Theft and Perjury

"I expect most of you will have heard by now (especially those who have been following the Highgate ‘vampire’ saga over years) that the current video from the Highgate Vampire Symposium 2015, 'The Vampire Theory' Part 2, was suspended by You Tube recently following a complaint made by one Sean Manchester again myself for ‘copyright infringement’. [Seán] Manchester insisted that he had undertaken Court action and demanded the permanent removal of this session while Court proceedings were pending. This would have a perfectly reasonable request . . . if true. The only problem was – it wasn’t! While it is true that [Seán] Manchester made the complaint cited above, it is NOT true that [Seán] Manchester had instigated any legal action to substantiate his complaint against myself and was therefore unable to supply any evidence to YouTube to the effect he had done so. Accordingly, the video was restored on December 10th and people are now able to view it." - David Farrant (19 December 2015)

Seán Manchester made no claim whatsoever that he had "insisted that he had undertaken Court action and demanded the permanent removal of this session while Court proceedings were pending." 

Farrant's allegation is preposterous nonsense. The only action Seán Manchester took was to issue a DMCA in view of copyright material from the British Occult Society's archive being published in the video without the consent of the lawful copyright holder. And that is all Seán Manchester did.

The entire video was taken down. Seán Manchester would have been content with just the portion where illicit material appears being excised. YouTube made the decision to take down the entire video. Farrant then made a counter claim to YouTube even though he is not the copyright holder.

This is what Seán Manchester received from YouTube:

"We have received the attached counter notification in response to a complaint that you filed with us.

"We're providing you with the counter notification and await evidence (in no more than 10 business days) that you've filed an action seeking a court order against the counter notifier to restrain the allegedly infringing activity. Such evidence should be submitted by replying to this email. If we do not receive notice from you, we may reinstate the material to YouTube.

"If you have any questions, please contact copyright@youtube.com

"Display name of uploader: David Farrant

"The video does not contain material which was or is known to me to be copyright of Mr. Sean Manchester. I request that further info is supplied ASAP re: the alleged copyright breach. I can supply copyright info, as known at the time of publication.

"I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good-faith belief that the material was removed due to a mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.

"I consent to the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court for the district in which my address is located or, if my address is outside the United States, the judicial district in which YouTube is located, and will accept service of process from the claimant.

"David Farrant

[House number DELETED by B.O.S.] 
Muswell Hill Road

London, London N10 3JE GB

[Email DELETED by B.O.S.]

[Telephone number DELETED by B.O.S.]"

Seán Manchester replied to YouTube:

"Regarding the New Copyright Counter-Notification: 

"David Farrant, the person responsible for the video infringing my copyrighted photograph, does not claim that he is the lawful copyright owner of the image in dispute.

"David Farrant, the person who has infringed my copyrighted photograph, does not claim that he knows the lawful owner of the image. If he does make such a claim, I have not been advised who he attributes it to.

"David Farrant, the person who has infringed my copyrighted photograph, does not claim that he was given consent to use the image. If he does make such a claim, I have not been advised by whom.

"Nobody appears to be actually disputing the fact that the photograph is my property. Indeed, recently published statements on the internet made by David Farrant capitalise on the fact that the photograph does belong to me.

"I issued a DMCA for copyright infringement of my picture. Farrant issued a counter notification in which he merely states that it was unknown to him at the time that I am the copyright holder. 

"I see no evidence of any copyright information he might be alluding to in his notification, but one thing is certain: David Farrant is not claiming that he is the lawful copyright holder. Whereas I am.

"In view of the above, how can my DMCA be cancelled and the video containing my photograph be restored on the say-so of someone who admits elsewhere that I created the photograph and does not lay claim to its ownership?

"Sincerely,

"Seán Manchester"

YouTube did not respond Indeed, nothing further was heard from them and the video was restored when the ten days expired.

Not quite "[Seán] Manchester insisted that he had undertaken Court action and demanded the permanent removal of this session while Court proceedings were pending," is it? Once again, David Farrant demonstrates that he is a pathological liar who is willing to steal and perjure himself.

