Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, Farrant's Patsy

"As a teenager [she was actually ten-years-old when the case became public] growing up in London during the 1970s Patsy was aware not only of stories circulating in the popular press about dark goings-on in Highgate Cemetery. Patsy began the meticulous process of writing her first book[let]." - Farrant's Highgate Vampire Symposium publicity

"[Sean Manchester] was reported to the Feltham Police for harassing Patsy Langley (from Feltham) by sending threats and obscene material to her work-place." - David Farrant (17 January 2015)

Such false accusations are commonplace when Farrant and Langley get their heads together. No complaint was made to the police regarding Patsy Langley, as far as anyone is aware. As for the ludicrous allegations - they sound much more like something Farrant would do. No warnings were issued to him, but Seán Manchester lodged a complaint against her. The claims made by Farrant are totally without foundation, needless to say. This applies equally to Patsy Langley who infringed copyright material from Seán Manchester's published work for her booklet published and edited by Farrant from his Muswell Hill Road bedsitting room. The original front cover contained a stolen image, as did the rear cover which displayed a copyright protected photograph. Inside (on page 47 near the pamphlet's conclusion) is another infringed image reproduced without the consent of the copyright holder from page 182 of The Highgate Vampire (Gothic Press, 1991) by Seán Manchester. The offenders responsible for this theft of Seán Manchester's material are Patsy Langley and David Farrant. This is the real offence where she is concerned. We invite police files to be consulted. Only records of Farrant's own threatening behaviour and very significant criminal record will be found.

Patsy Langley posted the following on an extremely hostile Facebook group on 10 July 2013:

"A friend of mine who wishes to remain anonymous (he knows Manchester, so isn't unreasonable request) and who has no involvement whatsoever in the Highgate case, actually watched the cine film that Manchester made in 1967. He told me that the pictures of the 'decomposing vampire' are actually stills from that film and it's Manchester dressed up and some clever camera trickery. Not that it took much working out, but Manchester makes so much of this film not existing, but it did. I found this out when doing the research for my book[let]."

In true Farrant fashion, Langley's non-existent "friend," whom she falsely claims knows Seán Manchester, "wishes to remain anonymous." These non-existent witnesses are always anonymous!

It is remotely possible that Farrant produced someone in cahoots with him to pull the wool over Langley's eyes, but far more likely is that she is making it all up under her own volition in collusion with him because she claims this witness is both a friend of hers and knows Seán Manchester.

The truth is that the alleged ciné film Farrant publicly claimed to have viewed decades after its supposed screening in the late 1960s is a complete and utter fabrication. That Langley is willing to go along with it puts her in the same category as Farrant, ie a pathological and incorrigible liar.

The originator of the lie, of course, is her close friend who self-published her booklet containing infringed copyright material under his own imprint from his Muswell Hill, London bedsitting room.

The genesis of this relatively recent piece of hokum is as follows:

Farrant claims that he first met Seán Manchester in “late 1967” (although he sometimes offers 1969). He couldn't claim a date any earlier because Farrant was not living in the UK prior to the summer of 1967. He married his first wife (they had met in France) in August of that year. Seán Manchester is adamant that he first met Farrant in "early 1970" (the occasion being recorded by the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 6 March 1970). Farrant conveniently slips all manner of unsubstantiated allegations into the three years discrepancy he created, including the claim that he was entertained with a screening of an 8mm horror movie made by and featuring Seán Manchester, and that "a papier-mâché vampire" Farrant claims was used in that movie is also what appears in photographs of the corporeal shell of the exorcised vampire in Seán Manchester's published account The Highgate Vampire (British Occult Society, 1985; Gothic Press, 1991) and in subsequently transmitted television programmes featuring images from the book. Seán Manchester strenuously denies this and invites anyone who claims to have seen a movie such as Farrant describes to come forward and be identified. No such ciné film was made and Farrant is not someone Seán Manchester would ever have considered entertaining in his home. Even when they did eventually become acquainted in March 1970, Seán Manchester only saw Farrant in a mutual acquaintance's coal cellar in Highgate.

Langley is a very close friend of Farrant, a convicted felon, and is amusingly described as his "secretary." Less amusing is the fact that Farrant has been waging a hate campaign against Seán Manchester for literally decades. Now he has Patsy Langley to assist him in this miserable ambition.

