May 22, 2025 • 60 mins
Hey folks!This week we cover the Highgate Vampire! Or Ghost.....or Phantom.....or prankster. Either way, there is a wizard beef battle so we're in!Thanks For Listening!
PS:Maybe you folks can do us a favor. Head to this website and scroll to the bottom. Let the fine folks at Galaycon that you want The What Cast there! If that's cool!
https://galaxycon.com/pages/galaxycon-san-jose
PS:Maybe you folks can do us a favor. Head to this website and scroll to the bottom. Let the fine folks at Galaycon that you want The What Cast there! If that's cool!
https://galaxycon.com/pages/galaxycon-san-jose
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
What's up everybody, Thanks for listening to the what cast.
We hope you're doing good. Mike. How are you over there?
Hopefully not covered in snow?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hopefully it's if I was covered in snow at this point,
there'd be a huge problem, way too late. I got
it would kill all my plants. I've got all sorts
of stuff blooming. It's it's wonderful. I love this temmy
here so much.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
A lot of work though, a lot of work to
put in, but I it's my favorite time year, well
like second favorite time of year.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah. We had a couple of days of heat over
here and I was like, oh God, make it cold again.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
I went out and I was doing yard work over
the weekend and it was like high fifties. But it
was a beautiful, clear day. And we had gotten a
load of rocks, a truckload of rocks dumped in the
driveway that I had to spread in the along our
landscaping in the backyard, and we got enough to add
(01:23):
another layer to We already had stuff set up, but
we wanted another layer. So anyway, it's almost sixty degrees.
I'm out there sweating my ass off, and I'm a
dumb ass. I know that temperature doesn't have any bearing
on sunburn, but I was thinking, it's not even sixty degrees.
I'm fine. I ended up with such a fucking bad sunburn, dude,
(01:46):
because I was out there for like six hours, and
my neck and shoulders and upper arms are so fucking
red got like the.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Farmer's tan going. I hate that I burn easily on
me too. Yeah, I've had sunburns where like I've had
quarter size blisters.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
On my back ew gross.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yeah. It was fun, doubt it. There's a sad story
behind it too.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I was tied in the middle of the desert it
staked for the vultures, and I broke out and I
fought my captors off. Meanwhile the sun was beating out
my back and burning me alive. After several days of
fighting and crawling through the deserts, I finally crawled out
and down the road was Rina, Nevada. And then I
(02:38):
had a beer and hooker and.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I wish it was that cool. Geez, No, I'll take
this out. What a dick. Oh yeah, but this she
was just like the biggest cunt I've ever met in
my life. Like, I hate that person.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
It sounds like it fuck her man.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yeah, like she had friends there with her to laugh too.
I was like, Okay, a piece of shit, and that's
my life.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Our lives were the eighties. We rode bikes without helmets.
We were fucking crazy after dark, hey, yeah, after dark exactly.
We didn't We didn't have cell phones.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, we didn't give a fuck if the street lank,
the street lamps were on or not. That didn't even
go home for us.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
I just I had to pop in for some dinner.
Then I was back at it.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Man.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
I used to do all sorts of wacky shit back
in the day.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
It's when life was good, you know. It's not even yeah,
it's not it's not about responsibility and all that shit.
It's just when times were simpler. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
But also it was a time when you could fuck
up and not have it documented and then post it
all over something where everybody else could see.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
It or Bretti, Yeah, post your own fuck ups so everybody. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah, But it isn't it weird that like in today
today's age, like our kids and and people in general
are more connected than they ever were. But you have
parents are more overprotective now, and kids are more stand offish.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Yeah they are.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
It.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
It's so fucking weird like that, in an age where
we are more connected than ever in human history, parents
are like, I can't love my kids go anywhere dude,
they get they literally have a tracking device on them,
like fucking simmer down. And I'm guilty of it too.
But like when you when your kids are out and
(04:50):
you call their cell phone and they don't answer, then
you start freaking out and you're like, oh my god,
why are the dance Meanwhile, we didn't have fucking cell phones.
Our parents didn't know where we were unless we didn't
come home, you know, like if we're not if we're
not home, then that's when that's time to panic. But
otherwise they're out with their friends and it's fine. But
(05:11):
it's fucking weird, man.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, sure is isn't Can you imagine though? Like just
I can remember plenty of times where something happened where
I got home super late and it was like completely innocent,
like I got a flat on my bike, or like
somebody's parents like eat dinner here and I tried to
call home and nobody answered. Shit like that. But they're
just like even my parents back then would be like
(05:33):
what happened. I'd be like, yeah, I ate at Gym's
house and they're like, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
I remember getting in trouble one time because I was
out with my friend and I was I told my
parents i'd be home at like eight or something, and
his parents picked us up and then they're like, oh,
we're going to friendlies and this is again a time
before cell phones. So we go to eat and I
(06:02):
don't have any way to call my parents because I
don't have a cell phone. You know, they weren't really
a thing at that point in time. And then I
get home. I'm like an hour and a half late.
My parents were super pissed because they're like, we didn't
know what was going on, we didn't know where you were,
and that I explained everything and it was cool, but
they were like, that was I almost got in trouble
(06:24):
for that. But when you're a kid, you don't. This
was a time when when if you had to call home,
you had to find a quarter, and then you had
to find a payphone.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yep, and you know.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Some a lot of times as a kid, I would
just be out gallivanting around without you know, not even
a wallet, let alone a quarter. Yeah, you know, I'm
fucking I'm eleven years old. What the hell do I
have a wallet for?
Speaker 1 (06:50):
I had my teenage meeting Ninja Turtle official fan club card. Nice.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, you probably would want to get a wallet just
for that alone. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah, of course it was hands stamped for christ Sikes.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
It's official.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yep, that's how you know. So we're gonna talk about
a fun one tonight. We've talked about a few cases
of this nature before, but I'm always excited to hear
of another one. Mike, what are we going to cover today?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
We're gonna talk about the Highgate vampire. But it might
not even be a vampire though. Maybe it's fairies like always.
Maybe it's an alien, Maybe it's mister Burns. Who knows.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
I mean, I really hope that's the case. Like with
all these different alien races we hear about, I really
hope that in the like plethora that will be like
informed of when all disclosure happens, that like there's like,
out of the five hundred races, there's two that are
just vampires.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Oh god, that would be the worst. I would absolutely
hate that.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
I wanted to be like like a compondium of like
a beast area of all these aliens.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah, that would be very cool to have, like the
Monster Manual of Alien Races. Yeah, I want to know
what the Gray's armor classes.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
So this this it's been dubbed the Highgate Vampire because
of a lot of the a lot of things that
happened down the line. Initially I thought it was because
of a very high gate. Sorry sorry, no, well no,
so Highgate is the name of the cemetery where these
(08:35):
sightings have taken place. Oh, the sightings themselves. The first
reported sightings took place in the late sixties, nineteen sixty nine,
I believe by this point the cemetery which has a
long history.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
It used to be a.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Place where like the fancy rich people would would get buried.
But by the late sixties it had kind of fallen
into disrepair. It wasn't being used and a lot of
the areas were overgrown, and because of that it became
a spot for a lot of alleged magical practices and
(09:18):
devil worship and all the usual shenanigans. But there there's
a road that goes through it called Swan's Lane or
Swain's Lane, and it runs right through the graveyard, and
there were two people who claimed that they had an
(09:38):
anomalous sighting of some sort well out on the road.
One old lady said she had been walking down with
her dog when she saw this tall, dark figure with
glaring eyes that seemed to be floating towards her, and
as it got closer to her, she said that the
air around her began to turn coal and like you
(10:01):
get in ghost sightings where the temperature just drops drastically,
And she took off and when she turned around again,
it was gone. Around the same time, there was another sighting.
This one was from an accountant who had reported his
(10:22):
sighting while he was in the cemetery, and he said
he was walking through the cemetery and this is a
huge cemetery, and again at this point it was fairly overgrown,
and he ended up getting turned around and kind of
got lost while he was walking through the cemetery. And
so he's trying to find his way out, and he
(10:43):
starts hearing this distant bell. So he starts walking towards
the sound of the bell, hoping that by finding the
source of the bell, he'll be able to find a
way out or maybe another person that can point him
in the direction of the exit, but the bell continued
to toll. He started moving, you know, or he kept
(11:05):
moving towards it, and he suddenly became aware that he
was being followed. And as this awareness kind of crept
over him, he noticed the temperature also starting to drop
and he was starting to get a chill. So he
turned around, having a feeling that something was watching him,
(11:27):
and he saw this tall, dark figure that looked at
him with this really intense stare, and then it just
vanished before his eyes.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
So he saw this thing disappear.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, yeah, just gone. So there was this local guy
who is practicing Wiccan named David Farrant, and he began
to investigate this these sightings. His idea to investigate was
to spend the night in the graveyard and he was
(12:04):
suspecting that it was probably somebody that was dressed up
in a costume that was out there trying to scare people,
or that it might be citing a mistake in sighting
of an animal or something. But Farren thought that like
(12:26):
the likely culprit were pranksters that were kind of jumping
on at the time in London, which is where Highgate
Cemetery is, there were a lot of stories in the
newspapers about vampires, so he thought maybe someone was taking
(12:46):
these stories and using it to kind of try to
scare people. But he settled in for the night and
was just kind of hanging on the cemetery being guy,
And he said around midnight he caught sight of a
seven foot tall figure that appeared to be floating just
(13:11):
above the ground. And as he as the figure kind
of turned to face him, he saw two points of
intense red light, so I would assume these would be
the eyes. And once this thing turned on him, the
entire area turned cold, he said. He said that it
(13:34):
felt like he had just stepped into a refrigerator, that's
how cold it got. And he got the impression that
this figure was draining energy from him, and he started
to feel kind of hazy, like like like a his
mind had a fog over it, and he said that
it started to feel like like it was a vivid
(13:57):
dream that he couldn't wake up from. Once he came
to this realization, he realized that this was some sort
of attack on him, and it might not be a
physical attack, but something was draining his energy. So, as
I mentioned, he was practicing wiccan but he also was
(14:20):
familiar with other forms of mysticism, and once he realized
that this thing was trying to drain energy from him,
he started reciting an incantation from the Kabbalah that's used
to dispel evil, and once he started repeating it, the
figure disappeared. But because of this experience, he no longer
(14:44):
thought that this was a prankster, that this is now
something more than just a normal human. So he believed
the reports at this point. So in February of nineteen seventy,
David wrote a letter into the local newspaper, which was
called the Hampstead and Highgate Express, but for sure a
(15:09):
lot of people just referred to it as Hammond High
But his letter that he wrote in was asking anyone
if they had seen anything strange around Highgate Cemetery and
or if they had seen anything similar to the reports
anything like that. But a number of people actually wrote
(15:30):
back saying that they had seen strange things in either
Highgate Cemetery itself or along Swain's Lane. The problem is
a lot of the reports that came in they were
all over the place, so it wasn't like this uniform description.
