An Amateurish Left-hand Path Adversary

Anthony grew out of his admiration for Crowley, becoming sceptical in retrospect about his past experiences with séances and the like. He explained away his vision of the Devil as being nothing more than a face he saw in cigarette smoke while imbibing cannabis, a practice he later abandoned. Ironically, he became self-employed in the more mundane business of selling newspapers. His first marriage ended in divorce, and his next wife could not have been more different.

Everything worth recording about the case of the Highgate Vampire has already been written, and I have no intention of trawling through everything yet again. The pivotal point was when two sixteen-year-old schoolgirls witnessed what can only be described as supernatural phenomena of the most unearthly kind beyond the gates of Highgate Cemetery. Several weeks later the manifestation of a spectral figure floating near the graveyard’s eerie north gate terrified a young couple walking along Swains Lane. These two eerie incidents so intrigued me that I took it upon myself to investigate the mystery. An informal group of friends who researched the paranormal became a specialist unit within the British Occult Society, an almost forgotten club of investigators whose roots went back to the nineteenth century, which, in June 1967, I accepted to preside over in the absence of anyone else wanting the position. The remit of this now obscure society was to investigate all things supernatural, including the occult. It should be stressed that it did not countenance occult practices. For decades I recounted this thirteen year investigation, wrote books about it and made film documentaries. The number of interviews on the case runs into hundreds. That notwithstanding, the amount of false and misleading commentary subsequently to appear from those totally unconnected to the case is astounding, but does not merit any attention at this juncture from me.

The Sun, 21 June 1974, had recorded: “The wife of self-styled occult priest David Farrant told yesterday of giggles in the graveyard when the pubs had closed. ‘We would go in, frighten ourselves to death and come out again,’ she told an Old Bailey jury. Attractive Mary Farrant - she is separated from her husband and lives in Southampton - said they had often gone to London’s Highgate Cemetery with friends ‘for a bit of a laugh.’ But they never caused any damage. ‘It was just a silly sort of thing that you do after the pubs shut,’ she said. Mrs Farrant added that her husband’s friends who joined in the late night jaunts were not involved in witchcraft or the occult. She had been called as a defence witness by her 28-year-old husband.”

What, then, are the fundamental facts about the man who wanted fame, but only managed infamy?

He was born David Robert Donovan Farrant on 23 January 1946 at 34 Shepherds Hill in North London. His father owned an electrical shop in Junction Road, Archway, London, while his mother was a spiritualist who died when Farrant was thirteen years old. He had an older half-sister who married and went to live in Australia. No contact with Farrant ensued. He also has a half-brother whom he has never met. Robert Farrant is a very different kettle of fish to his younger sibling, achieving considerable fame in the early 1960s as a pop singer, and then as a performer on stage in musicals such as Jesus Christ Superstar where ironically he played the lead rôle of Jesus Christ at a time when Farrant was pinning his notorious Luciferian credentials to the mast throughout the media.

 David Farrant tells us he attended Preparatory School in 1955 where he did not make any friends:

“After only a few days, I realised that I’d entered an altogether hostile environment; within weeks, I’d come to hate everything about the place - including most of the teachers. Most of these were ‘mindless buffoons’ trying desperately (if not largely successfully) to impound worthless drivel otherwise viewed as ‘needed intellectualism’; but the headmaster was particularly bent on applying these principles, and before long we clashed ferociously. He seemed to take exception to the fact that I couldn’t get on with the other boys, as well as my persistent inability to take any serious interest in the lessons. … he eventually wrote an outraged letter to my father (I cannot recall the exact point of contention) demanding the removal of my ‘bad influence’ from his school. I’d finally manoeuvred myself from his clutches.”

No reason is provided as to why Farrant hated everything, including teachers and pupils, about this school which was in Hendon, something he omits, apart from his obvious contempt for everything and everyone he encountered. The boarding school in Sussex was Hawkhurst Court, which he also fails to identify. Here he fared no better than before, having to “study meaningless rubbish” and “mix with brain-washed children.” He readily admits: “I ran away twice from my ‘prison’ in Sussex and was expelled again from another school.” This last school, too, remains unidentified by him. It was Thornlow in Weymouth, Dorset. One is obliged to turn to a book of my own to discover these facts where I reveal that “his school career ended two years after entering a private school in Weymouth at the age of thirteen. Attempts to belong to a theatre club in Hornsey ended again with his expulsion.” (reference to Thornlow and Hawkhurst Court in The Highgate Vampire (British Occult Society, 1985, page 78; repeated without naming schools in The Highgate Vampire (Gothic Press, 1991, page 109). Neither does Farrant make mention of the Mountview Theatre Club he joined at the age of fifteen whose director, Peter Coxhead, expelled him for throwing potatoes and dustbin lids at other students.

A telling piece of information in his booklet Dark Secrets on that “bleak March day in 1959” in mid-term - while he was still at boarding school - was news of his mother’s illness. Farrant reveals how his “emotions [were] lost in a sea of indifference.” She died shortly afterwards.

Farrant married twice; though he falsely claims thrice. His second marriage, soon after his release from prison in the 1970s was to Colette Sully (aka Colette Gee). It was not long before they, too, divorced. In the new century he claimed to have married someone by the name of "Della," which, needless to say, is not her real name. Nor did they marry. It was convenient publicity ploy for two very dysfunctional people. Curiously, "Della Farrant" bears an uncanny resemblance to Colette Sully.

