Post by Vampirologist on Mar 13, 2008 12:05:43 GMT -5
Tonight is the anniversary of the mass vampire hunt at Highgate Cemetery on 13 March 1970.
Following reports in local and national newspapers, plus a television interview with various witnesses earlier in the evening of March 13th on British television, a spate of amateur vampire hunters inflicted themselves on Highgate Cemetery with home-made stakes, crosses, garlic, holy water, but very little knowledge about how to deal with the phenomenon if they actually encountered it. The president of the British Occult Society (who had founded the Vampire Research Society in the previous month) made an appeal on the Today programme at 6.00pm to request the public not to get involved, nor put into jeopardy the investigation already in progress. Not everyone heeded his words. Over the following months a wide variety of independent vampire hunters descended on the graveyard only to be frightened off by its eerie atmosphere and what they believed might have been the vampire.
Some were quickly arrested by police patrolling the area. The public were advised that a full-scale investigation was taking place. Individual efforts by those merely seeking thrills nonetheless served to endanger all concerned and frustrate the official hunt. Simon Wiles and John White armed themselves with a crucifix and a sharpened stake and set off to see if they could locate the vampire’s tomb. Like others who acted in a freelance capacity, they were arrested by police who found in their rucksack an eight inch long wooden stake, sharpened to a fine point.
White later explained at Clerkenwell Court: “Legend has it that if one meets a vampire, one drives a stake through its heart.” He was wearing a crucifix round his neck and Wiles had one in his pocket. They were eventually discharged. Thus began a trend.
A 25-year-old history teacher from Billericay, Alan Blood, also descended on Highgate after seeing the Today report, but he at least had the good sense not to enter the infamous graveyard. Though described by the Evening News, 14 March 1970, as a “vampire expert,” Blood, in a later interview given to the Hampstead and Highgate Express, 20 March 1970, admitted that he was no such thing. “I have taken an interest in the black arts since boyhood, but I’m by no means an expert on vampires,” he told them. Following a drink in the local pub, Blood joined a crowd of onlookers outside the cemetery’s north gate, but he did not enter.
The BOS president (on the Today programme, 13 March 1970) warned one particular amateur vampire hunter, who had appeared on the same programme as one of several witnesses, to leave things he did not understand alone. Apparently he had received “a horrible fright” a few weeks earlier when he allegedly caught sight of the vampire by the north gate of Highgate Cemetery causing him to immediately write to his local newspaper about the experience, concluding with these words: “I have no knowledge in this field and I would be interested to hear if any other readers have seen anything of this nature.” (Letters to the Editor, Hampstead & Highgate Express, 6 February 1970). In the following month he revealed to the media that he had seen something at the north gate that was “evil” and that it “looked like it had been dead for a long time” (as told by him to Sandra Harris on the Today programme). Seán Manchester gave a warning on the same television programme that this man’s declared intention of staking the vampire alone went “against my explicit wish for his own safety.”
Police searching the cemetery inevitably arrested the amateur vampire hunter some five months later. He was found to be in possession of a wooden stake and a crucifix. Charged with being in an enclosed area for an unlawful purpose, he was later released because, in the strict sense of the wording, Highgate Cemetery is not an enclosed area.
It should have ended at that point. Several people had either been cautioned or arrested in the area when discovered to be engaged in amateur vampire hunting. Nothing more was heard of them once they retreated into their former obscurity, but some persisted. The one who was arrested in August 1970 belonged to the latter category. Had he heeded the public warning given by Seán Manchester on Thames Television's Today programme, and also in the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 13 March 1970, he could have probably avoided many of the problems that would blight his life in the years to follow, including a significant prison sentence.
The Hampstead & Highgate Express, 13 March 1970, under the headline "The Ghost Goes On TV," reported:
"Cameras from Thames Television visited Highgate Cemetery this week to film a programme ... One of those who faced the cameras was [the amateur vampire hunter]. ... Also interviewed was Mr Seán Manchester, president of the British Occult Society, whose theory is that it is not a ghost at all but a vampire. 'I've seen the ghost three times so far,' said [the amateur vampire hunter]. 'It was tall and very dark grey. But it didn't appear to have any feet. It just glided along.' He intends to visit the cemetery again, armed with a wooden stake and a crucifix, with the aim of exorcising the spirit. He also believes that Highgate is 'rife with black magic.' ... Mr Manchester is opposed to [the amateur vampire hunter's] plans. 'He goes against our explicit wish for his own safety,' he said. ‘We feel he does not possess sufficient knowledge to exorcise successfully something as powerful as a vampire, and may well fall victim as a result. We issue a similar warning to anyone with likewise intentions'."
