Entities and Non-Entities on the 46th Anniversary

Forty-six years ago today the Highgate Vampire case was taken into the public domain for the first time in the form of a front-page news feature article headlined "Does A Wampyr Walk In Highgate?" There was no mention of David Farrant in the article which focussed on the findings of the President of both the British Occult Society and the then fledgling Vampire Research Society. Many have since attempted to jump on the publicity-bandwagon that ensued, but none perhaps have been so desperate and compulsive as Anthony Hogg and his collaborators Trystan Lewis Swale and Erin Chapman who are currently trying to track down two females who have hithertofore enjoyed a very private existence.

A response from the author of The Highgate Vampire, Seán Manchester:

"Hogg, Swale and Chapman make clear their intention to pursue two women who I happen to know will resist any attempt to have their privacy compromised after all these years, but the trolling trio show no interest whatsoever in finding eye-witnesses identified with names and addresses in the Hampstead & Highgate Express in the early months of 1970. These eye-witnesses only differ from Elizabeth (I do not include Jacqueline because she is not 'Lusia' as falsely alleged by the stalkers) in one regard. None of them have any connection to me. Had they a connection to me they would doubtless be pursued to the ends of the earth by these obsessive non-entities out to grab their undeserved fifteen minutes of fame at the expense of innocent women and, of course, on the coat-tails of my book The Highgate Vampire and myself. What they are doing is morally unacceptable, and should not be encouraged or helped in any shape or form." - Seán Manchester (27 February 2016)

Kenneth Frewin, R Docherty, Julian McKennar, Audrey Connely and Nava Arieli (aka Nava Grunberg) were all identified as first-hand eyewitnesses in the Hampstead & Highgate Express, February — March 1970. Trystan Lewis Swale, Anthony Hogg and Erin Chapman are content to ruthlessly pursue Elizabeth Wojdyla while ignoring the other self-proclaimed eye-witnesses. Elizabeth Wojdyla was not identified by name in 1970, albeit she was referred to anonymously on television programmes that year. Mary Farrant and Colette Sully, although sympathetic to David Farrant at the time, might bring fresh evidence and certainly an unheard perspective. Females much less sympathetic to Farrant who were also identified by name in newspapers and magazines, eg Victoria Jervis, Nancy O'Hoski and many others, might equally shed new light on the goings-on in the 1970s. They have unique and privileged information. But you will find neither Hogg nor Swale nor Chapman showing the slightest interest in these females because they have no association with Seán Manchester.

As David Farrant, now turned seventy, falls further into an undead slumber, Anthony Hogg, Trystan Lewis Swale and Erin Chapman have become his replacement, using pernicious propaganda originating with Farrant to pursue an identical vendetta against the exorcist Seán Manchester. They are this generation's clones of a clown who nobody took seriously back in the 1970s. Swale, who regards Satanists as being mostly atheists and is one himself, declared on his site yesterday that Seán Manchester "doesn't know much about Satanism." The implication is that these clones do and their undisguised empathy with the dark side provides common ground with the source of all the malice.

Further reading on this topic:

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=573468252812286&id=230568517102263

http://fobsm.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/a-low-and-hollow-place_9.html

http://fobsm.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/the-unholy-trinity.html

http://fobsm.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/the-italian-connection.html

Seán Manchester's final comment in 2013 on the Highgate Vampire case:

"It was necessary to tell the full story, even though this was not an easy decision, due to the overwhelming public interest in the case, but I really now feel the subject has been exhausted and all there is to say about it has been said. It has also exhausted me after decades of television and radio interviews, film documentaries and related projects concentrating on this one topic. There will always be people seeking to cash in and exploit my work for their own ends. Many, of course, will be too young to remember the happenings at Highgate. That notwithstanding, my book The Highgate Vampire is optioned for cinematic treatment, but that is not something I wish to elaborate upon here.

