Amateur Vampire Hunters

[Vampirologist]

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 that evening on British television, led to a spate of amateur vampire hunters inflicting themselves on Highgate Cemetery with home-made stakes, crosses, garlic, holy water, but very little knowledge about how to deal with the suspected undead if they encountered it. The president of the British Occult Society had made an appeal on the Today programme at 6.00 pm 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. However, individual efforts by those merely seeking thrills served only 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 followed in their wake, they were arrested by police who found their rucksack and its contents: an eight inch long wooden stake, sharpened to a 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, Allan Farrow, 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 and immediately wrote 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). The BOS president, Seán Manchester, gave a warning on television 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, Allan Farrow, 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.

Farrow had made his television debut five months earlier, employing on that occasion the name on his birth certificate, ie "Farrant." However, when the American vampire aficionado Donald F Glut came to have his book "True Vampires of History" published in 1971, he referred only to "Allan Farrow who was arrested for trespassing in a London Graveyard." And those who socialised with Farrow, and knew him well, all called him "Allan" ~ not any of the forenames that appear on his birth certificate.

There still exists a letter on headed prison notepaper from Farrow, prisoner number 087665, which was sent to Seán Manchester, president of the British Occult Society and founding president of the Vampire Research Society. The letter contradicts much later claims made by Farrow ~ not least those about his relationship with the British Occult Society and its president Seán Manchester. Farrow's lone antics heralded worse days ahead for the amateur vampire hunter.

It should have ended at that point. Several people had either been cautioned or arrested in the area when discovered to be engaged in freelance vampire hunting. Nothing more was heard of them once they retreated into their former obscurity, but some persisted. Farrow 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 four years and eight months jail 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 Mr David Farrant, of Priestwood Mansions, Archway Road. ... 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 Mr Farrant. '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 Mr Farrant'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 [the British Occult Society] issue a similar warning to anyone with likewise intentions'."

[Vampirologist]

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. At 6.00 pm a television programme had confirmed that a vampire contagion was evident in the graveyard, and that a vampire hunt was imminent. The 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 in a longer interview given to the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 20 March 1970. This latter interview, reproduced in Seán Manchester’s account about the case, has been totally ignored by commentators two decades or more later.

An authentic account of Alan Blood’s part in the affair is given in Seán Manchester’s The Highgate Vampire (pages 77-79) from which the following is revealed:

“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.”

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 an unkempt individual who had been one of several interviewed by Sandra Harris as alleged witnesses of the vampire spectre. 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 research team. 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 a 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 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.”

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.”

None of which would stop American author Matthew Bunson publishing some twenty-three years later:

“The focus of the media attention turned to David Farrant [aka Allan Farrow] and Alan Blood, vampire experts who led the search. Both were convinced that a vampire was sleeping in one of the vaults and were determined to find it and kill it. While blamed for the desecration of tombs and arrested for trespass, Farrant [Farrow] was acquitted on the grounds that the cemetery was open to the public. As is typical of such incidents, stories based on rumour and on unconfirmed sightings soon spread, and the tabloids and newspapers ran exploitative reports. No vampire was ever publicly discovered.” (The Vampire Encyclopedia, page 121).

Apart from the reference to press exploitation, not a single statement in Bunson’s entry for “The Highgate Vampire” is accurate. The focus of the media did not turn to the lone vampire hunter Farrow and Blood. The latter, after 13 March 1970, completely disappeared off the scene. Farrow gained an appetite for media attention, but by the end of 1970 he had repudiated the “vampire theory,” as he described it. Save for his original claim in 1970 (in the form a letter to his local newspaper), he was not a “focus” with regard to the investigation which dismissed his claims of sightings as unsafe and his behaviour unwise. Blood never stated that he was “determined to find and kill” the vampire. Farrow did, of course, but later revoked this ambition. Nor was Farrow arrested for “trespass” ~ he was, in fact, arrested for being in an enclosed area for an unlawful purpose. And he was not only “blamed for the desecration of tombs” in Highgate Cemetery. He was charged and found guilty of malicious damage to tombs at London’s Central Criminal Court in June 1974. He was to receive a prison sentence of almost five years.

Many sightings of the Highgate Vampire were, of course, confirmed, documented, and recorded.

Seán Manchester would add in The Vampire Hunter’s Handbook (pages 66-67):

“Interestingly, Jeanne Youngson’s name crops up in Bunson’s acknowledgements as having assisted with this book [The Vampire Encyclopedia]. Why does that come as no surprise? Peter Hough follows in Bunson’s errant footsteps in Supernatural Britain (1995) and repeats the misinformation that David Farrant [aka Allan Farrow] ‘teamed up’ with Alan Blood (something neither ever claimed) whilst ignoring the actual investigation. When contacted through their respective publishers, neither deigned to reply. Their publishers also refused to answer any correspondence on the matter.”

This refusal to address serious error placed on record is a matter of some concern.

Bunson and Hough are followed by the journalist Tom Slemen whose latter-day paperback 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 an interested onlooker. It was not the “schoolteacher’s plan to wait until dawn.” This was the published plan of Farrow. 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 Satanists and investigated it as such.

Some weeks later Farrow was arrested prowling around the graveyard at night.

"Armed with a wooden stake and a crucifix Allan Farrow prowled among the tombstones of a graveyard. He was hunting the vampire of Highgate Cemetery. And 24-year-old Farrow told a court yesterday: 'My intention was to search out the supernatural being and destroy it by plunging the stake in its heart.' Farrow pleaded guilty at Clerkenwell, London, to entering St Michael's Churchyard, Highgate Cemetery, for unlawful purposes. Farrow 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 and recorded facts about the then 25-year-old schoolteacher Alan Blood who, on 13 March 1970 travelled from Billericay to Highgate in London, having seen a report on television earlier that evening, to satisfy his curiosity. He was not a vampirologist, nor ever claimed to be. He was one of hundreds who had turned up to see what was going on. After talking to the press he was not heard of again in this context. Yet his name entered a legend of its own.

The full story of the case can be read in Seán Manchester’s bestselling book, a reliable account by a first-hand witness, participant and investigative researcher. For more details, plus ordering information, click on the link below:

www.gothicpress.freeserve.co.uk/Highgate%20Vampire%20Book.htm

[kabuki177]

amateur vampire hunters? are there professional ones?

[Vampirologist]

It is reasonable to attribute amateur status to someone who proclaims they have "no knowledge in this field", who clearly ignores all known procedures, who invites the press along to accompany ill-advised nocturnal forays where a home-made stake and cross appear clasped in each hand for photographs that find their way into the next day's newspapers, and who conveniently declares soon afterwards that he "does not believe in vampires". Who wouldn't view this behaviour as deserving amateur status where vampire hunting is concerned?

As for myself, I hope I have studied this arcane area for sufficient years and have had enough practical experience not to be regarded amateurish in my application of it in the field.

The VRS founding president is himself a consultant to television and film projects on the topic of vampirology (including vampire hunting), as well as being a successfull author on the subject of vampires (including vampire hunting), and has been commissioned over the last thirty-five years to seek out vampires for a vast array of clients. I suppose this might have earned him "professional" status as a vampire hunter?

However, the word "amateur" often applies to someone who treats a serious matter as merely a game in which execution he/she is palpably lacking in any skill. This fits admirably those described above as amateur vampire hunters.