Not the Vampire Theory (conclusion)

Patricia Langley, an accomplice of David Farrant, claims "I had a friend, I still have him, I still know him. His name is Roger" whose surname has conveniently been bleeped out on the video, so we cannot even begin to trace him. Anyone would have thought that "Roger" is a vital witness Langley would have wanted present at the Symposium to lend weight to her allegations, but no sight or sign of "Roger" was evident except on the lips of Langley. Had she have produced a willing dupe to be a false witness, of course, his claims could have been challenged and eventually revealed to be lies.

"[In the year 1990] Peter Underwood was completely dismissive of the whole phenomenon of vampires." - Patrica Langley (forty-seven minutes into the video)

This attribution by Langley about the late Peter Underwood, now no longer able to defend himself, claiming that by 1990 he would not have entertained the idea of vampires, does not accord with the known facts. In that year he published his book Exorcism! where Seán Manchester's vampire account up to the year 1970 is retold in Underwood's own words in Chapter Six, which is given the title Exorcism and Vampires. It is clear, reading this chapter where a full page photograph of Seán Manchester with accompanying accoutrements appears, Peter Underwood supported vampire belief.

Seán Manchester can be seen (above and below) attempting to exorcise the suspected tomb at the heart of Highgate Cemetery in 1970. The exorcism was covered by the BBC and also in the Hornsey Journal which had earlier reported on a satanic outrage close to the same sepulchral location.

David Farrant attributed words to Seán Manchester which anyone examining the programme (Today, Thames Television, 13 March 1970) will find he did not actually utter. Farrant can also be heard in the video denying that he intended to hunt out the cemetery vampire even though, when interviewed by the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 6 March 1970, he is quoted as saying: "I for one am prepared to pursue [the vampire], taking whatever mean might be necessary so that we can all rest." 

Farrant follows this by claiming at the Symposium, "Mr Manchester was nowhere to be seen on that night." The night he is talking about, of course, is 13 March 1970 when a massive public vampire hunt took place at Highgate Cemetery. How would Farrant know? He did not venture anywhere near the graveyard himself, and spent most of that evening in the Prince of Wales pub which is where history teacher Alan Blood discovered him before Blood proceeded alone to Swains Lane with its gathering throng. David Farrant, needless to say, stayed away from Highgate Cemetery that night.

By which time, Seán Manchester was already inside the cemetery with his hand-picked assistants. Some of that account can be read by clicking on the newspaper headline from the following day:

"We were also honoured with the presence of Dr Jacqueline Simpson. Dr Simpson first became aware of the case of the Highgate ‘vampire’ through the work of her American colleague, Professor Bill Ellis. The ostension approach posited by Ellis is postulated by Dr Simpson, with consideration of the Highgate ‘vampire’ flap." - Della Farrant aka Anna Hinton (18 November 2015 )

Enter Jacqueline Simpson twenty-four minutes into the video. Simpson is dismissive of ghosts, vampires and all things supernatural. When Langley started bleating on about ley-lines, which she explains has no supernatural aspect, Simpson's facial expression turned quite sour as eyebrows raised and eyes rolled in a most disapproving manner. Simpson rambles on with her historical folkloric anecdotes until we reach the question period with those posing questions anonymously.

"In 1993 we [Folkore Journal] got sent a very interesting article on the Highgate case by a man called Bill Ellis who came to London specially to research the Highgate story and he met David [Farrant], interviewed David, took lots of notes from David, and he wanted to interview Seán but Seán did not wish to be interviewed, got on his high horse, and said he had put all that behind him and needed the time to devote to his Church. As a result, Bill Ellis' article is full of references to David, and full or quotations from newspapers [provided by Farrant], and does quote from Manchester's published book, but he has no interviews with Manchester. Consequently, as those of you who know the man will readily appreciate, in a few months there was an explosion." 

FACT: Bill Ellis was given a clear choice to either interview David Farrant or Seán Manchester. It was widely known and appreciated at that time that the latter would not participate in any project which involved the publicity-seeker Farrant. Ellis knew this, and chose to involve Farrant. When the article was published Seán Manchester contacted Folklore to point out some serious errors which were acknowledged by both the journal and Ellis who omitted the most offensive material in his article when he regurgitated it as a chapter about the Highgate case in his book Raising the Devil.

