Meek but not Mild Magicians and Charlatans

Written three days before it was posted on 21 August 1970 from Brixton Prison where he was being held on remand, David Farrant’s own statements leave no doubt where he stood in relation to what was happening. According to the scores of tracts and pamphlets self-published by Farrant from 1991 until the present-day, he had “founded” the British Occult Society in 1967, and by 1970 his “investigations” were supposedly three years old. This was clearly not the case as evinced in his prison letter of August 1970 where he once again resorted to his familiar pseudonym "Farrow":

speak  for  me.   I  don't  know  if  they  have     [replaced words, top line]

Farrant’s letter explains that his arrest was the result of not listening to my public warning to him, and others engaged in similar behaviour, to not interfere with the ongoing investigation being carried out by the British Occult Society. He then claims to have information about a cult meeting in Highgate Cemetery. This did not prevent him entering it with a cross and stake, however, which he overlooks mentioning. He apparently wanted “to find some further evidence of [the cult’s] existence.” He admits going against the wishes of the Society and me. Then he promises to forward all the facts about his lone escapade - something he did not do. He says in his letter that he has now changed his plea to the court from one of guilty to not guilty, and requests my appearance as a character witness to speak on his behalf. Concern is expressed over how the court might react when they realise he sought publicity in connection with Highgate Cemetery over the six months prior, and apparently now wanted me in court “to say you have warned people” about the very behaviour he had recently engaged in. He claims to appreciate that I am “a busy man,” but nonetheless would like me to visit him, or, at least, send somebody in my stead. He then asks for my advice, concluding his letter with the following statement: “Well that’s all, please forgive me for being in this trouble and having to ask your help. I would be grateful if you could write immediately.” I did not write, nor did I allow myself to be exploited for his court case and inevitable media coverage to follow. But I did visit him at Brixton Prison.

The visit left me in no doubt that Farrant was trying to rope me into some sort of dubious attention-seeking scheme, and wanted it to be made all the more plausible by what might be seen as my seal of approval. I told him that it was not going to happen. The case against him was dismissed when he appeared in court because Highgate Cemetery, in the strict sense of the wording of the charge, is not an enclosed area - and he had been accused of being found in an enclosed area for an unlawful purpose. Thereafter he continued to seek publicity, and make a general nuisance of himself. In 1991 his started to publish and circulate his home-produced pamphlets. The first of these devote seventeen pages to the Highgate affair, beginning: “March 1969, and wide reports were coming in to the British Psychic and Occult Society [sic] concerning a tall black apparition that had been seen lurking among the tombs of London’s Highgate Cemetery.” (Beyond the Highgate Vampire by David Farrant, BPOS, 1991, page 5). But, as we know, Farrant was still with his wife in March 1969, albeit awaiting bankruptcy and eviction, and she would later state under oath that nothing of the kind occurred. The prison letter sent in 1970 is further evidence that Farrant’s self-serving claims are utterly fraudulent.

His first pamphlet contains fifty stolen lines of text from my bestselling book The Highgate Vampire, a trend he would continue in all his future tracts where further text and photographs stolen from my books are unlawfully reproduced. This would expand to theft from glossy magazines and internet websites from which source images of me would be reproduced without permission and then given false attributions alongside poisonous fabrication which invariably strayed into areas that can only be described as truly bizarre. He invented a completely non-existent history; including anecdotes that often mutated and contradicted previous claims. Only recipients who require absolutely no evidence were at risk of being influenced by his endless stream of malice. Or those with a particular agenda.

In an interview, following his release from jail, David Farrant was asked whether he considered himself to be a Satanist. He answered: “I wouldn’t describe myself one way or the other.” In the same recorded interview he confirmed that he had been consorting with occultists and black magicians from as early as August 1970. He boasted of his witchcraft spells that would harm those who oppose him, and argued in favour of practicing ritual animal sacrifice. I deduced during my time investigating him that, while he is open to manipulation, his own theatricals have little to do with witchcraft and everything to do with gratuitous self-aggrandisement. He wanted to be seen as a black magician and did everything he could to foster this image while at the same time protesting his “white witch” credentials whenever there was a hue and cry.

Alex Sanders

In October 1972, Alex Sanders attended a Hallowe’en ritual at Highgate Cemetery’s north gate that had received prior publicity in newspapers. Manufactured by Farrant, who stood alone on the inside of the gate where attempts to light a fire were made, accompanied by incomprehensible mutterings, Farrant waved his arms about in a manner unrecognised by any other practitioner of the magic. Sanders, wearing a hooded duffle jacket, looked suitably bemused. The diminutive figure of the “King of the Witches,” as Sanders was dubbed throughout his career, shuffled about among the tiny crowd of puzzled onlookers in Swains Lane; a crowd invariably outnumbered by the assembled reporters and photographers, while Farrant peered through the iron railings in the hope of being arrested in order to make newspaper headlines. It became embarrassing for everyone, as the phoney witch stood hunched in his grease-stained mackintosh with nothing much to do or say or indeed do. You could almost hear him begging for the police to arrive under his breath. A few flash photographs were taken before the curious handful of people, and the significantly greater number of journalists who came to witness the promised ritual, departed disappointed. Arch-showman Alex Sanders was singularly unimpressed by Farrant’s puerile antics in the name of witchcraft. This was the first time they were in each other’s close physical proximity. It would be the last

London diabolist John Pope making the sign of the Beast.

