which can be traced through contemporary media reports and subsequent books by two participants, Sean Manchester and David Farrant. The fullest account is given by a folklore scholar, Professor Bill Ellis, in the journal Folklore(vol. 104, 1993, pp. 13-39). He writes from the viewpoint of sociological legend study; this concerns public perceptions of a (real or alleged) event, and how these are shaped into a narrativwe by processes of selection, exaggeration, stereotyping etc.
Those who prefer to believe that something supernatural really did occur at Highgate in 1968-70 will probably find Ellis's rationalism irritating, and can find an alternative interpretation in the books and websites of Sean Manchester and David Farrant.
Initial publicity
The publicity was initiated by a group of young people interested in the occult who began roaming the overgrown and dilapidated cemetery in the late 1960s, a time when it was being much vandalised by intruders. (1)
On 21 December 1969 one of their members, David Farrant, spent the night there and glimpsed a very tall figure with inhuman, hypnotic eyes. He wrote to the Hampstead and Highgate Express on 6 February 1970 to ask if others had seen anything similar. On the 13th, several people replied, describing a variety of ghosts said to haunt the cemetery or the adjoining Swains Lane. These included a tall man in a hat, a spectral cyclist, a woman in white, a face glaring through the bars of a gate, a figure wading into a pond, a pale gliding form, bells ringing, voices calling. (2)
Hardly two correspondents gave the same story (a common feature in genuine folk traditions about eerie places), but this natural diversity was about to be swamped by a single melodramatic image.
The vampire theory
A second local man, Sean Manchester, was just as keen as Farrant to identify and eliminate the supernatural entity in the cemetery. He told the Hampstead and Highgate Express on 27 February 1970 that he had seen the bodies of foxes drained on blood, and so deduced that what the paper called 'a King Vampire from Wallachia' had been brought to England in a coffin in the eighteenth century and buried on the site that later became Highgate Cemetery, and that modern Satanists had roused him. Manchester said the right thing to do would be to stake the vampire's body, or behead and burn it, but regrettably this would nowadays be illegal inside a tomb. The paper headlined this: 'Does a Wampyr walk in Highgate?' The influence of the Dracula story is blatant, but after initial hesitation Farrant agreed that the spectre might well be vampiric, and the label stuck. (3)
The Mass Vampire Hunt of March 1970
The ensuing publicity was enhanced by a growing rivalry between Farrant and Manchester, each claiming that he could and would expel or destroy the spectre. Manchester declared that he would hold an 'official' vampire hunt on Friday 13 March -- a date sure to win maximum attention, since in British and American superstition Friday the Thirteenth is always ominous (4). Press and TV duly responded. Interviews with both men were broadcast on ITV early that evening, and within two hours a mob of 'hunters' from all over London and beyond swarmed over gates and walls into the locked cemetery, and were with difficulty expelled by police. (5)
Manchester's exorcism claims
In later years, Manchester wrote his own account of his doings that night (The Highgate Vampire 1985; 2nd rev. ed. 1991). Unobserved by the police, he and some companions entered the cemetery via the damaged railings of an adjoining churchyard, and tried to break open the door of one particular catacomb to which a psychic sleepwalking girl had previously led him. Failing in this, they climbed down on a rope through a hole in its roof, finding empty coffins into which they put garlic, and sprinkling holy water around. On seeing police searchlights approaching, they climbed out of the catacomb, but remained nearby. (6)
Some months later, on 1 August 1970, the charred and headless remains of a woman's body were found not far from the catacomb. The police suspected that it had been used in black magic, but it seems likely that this was another, more drastic, attempt at vampire-laying, since decapitation and burning are methods just as well known as staking (recommended by Van Helsing in Dracula and shown in many vampire films.) This incident stirred both Farrant and Manchester to further activity. Farrant was found by police in the churchyard beside Highgate Cemetery one night in August, carrying a crucifix and a wooden stake. He was arrested, but when the case came to court it was dismissed. (7)