Farrant is absolutely clueless about hidden and arcane matters and retreats into his customary mumbo jumbo to offer a bogus veneer. He refers to his coven of twelve (latterly revised and given the name “Secret Order of the X”). I personally investigated it when it was called the “Order of the Black Moon” in the period following his release from prison. At that time I made every attempt to gain his confidence. His "Order" did not exist and such photographs proffered to newspapers and occult magazines like New Witchcraft comprise of nothing more than willing dupes such as Victoria Jervis, Martine de Sacy and whomever else he could enlist to pose naked before his satanic altar.

Readers letters to the Hampstead & Highgate Express in early 1970 included reports of a ghost wearing a top hat that had been seen in Swains Lane, just inside the north gate at Highgate Cemetery. With the benefit of hindsight we now know that some of these letters bore the names and addresses of close acquaintances of David Farrant. Fraudulent letters were sent to the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 13 February 1970, using the names and addresses of Farrant's friends Audrey Connely and Kenneth Frewin. He used these names and addresses with their consent. He used his close friend Nava Grunberg's address in Hampstead Lane, but her name was changed to a pseudonym. He also used Nava Grunberg, now adopting the nom de plume "Nava Arieli." She used an address in Rosslyn Hill, Hampstead, belonging to a friend of hers. Others might have witnessed Farrant in his familiar black mackintosh pretending to be a ghost. He wore an old grey topper and ghostly make-up to convince local people that the cemetery was haunted by a “ghost.” The vampire sightings and experiences by others were most probably genuine enough. Others who were the product of collusion with Farrant were not. His part in the saga was fraudulent. He pretended to be a "vampire hunter" for the next few months before turning his attention to malefic pseudo-occultism which guaranteed a far bigger return in the publicity stakes. This led to criminal convictions which included indecency in Monken Hadley churchyard under the Ecclesiastic Courts Jurisdiction Act 1860. Victoria Jervis was also found guilty. Her revelations under oath when called as a witness during Farrant's Old Bailey trials two years later are damning, to say the least.

This is what Victoria Jervis stated under oath:

"I have tried to put most of what happened out of my mind. The false letters I wrote to a local paper were to stimulate publicity for the accused. I saw him almost every weekend in the second half of 1972 and I went to Spain with him for a fortnight at the end of June that same year. I was arrested with him in Monken Hadley Churchyard. That incident upset me very much. Afterwards, my doctor prescribed tranquilisers for me."

Facing Farrant in court to address him, Victoria Jervis added:

"You have photographed me a number of times in your flat with no clothes on. One photograph was published in 1972 with a false caption claiming I was a member of your Society, which I never was."

On another occasion, she recalled, how she had written psuedonymously to a local newspaper at Farrant's request "to stimulate publicity for the accused."

During their case where Jervis and Farrant were both found guilty of indecency in Monken Hadley churchyard, "Mr P J Bucknell, prosecuting, said Mr Farrant had painted circles on the ground, lit with candles, and had told reporters and possibly the police of what he was doing. 'This appears to be a sordid attempt to obtain publicity,' he said." (Hampstead & Highgate Express, 24 November 1972).

Things began to spiral downwards at an alarming rate as Farrant turned to what ostensibly appeared to be diabolism, but in truth was just further attention-seeking for the sake of the media. He nonetheless engaged in theatrical stunts of an occult nature in churchyards, cemeteries, woods and derelict houses which took on an increasingly satanic appearance. This led to him being charged, tried and convicted for offences which included malicious vandalism to tombs, interfering with and offering indignity to remains of the dead through the use of black magic, and attempting to pervert the course of justice by threatening police witnesses with death dolls impaled with pins. By which time I decided to get to know him properly for the purpose of discovering exactly what was going on and try to and resolve whatever lay behind the enmity evinced toward me by this man. This was some time after Farrant had invited what he describes as a "satanic force" to enter him in a nocturnal necromantic ritual he claims to have staged with a naked female at Highgate Cemetery in 1971. The ritual is described at length by Farrant in an article he wrote while serving a four years’ eight months’ prison sentence. It was published in the fourth issue of New Witchcraft magazine.

In another article called "Witch Report," (Penthouse magazine [UK], Vol. 8, No. 8, 1973, page 19), Farrant mentions helping a man of diminutive stature — "a midget" — who was being evicted from a controlled tenancy and allegedly suffered harassment as a consequence. Furthermore, the man's wife was apparently pregnant and not coping with the stress of the situation. Farrant "wrote to the landlady saying politely but bluntly that if she didn't stop we would deal with her our own way." She was sent an amulet "consecrated" by Farrant along with a rhyme intended to convey that "once she'd touched it we'd have power over her, and we performed a ceremony in which we cast forces on her wishing her all she wished on the midgets."  Two days later, according to Farrant, "she went into the hospital and lost her baby." 

In that Penthouse article, Farrant states: "Satanists worship Lucifer, the supreme power of evil, whereas witchcraft is a neutral thing — it's only evil if practised for an evil purpose." Like several of his Luciferian acquaintances, Jean-Paul Bourre amongst them, David Farrant, who publicly stated that he abandoned witchcraft in 1982, describes himself as someone who “accepts Lucifer as an important deity” and that he “worships Lucifer.”

The person I came to know in the 1970s believed only in his own self-aggrandisement and the amount of newsprint his manufactured stunts might attract; a man, moreover, who did not believe in his own rectitude. Thus, rather than resolve anything, my acquainting myself with Farrant only served to make matters worse because he understood that I was someone who had become all too aware of his insincerity and deceitfulness. I have not ruled out the very real possibility, however, that his engaging in theatrical Satanism and phoney witchcraft to stimulate media interest might have assisted in him becoming demonically possessed.