In the following year, 1973, Farrant joined forces with John Pope who, decades later, would still be giving the clear impression that he is as much a black magician later in life as ever he was as a young man. On his now defunct London Horror Tours website, Pope was unambiguous in how he sees himself, ie “a master of the black arts, a third degree witch and Odinist.” Standing in masonic regalia, complete with apron, next to what is claimed by him to be the “Grand Master, Forsyth Lodge, American Freemasonry,” ie “A H Marriott,” Pope informs visitors to his website that he “is a blood relation to Jack the Ripper and Dracula.” No less disturbing, perhaps, is the inclusion in his profile that he “served his apprenticeship with the late Andraus Nickifaru, gangland boss 1968 to 1988.” Pope also claims (in videos on YouTube) that he was well acquainted with the Krays.

Duncan Campbell

This unsavoury link to London’s criminal underworld, bearing in mind Pope’s boast of having killed the rock musician Graham Bond, brings the story full circle when the life and death of Joe Meek is examined. Duncan Campbell, a senior staff reporter for City Limits magazine, before he moved to the Guardian newspaper, took an unusual interest in Farrant during the 1980s. The journalist assisted Farrant from time to time in the publicity stakes, appearing strangely sympathetic to the disingenuous campaigns run by Farrant to curry favour with an increasingly hostile public. Campbell seemed always ready to promote Farrant’s stunts, as if they were somehow worthy. As previously revealed, “Campbell had an interest in the criminal underworld … [and] later published a book about criminals and the environment in which they operate.” (The Vampire Hunter’s Handbook, Gothic Press, 1997, page 89). I spoke to this left-wing journalist and boyfriend of Julie Christie just once, only to find myself being seriously misrepresented and misquoted by him in a London magazine. 

A report in the third edition of the Evening News, 3 February 1967, reveals the horrifying circumstances of Joe Meek’s violent end: “The man behind The Tornados and The Honeycombs was shot in the head. A 12-bore shotgun lay beside him on the first floor landing outside his studio flat.” 

Suicide or murder? Speculation continues to this day, but the death coincided within a matter of days of the eerie incident when two convent schoolgirls witnessed “bodies rising” at Highgate Cemetery. The inquest, held at St Pancras on 9 March 1967, heard Professor Francis Camps, who performed the post mortem, inform the jury that “Meek had a wound near his right ear.”

Since publication of the first biography of Joe Meek in 1989, speculation has grown to obscure the facts and encompass a wide array of bizarre theories. The only facts that can be unquestionably stated about the events of 3 February 1967 are that at approximately 10.30am at 304 Holloway Road, London N7, Robert George “Joe” Meek, aged 37, lay dead, and Mrs Violet Shenton, aged 54, lay dying of gunshot wounds to the head and back respectively. A maze of myth, legend and fact then unfolds where an assortment of protagonists materialise, including the Kray twins, the Richardson gang, a blackmailer (unidentified) and a black magician with whom Meek might or might not have become involved. The most popular methods of entry put forward are either the murderer slipped in from the street while the door was open and hid somewhere, or that he came in through one of the two traps or the skylight on the roof. The method of exit would most likely have been the roof, as the murderer climbed out and hid on the roof until the police had gone, and then climbed down the back of the building to make his escape. The Kray twins were supposed to have shown an interest in The Tornados, and the Blue Rondos had played at a Kray owned club in the Highbury Corner area on a couple of occasions, a mile south of 304 Holloway Road. The Krays did have a lot of interest in the entertainment world, north and east London being their “patch,” so it is possible that Meek met them once or twice. They may have tried to obtain protection money from him, believing Meek to be wealthier than he actually was; but to kill someone like him was not their method or style. They tended to kill their “own kind.” Both gangs had been accused in an earlier incident when Meek was found half conscious in his car, having been beaten up, but the truth seems to be that nobody has a clue what really happened. It would appear that the gangland fraternity is merely a handy scapegoat to pin the blame on.

Oddly enough, the “black magician” would seem to be the most likely perpetrator, if any of them can really be described as “likely.” If Joe Meek was really as involved as we are led to believe, and he had maybe witnessed or heard about some dubious satanic ritual, this could provide a possible motive. However, the identities of the person or persons involved are so vague that it is unclear exactly whom to identify. The Death of Joe Meek by Kim Lowden nonetheless reveals that “Joe Meek was fascinated by the occult. He spent nights wandering graveyards trying to record voices of the dead. He believed in spiritism.” More about Joe Meek’s penchant for the occult was revealed on the “Meeksville” website where his mysterious death is examined in great detail. This source provided the following information about David Farrant:

“There is some evidence that Joe was playing around with the 'black arts,' particularly from Margaret Blackmore, who saw a lot of Joe in his last few weeks. She claims that Joe told her that she was like Lady Harris who was, according to Joe, one of Aleister Crowley's girlfriends who painted a set of tarot cards and was alleged to be very beautiful. Although a Lady Harris indeed worked with Crowley to create their famous Thoth Tarot deck, she was in fact a lady of mature years who was also the wife of an eminent British politician. Later on, Pamela Coleman Smith and A E Waite tried to repeat the experiment and created the equally famous Rider-Waite Tarot deck. Smith, as far as can be made out, was a rather attractive and somewhat dramatic-looking woman. Joe's account sounds like an amalgam of the two; whether Joe got his facts wrong or whether Blackmore has her recollections muddled up isn't clear, but certainly someone didn't know very much about some historical facts which were very easy to check, and that may be true in general of Joe's interests in that direction. More frightening is the fact that Joe supposedly knew David Farrant. Again, the source in the book is not named; I have been in contact with someone else who knows Farrant independently of any Joe connection, and has stated that Joe met Farrant a couple of times. Having said that, I can't confirm it, as I have no way of proving whether my contact genuinely asked Farrant about it or not. Farrant was (and probably still is) a self-styled High Priest of Satan, and is still feared in some parts of North London, where he can still be seen wandering around the Archway area occasionally. He allegedly led the Highgate Cemetery desecrations in the early 70's, and most people who have encountered him say that he is at first charming, but you quickly realise he's not the kind of guy you really want to hang around too long.”