(15:51):
There was some descriptions that said that there was a
tall man who was wearing a hat like a top hat.
There were some that reported seeing a ghostly cyclist, so
a ghost out for a leisurely bike ride. There were
sightings of a woman dressed in white, which is pretty typical.
(16:17):
One person reported, this is kind of creepy, but a
face that was grimacing through the bars of the gate
of the cemetery. Ugh, just this face looking out at them.
And then another person saw us this pale figure float
out into the pond that's on site. And then there
(16:39):
were several reports where people didn't see anything, but they
heard the sound of bells chiming where there shouldn't be
any bells, or voices where there was nobody around. But
for the most part, none of the sightings were uniform.
They were all over the place. But after all these
(17:00):
letters coming in, there was another local man by the
name of Sean Manchester who became interested in all these
sightings and started to draw his own conclusions about what
this thing might be. And he started to put out
(17:22):
the idea that this was a vampire that was brought
to North London and buried in the Highgate Cemetery. So
with that theory, in mind, and because, as I mentioned,
vampires seemed to be hot in the news at the time.
The newspaper on February twenty seventh, nineteen seventy put an
(17:46):
interview in the newspaper with Sean Manchester entitled does a Vampire.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Walk in Highgate?
Speaker 2 (17:52):
And he outlined his theory and this I love this.
He actually referred to this, this vampire, the Vampire of Highgate,
as the King Vampire of the Undead. Yes, so yeah,
so his his theory or the story he's going with,
(18:13):
and there it didn't seem that there was any It's
hard to say how much of this is based on
historical fact, and it's easy to say that a lot
of this is a theory that this Sean Manchester guy
just kind of rolled with after possibly learning of a
(18:33):
European noble being buried in the cemetery. But his theory
of the King Vampire of the Undead is that this
was a vampire who was an aristocrat and a practitioner
of black magic in Romania, because fucking of course it
was from Romania and he had been transported to England
(18:57):
in a coffin in the early eighteenth century, so he
would have had some followers or a cult or something
that would have brought him to the cemetery in the
early eighteenth century. So his co his followers brought him
to this area and they interred him into a site
(19:18):
that would later become the Highgate Cemetery. So at this
point in time, the Highgate Cemetery was not the Highgate Cemetery,
but he was interred into this area, and then around
there the Highgate Cemetery was formed. In addition to inturing
him into this area, they also they being his followers
(19:40):
or cult or whoever, purchased a house for him on
the west or in the west end of London. There
are some similarities here to Dracula. By the way, the
whole by a house in London for the vampire when
he comes and all that shit. But the or Sean
(20:02):
Manchester then goes on to claim that the reason that
the vampire hadn't been seen until just recently is because
there've been rituals carried out by Satanists in the cemetery,
and these rituals reawakened the evil presence which brought him
back from his super slumber, and now he's he's ready
(20:27):
to suck the energy from people that want to walk
through an abandoned cemetery, So that's his whole thing. But
as part of this interview, Sean Manchester claimed that he
had conducted his own interviews with several people in the
(20:47):
area who had experienced vampiic activity. There was one schoolgirl
named Elizabeth Woodela. She had seen the vampire when walking
down Swain's Lane, and she said after witnessing the figure,
the tall black figure, she began to have nightmares and
(21:08):
in her nightmares something evil. There was this evil entity
of some sort that would come into her bedroom and
allegedly two wounds appeared on her neck one night, and
she started to display symptoms of anemia. So once they
(21:28):
noticed that, her boyfriend, along with the help of Sean Manchester,
filled her room with garlic, crucifixes, and holy water, and
as soon as they did that, her condition started to improve.
He also spoke with another young woman that he just
referred to as Jacqueline, who said that she had woken
up in the middle of the night to find something
(21:50):
cold was clutching her hand and she tried to pull
her hand away, and she said the next morning when
she woke up, she had these deep cuts in her
arm where she had to force this gross cold thing
from her hand.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Ugh.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
And she said soon after that happened, both her and
her younger brother started to develop this weird fascination that
almost called them to Highgate Cemetery. And she said they
it wasn't like a normal thing where they would feel
compelled to go, but all of a sudden, out of nowhere,
(22:28):
they would just constantly feel compelled to go to the cemetery.
He also said that he had many people that contacted
him describing a tall, dark being with blazing red eyes
that was witnessed in the cemetery. Now, one thing he
did not prove, however, like I mentioned earlier, was any
(22:52):
he had no proof for any of these claims. Really,
it's all just hearsay, especially about the VAM player coming
from Romania at one point, and there's a little bit
of a contradiction here, but at one point he said
that the article where they talked about that was journalistic embellishment.
(23:14):
But he wrote a book about this in nineteen eighty five,
and in the book he does mention that at one
point there was a foreign nobleman's coffin that was brought
into Highgate and buried, but it was actually brought into
the cemetery, so it wasn't before the cemetery. But there
(23:35):
have he did make claims about the Satanists, but there
was actual a cult activity that was taking place. David Farrant,
who who was the first researcher I was talking about,
he said that in his investigations he found a lot
(23:57):
of discarded remains from a rituals. He said he would
find stubs of black candles, he would find pentagrams on
the floors of tombs. There was various occult symbols that
were painted on graves, things like that. And he also
(24:19):
believes that these sort of activities may have awoken something
that was laying dormant there, but he does not believe
that it's actually a vampire. He thinks it's something else,
but that's for him. That's that's why he thinks that
(24:41):
things picked up in the late sixties and seventies. But
apparently there was reported sightings of something similar during the
Victorian era, So there's something seen then, which I believe
around that time was the rise of like spear ritualism
and seances and that type of stuff, So that could
(25:05):
have been you know, there a reason. They they were
conducting that sort of ritual or experimentation and cause something
to wake up, and then it went dormant, and decades
later someone else did the same thing.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Right, But.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
These these there's a cult activity that took place in
the cemetery. It was so much that the police at
the time were actually aware of it and they they
had been called out to investigate this on many occasions.
David Farrant himself had confessed to using this cemetery for
(25:47):
his own wicked rituals. Nothing satanic. His stuff was was
all based around wika, but he said it was more
because it was the rituals they were doing. Was more
because it was an outdoor space that was secluded and open,
(26:09):
so it was kind of everything that they needed to
conduct some of these rituals, so that's why. But he
claims there was nothing satanic. They weren't summoning demons or
anything like that. But around this time there was a
revival of spiritualism and mysticism and all that going on,
(26:32):
and people started looking into the teachings of Alistair Crowley again,
and there was Christian mystical sex, a whole bunch of
different things that kind of seemed to spike in interest
around this time in London, and both of these researchers
(26:56):
seemed to think that this activity is what caused whatever
this thing is to come back. So the Hampstead and
Highgate Express continued to follow this story. They would conduct
interviews with Farrant and Manchester off and on for the
next few months. In March, they published an interview with
(27:18):
David Farrant where he made reference to the fact that
dead foxes continued to be found in the cemetery, but
there was no real explanation for how they died. Manchester
actually backed that up, claiming that he'd also seen dead foxes,
(27:38):
and he suggested that the vampire drained them as a
food source, and because the cemetery wasn't a high traffic area,
that maybe it was feeding off of animals rather than people.
But then of course rumors start to spread out and
(28:03):
this sort of thing becomes that the animals were found
drained with all their blood, or their bodies drained of
all blood and their necks ripped open, and you know,
make it more sensationalist than it needed to be. Mm hmm.
But the as their reports continued to come in, it
started to gain national attention throughout England, and it even
(28:29):
started to get picked up by the BBC Network and
then the international news Reuters also picked up the story.
So it was being it was, it was being reported
on all over the place, and there was are you
are you at all familiar with the the Hammer horror
(28:50):
Dracula movies? No with where Christopher Lee was Dracula.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
And yeah, sorry Hammer Production?
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yes, yes, yeah, okay, So there were a lot of
a lot of people drying conclusions that this was maybe
hysterica hysteria due.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
To these.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
The recently released Dracula movies from Hammer. There's actually one
called Taste the Blood of Dracula that was released in
nineteen seventy that was actually shot in Highgate Cemetery. Oh shit,
one year before the first sighting happened.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
It was filmed that the filming could have wakened something up.