There was certainly no "explosion." Such a term is Simpson's way of currying favour with her host, David Farrant, at the Symposium. Seán Manchester and Bill Ellis had a very convivial correspondence throughout the entire episode. Jacqueline Simpson was rather more abrasive - and economical with the truth! By the time she co-wrote The Lore of the Land and long before she spoke at the Symposium, she was in possession of a CD (The Devil's Fool) on which Farrant can be heard being interviewed across the decades. When interviewed in the 1970s he makes clear that he hunted a vampire at Highgate Cemetery and is quite unapologetic about the fact. Details of his attempt are provided by him when interviewed. Simpson knew this, but remained tight-lipped when Farrant denied having any part in this ambition. It did not suit her anti-Seán Manchester agenda to rock the boat.

This is Bill Ellis' correspondence of 22 February 1996 to Seán Manchester:

(click on image to read letter properly)

In his correspondence, Bill Ellis writes:

"We agree that the contemporary press handling was often inaccurate, and most subsequent discussions were even more distorted. Mr Farrant, since he brought the matter to the papers and was repeatedly arrested for his activities in and around Highgate, clearly was 'central to events' in this sense. Credible, I don't say: I give his explanations for what they're worth and expect that most readers would also recognize that a judge and jury found them unconvincing."

Not the Vampire Theory (Part 2)

(Click on image to view video)

The second part of the Symposium's supposed coverage of the vampire theory descends into a tissue of lies from the onset with Paul Adams coaxing David Farrant to tell all about an early witness recounted in Peter Underwood's anthology The Vampire's Bedside Companion by Seán Manchester and in even greater detail in The Highgate Vampire by the same author, Seán Manchester. An image of the witness, Elżbieta Wojdyla, published illegally at the Symposium for the audience but not in the video, can be seen below. Farrant's rambling, unsubstantiated claims are interspersed by rebuttals.

One minute and forty seconds into Part 2 of what is really not the vampire theory, Farrant alleges:

"I needed the girl's address that appeared in Peter Underwood's book, The Vampire's Bedside Companion, I can never pronounce her second name. Is it 'Wojdyla'? She's Polish. So I got this [unidentified] friend of mine to 'phone up her parents and it was either the mother of the father, I can't remember which way 'round it was. She said she wanted to speak to Elizabeth. For example, suppose it was her father, he said 'I can't speak English' and passed her to Elizabeth's mother who spoke really good English. And said, 'I'm sorry but I'll give you her work [telephone] number."

FACT: Elżbieta Wojdyla's father spoke excellent English. Indeed, considerably better than Farrant's stammered assault on English grammar. Her mother was not English. Neither was she Polish. Her accent was quite strong; probably stronger than that of her husband. They were warned about Farrant when they were both alive and were asked if anyone had ever contacted them as Farrant describes. (He has made this claim in the past). They stated unequivocally that they had not been contacted.

"My friend 'phoned and actually spoke to Elizabeth - she was very surprised - and said 'I'm looking for the address of Seán Manchester.' Elizabeth said, 'I'm sorry, I don't know. He used to live not many streets away from me, but I don't actually know the address.' And my friend said, 'Well, I thought you might do because I saw a picture of you, and I contacted the publishers and managed to trace your address. That's how I got your 'phone number and your mother gave me your work address'."

FACT: At the time that Seán Manchester and Elżbieta Wojdyla lived as close as anything being attributed in this fabricated conversation she visited him at that address and would have obviously known it. At the time Farrant claims her parents were contacted by his unnamed friend, Elżbieta Wojdyla was not living with them and her actual address was some distance away from where they lived. The publishers (Leslie Frewin Books and, later, Coronet) had absolutely no information about Elżbieta Wojdyla and could not have possibly disclosed her telephone number. Even Peter Underwood did not have any personal details of this kind about her. Only Seán Manchester did. It should also be added that Elżbieta Wojdyla's parent's telephone number was unlisted (ex-directory).

"[Elizabeth] said she hadn't seen Peter Underwood's book, and when it was described to her, and the caption read out, she burst out laughing. My friend asked her, 'What about those vampire marks on your neck?' [Elizabeth] said, 'Oh that was Seán just playing a joke."

