In the Beginning

 

FROM SEÁN MANCHESTER'S MEMOIR

* * *

Anthony stood alongside a pretty, dark-haired woman, not his wife, who held a baby, not his, in her arms. They wanted the use of my flat for a brief period before going off together to goodness knows where. Anthony referred to the girl’s husband as “Allan,” which, though not his real name, was the name by which he was apparently known amongst friends. The girl, Mary, was someone I vaguely recognised as a barmaid from a pub on Archway Road where I had played saxophone in a jazz group on occasions. Now she and Anthony were asking me to collude in their “elopement.” Put on the spot, I made a split-second decision to resolve the dilemma by declining. Anthony was never quite the same again after that. He failed to return to the studio darkroom after the six months “elopement” ― something he described as the happiest months of his life ― and instead opted to take employment other than darkroom work, including another milkman’s job prior to becoming a newspaper vendor. Mary, now pregnant, returned to “Allan,” but left for the second time, to live with her parents by the late summer of 1969. She eventually filed for a divorce. Anthony returned to his wife and their Highgate flat in Archway Road.

The bizarre twist to this episode is that “Allan,” now having been made homeless following his eviction from a nearby flat, sought refuge in Anthony’s coal cellar. Partial to alcohol, “Allan” would later be arrested and held on remand for shenanigans not entirely unrelated to his drinking in the following year. A handful of months before the arrest, he wrote to his local newspaper, at the behest of Anthony, to declare that he had seen a ghostly figure some nights as he “walked home past the gates of Highgate Cemetery.” Thus he became one of the many people I sought to interview, and was included among those briefly interviewed in the press and on television throughout 1970. There is an obvious flaw in his overture to the press in as much as it is physically impossible to “walk home” from any of the pubs he frequented in Highgate Village and pass by the cemetery gates in Swains Lane. Any map of the area will show that his coal bunker lodgings in Archway Road were located in the opposite direction. But, then, “Allan” was less than serious when he wrote his letter in February 1970. Indeed, the exercise was an attention-seeking prank. To that end, I suppose it succeeded. I learned these facts later from Anthony without too much surprise, but some dismay. "Allan" gave Anthony the pseudonym "Tony Hutchinson" in newspaper and magazine articles.

Revelations later made by Anthony only served to confirm what I had already suspected. It would seem that “Allan” had discussed faking another news story. It was decided to invent a story about the escape and recapture of his macaw, Oliver, now in the care of someone else. This was hardly original. “Goldie” the eagle had escaped from London Zoo in 1965, only to be later recaptured. This became a national news story at the time. “Allan” thought he had found a bandwagon on which to catch a ride. Anthony, unimpressed by the Oliver story, jokingly suggested a fake suicide attempt from Archway Bridge with a no less bogus “rescue.” This, too, was unoriginal because a news story about the actor and comedian Peter Sellers persuading a depressed person (about to jump off Archway Bridge) from committing suicide had also made the headlines.

While “Allan” was thinking about how to go about manufacturing one or possibly both stories, he heard talk of an alleged vampire in Highgate Cemetery on his visits to the Prince of Wales and various other pubs in the area.

The escaped bird and fake suicide attempt stories were instantly ditched. “Allan” was determined to exploit the three-year-old word-of-mouth reports of a vampire by writing a letter to the editor of the Hampstead and Highgate Express in early 1970, ending with the frank admission: “I have no knowledge in this field and I would be interested to hear if any other readers have seen anything of this nature.” Some readers of the newspaper were apparently able to confirm plenty of sightings. Unfortunately, some of the correspondents had been put up to it by "Allan," whom they were acquainted with.

The Highgate phenomenon was a story about to snowball. This had the unfortunate effect of dragging me into the forefront of something I had decided hitherto to keep a lid on. I felt that it was incumbent upon me to make some sort of statement in view of all the readers’ comments. Thus, on 27 February 1970, following batches of readers’ letters, I appeared on the front page to summarise the view of the British Occult Society and the newly-formed Vampire Research Society. It did not make easy reading. Two weeks later, I featured on Thames Television’s Today programme with the same ambition.

“Allan” also made an appearance on the same transmission, along with several youngsters who had allegedly witnessed a spectre at Highgate Cemetery. Sandra Harris, interviewing “Allan,” asked: “Did you get any feelings from it? Did you feel that it was evil?” Now calling himself David (his given name), “Allan” replied: “Yes, I did feel that it was evil because the last time I actually saw its face and it looked like it had been dead for a long time.” Sandra Harris asked: “What do you mean by that?” “Allan” answered: “Well, I mean it certainly wasn’t human.” That was all he had to say on the Today report, yet its repercussions haunted him thereafter

Captioned “David F——” [his surname is deleted here to avoid awarding him any further publicity], he certainly made no claim to any association with the British Occult Society. Needless to say, “Allan,” or David, was not a member, associate or participant in the activities of the British Occult Society, which existed purely for the purpose of investigating occult and supernatural phenomena. The following year found David fraudulently claiming membership. The claim was instantly and publicly rebuffed by the British Occult Society. He next absurdly claimed to be both “president and founder.” Disclaimers followed press reports whenever he was thus described, invariably with the editor adding the prefix “self-styled.” Tired of being exposed in the press as an interloping charlatan who had hijacked the name of a long extant organisation, along with the title of its current president, in 1983 David altered the name of his “society” by inserting the word “Psychic” in its title. Nobody was fooled. He had spoken to the media about his “thousands of followers” (Hornsey Journal, 23 November 1979), and even went so far as to proffer the notion of a number as high as twenty thousand members (Finchley Press, 22 February 1980). However, in the same report was stated the following: “On Monday, Seán Manchester, president of the British Occult Society, disclaimed any connection between Mr F[——] and the society. Questioning Mr F[——]’s claim to have 20,000 ‘followers,’ Mr Manchester said: ‘I challenge you to find one serious occultist in the whole of the United Kingdom who will support any of Mr F[——]’s claims.’ Mr Manchester believes that Mr F[——]’s activities — including the libel action [which he lost] — have been publicity-seeking.”