"I am willing to quietly and privately set the record straight where need be, but I gave my final interview about this case to the broadcast media some years ago and have no intention of returning to the topic despite persistent requests from television and radio programmes for me to do so almost every week. I still make contributions on unrelated matters, but this subject of intense public fascination — in some cases obsession — concerning events at Highgate Cemetery more than forty-four years ago is not something I have an appetite to return to any longer. Having said that, my memoir in its unexpurgated form obviously mentions the case in a proper and fitting context to my life. However, I have no plans to have my memoir published — now or ever.

"Unimaginable horrors were experienced by folk at the time of the contagion and these I feel are best not evoked. They should be left undisturbed. The reality that I and others, most now sadly deceased, experienced all those many years ago no longer exists, and next to the hunger to experience the supernatural, albeit in this case at its most maleficent and deadly, there is perhaps no stronger hunger than to forget.

"Should an individual have a particular query about those mysterious happenings, I will give that person an answer (but not an interview); otherwise I have too much in the present with which to be concerned without reliving nightmares from the past."

Forty-fifth Anniversary

Peter Underwood R.I.P. 

(16 May 1923 – 26 November 2014)

The Last Journey ...

Seán Manchester's obituary for Peter Underwood

Peter Underwood was born in Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire, lived for much of his life in a small Hampshire village, and finally resided in Surrey. President of The Ghost Club since 1960, and a long-standing member of the Society of Psychical Research, Peter first entered the Vampire Research Society in 1973, having established a lively correspondence with myself wherein his support was unequivocal.

His colleague, Tom Perrott, had already invited me to address members of The Ghost Club in London. On 16 March 1973, Peter added: “We have a number of members who are deeply interested in the subject of vampires and I feel sure you would find our members kindly, sympathetic and friendly. I knew Montague Summers and members of The Ghost Club include Eric Maple and Robert Aickman who has written some excellent vampire stories. I hope that we may meet one day.”  In 1974, Peter took part in Daniel Farson’s television documentary on the subject of vampires and vampirism.

Peter kindly made me a Life-Member of The Ghost Club, whilst he, along with life-membership, was to become a Fellow Associate of the Vampire Research Society. Peter was already a member of the British Occult Society, an organisation that investigated the paranormal and occult phenomena, which was formally dissolved on 8 August 1988. The following year witnessed my collaboration with Peter on an anthology that would include the first published account of events in the early days of the Highgate Vampire case. On 14 October 1974, Peter wrote: “I am pleased to be able to advise you that I have now passed the proofs and I am very pleased with the way the book has turned out. It will be entitled The Vampire’s Bedside Companion and is due for publication early in 1975 [by Leslie Frewin Books].”

On 25 July 1975, Peter wrote: “As you know, I possess a medallion, given to me by Montague Summers, that is reputed to have power over vampires. … I am just wondering whether you happen to know of a current vampire infestation where [the medallion] might be tried [and tested]?”

The Highgate Vampire had been exorcised a year and a half earlier, but there were other vampires awaiting discovery. Thus began a comradeship in the field of vampirology that would endure to the sad news this month of my dear friend's death. On 15 December 1985, I was invited to give a piano recital of my own compositions on the occasion of Peter’s quarter of a century service as president of the The Ghost Club, at Berkeley Square, London. Other well-wishers included Dennis Wheatley, Vincent Price, Patrick Moore, Michael Bentine, Sir Alec Guiness and Dame Barbara Cartland — all of whom have now sadly passed on.

In 1990, Peter Underwood retold the events of the Highgate Vampire case (up to the first discovery of the undead 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 earlier book, containing the chapter with photographic evidence from the archive of the Vampire Research Society, written and contributed with Peter's encouragement by myself, he 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 so our history in this arcane field progressed. We corresponded regularly and I was invited on various occasions to become involved in various projects. What struck me always was Peter's dedication to his work and loyalty to me. He wrote a Foreword to my novel Carmel at the turn of the century which included these words: "Memories crowded in: [the author's] commanding lectures and television appearances; his ready and valuable co-operation in literary labours of love; his admiration of mutual friends such as Montague Summers, Dennis Wheatley and Devendra P Varma; his dealing with not always complimentary publicity; his piano playing and musical compositions; his abiding interest in unearthly subjects and his enduring publications — the list goes on and on."