FACT: When the paperback edition appeared in the year following the first edition's publication, Elżbieta Wojdyla was spoken to by a national newspaper when they reviewed the vampire anthology. She supported what had happened to her, as she did when interviewed much closer to the time. 

FACT: Elżbieta Wojdyla has been asked about Farrant's allegations by Seán Manchester who spoke to her directly. She totally denies everything Farrant claims; categorically refuting the absurd notion of her being contacted by him (or anyone else) with regard to the Highgate Vampire case. She was also adamant that her parents were also not contacted by anyone in this connection. David Farrant, as far as she is concerned, is a liar. Moreover, if what he falsely attributed to her was remotely accurate it would make her liar, which she is far from being, as she gave testimony to the occurrences she witnessed and experienced. Recorded at the time, these have since been televised.

Click on the book in question (below) on which cover her image from the 1960s is visible, and listen to her own testimony in person, fifty-five seconds into the video True Horror: Evidence of Vampires:

One minute and thirty-seven seconds into the same video, Elżbieta Wojdyla can be heard saying: "One day I woke. I went downstairs, and there were two lumps on my neck. They weren't lumps. They were like pin holes." In the full interview recording (available on CD), Elżbieta Wojdyla tells of nightly visitations and specks of blood appearing on her pillow after such nightmarish experiences. Her brother even asked if she had been bitten by a vampire when the marks became more prominent; indeed, developed into open punctures.

Farrant claims she told his "friend" that the marks were Seán Manchester "just playing a joke." Listen to the brief extract from Elżbieta Wojdyla's recorded testimony from 1969 again. Then decide whether it was "just a joke."

Seven minutes into the video we hear from Patricia Langley who collaborates with Farrant's fabrications to the point of making up ones of her own. She is frequently described by Farrant as the "secretary" of his "British Psychic and Occult Society," which he invented circa 1983 after being repeatedly exposed in the media as having fraudulently hijacked the nomenclature of the British Occult Society, one of the first organisations to publicly expose Farrant as an inveterate charlatan and  impostor.

"About 2003 to 2004, when I began researching this case, I had a friend, I still have him, I still know him. His name is Roger [surname bleeped out on the video], and he is a computer scientist. In the 1960s [when Patricia Langley herself was a young child; she was barely ten when the case first hit the headlines in the following decade], he was studying computer science at the University of London and my friend Roger was into the vampire scene, the vampire sphere. And the sphere, the whole paranormal was something he was into and is still into. And he came into contact with Mr Manchester and became a good friend of his. And Roger, in 2004, told me when I was researching, 'Do you know about the film that was made?' And I said, 'Well, I know of it. Can you tell me about it?' And he said, 'Well, yeah, I can tell you about it because he invited me and a few other students that were studying at the University of London to go to a screening at his house one Saturday evening and this Jacqueline was there laying on a few nibbles, and drinks and things, and they settled down to watch this film, The Vampire Exhumed."

FACT: Seán Manchester wrote a manuscript, later a screenplay, in 1979 that he gave the title The Vampire Exhumed. A French art house film was made soon afterwards with an independent director, starring the French film actress Sylvaine Charlet who was a very close personal friend of Seán Manchester. The film was titled Le Vampire Exhumé. This was made professionally by a French production company at the turn of the 1980s. Seán Manchester did not meet a computer scientist by the name of "Roger" and had no contact with any students at the University of London. Nor did he entertain this mythical "Roger" and his student friends, or indeed anyone else, in the way described.

"And this Vampire Exhumed was the story of a vampire hunter who chases out a vampire, seeks out a vampire, in Highgate Cemetery. Made in colour, but it had no sound. It was full colour, but it didn't have any sound. Mr Manchester on film was playing both the vampire hunter and the vampire. And so I said, 'Well, this is the second independent case of the film actually having been seen by someone other than David [Farrant]  who saw it with others, and for which Mr Manchester categorically denied it. And Roger then revealed some quite good technical details about the film. He said, or he offered to me, details about the decaying scene of the vampire. What it was, Mr Manchester covered himself in flour, wet flour on his face, let it dry and after a little while it dried and fans were used and a hot breeze was used to blow the flour from his face so it looked as if his skin and the muscles and everything of the vampire's face and body was disintegrating. And I knew at that time Mr Manchester was a very good photographer. Very adept in technical effects of this kind. And Roger told me that this is how the effects of the vampire decomposing were achieved."

