Following on from our Sweeney Todd blog, this week we’re hunting things that go bump in the night in North London. Fittingly, our setting is Highgate Cemetery, one of the most beautiful burial grounds in the UK, set in this gorgeous village-like London hamlet. And what is it we’re hunting here...?
Why, vampires of course.
The Highgate Vampire is a persistent legend, which peaked in the 1970s, becoming a media sensation, but continues to this day.
That Highgate Cemetery West is the setting for this piece of horror is perhaps not surprising, even today the overgrown cemetery is an eerie, silent place with generations of the dead and their stories lending their not-inconsiderable weight to this beautifully creepy atmosphere.
There have been sightings of spooks as far back as the 1920’s, when the cemetery was already decaying, but it wasn’t until early 1970 that the vampire myth really took hold. David Farrant, a devotee of supernatural phenomena, wrote to the local paper claiming to have seen a grey figure in the cemetery while passing one night. Farrant stated his belief that this figure as supernatural and asked for others who had seen something to come forward.
Given Highgate is an incredibly crowded burial ground with a mountain of history, it is no surprise that Farrant received scores of responses. The only problem is, none of them matched. Soon afterwards, a second local man Sean Manchester stepped forward saying he believed a vampire was living in Highgate Cemetery.
The story he gave was essentially a summary of the quintessential vampire story Dracula by Bram Stoker – Eastern European nobleman practiced black magic and became one of the undead. He was transported to England by sea in a coffin and housed in the West End before being moved to Highgate Cemetery, where he now walks. Ergo, Manchester believed it was his job, like Stoker’s Van Helsing, to hunt down the vamp, stake and behead him, then burn the body.
As an aside – if you haven’t read Dracula, you really should. It’s a stunning book, fully deserving of its reputation and essentially the fountainbed of vampire lore – as this case demonstrates.
Both men began to hunt the vampire, although little evidence beyond some supposedly blood-drained fox corpses found in the cemetery was found. Even so the case became a media sensation, sparking a mass vampire hunt on Friday 13th March 1970.
Manchester and Farrant, who were exceptional self-publicists, arranged a hunt for this day. The turn-out was overwhelming, police were unable to cope and the cemetery was swamped. Manchester got in though, undertook a bit of tomb raiding, and sprinkled incense and garlic around empty coffins he believed to be vampiric nests, although he stopped short of staking any bodies
Whatever they did, it wasn’t successful – the stories continue to this day. Large animals supposedly found dead and drained of blood in the cemetery, supernaturally tall and ethereal beings peering over the gate and into Swain’s Lane, visitors coming face-to-face with a vampiric figure and becoming hypnotised by fear. So, does a vampire walk in Highgate?
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