Such was the generosity of spirit incumbent in Peter Underwood who ended his introduction to this author with the following:

"And as the shadows lengthen ... I often think, in the words he sometimes used to close his letters: 'Until we meet again ...' "

Peter's first and last acts in our long friendship was to offer me his unconditional support. And he knew I always offered mine. There were times after the death in 2003 of his wife, Joyce (whom I had met in the previous century and he had married on the day I was born), when Peter reached out to me in the full knowledge I would console, counsel and completely support him where others might have been less willing because of what transpired in the aftermath regarding his personal life. Such friendship, trust and loyalty between two people is rare in today's modern world, and we each recognised, understood and valued what comprised an archetypal English gentleman. Peter, indeed, was quintessentially an English gentleman. That is how I shall always remember him. Well-attired, upright, kind, considerate, polite and punctilious. A lovely, lovely man.

I have lost one of my closest colleagues and beloved friends. My condolences are extended to Peter's family, friends and colleagues. When he parted company with The Ghost Club in 1993 and formed the Ghost Club Society, one of the first things he did was to make me an honorary life-member.

Thank you for everything, Peter. I shall for ever hold you in my thoughts and prayers.

Until we meet again ...  

Highgate Cemetery Vampire Hunt

The Last Mass Vampire Hunt in England

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The night of Friday 13 March 1970 witnessed in England the largest vampire hunt of the twentieth century by members of the public. It bordered on hysteria and led to local police having their leave cancelled to contain it. Just how many were involved would be difficult to estimate, but certainly hundreds. In the preceding weeks, the Hampstead & Highgate Express (a local newspaper) told of unearthly goings-on at Highgate Cemetery. Its February 27th issue ran the headline "Does A Wampyr Walk in Highgate?" The front-page headline of the following fateful week's edition told of the matter being discussed on television that very evening by Seán Manchester who recounts the event in his bestselling book The Highgate Vampire:

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"... attempts to shoot the interview by the north gate were abandoned and the actual filming took place outside the main gate further down Swains Lane. Some independent witnessed, including several children who had seen a ghostly manifestation, were also interviewed for the programme. One person said: ' Yes, I did feel it was evil because the last time I actually saw its face and it looked like it had been dead for a long time.' Another witness commented: 'It seemed to float along the ground.' One of those interviewed who claimed to have seen the vampire was a certain David Farrant, a pathetic figure whose infatuation with the Highgate haunting was to earn him an undeserved notoriety and send him on a helter-skelter into the abyss of the dark occult. The programme was transmitted at 6.00pm on Friday 13 March 1970: the eve of the proposed vampire hunt. Eamonn Andrews introduced the viewing audience to a report on the Highgate Vampire. Within two hours Highgate was the scene of utter pandemonium as crowds of onlookers flocked to Swains Lane. The number multiplied as the evening progressed. Police on foot and in cars were unable to control the swarming mass of those who had arrived to witness the discovery of a modern-day vampire infestation in their midst. And its eradication! While chaos and frenzy continued to erupt in Swains Lane, a group of hand-picked researchers led by myself, constituting the official vampire hunt, made their way to the catacombs in the inky darkness of the cemetery." ― Seán Manchester (The Highgate Vampire, pp. 76-77). 

What followed would confirm the investigating hunters' worst fears.

Yet people still ask the question ...

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Does A Wampyr Still Walk In Highgate?