This had been my assessment in early 1970 when I first made his acquaintance while interviewing witnesses of the widely reported Highgate spectre. It was also the conclusion of others. Eminent researcher Peter Underwood would comment in a book published five years after David had launched himself in the media: “Publicity of a dubious kind has surrounded the activities of a person or persons named F[——] and his — or their — association with Highgate Cemetery. … a Mr Allan F[——] was caught climbing over the wall of Highgate Cemetery carrying a wooden cross and a sharpened piece of wood. … According to the Daily Mail Allan F[——] saw ‘an apparition’ eight feet tall in the cemetery that ‘just floated along the ground’ when he was on watch one morning waiting ‘for the vampire to rise.’ He believed that there had been a vampire in Highgate Cemetery for about ten years. … Less than a month later a Mr David F[——] was guiding Barry Simmons of the London Evening News on a night-tour of Highgate Cemetery armed with a cross and wooden stake which he carried under his arm in a paper carrier bag. In fact the whole project seems to have been a somewhat dismal and depressing effect — even the cross, created from two pieces of wood, was tied together with a shoelace.” [The Vampire’s Bedside Companion by Peter Underwood, Leslie Frewin Books, 1975, pages 77-79.]

In a home-produced and stapled pamphlet, somewhat unimaginatively titled Beyond the Highgate Vampire, self-published a quarter of a century later, David denied vampire hunting with a cross and stake. He merely wanted to measure out a circle, he unconvincingly claimed, with the wooden stake and a piece of string. Even so, a nine inch tall photograph of him, holding a cross in one hand and a stake in the other, appeared on the front page of the Hornsey Journal, 28 June 1974, beneath a banner headline stating: “The Graveyard Ghoul Awaits His Fate.” The picture’s caption read: “F[——] on a ‘vampire hunt’ in Highgate Cemetery.” The report began: “Wicked witch David F[——], tall, pale and dressed all in black, saw his weird world crumble about him this week. F[——], aged 28, the ghoulish, self-styled High Priest of the British Occult Society [sic], was found guilty by an Old Bailey jury of damaging a memorial to the dead at Highgate Cemetery and interfering with buried remains. … Mr Richard du Cann prosecuting, accused F[——] of ‘terrible’ crimes and at one stage described him as a ‘wicked witch.’ … One of the witnesses for the prosecution was Journal reporter Roger Simpson. F[——] had given him a photograph of a corpse in a partly-opened coffin. Because of the nature of the picture, the paper decided not to publish it, and it was handed to the police.”

The public relations damage inflicted upon the actual British Occult Society by David’s phoney association was due to his incessant manufacture of fraudulent news stories and claims of “occult powers” and “witchcraft ceremonies.” In countless published interviews given by David to the press, he boasted of sacrificing cats, invariably adding that they were “stray cats” and that they were “anaesthetised” before having their throats slit. “We rarely sacrifice animals in rituals but this sacrifice was essential to our belief as we derive power from blood. The power we gain is used for good as against evil,” he told Roger Simpson in an article for the Hornsey Journal, 31 August 1973, adding: “Hundreds’ of years ago a naked virgin would have been sacrificed but obviously we couldn’t do this now so we had to have an animal for the important ritual.”

A headline news story in the same newspaper, 28 September 1973, revealed: “F[——], as the Journal reported, admitted slitting a ‘stray’ cat’s throat at the height of a bizarre witchcraft ritual … in Highgate Woods recently.” There are countless quotes in the press where he describes his animal sacrifice threats and their execution, eg headline of the Hornsey Journal, 7 September 1973: “I will sacrifice cat at Hallowe’en: F[——],” and the same newspaper, 16 November 1979: “Ritual sex act and cat sacrifice,” followed by a report opening with the words: “Self-styled ‘high priest’ David F[——] told a High Court jury this week of the night he performed a ritual sex act in an attempt to summon up a vampire in Highgate Cemetery. He admitted that he had taken part in the ‘sacrifice’ of a stray cat in Highgate Wood.” In another squalid report, where he is interviewed by Sue Kentish for the News of the World, 23 September 1973, he is quoted as saying: “I did not enjoy having to kill the cat, but for one particular part of the ritual it was necessary. The sacrifice of a living creature represents the ultimate act in invoking a deity. I do not see animal sacrifice as drastic as people have made it out to be. … And, at least, I anaesthetised the cat before I had to kill it.”

While serving a four years and eight months prison sentence, David wrote an article for New Witchcraft magazine (issue 4), in which he claimed: “In magic, blood is symbolic of the ‘life force’ or ‘spiritual energy’ which permeates the body and in this context is used in many advanced magical ceremonies. It would not be sacrilegious to compare this to the use of wine as symbolic of blood in the Catholic Communion. Accordingly, at approximately 11.45pm, I drew blood.” His lengthy description of summoning a “satanic force” is nothing short of an admission to his engagement in unabashed diabolism: “We then lay in the Pentagram and began love-making, all the time visualizing the Satanic Force so that it could — temporarily — take possession of our bodies.” Use of the word “temporarily” might have been inappropriate in the circumstances and somewhat premature with hindsight.

In my first unexpurgated account of the Highgate case, I tendered the following opinion: “I have found not a single shred of evidence to suggest that the least of these things are true.” [The Highgate Vampire, British Occult Society, 1985, page 80.]