Her agenda is quite transparent. It is to try and discredit Seán Manchester’s findings by every conceivable method available to her; not least by false and misleading attributions amid a plethora of malicious allegations. These have been fed to her by her collaborator and close friend who is guilty of the very things she accuses the author of the book she is out to besmirch and undermine.

Apologist for Satanism and its fellow travellers on the Left-hand Path, Gareth Medway, provides the Introduction to Langely’s stapled effort. He is the only person willing to lend his name to the printed pages and quickly runs out of steam reprinting the same invective we have seen dozens of times before in Farrant’s own malicious tracts that concentrate on pursuing his principal obsession. Medway also has an axe to grind with Seán Manchester. Like Langley, he has never had contact with the author and exorcist, but is a very close friend of Farrant with whom he has conducted publicity stunts involving an illicit occult “ceremony” after nightfall over a private grave in April 2005.

Patsy Langley’s little “casebook” is a clear attempt to make money off the success of Seán Manchester’s The Highgate Vampire, and she is reliant on the man waging a personal vendetta against the author. David Farrant, of course, has engaged in the same sort exploitation himself.

It has been erroneously claimed the mass vampire hunt of 13 March 1970 caused damage and led to a spate of wanton vandalism. Nothing could be further from the truth. There had certainly been acts of vandalism in the previous decade which were evident to anyone visiting, but no damage occurred on the night of 13 March 1970. With the world's spotlight now focused on Highgate Cemetery in the period following the famous vampire hunt, vandalism significantly decreased. Such rare acts that did occur were invariably carried out by black magic devotees, as happened in August 1970 when three schoolgirls discovered a hundred-year-old corpse strewn across a cemetery path with evidence of a satanic ceremony having taken place in the immediate vicinity. No investigating vampire hunters were accused (much less found guilty) of causing any damage. The police at the time confirmed the outrage to be the work of black magic devotees. Friends of Highgate Cemetery had not yet come into existence, but, when they did, incidents of thrill-seekers and Hallowe'en revellers did not decrease. Farrant himself would become one such graveyard reveller inside Highgate Cemetery on Hallowe'en,

Langley desperately tries to make capital out of the intended dislocation of highly sensitive places. 

In the first edition of The Highgate Vampire, the above locked entrance was offered as the "iron door which could not be opened but beyond which lay three empty coffins." There was a reason for that.

Just as the author neither wanted nor intended the identity of certain people to be revealed, eg Dennis Crawford, "Arthur" and "Lusia" etc, there were some places, then very accessible to members of the public, which he did not want to be clambered over or invaded by dilettantes and amateur sleuths. Hence he originally used a photographic model and friend (later various actresses) to portray "Lusia" in reconstructions; purposely misdirecting in published photographs of her the places referenced in The Highgate Vampire so that vaults and tombs would not suffer as a consequence. This was a time way before the creation of Friends of Highgate Cemetery (FoHC) who took it upon themselves to care for the place; a time when the graveyard was open season to anyone with a mind to engage in their own enquiries, as well as those of more malign intent such as Satanists and ne'er-do-wells. Likewise, he did not want sensitive key personalities to be identified.

The book does include images of the suspected vampire tomb, both before and after it was bricked up, but this had already been revealed in a photograph by a local newspaper when a private exorcism took place in August 1970. Once it had been sealed and cemented with bricks it no longer presented an easy invitation for entry. By the time the bricks were removed in later years, the hysteria and panics had subsided and the cemetery was being closely monitored and managed by FoHC.

Seán Manchester, of course, was and remains intimately familiar with Highgate Cemetery and unsurprisingly knows its topography better than most people. As someone who has sought to prevent the destruction of graveyards in the wake of the Disused Burial Ground Amendment Act of 1981, he would naturally purposely set out to protect Highgate Cemetery. As well as being a good friend of the late Jean Pateman, someone who kept him updated with FoHC material after he left London and also the person who ran Friends of Highgate Cemetery until her death in 2012, Seán Manchester stood as an independent candidate in May 1982 on the single issue of preserving a woodland cemetery.

Of one thing we can be certain, none of this will be mentioned at the Highgate Vampire Symposium.