The night of 13 March 1970 witnessed scenes of utter pandemonium as people gathered in large numbers along the steep lane running alongside London's Highgate Cemetery. Viewers of a television programme watched in amazement as they heard confirmation that a vampire contagion was evident in the area. A vampire hunt was imminent. Crowds multiplied in hopeful anticipation of locating the resting-place of the undead entity. Police were present to control those arriving, but it was an almost impossible task. By 10.00pm an assortment of independent amateur vampire hunters had joined the onlookers. Principal among the freelance brigade was a schoolteacher, fortuitously named Alan Blood.
The London Evening News, 14 March 1970, reported on its front page the legend: “Mr Blood Hunts Cemetery Vampire.” The brief quotes attributed to Blood in this sensationalist report were soon afterwards rebutted by Blood himself in a longer interview given to the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 20 March 1970. This latter interview, reproduced in Seán Manchester’s The Highgate Vampire, has been largely ignored by commentators almost four decades after the event.
“By 10.00pm [on the night of 13 March 1970] the hundreds of onlookers were to include several freelance vampire hunters, including a history teacher, Alan Blood, who had journeyed from Billericay to seek out the undead being.” (The Highgate Vampire, pages 77-79)
Blood had seen a report on television some hours earlier that evening and immediately set off for Highgate. On his arrival in Highgate Village, he entered the Prince of Wales pub on the High Street, whereupon he instantly recognised one of the witnesses who gave testimony (when interviewed by Sandra Harris on television) as someone who had seen the vampire. However, Seán Manchester, who was featured on the same programme as leading the investigation, was nowhere to be seen because he was already inside the cemetery with his small team of researchers. Blood was obliged to settle for the character quaffing pints of ale in the Prince of Wales pub. He listened to claims of “a seven foot tall vampire that hovered by the cemetery gate” and wanted to be shown exactly where this occurred. But the witness declined, and continued drinking his ale.
Blood left the pub and joined the steadily growing crowd of several hundred people in Swains Lane. When the pub eventually closed, the witness allegedly also joined the throng outside the cemetery’s north gate in the lane, but, like Blood, made no attempt to enter.
It was while in Swains Lane that Blood, wearing a Russian-style hat with his beard, was noticed by an Evening News photographer and a reporter. They spoke to Blood, and also to a 27-year-old Hampstead resident, Anthony Robinson, who had ventured to the cemetery gate “after hearing of the torchlight hunt.” Robinson is alleged to have told the reporter:
“I walked past the place and heard a high-pitched noise, then I saw something grey moving slowly across the road. It terrified me. First time I couldn’t make it out, it looked eerie. I’ve never believed in anything like this, but now I’m sure there is something evil lurking in Highgate.”
Yet it was Blood, who saw and did nothing, whose photograph was to appear on the front page of the next day’s Evening News. He is described at the head of the report as “a vampire expert named Mr Blood who journeyed forty miles to investigate the legend of an ‘undead Satan-like being’ said to lurk in the area.” Had his surname been other than "Blood" we would probably not have heard about him.
But Alan Blood had not claimed to be a “vampire expert,” and would readily confirm in a more soberly conducted interview with the Hampstead & Highgate Express, that he was “by no means an expert on vampires.”
Liverpool journalist and radio disc jockey Tom Slemen in a latter-day paperback titled Strange But True (1998) claimed:
“Alan Blood organized a mass vampire hunt that would take place on Friday 13 March, 1970. Mr Blood was interviewed on television. … The schoolteacher’s plan was to wait until dawn, when the first rays of the rising sun would force the vampire to return to his subterranean den in the catacombs, then he would kill the Satanic creature in the time-honoured tradition; by driving a wooden stake through its heart. … In an orgy of desecration [the crowd] had exhumed the remains of a woman from a tomb, stolen lead from coffins, and defaced sepulchres with mindless graffiti.”