FACT: This is the steadily evolving account that owes its origin entirely to David Farrant who has even claimed that images of the vampire corpse in The Highgate Vampire were taken from this non-existent film. "Roger," of course, will never come forward to be identified because he does not exist. Langley claims that she "knew at that time" that Seán Manchester was "a very good photographer" and "very adept in technical effects of this kind." In fact, Seán Manchester was a portrait photographer with his own studio and a permanent staff of five people, but he did not have any expertise in ciné film, much less technical effects using ciné film. How would Langley know such a thing? She would have been practically a babe-in-arms at the time. Farrant is her exclusive source.

"When I put this to Mr Manchester in my research - it wasn't just David I interviewed, I did eventually ask for an interview with Mr Manchester and I did put these points to him in 2004 - not only did he categorically deny that this film exists, existed, but [he] told me I was all wrong, a complete liar, that I was a member of Farrant's evil cabal, and so on."

FACT: Seán Manchester has never spoken to Patricia Langley and has never discussed anything to do with the Highgate Vampire case with her. She did not interview him. The whole thing is fabricated. Langley was born in 1960, and was therefore still in junior school when the Highgate Vampire case first hit the headlines. She is a self-proclaimed witch, spiritualist, medium and number one fan of Farrant whose phoney witchcraft and pseudo-occultism has been exposed many times by investigative journalists and the law courts. The latter saw fit to sentence him to a term of almost five years’ imprisonment for crimes associated with his publicity-seeking behaviour at Highgate Cemetery in the early 1970s where he threatened witnesses in the case of his demented and perverted associate John Pope, a self-proclaimed Satanist found guilty of sexual assault on a boy.

What Langley describes as her “casebook” comprises fifty or so stapled pages bearing Farrant’s address and self-styled imprint “British Psychic and Occult Society” as the work’s publisher. The publishing address is Farrant’s attic bed-sitting room in London’s Muswell Hill Road. The copy we have seen bears a front cover containing a stolen image, as does the rear cover which displays a copyright protected photograph of Seán Manchester. Inside (on page 47 near the pamphlet’s conclusion) is another stolen image reproduced without consent from page 182 of Seán Manchester’s The Highgate Vampire. No photograph can be found of Langley, who opts to be known as “Patsy.”

Farrant apologist 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 malicious tracts that concentrate on pursuing his principal obsession. Medway, an apologist for Left-hand Path occultists and sundry diabolists, also has an axe to grind with Seán Manchester. Like Patricia Langley, he has never had contact with Seán Manchester, but is a very close friend of Farrant with whom he has conducted publicity stunts involving an illicit, albeit phoney, “occult ritual” 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 an ex-convict waging a personal vendetta.

Twenty minutes and twenty seconds into the video, David Farrant makes the following claim:

"A person also on the programme [Today, Thames Television, 13 March 1970], being interviewed by Sandra Harris stepped forward and he said, 'No, it's definitely not a ghost. It's a vampire. And, as if to emphasise this point, as he said that he pulled a large wooden stake out of his trousers and produced a very large silver-plated crucifix."

FACT: No such words were uttered by Seán Manchester, as examination of the transmission will confirm, and no "large wooden stake [came] out of his trousers." Nor did he at any time "produce a very large silver-plated crucifix." At least, not in the Today programme of March 1970. Farrant did, however, produce a large cross and stake from inside his trousers, as confirmed four minutes and forty seconds into a video of him reconstructing for BBC the night in August 1970 when he went vampire hunting. Seán Manchester was also asked to demonstrate a Christian exorcism, as had taken place earlier in the year at Highgate Cemetery, and elucidate on the ancient practice of impalement, which he did by revealing a small wooden stake. Click on image below to view video:

                                                                                                               (... continued ...)