Maybe Christopher Lee ranting around there could have woken something. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
But as the as things kind of ramped up with
the sightings there, David Farrant and Sean Manchester started to
develop a rivalry. And I should mention so I already
said that David Farrant was a practicing Wickan, but Sean
Manchester was an exorcist, and so they started to slink
(30:10):
some mud talk a little trash about the others each
other's skills as an exorcist. So of course Sean Manchester,
believing himself to be the to be the as an exorcist,
being the authority on the subject, claimed that David Farrant,
(30:33):
who was a Wickan who practiced magic and stuff, was
not equipped to take care of this. And then David
Farrant would say, well, he's only an exorcist. I have
the power of magic on my side. And I mean really,
at the end of the day, it's magic no matter
(30:54):
what we cut it. If you're if you're, if God
is imbutying you with magical powers to dispel d that's
fucking magic. Man, I don't care what you say. So
we got we now have a vampire and a wizard rivalry. Fuck,
it's only it's each side of the wizard rivalry had
(31:15):
their own investigation group and they were like they were
like the Ghostbusters basically, except you know, they had different
They were just different crews of Ghostbusters that had a
rivalry with each other. So I, obviously Matteo and I
are not British in any way, but from what I've heard,
(31:39):
and I guess to a certain extent, it is true.
Run here. I can't tell you how many times I've
seen a Friday the Thirteenth marathon on TV on a
Friday thirteenth, but apparently on British TV at least in
the seventies, when there'd be a Friday the thirteenth, a
lot of networks would air paranormal paranormal shows or investigations,
(32:08):
or they would kind of center around something spooky and supernatural.
So on Friday thirteenth in March of nineteen seventy, there
was a show that aired on ITV featuring David Farrant
and Shawn Manchester as well as witnesses that claim to
(32:29):
have seen supernatural figures or entities around Highgate Cemetery. Nice
In addition to interviews and everything, there was actually a
live crew that was reporting outside of Highgate Cemetery. Within
two hours of this show being aired, hundreds of people
(32:50):
from the area roll up to Highgate Cemetery ready to
fight fucking vampires. There were so many people that showed
up the cop came trying to stop them, and people
were just jumping the fences pushing through. There's pictures of
a newspaper or pictures from a newspaper of people actually
(33:11):
climbing the fenceive Highgate Cemetery trying to get in. But
people showed up. Some of them just showed up out
of curiosity. Some of them showed up with actual weapons,
looking through all the tombs and graves and trying to
find this vampire to kill it. So then the news
crew starts interviewing these people and they're saying that they're
(33:34):
they're determined to put an end to the evil vampire
and put them to rest for good, and you know,
all that happy horseshit. But I'm sad to report not
a single vampire was found that night, God damn it,
even though some people did claim that they saw a
shadowy figure, but could have just been somebody else, you know,
(33:55):
prancing around the cemetery.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Right right, Yeah, I mean, if there's that many people
flocking to this area to hunt the vampire, there's at
least six drunk dudes who are addressing like a vampire. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
So Farrant, throughout all this hysteria, started to get pissed off,
and this kind of the whole the vampire talk was
starting to piss him off, and as a result, was
starting to make him more pissed off at Manchester because
he was claiming that the hysterical or the hysteria within
(34:29):
the media and the sensationalist headlines are turning with some
sort of actual supernatural entity into a vampire, you know,
the type of vampire that everybody is familiar with, and
he's claiming this is some sort of other entity. Okay,
(34:52):
so there was there was a disagreement there, and it
was basically an exorcism pissing contest. But during that night,
as people are swarming over the gates, Sean Manchester and
his crew of vampire hunters made their way to the
entrance of one of the catacombs, and Manchester claimed that
(35:15):
this particular catacomb was pointed out to him by a
young girl who had been led there while sleepwalking, and
in his interview with her, she had told him where
this catacomb was, and she said that the Highgate vampire
(35:40):
had lured her there and she started to exhibit similar
symptoms to Elizabeth in the earlier case. So they following
this girl's directions to where this particular catacombs were they
tried to open the door and they couldn't get in,
(36:00):
so they were able to get through a window and
they used a rope to climb in through the window.
Once inside, they found that it was this big vault
that had it lined with coffins basically, but Manchester claimed
one of these coffins was a sinister looking casket made
(36:23):
of black wood, and it stood out from the rest,
which were just regular caskets, but this one was apparently
an ornate casket made of black wood, and Manchester and
his companions tried to exercise the vampire. So he performed
(36:43):
his ritual of exorcism, used holy water and garlic, sprinkled
salt around the casket, and basically hoped for the best.
At that point, rather than try to stake it or
burn it or decapitate it, they tried the exorcist way.
(37:06):
So things were relatively uneventful until the first day of August,
where a charred and decapitated corpse of a woman was
found near that particular catacomb Geez. The police, when they investigated,
(37:29):
had a suspicion that this was a corpse that had
been taken and used in a black magic ritual. This
to both Farrant and Manchester indicated something more was going on,
so they both start to become more active in their investigations.
Farrant was actually arrested by police in the churchyard next
(37:53):
to the cemetery, for all his claims that this wasn't
a vampire. Do you know what he was arrested with.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Oh shit, what a.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Crucifix and a wooden fucking steak. Haha, it's for rats, bro,
That's that's some classic vampire hunting shit right there. Sure,
maybe Manchester won him over, but he once they so
he was arrested and when he was brought to court,
the case was dropped and he was released. On the
(38:27):
other side of things, Sean Manchester and his ghostbusters were
following the advice of a psychic woman and so so,
first time he was led to the catacombs by a
sleepwalking girl, this time he's being led by a female
psychic wizard lady. All Right, well, I guess saying female
(38:52):
and lady is redundant. But she's a psychic wizard lady.
She might not be a wizard. I'm probably just throwing
that in. She's she's just a psychic. She's probably lovely,
she probably makes really good oatmeal cookies. It doesn't matter.
She's a psychic and she's leading in places.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
So she takes them.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
She has a vision that they have to go to
this particular family vault on the grounds, and she takes
them to the place. Of course, it's a vault, so
the doors are locked. So what do they do? Just
some light breaking and entering.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
No big deal.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
They're dead, It's not like they're gonna give a shit, right,
So they force the doors open. They go inside, and
what do they find in their mateo Sarah exactly and
she kicked them all in the no. After forcing it open,
they go inside and they find the fucking same black
casket from before that was in the catacombs. Now it's
(39:52):
in this family family crypt.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Oh shit.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
So suspecting that this VAM knew that its hiding spilit
hiding place had been founded and was not happy with
the attempted exorcism, called upon its cult or followers or
what have you to move his casket so to prevent
this from happening again. He pops that fucking lid open,
(40:21):
and then he said that when he looked upon it,
he had absolute confirmation of what they were dealing with
and that it was and what they were dealing with
was a goddamn vampire. We knew it all long, we did,
we did, we called it. Manchester wanted to drive a
(40:43):
stake through the heart the old fashioned way, but one
of the other ghostbusters said that you can't kill a
vampire that way because interfering with the remains of their
diet is a crime punishable at the court of law,
and you can't do that to vampires. So because it's illegal,
(41:03):
he decided he would not impale the vampire, and instead
he performed another ritual. This one, he said. They used
seven crucifixes, lit four white candles, had seven cups of
holy water, and carried out a ritual to banish the
(41:24):
spirit of evil. And then he reported it to the noose,
who then put it out to the masses, and everyone thought, well,
this is it. He dispelled the vampire with his Christian
voodoo magic. After the ritual took place, Manchester had the
officials brick up the vault, but he left a crucifix
(41:47):
and holy water inside. But according to Manchester, the vault
did not remain bricked up for long. Dun dun, dum.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Or did it?
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Or was it ever bricked up to begin with. I
guess it all depends on what sort of faith you
put in Sean Manchester right. So on the other side,
back to the David Ferrett group of merrymakers, they decided
they were going to try to communicate with whatever this
(42:23):
entity was to try to figure out what it wanted
and why it was showing up. So they also got
the help of a psychic, but this was a medium
and using their wick and voodoo magic, they were trying
(42:44):
to cast a spell using magic circles and candles in
connection with the medium to reach out to whatever this
thing was. They had tried once and the prescot win
that they were doing it and they got interrupted, so
the ritual was incomplete. They waited a whole other year
(43:08):
to make another attempt, and this time they made contact.
And apparently whatever this entity was did not enjoy being
contacted in that way, because he grabbed the medium by
the throat, and in order to break the hold they
had to get rid of the circle, and then the
(43:30):
area turned cold, and he said that the medium reported
that she was being enveloped by complete blackness, and in
the blackness she felt something try to strangle her, but
she couldn't make out what it was. So now Faren
knows that whatever this thing is, which again, remember he
was arrested holding a crucifix and a stake, but he's
(43:54):
now finally convinced that this thing, whatever it is, is
malevol and wants to harm people. So at this point
he came to the conclusion that this was not a vampire.
This was an evil presence that traveled along a lay line. Now,
(44:15):
this particular lay line started at the Columbarium, which is
the part of the cemetery of Highgate Cemetery where the
urns of the cremated are kept. And then this lay
line runs across Highgate, through two old pubs, goes through
(44:35):
Highgate Wood and through an apartment complex over the top
of a nunnery. So he starts looking into these places
to find out what's going on, and he found that
there was evidence or reports, i should say not evidence,
(44:57):
reports of supernatural activity that took place in these places.