I slowly became less confident in that view, as his associations with hardcore Satanists like Jean-Paul Bourre grew exponentially. Accordingly I expurgated it from the 1991 edition of The Highgate Vampire. The simple fact of the matter is that I did not know how far he was capable of going. After all, he had broken the law before I ever met him, using two British passports — the phoney one being in the name of “Allan Aden Ellson.” To own this passport meant that he had acquired Crown property through deception by falsifying information on the application form. Had it been known at the time by the authorities, he would have been arrested and charged with a serious offence. He was causing the BOS/VRS a lot of personal inconvenience, and was obviously a compulsive individual. But how sinister, or even satanic, was he really?

Two people who knew him longer than anyone else, Anthony and David’s first wife, Mary, are convinced that his witchcraft and occult stunts were utterly phoney. In that regard I concurred, but I could no longer opine with certainty just how far or not he was willing to go in the pursuit of publicity.

The Sun, 21 June 1974, recorded: “The wife of self-styled occult priest David F[——] 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 F[——] — 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 F[——] 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.”

Shortly before and for a period following his imprisonment in 1974, I attempted to gain David’s confidence in order to discover the truth about his alleged “occult” activities. The conclusions I arrive at are published in The Vampire Hunter’s Handbook, a work that covers this matter comprehensively: “My personal view is that he has become possessed by demonic influences. His behaviour, by any standard, is extremely obsessive.” His self-styled organisation, rarely consisting of more than one member, I deduce “did not have the same appeal [as other witchcraft groups], owing to the ‘high priest’s’ total lack of occult knowledge and contradictory statements.” [The Vampire Hunter’s Handbook, Gothic Press, 1997, pages 55 & 87.]

From the very beginning — when his acquaintances knew him only as “Allan” — to the last moment I spoke to him [a brief meeting, after a gap of five years, which took place in London’s Highgate Wood at dusk on 24 January 1987, as recorded in From Satan To Christ, Holy Grail, 1988, pages 73-74], F[——], in the absence of any corroborating witness, would frequently ridicule witches, occultists and also members of any mainstream religious faith. For him witchcraft and the occult was only a means to an end. My impression was that he actually believed none of it. He saw those who took such things seriously as being only worthy of his contempt. His raison d’être was and remains an agenda where his manufactured publicity stunts masked deep-rooted insecurities that probably stem from childhood. By dabbling in these areas, however, David opened himself to the very thing he privately scorned behind closed doors. He rapidly became the Devil’s plaything.

“I don’t believe in the existence of the Devil,” [quoted from David’s appearance on the Michael Cole Show, UK Living, 20 December 1998] he would protest in later years when interviewed. But, of course, the Devil was more than aware of David — and, moreover, sought to manipulate him.

Barring journalists who will always take advantage of a free meal ticket when a compulsive publicity-seeker offers one on a plate, many of his acquaintances who provided David with succour turned out themselves to be apologists for the diabolist Aleister Crowley and others of that ilk.

Gareth Medway

 

Medway and Farrant celebrating something diabolical with an effigy of Bishop Manchester's decapitated head.

Gareth Medway with one of several anti-Bishop
Manchester items he and David Farrant promote.

Gareth Medway assists David Farrant’s vendetta on a weekly basis despite having no personal computer of his own (he uses Mr Farrant’s) and has taken the trouble to travel all the way to Bishop Seán Manchester’s private retreat in order to clandestinely take photographs of its exterior for publication in Mr Farrant’s pamphlets in which libellous incitements of hatred against the bishop fill every page. Mr Medway also partakes in the dissemination of malicious merchandise aimed at ridiculing Bishop Manchester. These items are sold to those with an axe to grind against traditional Christians generally and the bishop in particular. 

Mr Medway describes himself as “a priest of The Fellowship of Isis, a historian of the occult and the author of Lure of the Sinister: The Unnatural History of Satanism,” and defends the past actions and current vendetta of his close friend and collaborator David Farrant with vigour.

Gareth Medway with his collaborator David Farrant.

Just to briefly recap on some of Mr Farrant’s actions:

“Judge Michael Argyle QC passed sentence after reading medical and mental reports. He said that Farrant — self-styled High Priest of the British Occult Society [sic] — had acted ‘quite regardless of the feelings of ordinary people,’ by messing about at Highgate Cemetery.” (Hornsey Journal, 19 July 1974)

“The judge [Michael Argyle QC] said any interference with a corpse during black magic rituals could properly be regarded as a ‘great scandal and a disgrace to religion, decency and morality’.” (The Sun, 26 June 1974)

“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.” (The Sun, 21 June 1974)

Gareth Medway makes some bizarre latter-day representations on behalf of Mr Farrant in an article published in a self-produced pamphlet by his friend from a series of similarly unpleasant tracts. Mr Medway is the author of Lure of the Sinister, and has also occasionally written for the magazines Fortean Times and Magonia, which makes it all the bizarre when he throws his weight behind a man like Mr Farrant.  Mr Medway is quoted below exclusively from his piece, “The Highgate Affair,” published on page 4 of Mr Farrant’s highly defamatory series of illicit tracts, Man, Myth and Manchester (issue 6) where the sole preoccupation is to malign and libel Bishop Seán Manchester (hence the pamphlet’s title).

MEDWAY: “David Farrant will not disclose his age, going so far as to state that ‘We don’t believe in linear time,’ but he has told me that he was initiated into Wicca by a High Priestess named Helen, in Barnet, north London, in 1964, and, on another occasion, said that at the time of his initiation he was eighteen. He reached the third degree in 1966, and won a reputation as an authority on occultism. So in 1967 he set up the British Occult Society.”

FACT: Mr David Robert Donovan Farrant was born on 23 January 1946 at Shepherds Hill in north London. Dark Secrets, self-published in 2001 by Mr Farrant, claims on page 16 the same period, 1964, for his initiation into wicca (or witchcraft). However, when asked about this matter in interviews given throughout the previous three decades, he invariably told reporters that he had been initiated by his mother at a very young age. The age thirteen was sometimes given. This wavered in the telling to different reporters, but any initiation into witchcraft was obliged to remain prior to 1959 (when he would have been thirteen) because this is the year his mother died.