Not the Vampire Theory (Part 1)

(Click on image to view video)

Eleven minutes into a rambling avoidance of actually discussing the vampire theory, which never seems to get examined, Paul Adams mentions in passing that the late Peter Underwood knew both Montague Summers and Seán Manchester. He falsely describes Montague Summers as a "self-styled priest" and incorrectly titles Seán Manchester as "Mister" throughout. In fact, Montague Summers was a bona fide priest and, in the last years of his life, a bishop. Likewise, the correct formality for the Right Reverend Seán Manchester is "Bishop" and not "Mister." But when was Adams ever interested in paying attention to facts that might upset his collaborator David Farrant?

Adams also intimates that without Underwood's The Vampire's Bedside Companion the public would have been none the wiser about the case as it unfolded. This flies in the face of the fact that Seán Manchester was already planning to publish his full and expurgated account as soon as the case was satisfactorily resolved. His contribution to Peter Underwood's aforementioned anthology, by far the largest section of the book, was merely a precursor to his own The Highgate Vampire which, curiously, is a work that Paul Adams does not mention or refer to in this first part of the Symposium's alleged discussion of the vampire theory. Yet the account, first published by the British Occult Society and currently available in hardback from Gothic Press, was instrumental in acquainting the wider public with the investigation from start to finish. Peter Underwood's book contained a summary of the case up until and including the exorcism attempt in the summer of 1970.

  

The vampire theory, as far as Highgate is concerned, becomes forgotten as the video progresses, but not before Paul Adams concedes that, more than anyone else, Peter Underwood believed Seán Manchester knew what really happened. A mean-spirited attempt is then made by Adams to excuse Underwood's open support for Seán Manchester's account, but it can be seen for what it is, and does him no favours. The video concludes just as Adams turns to Farrant with mention of the convent girl identified in both Peter Underwood's and Seán Manchester's book who bore bite marks on her neck. Those attending the Symposium were shown on the screen behind the panel a photograph of the girl with the marks on her neck. This is occluded in the video version because no consent was given by Seán Manchester for its use. Its use and abuse, therefore, falls foul of copyright law. No doubt the second part of the Not the Vampire Theory session will commence with Farrant making false and unsupported allegations about a person and incidents of which he knows absolutely nothing.

As already stated, Paul Adams refers to Montague Summers as "self-styled." Here are some facts:

Montague Summers grew up in a wealthy family living in Clifton, near Bristol. Religion always played a large part in his life. He was raised as an evangelical Anglican, but his love of ceremonial and sacraments drew him to Anglo-Catholicism. After graduating in Theology at Oxford he took the first steps towards holy orders at Lichfield Theological College and entered his apprenticeship as a curate in the diocese of Bitton near Bristol. A year or so later he converted to Roman Catholicism. He had been made a deacon within the Church of England, and was diaconated again within the Roman Catholic Church, but it was not until he embraced the Old Catholic Church that he was ordained into the sacred priesthood. He celebrated Mass publicly when travelling abroad, but at home in England he only performed this sacrament in private. This was probably due to the fact that he was ordained into the priesthood outside the regular procedures of the Church. Old Catholic holy orders, albeit valid, are irregular in the eyes of Rome and Canterbury (the latter, of course, being the Church of England, is not accepted as being remotely valid by Rome). Montague Summers, in whose memory Seán Manchester would dedicate the revised and enlarged edition of The Highgate Vampire, entered the Old Catholic priesthood (having been diaconated in 1908 in the Church of England, and later joining the diaconate in the Roman Catholic Church, which he entered a year later). Bishop Summers was consecrated for the Order of Corporate Reunion on 21 June 1927 by Dominic Albert Godwin. He was later consecrated sub conditione on 21 March 1946 by Roger Stephen Matthews and appointed Nuncio for Great Britain. Like Bishop Seán Manchester, he wrote books about demonology whilst placing great emphasis on exorcism. Summers' biographer is the Carmelite Father Brocard Sewell.

None of Montague Summers' close friends doubted the sincerity of his religious faith. Dame Sybil Thorndike wrote of him: “I think that because of his profound belief in the tenets of orthodox Catholic Christianity he was able to be in a way almost frivolous in his approach to certain macabre heterodoxies. His humour, his ‘wicked humour’ as some people called it, was most refreshing, so different from the tiresome sentimentalism of so many convinced believers.”