A few days later Manchester returned to Highgate Cemetery, but in the daytime, when visits are allowed. Again, we must depend on his own published book for an account of his actions, since neither press nor police were present. He claims that this time he and his companions did succeed in forcing open, inch by inch, the doors of a family vault (indicated by his female psychic helper). He lifted the massive lid off one coffin, believing it to have been mysteriously transferred there from the previous catacomb. He was about to drive a stake through the body it contained when a companion persuaded him to desist. Reluctantly, he shut the coffin, put garlic and incense in the vault, and came out from it. (8)
A later chapter of Manchester's book claims that three years afterwards he discovered a vampiric corpse (he implies that it was the same one) in the cellar of an empty house in the Highgate/Hornsey area, and staked and burnt it. (9)
Manchester's story is full of melodramatic details mirroring the Dracula mythos -- the sleepwalking girl; a coffined corpse 'gorged and stinking with the life-blood of others', with fangs and burning eyes; his own role as a Van Helsing figure. If he did indeed behave in the way he describes, he was fortunate to have been unobserved. It was a good instance of what folklorists (following termilology established by Linda Degh) now call 'ostension'. This means the real-life imitation of elements from a well-known tale, often involving role-playing, and sometimes leading to ritual acts of vandalism and desecration.
Aftermath
There was more publicity about Farrant and Manchester when rumours spread that they would meet in an 'magicians' duel' on Parliament Hill ion Friday 13 April 1973, which never came off (10); and when Farrant was jailed in 1974 for damaging memorials in Highgate Cemetery -- damage which he insisted had been caused by Satanists, not him. (11) Both episodes kept memories of the Highgate affair vivid. In 1975 Manchester wrote a chapter about it in a book edited by Peter Underwood, a well-known popular writer on ghost lore. The Highgate Vampire is now regularly featured in books and internet sites on occult subjects.
The feud between Manchester and Farrant remains vigorous to this day; each claims to be a competent psychic researcher and exorcist; each pours scorn on the other's alleged expertise. They continue to investigate supernatural phenomena, and have both written and spoken repeatedly about the Highgate events, in every medium available, each stressing his own role to the exclusion of the other.
Source notes
HHE = Hampstead and Highgate Express CHHR = Camden, Highgate and Hampstead Record
(1)R D Altick, To Be in England (1969), 194-5, and various press reports,cited in Ellis (1993)19-20.
(2)HHE 6/2/70, 26; 13/2/70, 25; 20/2/70, 1, 27; 27/2/70, 6. Cited in Ellis (1993)20-21; some also in Farrant (1991)6-8.
(3)HHE 27/2/70,1; Manchester (1991)75. Whether or not the journalist embelished what Manchester said is irrelevant, since it was the actual press report which cred public excitement
(4)HHE6/3/70, 1; HHE 27/2/70, 1; Manchester (1991) 69-70, 75; Ellis (1993) 24.
(5)HHE13/3/70, 1; The Evening News 14/3/70, 1; Ellis (1993) 24-5.
(6) Manchester (1991), 77-8.
(7) CHHR 21/8/70, 1; 28/8/70, 1; 2/10/70, 1.
(8) Hornsey Journal 28/8/70, 36; Manchester (1991), 84-7.
(9) Manchester (1991), 141-5.
(10) The Sunday People 8/4/73; Ellis (1993) 30-1.
(11) Press coverage was very extensive, in both local and national papers, see Ellis (1993) 31-3 and the list of press sources in his note 81.
References
Ellis, Bill. 'The Highgate Cemetery Vampire Hunt', Folklore 104 (1993), 13-39.
Ellis, Bill. Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions and the Media (University Press of Kentucky, 2000), 215-36.
Farrant, David. Beyond the Highgate Vampire (British Psychic and Occult Society, 1991).
Manchester, Seán. The Highgate Vampire (1985; revised ed., 1991).
Underwood, Peter. The Vampire's Bedside Companion (1975; revised ed., 1976