Quantum Queries

 

The Highgate Cemetery Vampire Hunt

 

The Castleton Report

"I think it's a wonderful story though totally madcap." — David Castleton

The following claims by David Castleton in his article of 9 December  2018 are either false, unsubstantiated, fabricated, embellished beyond all recognition, or do not stand up to any form of examination whatsoever.

"Vampire hunters claimed to have broken open coffins, and plunged stakes into – and even burnt – the corpses of the ‘undead’."

Nobody made such a claim, and nothing of the sort happened.

"But  another local young man with an interest in the supernatural, Sean  Manchester, was intrigued by what he read [about Farrant]."

†Seán Manchester had been investigating the case since the 1960s, and, far from being intrigued by what he read in the readers' letters' column of the Hampstead & Highgate Express, warned against Farrant's ambitions, both in the aforementioned local newspaper and on television on 13 March 1970.

"Though Farrant had never claimed the dark figure he’d encountered was a vampire."

Farrant did claim the figure he encountered was a vampire in his earliest television interviews. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bahSRljtG9E

"Manchester alleged that ‘a King Vampire of the undead’ ... etc"

This piece of journalistic embellishment was challenged the moment it was employed by the newspaper's editor, as revealed in one of †Seán Manchester's books that deal with the topic.

"One film – the Hammer Horror production Taste the Blood of Dracula – had actually been shot in Highgate Cemetery just a year before the Highgate Vampire incidents began."

Taste the Blood of Dracula (7 May 1970) was shot over two days in broad daylight. No scenes were  filmed after dusk. The Highgate Vampire incidents began, as confirmed in  †Seán Manchester's book of the same name, in early 1967. Other researchers, eg Peter Underwood, recorded even earlier incidents of a vampire presence in the same decade, ie the 1960s..

"Farrant,  meanwhile, still unconvinced the spooky presence was a nosferatu,  complained that media hysteria and local superstition had turned the  Highgate entity into a vampire."

David Farrant's interviews on television in 1970 confirm he believed the entity to be a vampire. He was arrested around midnight in Highgate Cemetery by police  on the night of August 17th, armed with a cross, rosary and a wooden stake. In press interviews at the time he confirms his intention of impaling the vampire with a wooden stake. In later years, he revised this claim considerably.

"Both Farrant’s and Manchester’s entourages were groups of young people led by charismatic young men."

There  is no reason to suppose that those associated with †Seán Manchester's pursuit of the  Highgate phenomenon were "young people"; in fact, some were older than †Seán Manchester and, equally, some were not. †Seán Manchester was in his late mid-twenties when he first hit the headlines.

"Their escapades did include breaking and entering, vandalism etc."

Farrant was convicted of vandalism, but the accusation is being levelled at both by David Castleton. †Seán Manchester has no  criminal convictions whatsoever. Castleton's claim is therefore libellous.

"The name Lucy (Lucia) is also connected with the secondary infestation in the Great Northern London Cemetery."

The identity of the female was not revealed, and has still not been revealed. Castleton fails to get the nom de plume †Seán Manchester gave her in his book correct. The pseudonym is Lusia, not "Lucia."

"Still,  it would seem that much of the Highgate Vampire mythos may well have been moulded by the propensities of local youngsters for legend tripping and ostentation."

Due to a total lack of proper research, David Castleton assumes rather than knows. 

"Local youngsters" might have assembled in Swains Lane after the broadcast on television by †Seán Manchester on 13 March 1970, but even that crowd were by no means all young. The schoolteacher, Alan Blood, who was among them and featured on the front page of a national newspaper the next day, could hardly be described  as a youngster. There is a propensity on the part of David Castleton to project his own agenda, which is hostile to the facts found on public record, and testimonies by witnesses that were taped or filmed at the time. Some of the crowd that assembled outside Highgate Cemetery's north gate on that fateful night can be seen in this photograph. All adults.