A Question of Attribution

In the conclusion of the so-called occult section, Paul Adams wraps it up quickly following a brief interaction with the audience who are barely audible and invariably comprise satanic apologists.

This video is even more tedious than the first part of the session, if that can be imagined; until, that is, someone in the audience asks a question about Welch who had already been libelled by Adams.

Forty-one minutes and thirteen seconds into the video (click on the image to view) the audience were once again treated to Don McCullen's misdescribed photo of Welch on a screen behind the panel.

Forty-two minutes and forty-four seconds into the video, David Farrant states:

"It appeared in a book called The Highgate Vampire which was written by Mr ... [Farrant is suddenly overcome by a fit of seemingly uncontrollable coughing at this point in the proceedings and takes quite a while to recover, sipping from a glass] ... Seán Manchester. Yes, they knew each other."

This time Seán Manchester's name has not been bleeped out on the video. Farrant obviously had what's left of his feathers ruffled by our comment made about its censorship in the first session.

Someone unseen in the audience asked something about Don McCullen, but it is so muffled as to be totally inaudible. Indeed, the sound quality throughout is very poor, given the controlled situation. 

Then we hear a discarnate voice ask whether Welch was prosecuted. Paul Adams turns to Farrant:

"Was he prosecuted, David?"

Farrant tersely responds:

"No!"

Seán Manchester, of course, knew M J Welch, as, apparently, did Don McCullen whose back-story to the picture captioned "The Head Hunter of Highgate" was inspired by the fabricated nonsense Farrant was disseminating at the time to journalists such as Roger Simpson, plus all and sundry. 

McCullen's photograph of Welch had various captions down the years. McCullen and Seán Manchester are photographers, and the latter had already photographed Welch in the exact same pose. Welch must have shown Seán Manchester's photographic portrait to McMullen who, more or less, copied it when he posed his subject between two human skulls in precisely the same manner.

Does the picture appear in The Highgate Vampire?

Well, yes and no.

It does not appear in the 1991 Gothic Press edition, but is a minuscule part of a composite of cuttings and images in the 1985 British Occult Society edition. Welch can barely be seen; less than one inch by almost half an inch in the bottom left-hand corner of a picture which fills the entire page.

The Vampire Hunter's Handbook, published a dozen years later, acknowledges at the top of page 10 that Seán Manchester knew M J Welch; so Farrant is hardly the master of revelation he likes to pretend to be. 

Farrant had to admit, when asked by the audience, that Welch has not been prosecuted. How could he have been? Tales about Welch originated entirely with Farrant who acted out the very things he falsely attributed to this associate of Seán Manchester. As we know, David Farrant was prosecuted and found guilty of interfering with and offering indignity to corpses at London's Highgate Cemetery.

Adams' Rotten Apple

Eight minutes and twenty seconds into the video (click on the image to view), Paul Adams makes the following astonishing claim:

"What we do know in the 1960s is that Highgate Cemetery was being utilised as a source for occult supplies in the form of stolen skulls and other body parts during the period of 1962 at the latest. In that year famous war photographer Don McCullin composed this astonishing photograph [a black and white image of a bearded man between two skulls is shown on the screen] of a local character, a man he knew by the name of Welch. Now according to interviews he's given over the years, Welch was heavily into black magic, and other contemporary sources confirmed that he was also involved in a small and highly secretive body-snatching ring operating in both Highgate and Kensal Green cemeteries."

The image attributed to Don McCullin emulates a photograph Seán Manchester took of M J Welch some time prior to McCullin. Our concern, however, is the appalling libel committed by Paul Adams' public allegation, which is known to be completely false. Seán Manchester found Welch an introverted and unusual person, but he was most certainly not "a source for occult supplies" and most definitely not "heavily into black magic." He would have treated such a thing and anyone involved in it with contempt. He became aware of David Farrant when the latter fed a false story about Welch, a name learned from another party, to a Hornsey Journal newspaper reporter by the name of Roger Simpson. This is where the "occult supplies" and "black magic" fabrications have their origin. The journalist realised he had been led up the garden path by Farrant and no story was ever published. Indeed, it is from this point, partly due to the manufactured nonsense fed to them, that the Hornsey Journal started to gather incriminating evidence against David Farrant.