Mr Farrant married his first wife, Mary Olden, in a Roman Catholic Church in 1967. They had a nuptial mass and papal blessing. This is a strange ceremony to choose if you are a “high priest of witchcraft.” When Mary appeared as a defence witness during his Old Bailey trials in June 1974, she affirmed that she had no knowledge of his interest in witchcraft or the occult. His Highgate Cemetery antics were described by his wife, under oath, as being nothing more than a bit of a laugh and a joke. When Mr Farrant began his pursuit of publicity in early 1970, he was frequently photographed in attitudes of prayer before Christian crosses and images. He posed for photographs wearing crucifixes, rosaries and holding bibles. He was still doing so in August 1970, six years after he was supposed to have been initiated according to the latest date on offer from both him and his ally Gareth Medway.

There is no record anywhere in the public annals of David Farrant having “won a reputation as an authority on occultism,” and there is no evidence anywhere to suggest that he “set up the British Occult Society” in 1967. Until his return to England with his wife-to-be in the summer of 1967, Mr Farrant had been living in France and Spain. He met Mary Olden in Bordeaux from where they went to Spain. Here they remained until their wedding in north London at St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church. The British Occult Society was actually “set up” circa 1860, which might explain why Mr Farrant does not subscribe to “linear time.” Bishop Manchester was its last president, appointed in June 1967, until the formal dissolution of the Society on 8 August 1988. Bishop Manchester’s appearance on Thames Television’s Today programme, 13 March 1970, witnessed the caption beneath his screen image: “Seán Manchester, President, British Occult Society.” Mr Farrant also made an appearance on the same transmission, along with several accompanying witnesses to an alleged spectre at Highgate Cemetery. He was captioned “David Farrant.” He made no claim on BOS membership at this time. Indeed, Mr Farrant has never been a member, associate or participant in the activities of the British Occult Society, which existed purely for the purpose of investigating supernatural and occult phenomena. The BOS did not engage in witchcraft, magical ceremonies, or occult “religious” practices.

The following year found Mr Farrant fraudulently claiming membership of the BOS. The year after that he falsely stated that he was the “president and founder” of the BOS, all of which was hotly denied by the BOS itself. When Mr Farrant appeared at the Old Bailey in 1974, he again described himself this way. He was quoted thus, but invariably with the prefix “self-styled” to make clear that his claim was not supported by anyone other than himself. Tired of being exposed in the press as an interloping charlatan who had hijacked the name of an already extant organisation, along with the title of its current president, in 1983 he altered the name of his “society” to the “British Psychic and Occult Society.” Nobody was fooled. He had spoken to the media about his “thousands of followers” (Hornsey Journal, 23 November 1979), and even went so far as to proffer a number as high as 20,000 (Finchley Press, 22 February 1980). In the same report, however, was stated the following: “On Monday, Seán Manchester, president of the British Occult Society, disclaimed any connection between Mr Farrant and the society. Questioning Mr Farrant’s claim to have 20,000 ‘followers,’ Mr Manchester said: ‘I challenge you to find one serious individual in the whole of the United Kingdom who will support any of Mr Farrant’s claims.’ Mr Manchester believes that Mr Farrant’s activities — including the libel action [which Farrant lost] — have been publicity-seeking.”

This had been Bishop Seán Manchester’s assessment of David Farrant years earlier when he made his acquaintance through interviewing alleged witnesses of the widely reported Highgate phenomenon in 1970. Mr Farrant was residing at that time in an Archway Road coal cellar beneath the flat of someone, given the name “Hutchinson” by Mr Farrant, who would later reveal some damaging facts about his tenant. It would seem that Mr Farrant had wanted to fake a news story as early as 1968. He discussed this with “Hutchinson” (real name Tony Hill) again the following year and it was decided to do a fraudulent piece about the supposed escape and recapture of Mr Farrant’s macaw named “Oliver.” This was hardly original. “Goldie” the eagle had escaped from London Zoo and had been recaptured. It made the news worldwide, however, and Mr Farrant saw a bandwagon he could jump on to gain media attention. “Hutchinson” was unimpressed by the “Oliver” story, and suggested a fake suicide attempt from Archway Bridge where Mr Farrant was “rescued.” This, too, was unoriginal because a news story about Peter Sellers talking a depressed person out of committing suicide by jumping off Archway Bridge had also been in the headlines. While Mr Farrant was thinking about this new suggestion, he happened to hear about rumours of a vampire in Highgate Cemetery when he visited the Prince of Wales pub, and decided to hoax a ghost. Nobody was interested Mr Farrant’s claims of seeing a ghost, however, and it was only a matter of weeks before he found a bandwagon that would catapult him into the limelight.

“Hutchinson” was less keen on pursuing the vampire story and felt that a ghost story would be far easier to manufacture. Mr Farrant did this by writing to a local newspaper, the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 6 February 1970, with his infamous “Some nights I walk past the gates of Highgate Cemetery” letter, ending with the statement: “I have no knowledge in this field and I would be interested to hear if any other readers have seen anything of this nature.”

“No knowledge in this field”? This does not quite tally with Mr Medway’s misleading claim of the year 1966 when Mr Farrant “won a reputation as an authority on occultism.” Mr Farrant was not even in the country in 1966! He was roughing it, picking fruit to stay alive, on the Continent where he eventually met Mary Olden who would become his wife.

MEDWAY: “Farrant was in addition accused by the press (though not by the courts) of sacrificing cats. … During 1973 more stories about cats being sacrificed in the Highgate area appeared in the press, and this time Farrant’s name was used. He now [thirty years later] thinks that he should have tried to deny these reports. … He supposedly confessed to sacrificing a cat, but this was incongruously juxtaposed with remarks like: ‘The power we gain is used for good as against evil.’ In fact, of course, sacrificing a cat would be totally against Wiccan ethics. Conceivably people might call themselves Wiccan and nevertheless perform blood sacrifices, but it would be exceptional. … No criminal charges ever arose from this allegation, even though the following year he would be prosecuted for everything from interfering with a corpse to stealing bedlinen. And, naturally, he denies ever having sacrificed any animal.”

