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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 vault 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 vault, 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 vault. 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 the doors of a different family vault (indicated by his female psychic helper). He lifted the lid off one coffin, believing it to have been mysteriously transferred there from the previous vault. 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 of 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

Over the next few years, Farrant and Manchester both independently explored the cemetery with their supporters, seeking traces of phantoms and black magic. There was more publicity 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)

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.

Seán Manchester's and Peter Underwood's Findings

“I became convinced that, more than anyone else, the president of the Vampire Research Society knew the full story of the Highgate Vampire.” ~ Peter Underwood, President of the Ghost Club Society

In 1990, Peter Underwood retold the events of the Highgate Vampire case (up to the first discovery of the suspect tomb in Highgate Cemetery) in his book Exorcism! He commented in chapter six:

“The Hon Ralph Shirley told me in the 1940s that he had studied the subject in some depth, sifted through the evidence and concluded that vampirism was by no means as dead as many people supposed; more likely, he thought, the facts were concealed. … My old friend Montague Summers has, to his own satisfaction, at least, traced back ‘the dark tradition of the vampire’ until it is ‘lost amid the ages of a dateless antiquity’.”

In his anthology, The Vampire's Bedside Companion (1975) which contains a chapter with photographic evidence from the Vampire Research Society, written and contributed by VRS founder and president Seán Manchester, Peter Underwood wrote:

“Alleged sightings of a vampire-like creature ~ a grey spectre ~ lurking among the graves and tombstones have resulted in many vampire hunts. … In 1968, I heard first-hand evidence of such a sighting and my informant maintained that he and his companion had secreted themselves in one of the vaults and watched a dark figure flit among the catacombs and disappear into a huge vault from which the vampire … did not reappear. Subsequent search revealed no trace inside the vault but I was told that a trail of drops of blood stopped at an area of massive coffins which could have hidden a dozen vampires.”

And probably did! In the previous year, two schoolgirls had reported seeing the spectre rise from its tomb. One of these would be interviewed by Seán Manchester. The case of the Highgate Vampire was about to open.

Two seemingly unconnected incidents occurred within weeks of one another in early 1967. The first involved two 16-year-old convent girls who were walking home at night after having visited friends in Highgate Village. Their return journey took them down Swains Lane past the cemetery. They could not believe their eyes as they passed the graveyard’s north gate at the top of the lane, for in front of them bodies appeared to be emerging from their tombs. One of these schoolgirls later suffered nightly visitations and blood loss. The second incident, some weeks later, involved an engaged couple who were walking down the same lane. Suddenly the female shrieked as she glimpsed something hideous hovering behind the gate’s iron railings. Then her fiancé saw it. They both stood frozen to the ground as the spectre held them in thrall. Its face bore an expression of basilisk horror. Soon others sighted the same phenomenon as it hovered along the path behind the gate where gravestones are visible either side until consumed in darkness. Before long people were talking in hushed tones about the rumoured haunting in local pubs. Some who actually witnessed the spectral figure wrote to their local newspaper to share their experience. Discovery was made of animal carcasses drained of blood. They had been so exsanguinated that a forensic sample could not be found. It was only a matter of time before a person was found in the cemetery in a pool of blood. This victim died of wounds to the throat. The police made every attempt to cover-up the vampiristic nature of the death. Seán Manchester informed the public on 27 February 1970 that the cause was most probably a vampire. He appeared on television on 13 March 1970 and repeated his theory. The VRS, whose specialist unit within a larger investigatory organisation (now defunct) had opened the case twelve months earlier, established a history of similar hauntings that went back to before the graveyard existed. A suspected tomb was located and a spoken exorcism performed. This proved ineffective. The hauntings and animal deaths continued. Indeed, they multiplied. By now all sorts of people were jumping on the vampire bandwagon; including film-makers and rock musicians. Most were frightened off. Some who interloped became fascinated by the black arts with disastrous consequences. Meanwhile, serious researchers considered the possibility that a nest of vampires might be active in the area. Yet there seemed to be one principal source which the media had already dubbed a “King Vampire of the Undead.”