It should be added that Paul Adams is a close friend and supporter of David Farrant who is seated to Adams' left on the stage in the video. This is the context of the defamation. Farrant, of course, was found guilty of graveyard vandalism, tomb desecration and black magic at Highgate Cemetery in 1974 and, together with other offences, was sentenced to four years and eight months imprisonment.

M J Welch is a name that crops up in The Vampire Hunter's Handbook (Gothic Press, 1997) as someone involved at the outset in an informal group researching strange phenomena in the early 1960s. Welch himself was a sceptic who held no beliefs and dismissed all practices, whether black magic or religious, in equal measure. In other words, he was an atheist who had no time for supernaturalism. He was, however, a student of taxidermy who also studied anatomy and osteology. His collection of preserved animals and bones of all sorts was considerable. His knowledge helped determine whether something was human, animal or other when certain discoveries were made. 

Being such a sceptic, and therefore unlikely to be impressionable, was also a useful control to have present when examining alleged haunted areas. Seán Manchester was introduced to him by a mutual friend who was an an enthusiastic researcher with an open mind and part of the same group.

Fifteen and a half minutes into the video, Paul Adams mentions the British Occult Society and falsely attributes its formation to David Farrant. In fact, the British Occult Society were among the first to expose Farrant as a publicity-seeking nuisance from 1970 onward. When Farrant fraudulently usurped the British Occult Society's name in the media the B.O.S. were equally quick to have retractions published. Adams alleges that this "involvement" of Farrant's led to him investigating the remains of a black magic ritualism at Highgate Cemetery. A picture is then screened of a Highgate mausoleum containing strange symbols. This was one of a number of photographs successfully used by the Crown in the summer of 1974 to find David Farrant guilty of tomb desecration and black magic. Farrant is then heard describing the picture as "proof of Satanists using Highgate Cemetery." 

Yet it was Farrant who was jailed after the charge was proved to the satisfaction of a jury that he was responsible for this very satanic outrage. A series of further images from the inside of the mausoleum are shown in the video which carefully omits a photograph taken at the same time by Farrant of a completely naked Martine de Sacy in a ceremonial pose before satanic symbols.

 

McWilliams' Wimpy Wampyr Intro

Farrant apologist and flunkie Redmond McWilliams attempts to talk about the Highgate Vampire, the British Occult Society and Readers' Letters in the Hampstead & Highgate Express in early 1970. We say "attempts" because the sound quality is so abysmal and McWilliams' reading skills - he is reading from a prepared script so that the audience receive propaganda as though they are attending a cult's indoctrination session - leaves an awful lot to be desired. A worse and more boring speaker would be difficult to imagine. That said, David Farrant would certainly give him a run for his money.

Seán Manchester's name is curiously bleeped out on the soundtrack, but those attending will have heard it clearly enough. That same audience were misinformed about the British Occult Society, an organisation which opposed Farrant's activities from the moment he entered the public arena and distanced itself from him immediately, and the truth about the article "Does A Wampyr Walk In Highgate?" which title Redmond McWilliams predictably mispronounced ("wampyr" sounds phonetically the same as "vam-pyre"). Furthermore, reference is made by McWilliams to letters written to the Hampstead & Highgate Express by readers, but, of course, he fails to mention that Farrant wrote quite a number of them, using the names and addresses of acquaintances and friends.

David Farrant's own letter to the same newspaper is projected onto the screen behind the speakers in doctored form. The very revealing last paragraph of his letter has been expurgated from the text.

A blundering, amateurish start to the so-called Highgate Vampire Symposium where even the sound of Seán Manchester's name sends such shivers down their spines that they felt obliged to censor it.

To view the video, click on the image of Redmond McWilliams at the top of the page.

To read some facts relating to McWilliams' prepared drone of a monologue, click on the image below of Seán Manchester, captioned "President, British Occult Society," from a Thames Television programme broadcast on 13 March 1970, where he spoke about the Highgate Vampire case.