None of which is true. Blood did not “organize a mass vampire hunt.” Indeed, Blood organised nothing. He was a curious onlooker with an interest in vampires and the supernatural. It was not the “schoolteacher’s plan to wait until dawn.” This was the published plan of an amateur vampire hunter who was arrested some months later. There was no “orgy of desecration” etc. No damage whatsoever occurred on the night of 13 March 1970. What Slemen is probably alluding to is an entirely different incident that took place five months later, as recorded on the front page of the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 7 August 1970, where the discovery of the headless body of a female and signs of a satanic ceremony were made by two fifteen-year-old schoolgirls as they walked through the graveyard on a sunny August afternoon. Police viewed it to be the work of diabolists and investigated it as such. Some weeks later a lone amateur vampire hunter was arrested prowling around the graveyard at night.
"Armed with a wooden stake and a crucifix [the amateur vampire hunter] prowled among the tombstones of a graveyard. He was hunting the vampire of Highgate Cemetery. And 24-year-old [amateur vampire hunter] told a court yesterday: 'My intention was to search out the supernatural being and destroy it by plunging the stake in its heart.' [The amateur vampire hunter] pleaded guilty at Clerkenwell, London, to entering St Michael's Churchyard, Highgate Cemetery, for unlawful purposes. [He] told police he had just moved to London when he heard people talking about the vampire of Highgate Cemetery. In a statement he said that he heard the vampire rises out of a grave and wanders about the cemetery on the look-out for human beings on whose blood it thrives. Police keeping watch for followers of a black magic cult arrested him. He was remanded in custody for reports. Last night Mr Seán Manchester, leader of the British Occult Society, said: 'I am convinced that a vampire exists in Highgate Cemetery. Local residents and passers-by have reported seeing a ghost-like figure of massive proportions near the north gate'." (Daily Express, 19 August 1970)
These are the known public records about the then 25-year-old schoolteacher Alan Blood who, on 13 March 1970, travelled from Billericay to Highgate in London to satisfy his curiosity. He was just one of hundreds who had turned up to witness and/or participate in the mass vampire hunt at Highgate Cemetery on a night which immediately entered the annals of legend and added yet another footnote to the infamous history of Highgate Cemetery.
Following reports in local and national newspapers, plus a television interview with various witnesses earlier in the evening of March 13th on British television, a spate of amateur vampire hunters inflicted themselves on Highgate Cemetery with home-made stakes, crosses, garlic, holy water, but very little knowledge about how to deal with the phenomenon if they actually encountered it. The president of the British Occult Society (who had founded the Vampire Research Society in the previous month) made an appeal on the Today programme at 6.00pm to request the public not to get involved, nor put into jeopardy the investigation already in progress. Not everyone heeded his words. Over the following months a wide variety of independent vampire hunters descended on the graveyard only to be frightened off by its eerie atmosphere and what they believed might have been the vampire.
Some were quickly arrested by police patrolling the area. The public were advised that a full-scale investigation was taking place. Individual efforts by those merely seeking thrills nonetheless served to endanger all concerned and frustrate the official hunt. Simon Wiles and John White armed themselves with a crucifix and a sharpened stake and set off to see if they could locate the vampire’s tomb. Like others who acted in a freelance capacity, they were arrested by police who found in their rucksack an eight inch long wooden stake, sharpened to a fine point.
White later explained at Clerkenwell Court: “Legend has it that if one meets a vampire, one drives a stake through its heart.” He was wearing a crucifix round his neck and Wiles had one in his pocket. They were eventually discharged. Thus began a trend.
A 25-year-old history teacher from Billericay, Alan Blood, also descended on Highgate after seeing the Today report, but he at least had the good sense not to enter the infamous graveyard. Though described by the Evening News, 14 March 1970, as a “vampire expert,” Blood, in a later interview given to the Hampstead and Highgate Express, 20 March 1970, admitted that he was no such thing. “I have taken an interest in the black arts since boyhood, but I’m by no means an expert on vampires,” he told them. Following a drink in the local pub, Blood joined a crowd of onlookers outside the cemetery’s north gate, but he did not enter.