And some people that he uh interviewed mentioned seeing a tall,
dark figure. There's a manager from one of the pubs
that saw something so horrific that it turned his hair
(45:19):
white and he now.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Has white hair. Oh shit.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
And in one of the apartments above the nunnery. The
room had to be exercised because of some evil presence
that was there, So it seems like whatever, But I mean,
I don't know. I guess it really depends how much
credence you put into lay lines and shit. But it
(45:44):
goes to show that weird things happen along lay lines,
and it's also kind of weird that there's always holy
sites on the lay.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Lines as well.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
So I mean, maybe it is a figure that's kind
of confined to the lay lines and that's where it
drives its energy from.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
But despite Sean Manchester's two attempts at an exorcism, strange
occurrences continued.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
As they should.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
People kept reporting sightings of this entity, strangely enough, or
maybe not so strangely, because again this is one person
telling the story. But Sean Manchester claims again three years
later that he and his ghostbusters were investigating the sellers
(46:34):
of an abandoned mansion that were on the borders of
Highgate and in their investigation, guess what they found. They
found that fucking black casket. Again, are you serious? According
to Manchester, that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Oh so he.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
Suspected after they bricked it up, the followers of the
vampire took the casket away and brought it to this mansion.
So they this time they dragged the coffin out of
the basement where they found it, brought it upstairs into
the grounds of the mansion, and morning was about to
(47:13):
break by the time they brought it outside. They removed
the lid, and he said he saw the same thing
that he saw when he opened the casket the first time,
but he said this time it looked even more distorted.
But its eyes were open, and he said it had
(47:34):
yellow Its eyes were yellow at the edges with blood
red centers, and it had a furrowed brow, and the
mouth was set in a cruel expression, with lips that
were drawn back. So at this point, Manchester says, fuck
the exorcism. He drives a steak through this fucker's heart. Yeah,
(47:56):
And he said, as soon as he impaled its chest,
the shell of its body caved in and turned into
this filthy, brown sludge.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Fucking in my head.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
Do you remember the video for Sober.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Dude, That's exactly what I was thinking.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
When he falls back in the chair and his head
crushes open. And it looks like caramel flows out. That's
what I picture. But after they after he impaled it
and it's chest caved in and turned to slime, he
decided he was gonna set this fucker on fire to
prevent him from ever walking again. Fuck yeah, So him
(48:40):
and the Ghostbusters gathered up. They burned the body inside
the coffin, and he said it took several hours before
everything burned. All that was left was some bone fragments
which they threw into the four winds.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
So there was bone fragments in that sludge.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
Yeah, the whole body didn't turn to it was just
the chest that cave didn't turned to sludge. Hugh.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Yeah. Gross.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
But at this point, Manchester claimed that Highgate Cemetery has
been purged.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
This house is clear, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
Despite this claim, Farreant didn't give a fuck, and they
continued to feud. They had a planned magicians duel that
they were going to enact on Friday the thirteenth in
April of nineteen seventy three. Oh shit, they talked so
much shit. They were getting their magical arsenal's ready. They
(49:41):
were fucking pumped up, and it never happened.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
Instead, Oh come on. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
The following year, David Farrant was again arrested at High
Highgate Cemetery. This time he was arrested under suspicion of
vandalizing memori reels and interfering with the remains. When he
was he claimed that the damage was were caused by Satanists,
(50:12):
wasn't him, and but there's no proof that it was
anybody other than he was there, And he ended up
getting arrested and was imprisoned for it. But that kept
the story alive, and then even after that, the few
(50:32):
dragged on for for decades and decades. They both claimed
it basically centers around these guys having a magical pissing contest.
They were both claiming to be expert exorcists, and both
claimed that the other guy sucked at being an exorcist.
(50:53):
And that's that's really what this whole thing was about. Like, no,
I'm a better exorcist than you. No, I'm a better
I killed the vampire. No, the vampire is still alive
and he's not a vampire, and I'm gonna take him out.
But they both spent many decades after investigating paranormal activity
around they both wrote books. Eventually with the rise of
(51:17):
the internet. They had stuff on the Internet, talked to
anyone that would listen, or gave interviews about the Highgate Vampire.
They would also take jabs at each other on social media,
which then prompted their followers to also join in.
Speaker 3 (51:34):
And no, my wizard guy is better than you wizard guy. Well,
you wizard guy sucks. Guy's the best wizard gay. He's
killed so many vamp players. Bad players don't exist their demons,
and my vampire killer guy is way better because he
understands it and fights the demons. You can't kill a demon.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
Stupid idiot got the internet stump, But said David Farrant
died in twenty nineteen and never reconciled with Seawan Manchester.
They hated each other's guts till he died. Hell yeah,
fucked that guy. Shawn Manchester still works as an exorcist, however,
(52:18):
and he is actually a bishop in the British Old
Catholic Church.
Speaker 1 (52:23):
Which don't fuck that guy.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
It's different from Roman Catholicism, but it's a conservative sect
that actually broke away from Roman Catholicism, so it's a different,
I guess slightly more conservative take on Catholicism, but he
claims that the Highgate vampire was just the first and
(52:50):
he's destroyed dozens of vampires since then at Highgate, no
different cemeteries. Maybe I'll do a quick and weird on
him sometime, but there was He's done one at uh
Finchley Finchley's Great Northern London Cemetery and this was in
(53:13):
the eighties. But that's there's an interesting story about that,
So I might do a quicken the weird on that.
So if if you guys want to hear more about that,
joint Patreon, we'll we'll do an episode on that at
some point. But the even though it's claimed to have
(53:33):
been destroyed, there has still been sightings of this even
through the nineties. And I don't know, maybe maybe it's
the same thing, maybe it's a different one. Maybe there's
an army vampires that live there.
Speaker 1 (53:47):
Yeah, I mean it sounds like something definitely was going
on there. It's such a long stretch of time to
have sightings by so many different people. It's so interesting
to see the that the you would almost impossibly inspire Charlatanism.
Do you think dude was going back to that graveyard
and maybe destroying shit to blame Satanist so he can
(54:09):
get more buzz to go back there and him fucking
destroy an empire.
Speaker 2 (54:14):
That wouldn't surprise me in the least. Wow.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Yeah, hmm. Just goes to show you even people who
are claiming to want to get to the bottom of things.
Speaker 2 (54:24):
Yeah, you know, well, I mean look at look at
the ghost Hunter shows today. You know that they're out
there claiming to help people clear ghosts. Meanwhile they're and
there with the camera crew making millions.
Speaker 1 (54:36):
Yeah, calling shit out and making shit happen.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
Yeah, So I and snake oil salesmen have always been
a thing. There's always charlatans, there's always con men, call
them what you will. And it seems like in the
magical community, in the new wave community or new age community,
there seems to be a lot of that. And here
(55:00):
it seems like we've got two grifters that are grifting away.
I mean that one dude has the audacity to claims
he's killed dozens of vampires right Like, in my opinion,
that means you dug up a bunch of corpses and
fucking staked their hearts. More, you're just a blatant liar.
Or both.
Speaker 1 (55:19):
Yeah, I just I have one photograph.
Speaker 2 (55:22):
Yeah, but I mean, if there was something really going on,
it could be a negative entity because the coldness always
goes along with that. They and they do seem to
feed off of negative emotions like fear and anger and
things like that. So it would make sense if that
(55:45):
was the thing, and maybe maybe somebody did accidentally summon something.
Kids do dumb shit and and sometimes they get their
hands on the wrong books and they do dumb shit
with those books, or they invite the wrong entity through
a Ouiji board. I remember the Zoso case.
Speaker 1 (56:06):
Yeah, yeah, I remember watching a documentary not too long
ago about Satanic colts and the person doing the documentary
just goes to a public park I think I've mentioned
this before and just walks around and points out things
that are basically like residue and evidence of Satanic rituals
that are going down there, and he's like, we're in
(56:27):
the middle of like suburbia here, you know. So something
like that definitely could have happened, but it just seems
like whatever it was was overshadowed, overshadowed with this duel
that these guys were having. Like whatever was there, maybe
they did kill it, but it just took a back
seat to them beefing.
Speaker 2 (56:46):
It to Yeah, and even after they were done with it,
they were still beefing. They didn't give a shit, Just
two stubborn wizards refusing to back down.
Speaker 1 (56:59):
Back when people I had follow through.
Speaker 2 (57:01):
I hope when Sean Manchester dies that their ghosts somehow
stick around and just just out of spite, they both
stick around, refusing to to move past their their feud
and they got to finally have their wizard duel, but
as ghosts.
Speaker 1 (57:19):
Yeah, dude, that dude will pass and then his ghosts
will appear, and then another ghost will appear of other dude,
and they'll be like at last, and they'll be like.
Speaker 2 (57:27):
The last thing that Sean Manchester sees is the ghost
of David Farrence standing at the end of his bed,
his smile and he just mouths. He doesn't even say,
he just mouths, I'll see you soon.
Speaker 1 (57:40):
Yeah. He's like, I'm gonna fuck you up pell Yeah.
Speaker 2 (57:44):
And he's had a lot, he's had he's had a
few years to practice now, so ye, you know, he's
probably got this ghost thing down. He's like cracking his
actoplasmic knuckles. He's ready to throw fists ectoplasmic fists.
Speaker 1 (58:01):
Yeah yeah, he's.
Speaker 2 (58:03):
Gonna splatter that entire room with ecto plaza.
Speaker 1 (58:07):
It's gonna turn it to a different kind of fight.
Speaker 2 (58:10):
Yeah yeah, it's gonna look like Stan Marsh in the
No Internet episode of South Park.
