Satanists & Fox Corpses: The Hunt for the Highgate Vampire 

June 12, 2020 ● Meltem Yalçın Evren

The year was 1969; rumours began circulating across London regarding a levitating tall, dark figure with piercing red eyes. All of these sightings stemmed back to the Highgate Cemetery and almost all accounts mentioned the ominous and malicious presence of the unidentifiable figure. Little was it known that the increasing sightings and a media frenzy that was soon to commence would be the beginning of London’s vampire epidemic during the early 1970s.

The once luxurious Highgate Cemetery, situated in North London was constructed in 1839 and became the burial ground for approximately 170,000 people including the likes of Karl Marx and Douglas Adams. However, the cemetery didn’t stand the test of time and by the 1960s was nothing like its former self - neglected, decaying, and heavily vandalised.

A hotspot for vampiric sightings took place at Swain’s Lane - a narrow road which lay parallel to the cemetery. The first sighting was 1963 by two convent girls, who on their way home from Highgate Village, decided to pass by the graveyards north gate when in front of them numerous bodies began emerging from their tombs. Similarly just a couple weeks after the incident was reported, another couple who were also walking down Swain’s Lane late at night describe a peculiar supernatural encounter: a hideous, hovering entity stood behind the iron railings of the gate, leaving the couple frozen for several minutes in utter fear. The pair described the phantom to have a facial expression that bore absolute horror.

As these sightings became the talk of the town, more incidents of similar nature began being reported to local newspapers:

Another man who chose to remain anonymous and was referred to as ‘Thornton’ reported his own encounter with the vampire. Due to the mass amount of media coverage, gossip, and false news surrounding the topic, ‘Thornton’ - described as a truthful man of logic, decided to remain unnamed to avoid being ridiculed for his story. He described being hypnotised by something in the cemetery after he had curiously wandered inside one late evening to have a look around. As the graveyard got darker, Thornton decided to leave, however found himself lost amongst the tombs. Remaining calm, he continued looking for the exit when he felt a presence behind him. Thornton was no man of superstition - he didn’t believe in the likes of vampires and other such ghouls, however, the presence of this ‘being’ left him almost certain it wasn’t human.

Peering behind him, six feet away stood a tall, dark figure - levitating above the ground (just as the other witnesses had described), Thornton reported being hypnotised on the spot, unable to move - transfixed on the spectre in front of him. He felt his energy drain away, clouding his perception of time. Several minutes seemed to pass before ‘it’ disappeared and Thornton was able to regain consciousness. Recalling on the events afterward, he claims that the evil apparition seemed to have targeted him, intending to cause harm.

Soon after, a disturbing and odd discovery came to light - numerous animal corpses (the majority being foxes), were found dead inside the cemetery walls. It wasn’t the corpses that were bizarre, it was the location they were found in. Usually, animals that are gravely injured would find somewhere secluded and hidden to die, however, in this case, the corpses were found in the centre of pathways, their blood drained - and this confirmed to those that believed in the events surrounding the cemetery, that there was in fact a vampire living within its walls.

It wasn’t long till the story attracted the interest of two figures who still to this day are closely linked to the case - David Farrant of the British Occult Society, and self-proclaimed exorcist and vampire hunter, bishop Sean Manchester of the Old Catholic Church.

Farrant, curious after hearing about the sightings had decided to take matters into his own hands in December of 1969 by camping overnight at the graveyard. He claimed to have witnessed a tall dark figure with piercing red eyes, just as others had described. Farrant’s link to the case became more apparent after his claim that professional Satanists were performing black magic rituals and sacrificing animals at the cemetery - this would explain the animal corpses that people were finding and why vampire sightings became more common. Farrant implied that the Satanists, using their necromancy spells may have summoned a dark entity, trapping it on the earthly plane.

Sean Manchester on the other hand claimed that the figure was a ‘King Vampire’ - a 15th-century Romanian magician, who after travelling to England had been buried in what would become the Highgate Cemetery. Manchester then went on to say that the satanic activity at the graveyard may have revived the demonic being from the grave.

Naturally, on Friday the 13th, 1970 - both Farrant and Manchester were interviewed by ITV News on the case. Manchester said he would be leading a vampire hunt that very night which attracted public attention, leading to 100 people, armed with homemade stakes and other such vampire-hunting gear to storm the gates with crucifixes and bibles. However, this was short lived, as the crusade to take back North London from vampires was defused by police who fought the aspiring vampire hunters back…

And so the feud began, spanning over decades, with both men fighting over whose name should be attached to the history of the Highgate Vampire, leading to several years of public quarrels including Farrant’s satirical comic book series called The Adventures of Bishop Bonkers, portraying Manchester as delusional, and Manchester’s oil paintings depicting Farrant as a demon. 

After numerous years of media coverage on vampiric sightings at Highgate, the first claim of a human attack was reported by a young woman in 1971. She described returning home in the early hours of the morning when a tremendous force by a “tall black figure” threw her to the ground causing cuts to her arms and legs. At that moment a car stopped to help her and the figure disappeared as quickly as it had appeared to the woman, however she swore she had glimpsed at its deathly white face. A thorough police search of the area concluded no explanation to the attack, and even more mysteriously, where could ‘it’ have disappeared? After all, the road that the incident happened on was lined with 12ft walls and the phantom had vanished in plain sight.

Three years later another incident with a dog walker returning to his parked car on Swain’s Lane outside the cemetery also saw bizarre happenings. Upon reaching his car, the man found a freshly dug up corpse in his passenger seat - however, the doors were still locked.

So was the Highgate Vampire real, or was it local gossip turned into a media frenzy? Who really knows - there have been reported sightings dating back to Victorian times, however, the decaying gothic cracked tombs and overgrown ivy is the perfect location for someone’s imagination to conjure up something supernatural. Nevertheless, although you may not have heard of the Highgate Vampire till now; its influence on pop culture has been profound, inspiring the likes of Dracula AD 1972, starring Christopher Lee, and the Highgate Vampire himself featuring as a villain in the comic book series Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Nine.

Meltem Yalçın Evren ● Writer

Twitter: @belalugosismom

Instagram: @meltemyalcinevren

Horror filmmaker and writer. You can usually find me with a cup of coffee in hand, either watching a true crime documentary or reading about the paranormal.