FACT: In countless published interviews given by Mr Farrant to the press during the Seventies and early Eighties, he openly admitted to sacrificing cats, invariably adding that they were “stray cats” and that they were “anaesthetised” before having their throats slit. The one cited by Mr Medway, ie Roger Simpson’s interview with David Farrant in the Hornsey Journal, 31 August 1973, quotes Mr Farrant directly from his taped conversation as saying: “We rarely sacrifice animals in rituals but this sacrifice was essential to our belief as we derive power from blood. The power we gain is used for good as against evil.” There is nothing “incongruous” about this juxtaposition. It is what you would expect him to say. Aleister Crowley, for whom Gareth Medway also has a soft spot, would never describe his animal sacrifices as being for evil, even if the rest of the world saw them as utterly wicked and depraved, which, of course, they did. Mr Farrant also gave a radio interview to the BBC in 1973 where he confirmed his policy to sacrifice cats in witchcraft ceremonies. Mr Farrant’s diabolical collaborator — John Russell Pope — in a recorded interview with Bishop Seán Manchester on 18 October 1987 (copies of which are available), confirmed: “Yes, David Farrant believes it is all right to kill cats.” Mr Pope, who had run the United Temples of Satan during the Seventies, was described as “Britain’s leading black magician” in Reveille magazine, 21 November 1975. The article quoted Mr Pope as saying: “I am going to form a coven that will rule the world.” Not a coven of witches, of course, but a coven of Satanists.

John Pope believed in ritual human sacrifice provided this was possible without legal penalty. Similar sentiments had been echoed by Mr Farrant two years earlier in his interview with Roger Simpson (Hornsey Journal, 31 August 1973) where he states: “Hundreds’ of years ago a naked virgin would have been sacrificed but obviously we couldn’t do this now so we had to have an animal for the important ritual.” In a front page headline story in the same newspaper, 28 September 1973, the following is found: “Farrant, as the Journal reported, admitted slitting a ‘stray’ cat’s throat at the height of a bizarre witchcraft ritual … in Highgate Woods recently.” There are countless quotes in the press where Mr Farrant describes his animal sacrifice threats and their execution, eg the headline in the Hornsey Journal, 7 September 1973: “I will sacrifice cat at Hallowe’en: Farrant,” and the same newspaper, 16 November 1979: “Ritual sex act and cat sacrifice,” followed by: “Self-styled ‘high priest’ David Farrant told a High Court jury this week of the night he performed a ritual sex act in an attempt to summon up a vampire in Highgate Cemetery. He also admitted that he had taken part in the ‘sacrifice’ of a stray cat in Highgate Wood.” In a truly revolting report, where David Farrant is interviewed by Sue Kentish for the News of the World, 23 September 1973, he is quoted as saying: “I did not enjoy having to kill the cat, but for one particular part of the ritual it was necessary. The sacrifice of a living creature represents the ultimate act in invoking a deity. I do not see animal sacrifice as drastic as people have made it out to be. … And, at least, I anaesthetised the cat before I had to kill it.”

Gareth Medway would have us believe that all these reports have been invented by journalists, and that, at worst, Mr Farrant just let them publish whatever they wanted. There is a fatal flaw in Mr Medway’s hypothesis, and that is that most of Mr Farrant’s interviews were tape-recorded. When interviewed by Bishop Seán Manchester, soon after Mr Farrant’s release from prison, the entire conversation was tape-recorded (copies of which are available) with Mr Farrant’s full knowledge and approval. Mr Medway has heard parts of this interview, including those parts where Mr Farrant unequivocally states that animal sacrifice is a vital part of his witchcraft practice. Moreover, whilst in prison, Mr Farrant wrote an article for New Witchcraft magazine (issue 4), wherein he states: “In magic, blood is symbolic of the ‘life force’ or ‘spiritual energy’ which permeates the body and in this context is used in many advanced magical ceremonies. It would not be sacrilegious to compare this to the use of wine as symbolic of blood in the Catholic Communion. Accordingly, at approximately 11.45pm, I drew blood.” Farrant’s lengthy description of summoning a “satanic force” is nothing short of diabolical necromancy: “We then lay in the Pentagram and began love-making, all the time visualizing the Satanic Force so that it could — temporarily — take possession of our bodies.”

The word “temporarily” might have proved to be incorrect in view of all that has followed. Some people, including Bishop Seán Manchester, take the view that Mr Farrant remains possessed.

MEDWAY: “At the end of 1969 Farrant heard reports of a mysterious spectral figure being seen in the vicinity of Highgate Cemetery, the north gate of which was only a hundred yards from his favourite pub, the Prince of Wales in Highgate Village. He went there after closing time on the night of the 21st of December and was rewarded with the sight of a seven-foot tall dark shape, which he felt to be malevolent, gazing at him. He repeated a Kabbalistic invocation and it vanished. … The rumour got around that the spectre was in fact a vampire.”

FACT: The “rumour” had been around since 1965. Two years later, in early 1967, two convent schoolgirls witnessed what they believed to be a vampire through the bars of the north gate. Innumerable other passers-by and residents also saw a vampire-like spectre in Highgate Cemetery, but refrained from seeking self-publicity in the press. Peter Underwood, president of the Ghost Club and member of the bona fide British Occult Society, was also aware of the Highgate Vampire long before Mr Farrant got wind of it. Mr Underwood, a celebrated author of over fifty books on the paranormal wrote: “In 1968, I heard first-hand of such a sighting,” adding, “Publicity of a dubious kind has surrounded the activities of a person or persons named Farrant and his — or their — association with Highgate Cemetery, in search of vampires. In 1970 a Mr David Farrant of Archway Road, Highgate, said, during the course of a television interview, that he planned to seek out the vampire in the cemetery and put an end to it by driving a stake through its heart.” (The Vampire’s Bedside Companion, Leslie Frewin, 1975, pages 76-77).