Speaker 4 (58:16):
Thank you for listening to The what Cast. You can
find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, iTunes, on YouTube. Enjoy
the podcast, get yourself a what Cast T shirt or
a stick or pack? Who was that dude on that
one episode? Try the links and homies page. All this
and more can be found at www dot thewcasters dot com.
(58:40):
Thanks again for listening and have a great week.
Speaker 1 (59:05):
And I don't know at
What's up everybody, Thanks for listening to the what cast.
We hope you're doing good. Mike. How are you over there?
Hopefully not covered in snow?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hopefully it's if I was covered in snow at this point,
there'd be a huge problem, way too late. I got
it would kill all my plants. I've got all sorts
of stuff blooming. It's it's wonderful. I love this temmy
here so much.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
A lot of work though, a lot of work to
put in, but I it's my favorite time year, well
like second favorite time of year.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah. We had a couple of days of heat over
here and I was like, oh God, make it cold again.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
I went out and I was doing yard work over
the weekend and it was like high fifties. But it
was a beautiful, clear day. And we had gotten a
load of rocks, a truckload of rocks dumped in the
driveway that I had to spread in the along our
landscaping in the backyard, and we got enough to add
(01:23):
another layer to We already had stuff set up, but
we wanted another layer. So anyway, it's almost sixty degrees.
I'm out there sweating my ass off, and I'm a
dumb ass. I know that temperature doesn't have any bearing
on sunburn, but I was thinking, it's not even sixty degrees.
I'm fine. I ended up with such a fucking bad sunburn, dude,
(01:46):
because I was out there for like six hours, and
my neck and shoulders and upper arms are so fucking
red got like the.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Farmer's tan going. I hate that I burn easily on
me too. Yeah, I've had sunburns where like I've had
quarter size blisters.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
On my back ew gross.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yeah. It was fun, doubt it. There's a sad story
behind it too.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I was tied in the middle of the desert it
staked for the vultures, and I broke out and I
fought my captors off. Meanwhile the sun was beating out
my back and burning me alive. After several days of
fighting and crawling through the deserts, I finally crawled out
and down the road was Rina, Nevada. And then I
(02:38):
had a beer and hooker and.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I wish it was that cool. Geez, No, I'll take
this out. What a dick. Oh yeah, but this she
was just like the biggest cunt I've ever met in
my life. Like, I hate that person.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
It sounds like it fuck her man.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yeah, like she had friends there with her to laugh too.
I was like, Okay, a piece of shit, and that's
my life.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Our lives were the eighties. We rode bikes without helmets.
We were fucking crazy after dark, hey, yeah, after dark exactly.
We didn't We didn't have cell phones.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, we didn't give a fuck if the street lank,
the street lamps were on or not. That didn't even
go home for us.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
I just I had to pop in for some dinner.
Then I was back at it.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Man.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
I used to do all sorts of wacky shit back
in the day.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
It's when life was good, you know. It's not even yeah,
it's not it's not about responsibility and all that shit.
It's just when times were simpler. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
But also it was a time when you could fuck
up and not have it documented and then post it
all over something where everybody else could see.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
It or Bretti, Yeah, post your own fuck ups so everybody. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah, But it isn't it weird that like in today
today's age, like our kids and and people in general
are more connected than they ever were. But you have
parents are more overprotective now, and kids are more stand offish.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Yeah they are.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
It.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
It's so fucking weird like that, in an age where
we are more connected than ever in human history, parents
are like, I can't love my kids go anywhere dude,
they get they literally have a tracking device on them,
like fucking simmer down. And I'm guilty of it too.
But like when you when your kids are out and
(04:50):
you call their cell phone and they don't answer, then
you start freaking out and you're like, oh my god,
why are the dance Meanwhile, we didn't have fucking cell phones.
Our parents didn't know where we were unless we didn't
come home, you know, like if we're not if we're
not home, then that's when that's time to panic. But
otherwise they're out with their friends and it's fine. But
(05:11):
it's fucking weird, man.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, sure is isn't Can you imagine though? Like just
I can remember plenty of times where something happened where
I got home super late and it was like completely innocent,
like I got a flat on my bike, or like
somebody's parents like eat dinner here and I tried to
call home and nobody answered. Shit like that. But they're
just like even my parents back then would be like
(05:33):
what happened. I'd be like, yeah, I ate at Gym's
house and they're like, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
I remember getting in trouble one time because I was
out with my friend and I was I told my
parents i'd be home at like eight or something, and
his parents picked us up and then they're like, oh,
we're going to friendlies and this is again a time
before cell phones. So we go to eat and I
(06:02):
don't have any way to call my parents because I
don't have a cell phone. You know, they weren't really
a thing at that point in time. And then I
get home. I'm like an hour and a half late.
My parents were super pissed because they're like, we didn't
know what was going on, we didn't know where you were,
and that I explained everything and it was cool, but
they were like, that was I almost got in trouble
(06:24):
for that. But when you're a kid, you don't. This
was a time when when if you had to call home,
you had to find a quarter, and then you had
to find a payphone.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yep, and you know.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Some a lot of times as a kid, I would
just be out gallivanting around without you know, not even
a wallet, let alone a quarter. Yeah, you know, I'm
fucking I'm eleven years old. What the hell do I
have a wallet for?
Speaker 1 (06:50):
I had my teenage meeting Ninja Turtle official fan club card. Nice.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, you probably would want to get a wallet just
for that alone. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah, of course it was hands stamped for christ Sikes.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
It's official.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yep, that's how you know. So we're gonna talk about
a fun one tonight. We've talked about a few cases
of this nature before, but I'm always excited to hear
of another one. Mike, what are we going to cover today?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
We're gonna talk about the Highgate vampire. But it might
not even be a vampire though. Maybe it's fairies like always.
Maybe it's an alien, Maybe it's mister Burns. Who knows.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
I mean, I really hope that's the case. Like with
all these different alien races we hear about, I really
hope that in the like plethora that will be like
informed of when all disclosure happens, that like there's like,
out of the five hundred races, there's two that are
just vampires.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Oh god, that would be the worst. I would absolutely
hate that.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
I wanted to be like like a compondium of like
a beast area of all these aliens.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah, that would be very cool to have, like the
Monster Manual of Alien Races. Yeah, I want to know
what the Gray's armor classes.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
So this this it's been dubbed the Highgate Vampire because
of a lot of the a lot of things that
happened down the line. Initially I thought it was because
of a very high gate. Sorry sorry, no, well no,
so Highgate is the name of the cemetery where these
(08:35):
sightings have taken place. Oh, the sightings themselves. The first
reported sightings took place in the late sixties, nineteen sixty nine,
I believe by this point the cemetery which has a
long history.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
It used to be a.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Place where like the fancy rich people would would get buried.
But by the late sixties it had kind of fallen
into disrepair. It wasn't being used and a lot of
the areas were overgrown, and because of that it became
a spot for a lot of alleged magical practices and
(09:18):
devil worship and all the usual shenanigans. But there there's
a road that goes through it called Swan's Lane or
Swain's Lane, and it runs right through the graveyard, and
there were two people who claimed that they had an
(09:38):
anomalous sighting of some sort well out on the road.
One old lady said she had been walking down with
her dog when she saw this tall, dark figure with
glaring eyes that seemed to be floating towards her, and
as it got closer to her, she said that the
air around her began to turn coal and like you
(10:01):
get in ghost sightings where the temperature just drops drastically,
And she took off and when she turned around again,
it was gone. Around the same time, there was another sighting.
This one was from an accountant who had reported his
(10:22):
sighting while he was in the cemetery, and he said
he was walking through the cemetery and this is a
huge cemetery, and again at this point it was fairly overgrown,
and he ended up getting turned around and kind of
got lost while he was walking through the cemetery. And
so he's trying to find his way out, and he
(10:43):
starts hearing this distant bell. So he starts walking towards
the sound of the bell, hoping that by finding the
source of the bell, he'll be able to find a
way out or maybe another person that can point him
in the direction of the exit, but the bell continued
to toll. He started moving, you know, or he kept
(11:05):
moving towards it, and he suddenly became aware that he
was being followed. And as this awareness kind of crept
over him, he noticed the temperature also starting to drop
and he was starting to get a chill. So he
turned around, having a feeling that something was watching him,
(11:27):
and he saw this tall, dark figure that looked at
him with this really intense stare, and then it just
vanished before his eyes.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
So he saw this thing disappear.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, yeah, just gone. So there was this local guy
who is practicing Wiccan named David Farrant, and he began
to investigate this these sightings. His idea to investigate was
to spend the night in the graveyard and he was
(12:04):
suspecting that it was probably somebody that was dressed up
in a costume that was out there trying to scare people,
or that it might be citing a mistake in sighting
of an animal or something. But Farren thought that like
(12:26):
the likely culprit were pranksters that were kind of jumping
on at the time in London, which is where Highgate
Cemetery is, there were a lot of stories in the
newspapers about vampires, so he thought maybe someone was taking
(12:46):
these stories and using it to kind of try to
scare people. But he settled in for the night and
was just kind of hanging on the cemetery being guy,
And he said around midnight he caught sight of a
seven foot tall figure that appeared to be floating just
(13:11):
above the ground. And as he as the figure kind
of turned to face him, he saw two points of
intense red light, so I would assume these would be
the eyes. And once this thing turned on him, the
entire area turned cold, he said. He said that it
(13:34):
felt like he had just stepped into a refrigerator, that's
how cold it got. And he got the impression that
this figure was draining energy from him, and he started
to feel kind of hazy, like like like a his
mind had a fog over it, and he said that
it started to feel like like it was a vivid
(13:57):
dream that he couldn't wake up from. Once he came
to this realization, he realized that this was some sort
of attack on him, and it might not be a
physical attack, but something was draining his energy. So, as
I mentioned, he was practicing wiccan but he also was
(14:20):
familiar with other forms of mysticism, and once he realized
that this thing was trying to drain energy from him,
he started reciting an incantation from the Kabbalah that's used
to dispel evil, and once he started repeating it, the
figure disappeared. But because of this experience, he no longer
(14:44):
thought that this was a prankster, that this is now
something more than just a normal human. So he believed
the reports at this point. So in February of nineteen seventy,
David wrote a letter into the local newspaper, which was
called the Hampstead and Highgate Express, but for sure a
(15:09):
lot of people just referred to it as Hammond High
But his letter that he wrote in was asking anyone
if they had seen anything strange around Highgate Cemetery and
or if they had seen anything similar to the reports
anything like that. But a number of people actually wrote
(15:30):
back saying that they had seen strange things in either
Highgate Cemetery itself or along Swain's Lane. The problem is
a lot of the reports that came in they were
all over the place, so it wasn't like this uniform description.