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The demonic presence in corporeal form (at first known locally and eventually worldwide as the Highgate Vampire) was successfully exorcised in early 1974. While accepting there have been anomalous sightings of apparition-like phenomena down the decades for generations - certainly as far back as Victorian times - none of these in recent years are remotely similar to sightings of what became known as the Highgate Vampire four and a half decades ago. Unfortunately, all the recent claims to a ghostly presence wafting about in the vicinity of the graveyard stem either directly or indirectly from a hoaxer who contacts his local newspapers regularly to such an end when not winding up naïve, local paranormal groups in the area comprising people not even born when events occurred in the 1960s and turn of the 1970s, who are clearly in awe of anything which might connect tangentially to the original case.

The Vampire Research Society would not dismiss the possibility of other manifestations elsewhere having a demonic/vampiric source, but no convincing evidence of the same phenomenon as before returning to Highgate Cemetery or indeed its environs has been provided by anyone.

The answer, therefore, to the question as to whether a wampyr still walks in Highgate is a resounding no.

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Source: Seán Manchester

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Does A Wampyr Walk In Highgate?

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"On Friday, 27 February 1970, the front page headline of the Hampstead and Highgate Express asked does a vampire walk in Highgate? There would be no going back. The die had been cast." (Seán Manchester, The Highgate Vampire, Gothic Press, p. 70)
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The banner headline "Does a wampyr walk in Highgate?" appeared across the front page of Hampstead and Highgate's most prestigious newspaper in February 1970. The editor himself had written the piece after meeting privately with the president of the British Occult Society and founder of the then fledgling Vampire Research Society. He allowed himself to get slightly carried away by introducing the journalistic embellishment "King Vampire of the Undead" - a term that Seán Manchester did not employ, as stated by him on page 72 of The Vampire Hunter's Handbook, but what else did the editor get wrong that day? Apparently more than you might imagine!

After warning that a vampire might be active in Highgate Cemetery, the article goes on to correctly describe Seán Manchester as a photographer (he had run his own photographic studio throughout the previous decade) and the president of the British Occult Society (a position he held from 21 June 1967 to 8 August 1988 when the BOS was dissolved). He is then quoted accurately enough before reference is made to a King Vampire of the Undead which is not attributed to him in actual quotes but attributed nonetheless.

A very important residence in Highgate somehow manages to transform into a different house in London's West End. For house "in the West End" one should actually substitute Ashurst House, which once stood at the western end of the site now occupied by Highgate Cemetery, as would have been explained by Seán Manchester who told the editor at the time that Ashurst House was sold and leased to a succession of tenants of whom one was a mysterious gentleman from the Continent who arrived in the wake of the vampire epidemic that had its origins in south-east Europe. This is not quite the same as what was reported and, of course, does not have anything like the same sensationalist impact as "King Vampire from Wallachia" which Draculesque adornment the newspaper clearly preferred.

There then follows reference to a group of Satanists attempting to "resurrect the King Vampire." This time the reference to a King Vampire is included in quotes even though the term was not uttered.

Next we are misinformed that the British Occult Society had "no formal membership" but instead corresponded with "50 to 100 interested people." Completely untrue. The BOS had a formal membership of over three hundred people with at least one hundred actively involved in ongoing research and investigation.

Then we learn that the British Occult Society "believes in countering magic by magic" when all that was said is that the supernatural will not submit to scientific methods to measure and prove its existence.

The newspaper correctly states that some BOS members had "spent nights in Highgate Cemetery" which was obviously for the purpose of observing the strange nocturnal goings-on in the place as had been reported by people in the previous decade and was still being reported up to the time of the article.

Readers are then offered in quotes "the traditional and approved manner" by which folk must rid themselves of this hideous pestilence without it being properly clarified that this is how clergy dealt with the problem in centuries past and was not on the agenda as far as the British Occult Society/Vampire Research Society was concerned with regard to Highgate Cemetery.

That Montague Summers' books bore some influence on Seán Manchester's understanding of vampirism is mentioned in tandem with  the suggestion that Bram Stoker's novel is based on fact. That Stoker was influenced by genuine cases and read about real vampires before writing Dracula is not in doubt, but the clumsy journalism of the Hampstead and Highgate Express clouds what is trying to be conveyed by the man they are interviewing in the pursuit (presumably) of economising on words for the sake of space.