The “Kabbalistic invocation” was curiously overlooked by Mr Farrant in his recounting of this incident at the time; possibly because he was found wearing a Catholic crucifix and carrying a wooden stake when arrested in Highgate Cemetery by police searching for black magic devotees on the night of 17 August 1970. When Farrant appeared in the press that year, and in a BBC interview on October 15th, he posed holding a large cross while brandished a wooden stake.

However, in his pamphlet Beyond the Highgate Vampire, self-published some quarter of a century later, he totally denied vampire hunting with a cross and stake. He merely wanted to measure out a circle, it is unconvincingly claimed by him, with the stake and a piece of string. Even so, a nine inch tall photograph of Mr Farrant, holding a cross in one hand and a stake in the other, appeared on the front page of the Hornsey Journal, 28 June 1974, beneath a banner headline stating: “The Graveyard Ghoul Awaits His Fate.” The picture’s caption read: “Farrant on a ‘vampire hunt’ in Highgate Cemetery.” The report began: “Wicked witch David Farrant, tall, pale and dressed all in black, saw his weird world crumble about him this week. Farrant, aged 28, the ghoulish, self-styled High Priest of the British Occult Society, was found guilty by an Old Bailey jury of damaging a memorial to the dead at Highgate Cemetery and interfering with buried remains. … Mr Richard du Cann prosecuting, accused Farrant of ‘terrible’ crimes and at one stage described him as a ‘wicked witch.’ … One of the witnesses for the prosecution was Journal reporter Roger Simpson. Farrant had given him a photograph of a corpse in a partly-opened coffin. Because of the nature of the picture, the paper decided not to publish it, and it was handed to the police.”

Gareth Medway has nothing more to say about his friend’s “vampire hunting” in his article “The Highgate Affair,” which is hardly surprising. The facts do not stack up in Mr Farrant’s favour, and the more anyone digs the more they will exhume lies, contradictions, deception and false claims.

So why would Mr Medway want to spread Mr Farrant’s disinformation propaganda? It surely casts him in a very poor and indeed questionable light, and makes anything he erstwhile has to say, not least in his book Lure of the Sinister, significantly less credible.

Mr Farrant, of course, has been branded a liar by the courts and by every journalist who did his homework without relying on nonsense fed to him by the subject. Mr Medway clearly has another agenda; one that is pro-Crowley and antipathetic toward the Christian Church and representatives of it like Bishop Seán Manchester who took holy orders after having worked as an exorcist.

That earlier collaborator, “Hutchinson,” assures that not only is Mr Farrant a phoney witch, but a phoney everything else. “He believes in nothing except his own self-publicity,” said “Hutchinson, when asked about David Farrant. “Behind these witches’ and occultists’ backs, he ridicules them. Farrant believes in none of it, and hasn’t a sincere bone in his body. He just wants to be the centre of attention, and will do and say almost anything to achieve it.”

So is Satanism a cocktail of sheer deception and depravity and nothing else? Bishop Seán Manchester believes it does comprise of traditional devil worship, and this is backed up by Mr Farrant’s admission in a recprded interview that he worships Lucifer.

What about Mr Medway who publishes so much apologia on behalf of Satanists such as David Farrant and John Russell Pope? Mr Medway’s correspondence is invariably “care of” other peoples’ addresses either in London or in Liverpool. He stays virtually anonymous, unreachable and unaccountable for what he says and publishes. It is, therefore, nigh impossible to serve him with a writ or summons.

In one of his many offending pamphlets, Mr Farrant publishes the private address in full of an elderly lady who lived entirely on her own. She was a close friend and London Secretary of Bishop Seán Manchester, which is why her private whereabouts were not revealed. When Mr Farrant published her address, she lived in fear of some deranged person calling on her in the last year of her life until she died painfully of cancer. She was included on the list of persons who had complained to the police of harassment that led to his arrest under the Protection from Harassment Act in December 2002.

In the same pamphlet self-published by Mr Farrant, preceded by the exact location of another private residence, is found the following from Mr Medway: “The exact location of the ultra-confidential, elusive as the door to fairyland, more highly classified than Roswell, top secret private home of … etc.” And on the facing page is a photograph of the private house in question. Such are the depths David Farrant and Gareth Medway are prepared to stoop in order to execute their vindictive vendetta against whomever they dislike; not least Bishop Manchester, a man Mr Medway does not know personally and has never met.

Yet the description of a residential address as an “ultra-confidential” location, which it patently is not, is surely more applicable to Gareth Medway’s own whereabouts, which he goes to great lengths to protect.

Gross hypocrisy, therefore, is never too distant from the venomous pen of the author of the Lure of the Sinister, which is worth bearing in mind next time his name crops up.

Gareth Medway with close associate David Farrant.

Media versus Fact

 

Everything  shown in quotes is from Francisco Garcia, and was published online 5th February 2020.

(Francisco Garcia is a London-based writer and journalist who works for The Guardian newspaper.)

David Farrant (1946-2019)

"While Farrant had presided over The British Psychic and Occult Society, Manchester founded the British Occult Society. When Manchester published his sensational book The Highgate Vampire in 1985, Farrant countered with Beyond The Highgate Vampire in 1991."

Farrant's booklet hardly "countered" my own work published five years earlier. Indeed, as more than one commentator observed, were it not for all the material filched from The Highgate Vampire, including one hundred lines lifted straight from the text, there would have been very little of interest in the stapled pamphlet. Moreover, I did not "found" the British Occult Society. It existed long before I was born. I became its president on 21 June 1967 until 8 August 1988 when I moved to dissolve the BOS.