(15:51):
There was some descriptions that said that there was a
tall man who was wearing a hat like a top hat.
There were some that reported seeing a ghostly cyclist, so
a ghost out for a leisurely bike ride. There were
sightings of a woman dressed in white, which is pretty typical.
(16:17):
One person reported, this is kind of creepy, but a
face that was grimacing through the bars of the gate
of the cemetery. Ugh, just this face looking out at them.
And then another person saw us this pale figure float
out into the pond that's on site. And then there
(16:39):
were several reports where people didn't see anything, but they
heard the sound of bells chiming where there shouldn't be
any bells, or voices where there was nobody around. But
for the most part, none of the sightings were uniform.
They were all over the place. But after all these
(17:00):
letters coming in, there was another local man by the
name of Sean Manchester who became interested in all these
sightings and started to draw his own conclusions about what
this thing might be. And he started to put out
(17:22):
the idea that this was a vampire that was brought
to North London and buried in the Highgate Cemetery. So
with that theory, in mind, and because, as I mentioned,
vampires seemed to be hot in the news at the time.
The newspaper on February twenty seventh, nineteen seventy put an
(17:46):
interview in the newspaper with Sean Manchester entitled does a Vampire.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Walk in Highgate?
Speaker 2 (17:52):
And he outlined his theory and this I love this.
He actually referred to this, this vampire, the Vampire of Highgate,
as the King Vampire of the Undead. Yes, so yeah,
so his his theory or the story he's going with,
(18:13):
and there it didn't seem that there was any It's
hard to say how much of this is based on
historical fact, and it's easy to say that a lot
of this is a theory that this Sean Manchester guy
just kind of rolled with after possibly learning of a
(18:33):
European noble being buried in the cemetery. But his theory
of the King Vampire of the Undead is that this
was a vampire who was an aristocrat and a practitioner
of black magic in Romania, because fucking of course it
was from Romania and he had been transported to England
(18:57):
in a coffin in the early eighteenth century, so he
would have had some followers or a cult or something
that would have brought him to the cemetery in the
early eighteenth century. So his co his followers brought him
to this area and they interred him into a site
(19:18):
that would later become the Highgate Cemetery. So at this
point in time, the Highgate Cemetery was not the Highgate Cemetery,
but he was interred into this area, and then around
there the Highgate Cemetery was formed. In addition to inturing
him into this area, they also they being his followers
(19:40):
or cult or whoever, purchased a house for him on
the west or in the west end of London. There
are some similarities here to Dracula. By the way, the
whole by a house in London for the vampire when
he comes and all that shit. But the or Sean
(20:02):
Manchester then goes on to claim that the reason that
the vampire hadn't been seen until just recently is because
there've been rituals carried out by Satanists in the cemetery,
and these rituals reawakened the evil presence which brought him
back from his super slumber, and now he's he's ready
(20:27):
to suck the energy from people that want to walk
through an abandoned cemetery, So that's his whole thing. But
as part of this interview, Sean Manchester claimed that he
had conducted his own interviews with several people in the
(20:47):
area who had experienced vampiic activity. There was one schoolgirl
named Elizabeth Woodela. She had seen the vampire when walking
down Swain's Lane, and she said after witnessing the figure,
the tall black figure, she began to have nightmares and
(21:08):
in her nightmares something evil. There was this evil entity
of some sort that would come into her bedroom and
allegedly two wounds appeared on her neck one night, and
she started to display symptoms of anemia. So once they
(21:28):
noticed that, her boyfriend, along with the help of Sean Manchester,
filled her room with garlic, crucifixes, and holy water, and
as soon as they did that, her condition started to improve.
He also spoke with another young woman that he just
referred to as Jacqueline, who said that she had woken
up in the middle of the night to find something
(21:50):
cold was clutching her hand and she tried to pull
her hand away, and she said the next morning when
she woke up, she had these deep cuts in her
arm where she had to force this gross cold thing
from her hand.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Ugh.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
And she said soon after that happened, both her and
her younger brother started to develop this weird fascination that
almost called them to Highgate Cemetery. And she said they
it wasn't like a normal thing where they would feel
compelled to go, but all of a sudden, out of nowhere,
(22:28):
they would just constantly feel compelled to go to the cemetery.
He also said that he had many people that contacted
him describing a tall, dark being with blazing red eyes
that was witnessed in the cemetery. Now, one thing he
did not prove, however, like I mentioned earlier, was any
(22:52):
he had no proof for any of these claims. Really,
it's all just hearsay, especially about the VAM player coming
from Romania at one point, and there's a little bit
of a contradiction here, but at one point he said
that the article where they talked about that was journalistic embellishment.
(23:14):
But he wrote a book about this in nineteen eighty five,
and in the book he does mention that at one
point there was a foreign nobleman's coffin that was brought
into Highgate and buried, but it was actually brought into
the cemetery, so it wasn't before the cemetery. But there
(23:35):
have he did make claims about the Satanists, but there
was actual a cult activity that was taking place. David Farrant,
who who was the first researcher I was talking about,
he said that in his investigations he found a lot
(23:57):
of discarded remains from a rituals. He said he would
find stubs of black candles, he would find pentagrams on
the floors of tombs. There was various occult symbols that
were painted on graves, things like that. And he also
(24:19):
believes that these sort of activities may have awoken something
that was laying dormant there, but he does not believe
that it's actually a vampire. He thinks it's something else,
but that's for him. That's that's why he thinks that
(24:41):
things picked up in the late sixties and seventies. But
apparently there was reported sightings of something similar during the
Victorian era, So there's something seen then, which I believe
around that time was the rise of like spear ritualism
and seances and that type of stuff, So that could
(25:05):
have been you know, there a reason. They they were
conducting that sort of ritual or experimentation and cause something
to wake up, and then it went dormant, and decades
later someone else did the same thing.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Right, But.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
These these there's a cult activity that took place in
the cemetery. It was so much that the police at
the time were actually aware of it and they they
had been called out to investigate this on many occasions.
David Farrant himself had confessed to using this cemetery for
(25:47):
his own wicked rituals. Nothing satanic. His stuff was was
all based around wika, but he said it was more
because it was the rituals they were doing. Was more
because it was an outdoor space that was secluded and open,
(26:09):
so it was kind of everything that they needed to
conduct some of these rituals, so that's why. But he
claims there was nothing satanic. They weren't summoning demons or
anything like that. But around this time there was a
revival of spiritualism and mysticism and all that going on,
(26:32):
and people started looking into the teachings of Alistair Crowley again,
and there was Christian mystical sex, a whole bunch of
different things that kind of seemed to spike in interest
around this time in London, and both of these researchers
(26:56):
seemed to think that this activity is what caused whatever
this thing is to come back. So the Hampstead and
Highgate Express continued to follow this story. They would conduct
interviews with Farrant and Manchester off and on for the
next few months. In March, they published an interview with
(27:18):
David Farrant where he made reference to the fact that
dead foxes continued to be found in the cemetery, but
there was no real explanation for how they died. Manchester
actually backed that up, claiming that he'd also seen dead foxes,
(27:38):
and he suggested that the vampire drained them as a
food source, and because the cemetery wasn't a high traffic area,
that maybe it was feeding off of animals rather than people.
But then of course rumors start to spread out and
(28:03):
this sort of thing becomes that the animals were found
drained with all their blood, or their bodies drained of
all blood and their necks ripped open, and you know,
make it more sensationalist than it needed to be. Mm hmm.
But the as their reports continued to come in, it
started to gain national attention throughout England, and it even
(28:29):
started to get picked up by the BBC Network and
then the international news Reuters also picked up the story.
So it was being it was, it was being reported
on all over the place, and there was are you
are you at all familiar with the the Hammer horror
(28:50):
Dracula movies? No with where Christopher Lee was Dracula.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
And yeah, sorry Hammer Production?
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yes, yes, yeah, okay, So there were a lot of
a lot of people drying conclusions that this was maybe
hysterica hysteria due.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
To these.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
The recently released Dracula movies from Hammer. There's actually one
called Taste the Blood of Dracula that was released in
nineteen seventy that was actually shot in Highgate Cemetery. Oh shit,
one year before the first sighting happened.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
It was filmed that the filming could have wakened something up.