Seán Manchester led the thirteen year investigation from beginning to end. There was indeed more than one vampire for him and the Vampire Research Society to confront. However, in early 1974 he tracked the principal source of the contamination, known as the Highgate Vampire, to a neo-Gothic mansion on the Highgate borders. Here he employed the ancient and approved remedy. No vampire has been sighted in or near Highgate Cemetery and its environs since that time.

The reason why Seán Manchester initially wrote his bestselling book (The Highgate Vampire) was due to so many people contacting him to ask what really happened. Letters ran into hundreds, and this accumulated following the commission from Peter Underwood and his publisher, Leslie Frewin Books, to give an account of events up to and including the spoken exorcism attempt of August 1970. Seán Manchester thought this might stem the flow, but the case itself was yet to be solved, and reports of unsavoury incidents continued to filter into the columns of local newspapers. Hence the complete and unexpurgated account first published in 1985. A more intimate account was given in a special edition published by Gothic Press in 1991 where the rear fly on the dust jacket states:

“ recognises the immense public interest in the Highgate Vampire case which is why he has written the present volume as a final comment on what, in his own words, is ‘hopefully the last frenzied flutterings of a force so dight with fearful fascination that even legend could not contain it’.”

It was never Seán Manchester's intention to try and convince anyone of the existence of the supernatural, yet still he receives correspondence asking him to do precisely that. Nor was it his wish to stimulate undue interest in these matters; though he accepts this has been an unintentional by-product. By writing a comprehensive recounting of those events surrounding the mystery, he merely sought to provide a record of his unearthly experience for those who wanted to read about it.

In the wake of his book, and personal appearances where he discussed its contents, some individuals were not slow to engage in shameless exploitation of his work. The majority of enthusiastic readers of Seán Manchester's work, however, have shown immense sympathy and encouragement.

The Vampire Research Society still has members living in the vicinity of Highgate Cemetery and they know of no recent sighting from any credible witness. No latter-day witnesses have been identified whose testimony can be checked. Not one person has independently come forward to verify the claim ~ a claim that still remains totally unsubstantiated. A lone, amateur “vampire hunter” is as much a danger to himself as he is to any investigation that might already be in progress. It is surely fundamental common sense that if the pursuit of supernatural evil is a dangerous occupation to embark upon, then the last thing anyone needs are meddlers drawing attention to themselves in the media as invariably always happens. The outcome is a breakdown in relations between officials, landowners and perhaps potential witnesses and the bona fide researchers. This certainly happened at Highgate Cemetery in London, and at Kirklees Hall Estate in West Yorkshire. One amateur “vampire hunter” is bad enough, but each of those investigations became plagued with all too many amateurs who only served to add to the mayhem. The curious thing is that some subsequent reporting of events at a very much later date by journalists who could not be bothered to do their homework only referred to the antics of meddlers and amateurs in the Highgate Vampire case and made absolutely no mention of the genuine VRS investigation that took place over a period of thirteen years. The Vampire Research Society, though informally a specialist unit within the British Occult Society (BOS) from 1967, became autonomous in February 1970. On 13 March 1970, Seán Manchester made a transmission for Thames Television as the head of that organisation, and its parent BOS, where he warned against lone “vampire hunting” by amateurs. Seán Manchester reiterated his disapproval on 15 October 1970 for a BBC television documentary that also included brief footage of one such amateur brandishing a home-made stake and cross.

Forums that discuss The Highgate Vampire

• British Occult Society
• The Cross and the Stake
• The Highgate Vampire
• The Highgate Vampire
• Vampire Research Society

References

Manchester, Seán. Carmel: A Vampire Tale (2000).

Manchester, Seán. The Vampire Hunter's Handbook (1997).

Manchester, Seán. The Highgate Vampire (1985; revised ed., 1991).

Underwood, Peter. The Vampire's Bedside Companion (1975; revised ed., 1976).

Melton, J Gordon. The Vampire Book: Encyclopedia of the Undead (Visible Ink Press, 1994)

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.

See also

• Dracula
• English folklore
• Urban legends
• Vampires

• English folklore
• Culture in London
• Cemeteries
• Vampires