☠

"The duo traded insults in print until Farrant's death, though the feud reached its dramatic peak in 1973, when both parties heavily advertised a 'magical duel,' which was to take place on Parliament Hill in Hampstead, before cooling down and calling off the clash."

This has been cribbed from Jacqueline Simpson's entry on Wikipedia. She was a friend and ally of David Farrant, even appearing at his symposium in July 2015 to offer him her support and belittle me. There was no "magician's duel," and I certainly made an appearance on the summit of Parliament Hill, as evidenced in above photographs. Not only was the occasion covered correctly in the Hampstead & Highgate Express, but I wrote about it in one of my books. The national press were in touch with Farrant, and he provided them with a different account of what would transpire. He was not present, of course, but he spoke of naked witches, sacrificing a cat and raising a demon. I created a ring of prayer.

☠

"The Highgate of 1970 was different, just as the Highgate Cemetery of the era was not the genteel tourist destination it is today. In place of the carefully manicured graves and pathways, there was a deep set neglect, characterised by rampant vandalism and mutterings about pagan sex parties taking place in the dark of night."

Highgate Cemetery was indeed succumbing to the voracious appetite of nature in 1970, which led to the tranquility of the tomb being disrupted by trees and roots. Coffins sometimes fell victim to the passage of time coupled with neglect, but vandalism by humans was no different to other cemeteries. As for "pagan sex parties taking place in the dark of night," I found no evidence of this whatsoever.

☠ 

"In the 1978 General Election, David Farrant ran in Hornsey as the sole candidate for his own Wicca Workers Party, on a platform of free sex and nudity, restoring the Wiccan creed, outlawing communism, establishing state brothels, restoring true power to the monarchy and leaving the EU Common Market. Farrant's brand of electoral paganism may have been unsuccessful, but it says something of an era in which London could play home to eccentrics and outliers."

It surprises me that Francisco Garcia, a left-wing journalist, chooses to overlook the eagles and runes on Farrant's WWP leaflets, or pursue what Farrant wrote to the Hornsey Journal, preferring to dismiss it all as "eccentricity." The fact is that Farrant was prevented from standing because of his criminal record, and transferred his vote to the NF.

☠

"Things took a left turn in the early 2000s, when Don [Ecker] posited a question on a blog about Manchester, written in admittedly brisk language. Several days later, the emails started from the Friends of Sean Manchester Society [sic]. 'Oh boy, that first day there must have been about ten or 15,' he told me. 'And I'm convinced [to this day] that Manchester does not have a secretary'."

There is no "society" as described above; though people might be aware of a group and blog called Friends of Bishop Seán Manchester, on which can be discovered the following regarding Don Ecker:

When Don Ecker had some of these photographs belonging to Bishop Manchester removed from his Facebook page under legal notice, he immediately begged his small coterie of FB friends for assistance:

"Hey All ... I need some help. Where in FB can you contact the people running this? I have a major complaint and I need to contact someone. I have l looked everywhere and can not find a link or name or telephone number. Pleassssse??"

His complaint, which Facebook naturally ignored, was that pictures owned by Bishop Seán Manchester stolen by Mr Ecker had been deleted from his FB page. These infringed photographs linked to his blogsite where legal notices have also been consistently ignored by his service provider and friend Don Peek of Coastland Technologies. (Mr Peek has also divulged confidential material to hate sites after receiving legal notices concerning infringed material owned by Bishop Manchester on those sites run by anonymous individuals).

Within no time, Don Ecker exploded in a comment on David Farrant's Facebook page:

"Well David, Bishop Bonkers (that is actually ol' Sean Manchester) struck again! It appears he doesn't like my Dark Matters blog posting ... 'Is The Bishop a Nutter??' He whined, sniveled and cried to FB claiming an infringement of copyright. Now, how can that whining and sniveling little ol' holy joe have copyright on ...MY FREAKEN BLOG?? Hmm? I ask you? You know, I think I will dedicate another whole show to him and pull out all the stops. Yep, just might do that."

Threats from the aging bully are commonplace, and FoBSM have certainly grown used to them down the years. David Farrant quickly made an offer which the American frothing at the mouth was quick to accept:

"Just let me know if you want me on the show again. Don, a PS. Did I ever send you a copy of my book "The Seangate Tapes"? If not, I will put one in the post for you. Its a classic!"

Don Ecker replied:

"Good morning David. No, you didn't send me that but it does sound fascinating! Would love to read it!"

To which Mr Farrant responded:

"I've just packaged it up for you Don, and will post tomorrow. I might as well put Pact with the Devil in with it as well, but the other thing will come a little later. Boy! will you have some fun when you read "The Seangate Tapes" book. For now, David."

"David ... I can HARDLY WAIT!" panted Don Ecker.

David Farrant commented further on his own blog:

"I heard from my friend American Radio Broadcaster, Don Ecker, to say he received the two books I sent him last week, and he has read them.  I better not repeat what he said here, but let’s just say I don’t think he has a very high opinion of ‘nutters’ who go around wearing teas pot cosies!"

The infantile reference to "tea pot cosies" is Mr Farrant's coded allusion to Bishop Manchester's biretta.

You have to keep reminding yourself that these are two elderly pensioners: an Englishman in his mid-sixties, and an American who is even older still!

Anthony Hogg had the same insulting comment posted by Don Ecker on his Facebook page. Mr Hogg responded:

"G'day Don. Good to hear from you! Yeah, he's a troublesome, dodgy sort. Leaves a nice trail of buffoonery behind him. This is the latest example."

Recovering stolen property, according to Anthony Hogg, is now to be regarded as "buffoonery."