Finally we come to a quote attributed to "one of Britain's busiest exorcists, the Rev John Neil-Smith" (they couldn't even get his name right - it was actually Christopher Neil-Smith) by attributing to him the following: "I believe the whole idea of vampires is probably a novelistic embellishment." He said nothing of the sort.

The Reverend Christopher Neil-Smith (1920-1995) was an Anglican priest, originally from Hampstead, most celebrated for his practice of exorcism and his paranormal interests.[1] Like Seán Manchester, whom he knew, Reverend Neil-Smith believed that evil is an external reality and should be treated as such rather than as an abstract concept.

A vicar at St Saviour's Anglican Church at Eton Road in Hampstead, London, he performed more than three thousand exorcisms in Britain since 1949. In 1972, the Bishop of London authorised him to exorcise demons according to his own judgement.[2] Two years earlier, he was misquoted in the Hampstead and Highgate Express, 27 February 1970, saying that vampires are "probably a novelistic embellishment," but, as Seán Manchester subsequently pointed out, Reverend Neil-Smith claimed to have actually exorcised vampires, as confirmed in a book written by Daniel Farson and Angus Hall which records:

"Yet not far from Highgate Cemetery lives a man who takes reports of vampirism seriously. The Reverend Christopher Neil-Smith is a leading British exorcist and writer on exorcism. He can cite several examples of people who have come to him for help in connection with vampirism. 'The one that particularly strikes me is that of a woman who showed me the marks on her wrists which appeared at night, where blood had definitely been taken. And there was no apparent reason why this should have occurred. They were marks like those of an animal. Something like scratching.' He denies this might have been done by the woman herself. She came to him when she felt her blood was being sucked away, and after he performed an exorcism the marks disappeared. Another person who came from South America 'had a similar phenomenon, as if an animal had sucked away his blood and attacked him at night.' Again, the Reverend Neil-Smith could find no obvious explanation. There is a third case of a man who, after his brother died, had the strange feeling that his lifeblood was being slowly sucked away from him. 'There seems to be evidence this was so,' says Neil-Smith. 'He was a perfectly normal person before, but after the brother's death he felt his life was being sucked away from him as if the spirit of his brother was feeding on him. When the exorcism was performed he felt a release and new life, as if new blood ran in his veins.' Neil-Smith rules out the possibility of a simple psychological explanation for this, such as a feeling of guilt by the survivor toward his brother. 'There was no disharmony between them. In fact he wasn't clear for some time that it (the vampire) was his brother.' The clergyman describes a vampire as 'half animal, half human,' and firmly refutes the suggestion that such things are all in the mind. 'I think that's a very naive interpretation,' he says. 'All the evidence points to the contrary'." [6]

The Reverend Christopher Neil-Smith, contrary to editor Gerald Isaaman's false attribution of 27 February 1970 in a local Hampstead newspaper, concluded that there really are such a things as vampires.

References:

1. a b Beeson, Trevor (2006). "The Reverend Christopher Neil-Smith". Priests And Prelates: The Daily Telegraph Clerical Obituaries. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0826481000.

2. Sands, Kathleen R. Demon possession in Elizabethan England. Praeger Publishers. "At around the same time, Father Christopher Neil-Smith, an Anglican priest, received a standing license from the Bishop of London authorizing him to exorcise freely according to his own judgment."

3. Neil-Smith, Christopher. Praying for daylight: God through modern eyes. P. Smith.

4. Cramer, Marc. The devil within. W.H. Allen. "with the noted exorcist, the Rev. Christopher Neil-Smith, author of an anecdotal book entitled The Exorcist and the Possessed."

5. Spence, Lewis. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Kessinger Publishing.

6. Mysterious Monsters (Aldus Books, 1978) by Daniel Farson and Angus Hall.
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