Maybe Christopher Lee ranting around there could have woken something. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
But as the as things kind of ramped up with
the sightings there, David Farrant and Sean Manchester started to
develop a rivalry. And I should mention so I already
said that David Farrant was a practicing Wickan, but Sean
Manchester was an exorcist, and so they started to slink
(30:10):
some mud talk a little trash about the others each
other's skills as an exorcist. So of course Sean Manchester,
believing himself to be the to be the as an exorcist,
being the authority on the subject, claimed that David Farrant,
(30:33):
who was a Wickan who practiced magic and stuff, was
not equipped to take care of this. And then David
Farrant would say, well, he's only an exorcist. I have
the power of magic on my side. And I mean really,
at the end of the day, it's magic no matter
(30:54):
what we cut it. If you're if you're, if God
is imbutying you with magical powers to dispel d that's
fucking magic. Man, I don't care what you say. So
we got we now have a vampire and a wizard rivalry. Fuck,
it's only it's each side of the wizard rivalry had
(31:15):
their own investigation group and they were like they were
like the Ghostbusters basically, except you know, they had different
They were just different crews of Ghostbusters that had a
rivalry with each other. So I, obviously Matteo and I
are not British in any way, but from what I've heard,
(31:39):
and I guess to a certain extent, it is true.
Run here. I can't tell you how many times I've
seen a Friday the Thirteenth marathon on TV on a
Friday thirteenth, but apparently on British TV at least in
the seventies, when there'd be a Friday the thirteenth, a
lot of networks would air paranormal paranormal shows or investigations,
(32:08):
or they would kind of center around something spooky and supernatural.
So on Friday thirteenth in March of nineteen seventy, there
was a show that aired on ITV featuring David Farrant
and Shawn Manchester as well as witnesses that claim to
(32:29):
have seen supernatural figures or entities around Highgate Cemetery. Nice
In addition to interviews and everything, there was actually a
live crew that was reporting outside of Highgate Cemetery. Within
two hours of this show being aired, hundreds of people
(32:50):
from the area roll up to Highgate Cemetery ready to
fight fucking vampires. There were so many people that showed
up the cop came trying to stop them, and people
were just jumping the fences pushing through. There's pictures of
a newspaper or pictures from a newspaper of people actually
(33:11):
climbing the fenceive Highgate Cemetery trying to get in. But
people showed up. Some of them just showed up out
of curiosity. Some of them showed up with actual weapons,
looking through all the tombs and graves and trying to
find this vampire to kill it. So then the news
crew starts interviewing these people and they're saying that they're
(33:34):
they're determined to put an end to the evil vampire
and put them to rest for good, and you know,
all that happy horseshit. But I'm sad to report not
a single vampire was found that night, God damn it,
even though some people did claim that they saw a
shadowy figure, but could have just been somebody else, you know,
(33:55):
prancing around the cemetery.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Right right, Yeah, I mean, if there's that many people
flocking to this area to hunt the vampire, there's at
least six drunk dudes who are addressing like a vampire. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
So Farrant, throughout all this hysteria, started to get pissed off,
and this kind of the whole the vampire talk was
starting to piss him off, and as a result, was
starting to make him more pissed off at Manchester because
he was claiming that the hysterical or the hysteria within
(34:29):
the media and the sensationalist headlines are turning with some
sort of actual supernatural entity into a vampire, you know,
the type of vampire that everybody is familiar with, and
he's claiming this is some sort of other entity. Okay,
(34:52):
so there was there was a disagreement there, and it
was basically an exorcism pissing contest. But during that night,
as people are swarming over the gates, Sean Manchester and
his crew of vampire hunters made their way to the
entrance of one of the catacombs, and Manchester claimed that
(35:15):
this particular catacomb was pointed out to him by a
young girl who had been led there while sleepwalking, and
in his interview with her, she had told him where
this catacomb was, and she said that the Highgate vampire
(35:40):
had lured her there and she started to exhibit similar
symptoms to Elizabeth in the earlier case. So they following
this girl's directions to where this particular catacombs were they
tried to open the door and they couldn't get in,
(36:00):
so they were able to get through a window and
they used a rope to climb in through the window.
Once inside, they found that it was this big vault
that had it lined with coffins basically, but Manchester claimed
one of these coffins was a sinister looking casket made
(36:23):
of black wood, and it stood out from the rest,
which were just regular caskets, but this one was apparently
an ornate casket made of black wood, and Manchester and
his companions tried to exercise the vampire. So he performed
(36:43):
his ritual of exorcism, used holy water and garlic, sprinkled
salt around the casket, and basically hoped for the best.
At that point, rather than try to stake it or
burn it or decapitate it, they tried the exorcist way.
(37:06):
So things were relatively uneventful until the first day of August,
where a charred and decapitated corpse of a woman was
found near that particular catacomb Geez. The police, when they investigated,
(37:29):
had a suspicion that this was a corpse that had
been taken and used in a black magic ritual. This
to both Farrant and Manchester indicated something more was going on,
so they both start to become more active in their investigations.
Farrant was actually arrested by police in the churchyard next
(37:53):
to the cemetery, for all his claims that this wasn't
a vampire. Do you know what he was arrested with.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Oh shit, what a.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Crucifix and a wooden fucking steak. Haha, it's for rats, bro,
That's that's some classic vampire hunting shit right there. Sure,
maybe Manchester won him over, but he once they so
he was arrested and when he was brought to court,
the case was dropped and he was released. On the
(38:27):
other side of things, Sean Manchester and his ghostbusters were
following the advice of a psychic woman and so so,
first time he was led to the catacombs by a
sleepwalking girl, this time he's being led by a female
psychic wizard lady. All Right, well, I guess saying female
(38:52):
and lady is redundant. But she's a psychic wizard lady.
She might not be a wizard. I'm probably just throwing
that in. She's she's just a psychic. She's probably lovely,
she probably makes really good oatmeal cookies. It doesn't matter.
She's a psychic and she's leading in places.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
So she takes them.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
She has a vision that they have to go to
this particular family vault on the grounds, and she takes
them to the place. Of course, it's a vault, so
the doors are locked. So what do they do? Just
some light breaking and entering.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
No big deal.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
They're dead, It's not like they're gonna give a shit, right,
So they force the doors open. They go inside, and
what do they find in their mateo Sarah exactly and
she kicked them all in the no. After forcing it open,
they go inside and they find the fucking same black
casket from before that was in the catacombs. Now it's
(39:52):
in this family family crypt.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Oh shit.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
So suspecting that this VAM knew that its hiding spilit
hiding place had been founded and was not happy with
the attempted exorcism, called upon its cult or followers or
what have you to move his casket so to prevent
this from happening again. He pops that fucking lid open,
(40:21):
and then he said that when he looked upon it,
he had absolute confirmation of what they were dealing with
and that it was and what they were dealing with
was a goddamn vampire. We knew it all long, we did,
we did, we called it. Manchester wanted to drive a
(40:43):
stake through the heart the old fashioned way, but one
of the other ghostbusters said that you can't kill a
vampire that way because interfering with the remains of their
diet is a crime punishable at the court of law,
and you can't do that to vampires. So because it's illegal,
(41:03):
he decided he would not impale the vampire, and instead
he performed another ritual. This one, he said. They used
seven crucifixes, lit four white candles, had seven cups of
holy water, and carried out a ritual to banish the
(41:24):
spirit of evil. And then he reported it to the noose,
who then put it out to the masses, and everyone thought, well,
this is it. He dispelled the vampire with his Christian
voodoo magic. After the ritual took place, Manchester had the
officials brick up the vault, but he left a crucifix
(41:47):
and holy water inside. But according to Manchester, the vault
did not remain bricked up for long. Dun dun, dum.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Or did it?
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Or was it ever bricked up to begin with. I
guess it all depends on what sort of faith you
put in Sean Manchester right. So on the other side,
back to the David Ferrett group of merrymakers, they decided
they were going to try to communicate with whatever this
(42:23):
entity was to try to figure out what it wanted
and why it was showing up. So they also got
the help of a psychic, but this was a medium
and using their wick and voodoo magic, they were trying
(42:44):
to cast a spell using magic circles and candles in
connection with the medium to reach out to whatever this
thing was. They had tried once and the prescot win
that they were doing it and they got interrupted, so
the ritual was incomplete. They waited a whole other year
(43:08):
to make another attempt, and this time they made contact.
And apparently whatever this entity was did not enjoy being
contacted in that way, because he grabbed the medium by
the throat, and in order to break the hold they
had to get rid of the circle, and then the
(43:30):
area turned cold, and he said that the medium reported
that she was being enveloped by complete blackness, and in
the blackness she felt something try to strangle her, but
she couldn't make out what it was. So now Faren
knows that whatever this thing is, which again, remember he
was arrested holding a crucifix and a stake, but he's
(43:54):
now finally convinced that this thing, whatever it is, is
malevol and wants to harm people. So at this point
he came to the conclusion that this was not a vampire.
This was an evil presence that traveled along a lay line. Now,
(44:15):
this particular lay line started at the Columbarium, which is
the part of the cemetery of Highgate Cemetery where the
urns of the cremated are kept. And then this lay
line runs across Highgate, through two old pubs, goes through
(44:35):
Highgate Wood and through an apartment complex over the top
of a nunnery. So he starts looking into these places
to find out what's going on, and he found that
there was evidence or reports, i should say not evidence,
(44:57):
reports of supernatural activity that took place in these places.