On his self-congratulatory blog, Mr Ecker makes any number of personal attacks on Bishop Manchester with the mandatory stolen images to accompany each malicious swipe. On an entry titled "Is the Bishop a Nutter?" Don Ecker's true colours are revealed, as he barely contains himself:

"Now, let me tell you a little bit about the guy that shoveled all that shit out there……. Sean Manchester" Don Ecker begins, and it is not long before we are being treated to more of his remarkable eloquence: "Well, I almost popped a blood vessel. ... This was after Manchester, under an assumed computer user identity, accused me of being an 'American War-Monger' because of my Viet Nam service. As I said later, I was soooooo happy I was here (So. Calf.) and not there (England-UK) because I just wouldn’t trust myself if I happened to 'bump' into good ol’ Sean. ... So remember Sean, it is never a good idea to go out of your way to piss someone off who buys ink by the gallon and spend their spare time in front of a radio microphone. It will come back to bite you …. you Holy Joe … you."

In fact, Bishop Manchester has never had any contact with Don Ecker. It was a member of FoBSM (a female) who referred to Mr Ecker as a "war monger." This came about following Mr Ecker turning nasty after he approached FoBSM to arrange a radio interview with the bishop. Don Ecker had been desperately trying to interview Bishop Manchester for years until he finally gave up and settled for David Farrant who managed to lead the American up the garden path with very little difficulty. The open threat from Don Ecker of what he would do if he bumped into the bishop, unfortunately, is typical of the man.

David Farrant started posting his familiar abuse on the blog comments at the invitation of Don Ecker. Then some balancing commentary appeared courtesy of FoBSM until the man who claims the American Constitution's first amendment allows him to say what he likes, using infringed images in the process, decided that "free speech" was to be curtailed if an opinion other than his own was being heard. The comments' section abruptly ended with this statement:

"Hear Ye This! Further comments on this topic are CLOSED! If you all wish to continue, do so on Mr. Farrants blog, Net Curtain Lurkers, The Pussy Meows, or where ever. I no longer am accepting further comments here. Don Ecker, Administrator."

Don Ecker wrote a vampire novel fifteen years ago which he is constantly plugging. It appeared a decade after the first edition of The Highgate Vampire was published to great acclaim. Indeed, Mr Ecker purchased a copy of the bishop's non-fiction work. His own less than successful first (and last) attempt at writing a book might have caused some envy towards Bishop Manchester whose book still remains a bestseller in its category, and is currently under option for a major cinema film. The trouble with Don Ecker's novel is that it reflects the man and his poor command of the English language with a tedious story that is almost impossible to read. If the amateurish presentation of language fails to put the reader off, the absence of any convincing or coherent storyline certainly will.

Envy, coupled with the fact that Don Ecker has failed at every attempt made to interview Bishop Manchester to boost the ratings of his self-serving radio show, is probably the reason the man has now turned to publishing libel. It is no more than you would expect from a pathetic bully who cannot get his own way.

.
As Hallowe'en approached, Mr Ecker decided it was time to interview Mr Farrant again via the telephone. It was only a matter of minutes before both engaged in an unadulterated hate-fest where each sought to lead the other in a mad scramble to introduce fabrications and lies. As Mr Ecker struggled to lead a hesitant Mr Farrant into fresh areas of calumny, it was not long before their joint defamation of character reached a new and disgusting low. More than three quarters of the interview was devoted entirely to issuing falsehood about the bishop; mocking and ridiculing him while declaring him mentally deranged. And this from one of them, Mr Farrant, whom psychiatrists appointed by the courts in the UK found difficulty in agreeing whether he was sane enough to stand trial. Don Ecker made the startling admission that if Bishop Manchester is a Christian, then he would rather be on the Devil's side. We thought he already was! 

David Farrant repeated all the same libel from past interviews he has given with whoever is daft enough to provide him with a platform, including Mr Ecker, where he employs every piece of incitement against the bishop that he can dream up. This includes the malicious allegation that he was once was a member and canvassed for the National Front. Don Ecker is never slow to seize upon any libel that comes his way without requiring a a shred of evidence.

.
Bishop Seán Manchester's position is quite clear. He has no interest in party politics and has at no time in his life been a member of any political party. False claims to the effect that he has been a National Front member, and indeed canvassed for them, stem solely from David Farrant; the same David Farrant who attempted to stand as a WWP candidate in the 1978 British General Election; the same David Farrant who recommended that potential voters should switch to the National Front when he stood down; the same David Farrant who has sought and received support from Nazi-minded individuals, eg Kevin Chesham, with far right associations to attack Bishop Seán Manchester.

At the time Ecker tried to make contact to interview me, my secretary was Katrina Garforth-Bless who was also my personal assistant. My next secretary and personal assistant was Diana Brewester.

☠

"There is a crucial problem with reporting the case today. Farrant is gone, his side of the story dependent on the often strained memories of others, and Manchester remains in no mood to relinquish his grip on ownership of the case – it is, after all, almost his entire life's work – while also not exactly forthcoming when it comes to interview requests."

I was central to the case from start to finish. There is no "grip" to relinquish. I began to investigate the case in 1967, and, devoting a lot of my time to it, closed it in 1982. My published account followed three years later. Apart from VRS members, friends and colleagues, there was nobody else involved. Francisco Garcia is aware that I ceased to provide any and all interviews in 2013, and eschewed contributions to television, radio and film in 2011. The case is definitely not my "life's work."

 ☠ 

"I'm not really sure what I expected when I asked Sean Manchester for some thoughts on his old rival, but it certainly wasn't a link to a relatively magnanimous self-penned eulogy. Perhaps I should have already realised that, when it comes to the Highgate Vampire, one should leave any reasonable expectations at the door."

Farrant was not a "rival." He sought publicity, whereas I shunned gratuitous publicity. I believe in the existence of a supernatural realm, including vampires, ie predatory demonic entities. Farrant did not.

The Curse of the Highgate Vampire

 

The Curse of Parasitic Journalists