The BOS president (on the Today programme, 13 March 1970) warned one particular amateur vampire hunter, who had appeared on the same programme as one of several witnesses, to leave things he did not understand alone. Apparently he had received “a horrible fright” a few weeks earlier when he allegedly caught sight of the vampire by the north gate of Highgate Cemetery causing him to immediately write to his local newspaper about the experience, concluding with these words: “I have no knowledge in this field and I would be interested to hear if any other readers have seen anything of this nature.” (Letters to the Editor, Hampstead & Highgate Express, 6 February 1970). In the following month he revealed to the media that he had seen something at the north gate that was “evil” and that it “looked like it had been dead for a long time” (as told by him to Sandra Harris on the Today programme). Seán Manchester gave a warning on the same television programme that this man’s declared intention of staking the vampire alone went “against my explicit wish for his own safety.”
Police searching the cemetery inevitably arrested the amateur vampire hunter some five months later. He was found to be in possession of a wooden stake and a crucifix. Charged with being in an enclosed area for an unlawful purpose, he was later released because, in the strict sense of the wording, Highgate Cemetery is not an enclosed area.
It should have ended at that point. Several people had either been cautioned or arrested in the area when discovered to be engaged in amateur vampire hunting. Nothing more was heard of them once they retreated into their former obscurity, but some persisted. The one who was arrested in August 1970 belonged to the latter category. Had he heeded the public warning given by Seán Manchester on Thames Television's Today programme, and also in the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 13 March 1970, he could have probably avoided many of the problems that would blight his life in the years to follow, including a significant prison sentence.
The Hampstead & Highgate Express, 13 March 1970, under the headline "The Ghost Goes On TV," reported:
"Cameras from Thames Television visited Highgate Cemetery this week to film a programme ... One of those who faced the cameras was [the amateur vampire hunter]. ... Also interviewed was Mr Seán Manchester, president of the British Occult Society, whose theory is that it is not a ghost at all but a vampire. 'I've seen the ghost three times so far,' said [the amateur vampire hunter]. 'It was tall and very dark grey. But it didn't appear to have any feet. It just glided along.' He intends to visit the cemetery again, armed with a wooden stake and a crucifix, with the aim of exorcising the spirit. He also believes that Highgate is 'rife with black magic.' ... Mr Manchester is opposed to [the amateur vampire hunter's] plans. 'He goes against our explicit wish for his own safety,' he said. ‘We feel he does not possess sufficient knowledge to exorcise successfully something as powerful as a vampire, and may well fall victim as a result. We issue a similar warning to anyone with likewise intentions'."
The night of 13 March 1970 witnessed scenes of utter pandemonium as people gathered in large numbers along the steep lane running alongside London's Highgate Cemetery. Viewers of a television programme watched in amazement as they heard confirmation that a vampire contagion was evident in the area. A vampire hunt was imminent. Crowds multiplied in hopeful anticipation of locating the resting-place of the undead entity. Police were present to control those arriving, but it was an almost impossible task. By 10.00pm an assortment of independent amateur vampire hunters had joined the onlookers. Principal among the freelance brigade was a schoolteacher, fortuitously named Alan Blood.
The London Evening News, 14 March 1970, reported on its front page the legend: “Mr Blood Hunts Cemetery Vampire.” The brief quotes attributed to Blood in this sensationalist report were soon afterwards rebutted by Blood himself in a longer interview given to the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 20 March 1970. This latter interview, reproduced in Seán Manchester’s The Highgate Vampire, has been largely ignored by commentators almost four decades after the event.
“By 10.00pm [on the night of 13 March 1970] the hundreds of onlookers were to include several freelance vampire hunters, including a history teacher, Alan Blood, who had journeyed from Billericay to seek out the undead being.” (The Highgate Vampire, pages 77-79)
Blood had seen a report on television some hours earlier that evening and immediately set off for Highgate. On his arrival in Highgate Village, he entered the Prince of Wales pub on the High Street, whereupon he instantly recognised one of the witnesses who gave testimony (when interviewed by Sandra Harris on television) as someone who had seen the vampire. However, Seán Manchester, who was featured on the same programme as leading the investigation, was nowhere to be seen because he was already inside the cemetery with his small team of researchers. Blood was obliged to settle for the character quaffing pints of ale in the Prince of Wales pub. He listened to claims of “a seven foot tall vampire that hovered by the cemetery gate” and wanted to be shown exactly where this occurred. But the witness declined, and continued drinking his ale.