And some people that he uh interviewed mentioned seeing a tall,
dark figure. There's a manager from one of the pubs
that saw something so horrific that it turned his hair
(45:19):
white and he now.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Has white hair. Oh shit.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
And in one of the apartments above the nunnery. The
room had to be exercised because of some evil presence
that was there, So it seems like whatever, But I mean,
I don't know. I guess it really depends how much
credence you put into lay lines and shit. But it
(45:44):
goes to show that weird things happen along lay lines,
and it's also kind of weird that there's always holy
sites on the lay.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Lines as well.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
So I mean, maybe it is a figure that's kind
of confined to the lay lines and that's where it
drives its energy from.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
But despite Sean Manchester's two attempts at an exorcism, strange
occurrences continued.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
As they should.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
People kept reporting sightings of this entity, strangely enough, or
maybe not so strangely, because again this is one person
telling the story. But Sean Manchester claims again three years
later that he and his ghostbusters were investigating the sellers
(46:34):
of an abandoned mansion that were on the borders of
Highgate and in their investigation, guess what they found. They
found that fucking black casket. Again, are you serious? According
to Manchester, that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Oh so he.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
Suspected after they bricked it up, the followers of the
vampire took the casket away and brought it to this mansion.
So they this time they dragged the coffin out of
the basement where they found it, brought it upstairs into
the grounds of the mansion, and morning was about to
(47:13):
break by the time they brought it outside. They removed
the lid, and he said he saw the same thing
that he saw when he opened the casket the first time,
but he said this time it looked even more distorted.
But its eyes were open, and he said it had
(47:34):
yellow Its eyes were yellow at the edges with blood
red centers, and it had a furrowed brow, and the
mouth was set in a cruel expression, with lips that
were drawn back. So at this point, Manchester says, fuck
the exorcism. He drives a steak through this fucker's heart. Yeah,
(47:56):
And he said, as soon as he impaled its chest,
the shell of its body caved in and turned into
this filthy, brown sludge.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Fucking in my head.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
Do you remember the video for Sober.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Dude, That's exactly what I was thinking.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
When he falls back in the chair and his head
crushes open. And it looks like caramel flows out. That's
what I picture. But after they after he impaled it
and it's chest caved in and turned to slime, he
decided he was gonna set this fucker on fire to
prevent him from ever walking again. Fuck yeah, So him
(48:40):
and the Ghostbusters gathered up. They burned the body inside
the coffin, and he said it took several hours before
everything burned. All that was left was some bone fragments
which they threw into the four winds.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
So there was bone fragments in that sludge.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
Yeah, the whole body didn't turn to it was just
the chest that cave didn't turned to sludge. Hugh.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Yeah. Gross.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
But at this point, Manchester claimed that Highgate Cemetery has
been purged.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
This house is clear, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
Despite this claim, Farreant didn't give a fuck, and they
continued to feud. They had a planned magicians duel that
they were going to enact on Friday the thirteenth in
April of nineteen seventy three. Oh shit, they talked so
much shit. They were getting their magical arsenal's ready. They
(49:41):
were fucking pumped up, and it never happened.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
Instead, Oh come on. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
The following year, David Farrant was again arrested at High
Highgate Cemetery. This time he was arrested under suspicion of
vandalizing memori reels and interfering with the remains. When he
was he claimed that the damage was were caused by Satanists,
(50:12):
wasn't him, and but there's no proof that it was
anybody other than he was there, And he ended up
getting arrested and was imprisoned for it. But that kept
the story alive, and then even after that, the few
(50:32):
dragged on for for decades and decades. They both claimed
it basically centers around these guys having a magical pissing contest.
They were both claiming to be expert exorcists, and both
claimed that the other guy sucked at being an exorcist.
(50:53):
And that's that's really what this whole thing was about. Like, no,
I'm a better exorcist than you. No, I'm a better
I killed the vampire. No, the vampire is still alive
and he's not a vampire, and I'm gonna take him out.
But they both spent many decades after investigating paranormal activity
around they both wrote books. Eventually with the rise of
(51:17):
the internet. They had stuff on the Internet, talked to
anyone that would listen, or gave interviews about the Highgate Vampire.
They would also take jabs at each other on social media,
which then prompted their followers to also join in.
Speaker 3 (51:34):
And no, my wizard guy is better than you wizard guy. Well,
you wizard guy sucks. Guy's the best wizard gay. He's
killed so many vamp players. Bad players don't exist their demons,
and my vampire killer guy is way better because he
understands it and fights the demons. You can't kill a demon.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
Stupid idiot got the internet stump, But said David Farrant
died in twenty nineteen and never reconciled with Seawan Manchester.
They hated each other's guts till he died. Hell yeah,
fucked that guy. Shawn Manchester still works as an exorcist, however,
(52:18):
and he is actually a bishop in the British Old
Catholic Church.
Speaker 1 (52:23):
Which don't fuck that guy.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
It's different from Roman Catholicism, but it's a conservative sect
that actually broke away from Roman Catholicism, so it's a different,
I guess slightly more conservative take on Catholicism, but he
claims that the Highgate vampire was just the first and
(52:50):
he's destroyed dozens of vampires since then at Highgate, no
different cemeteries. Maybe I'll do a quick and weird on
him sometime, but there was He's done one at uh
Finchley Finchley's Great Northern London Cemetery and this was in
(53:13):
the eighties. But that's there's an interesting story about that,
So I might do a quicken the weird on that.
So if if you guys want to hear more about that,
joint Patreon, we'll we'll do an episode on that at
some point. But the even though it's claimed to have
(53:33):
been destroyed, there has still been sightings of this even
through the nineties. And I don't know, maybe maybe it's
the same thing, maybe it's a different one. Maybe there's
an army vampires that live there.
Speaker 1 (53:47):
Yeah, I mean it sounds like something definitely was going
on there. It's such a long stretch of time to
have sightings by so many different people. It's so interesting
to see the that the you would almost impossibly inspire Charlatanism.
Do you think dude was going back to that graveyard
and maybe destroying shit to blame Satanist so he can
(54:09):
get more buzz to go back there and him fucking
destroy an empire.
Speaker 2 (54:14):
That wouldn't surprise me in the least. Wow.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Yeah, hmm. Just goes to show you even people who
are claiming to want to get to the bottom of things.
Speaker 2 (54:24):
Yeah, you know, well, I mean look at look at
the ghost Hunter shows today. You know that they're out
there claiming to help people clear ghosts. Meanwhile they're and
there with the camera crew making millions.
Speaker 1 (54:36):
Yeah, calling shit out and making shit happen.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
Yeah, So I and snake oil salesmen have always been
a thing. There's always charlatans, there's always con men, call
them what you will. And it seems like in the
magical community, in the new wave community or new age community,
there seems to be a lot of that. And here
(55:00):
it seems like we've got two grifters that are grifting away.
I mean that one dude has the audacity to claims
he's killed dozens of vampires right Like, in my opinion,
that means you dug up a bunch of corpses and
fucking staked their hearts. More, you're just a blatant liar.
Or both.
Speaker 1 (55:19):
Yeah, I just I have one photograph.
Speaker 2 (55:22):
Yeah, but I mean, if there was something really going on,
it could be a negative entity because the coldness always
goes along with that. They and they do seem to
feed off of negative emotions like fear and anger and
things like that. So it would make sense if that
(55:45):
was the thing, and maybe maybe somebody did accidentally summon something.
Kids do dumb shit and and sometimes they get their
hands on the wrong books and they do dumb shit
with those books, or they invite the wrong entity through
a Ouiji board. I remember the Zoso case.
Speaker 1 (56:06):
Yeah, yeah, I remember watching a documentary not too long
ago about Satanic colts and the person doing the documentary
just goes to a public park I think I've mentioned
this before and just walks around and points out things
that are basically like residue and evidence of Satanic rituals
that are going down there, and he's like, we're in
(56:27):
the middle of like suburbia here, you know. So something
like that definitely could have happened, but it just seems
like whatever it was was overshadowed, overshadowed with this duel
that these guys were having. Like whatever was there, maybe
they did kill it, but it just took a back
seat to them beefing.
Speaker 2 (56:46):
It to Yeah, and even after they were done with it,
they were still beefing. They didn't give a shit, Just
two stubborn wizards refusing to back down.
Speaker 1 (56:59):
Back when people I had follow through.
Speaker 2 (57:01):
I hope when Sean Manchester dies that their ghosts somehow
stick around and just just out of spite, they both
stick around, refusing to to move past their their feud
and they got to finally have their wizard duel, but
as ghosts.
Speaker 1 (57:19):
Yeah, dude, that dude will pass and then his ghosts
will appear, and then another ghost will appear of other dude,
and they'll be like at last, and they'll be like.
Speaker 2 (57:27):
The last thing that Sean Manchester sees is the ghost
of David Farrence standing at the end of his bed,
his smile and he just mouths. He doesn't even say,
he just mouths, I'll see you soon.
Speaker 1 (57:40):
Yeah. He's like, I'm gonna fuck you up pell Yeah.
Speaker 2 (57:44):
And he's had a lot, he's had he's had a
few years to practice now, so ye, you know, he's
probably got this ghost thing down. He's like cracking his
actoplasmic knuckles. He's ready to throw fists ectoplasmic fists.
Speaker 1 (58:01):
Yeah yeah, he's.
Speaker 2 (58:03):
Gonna splatter that entire room with ecto plaza.
Speaker 1 (58:07):
It's gonna turn it to a different kind of fight.
Speaker 2 (58:10):
Yeah yeah, it's gonna look like Stan Marsh in the
No Internet episode of South Park.
Speaker 4 (58:16):
Thank you for listening to The what Cast. You can
find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, iTunes, on YouTube. Enjoy
the podcast, get yourself a what Cast T shirt or
a stick or pack? Who was that dude on that
one episode? Try the links and homies page. All this
and more can be found at www dot thewcasters dot com.
(58:40):
Thanks again for listening and have a great week.
Speaker 1 (59:05):
And I don't know at
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