Highgate Vampire

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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 purportedly haunted Highgate Cemetery in the early 1970s. The growth of its reputation 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 . He writes from the viewpoint of sociological legend study; this concerns public perceptions of a (real or purported) event, and how these are shaped into a narrative by processes of rumour, selection, exaggeration, stereotyping etc.

Other narratives which treat these purported happenings as fact are available 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 . On 21 December 1969 one of their members, David Farrant, spent the night there, according to his account written in 1991. In a letter to the Hampstead and Highgate Express on 6 February 1970, he wrote that when passing the cemetery on 24 December 1969 he had glimpsed "a grey figure", which he considered to be supernatural, and asked 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 ghosts were descrbed as 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, and voices calling . Hardly two correspondents gave the same story (a common feature in genuine folk traditions about eerie places).

The vampire theory

A second local man, Sean Manchester, was just as keen as Farrant to identify and eliminate what he and Farrant believed was a 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 of blood, and so deduced that what the paper called 'a King Vampire from Wallachia' had been brought to England in a coffin in the early 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. The paper headlined this: 'Does a Wampyr walk in Highgate?' The influence of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula and its cinematic offshoots is blatant, but after initial hesitation Farrant agreed that the spectre might well be vampiric, and the label stuck .

Manchester has claimed, however , that the reference to 'a king vampire from Wallachia' was a journalistic embellishment. Nevertheless, the 1985 edition of his book still speaks of an unnamed nobleman's body brought to Highgate in a coffin from somewhere in Europe.

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 to his associates that he would hold an 'official' vampire hunt on Friday 13 March -- such Fridays are always ominous dates in British and American superstition (Friday the Thirteenth), and are frequently chosen for items on occult matters in the media . ITV then set up interviews with both Manchester and Farrant, which were broadcast on ITV early on the evening of the 13th; 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 .

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). According to his narrative, he and some companions entered the cemetery, unobserved by the police, via the damaged railings of an adjoining churchyard, and tried to open the door of one particular catacomb to which a psychic sleepwalking girl had previously led him; but try as they might, it would not budge an inch. Failing in this, they climbed down on a rope through an existing hole in its roof, finding empty coffins into which they put garlic, and sprinkling holy water around. .

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. Soon after this incident, there was a noticeable surge in both Farrant's and Manchester's activities. 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 .

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 heavy and rusty iron 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 .

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 .

Manchester's story is full of melodramatic details mirroring the Dracula mythos -- the sleepwalking girl; the vampire transported to England in a coffin; 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. It can be regarded as a good example of what folklorists (following termilology established by Linda Degh) now call 'ostension' and legend tripping. 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 a 'magicians' duel' on Parliament Hill on Friday 13 April 1973, which never came off ; and when Farrant was jailed in 1974 for damaging memorials and interfering with dead remains in Highgate Cemetery -- vandalism and desecration which he insisted had been caused by Satanists, not him . 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 exorcist and researcher of the paranormal; 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

Ellis (1993), p.13-39
R D Altick, To Be in England (1969), 194-5, and various press reports,cited in Ellis (1993)19-20
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.
HHE 27/2/70,1; Manchester (1991) 75; Manchester (1997) 72.
Manchester (1997), p. 72
HHE6/3/70, 1; HHE 27/2/70, 1; Manchester (1991) 69-70, 75; Ellis (1993) 24
. Such behaviour exemplifies, in an extreme form, a fondness for legend tripping.HHE13/3/70, 1; The Evening News 14/3/70, 1; Ellis (1993) 24-5.
Manchester (1991), 77-8.
CHHR 21/8/70, 1; 28/8/70, 1; 2/10/70, 1.
Hornsey Journal 28/8/70, 36; Manchester (1991), 84-7.
Manchester (1991), 141-5.
The Sunday People 8/4/73; Ellis (1993) 30-1.
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. This journal can be read online via the JStor site.

Ellis, Bill. Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions and the Media (University Press of Kentucky, 2000), 215-36.

Farrant, David. Beyond the Highgate Vampire (London: British Psychic and Occult Society, 1991).

Manchester, Seán. The Highgate Vampire (London: British Occult Society, 1985; revised ed., London: Gothic Press, 1991).

Manchester, Sean. The Vampire Hunter's Handbook (London: Gothic Press, 1997).

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

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