Blood left the pub and joined the steadily growing crowd of several hundred people in Swains Lane. When the pub eventually closed, the witness allegedly also joined the throng outside the cemetery’s north gate in the lane, but, like Blood, made no attempt to enter.
It was while in Swains Lane that Blood, wearing a Russian-style hat with his beard, was noticed by an Evening News photographer and a reporter. They spoke to Blood, and also to a 27-year-old Hampstead resident, Anthony Robinson, who had ventured to the cemetery gate “after hearing of the torchlight hunt.” Robinson is alleged to have told the reporter:
“I walked past the place and heard a high-pitched noise, then I saw something grey moving slowly across the road. It terrified me. First time I couldn’t make it out, it looked eerie. I’ve never believed in anything like this, but now I’m sure there is something evil lurking in Highgate.”
Yet it was Blood, who saw and did nothing, whose photograph was to appear on the front page of the next day’s Evening News. He is described at the head of the report as “a vampire expert named Mr Blood who journeyed forty miles to investigate the legend of an ‘undead Satan-like being’ said to lurk in the area.” Had his surname been other than "Blood" we would probably not have heard about him.
But Alan Blood had not claimed to be a “vampire expert,” and would readily confirm in a more soberly conducted interview with the Hampstead & Highgate Express, that he was “by no means an expert on vampires.”
Liverpool journalist and radio disc jockey Tom Slemen in a latter-day paperback titled Strange But True (1998) claimed:
“Alan Blood organized a mass vampire hunt that would take place on Friday 13 March, 1970. Mr Blood was interviewed on television. … The schoolteacher’s plan was to wait until dawn, when the first rays of the rising sun would force the vampire to return to his subterranean den in the catacombs, then he would kill the Satanic creature in the time-honoured tradition; by driving a wooden stake through its heart. … In an orgy of desecration [the crowd] had exhumed the remains of a woman from a tomb, stolen lead from coffins, and defaced sepulchres with mindless graffiti.”
None of which is true. Blood did not “organize a mass vampire hunt.” Indeed, Blood organised nothing. He was a curious onlooker with an interest in vampires and the supernatural. It was not the “schoolteacher’s plan to wait until dawn.” This was the published plan of an amateur vampire hunter who was arrested some months later. There was no “orgy of desecration” etc. No damage whatsoever occurred on the night of 13 March 1970. What Slemen is probably alluding to is an entirely different incident that took place five months later, as recorded on the front page of the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 7 August 1970, where the discovery of the headless body of a female and signs of a satanic ceremony were made by two fifteen-year-old schoolgirls as they walked through the graveyard on a sunny August afternoon. Police viewed it to be the work of diabolists and investigated it as such. Some weeks later a lone amateur vampire hunter was arrested prowling around the graveyard at night.
"Armed with a wooden stake and a crucifix [the amateur vampire hunter] prowled among the tombstones of a graveyard. He was hunting the vampire of Highgate Cemetery. And 24-year-old [amateur vampire hunter] told a court yesterday: 'My intention was to search out the supernatural being and destroy it by plunging the stake in its heart.' [The amateur vampire hunter] pleaded guilty at Clerkenwell, London, to entering St Michael's Churchyard, Highgate Cemetery, for unlawful purposes. [He] told police he had just moved to London when he heard people talking about the vampire of Highgate Cemetery. In a statement he said that he heard the vampire rises out of a grave and wanders about the cemetery on the look-out for human beings on whose blood it thrives. Police keeping watch for followers of a black magic cult arrested him. He was remanded in custody for reports. Last night Mr Seán Manchester, leader of the British Occult Society, said: 'I am convinced that a vampire exists in Highgate Cemetery. Local residents and passers-by have reported seeing a ghost-like figure of massive proportions near the north gate'." (Daily Express, 19 August 1970)
These are the known public records about the then 25-year-old schoolteacher Alan Blood who, on 13 March 1970, travelled from Billericay to Highgate in London to satisfy his curiosity. He was just one of hundreds who had turned up to witness and/or participate in the mass vampire hunt at Highgate Cemetery on a night which immediately entered the annals of legend and added yet another footnote to the infamous history of Highgate Cemetery.