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Cities never sleep, but neither do the creatures that might hide in their shadows.
From the towering skyscrapers of New York to the winding alleyways of London, there
are whispers, stories of beings who walk among us, unseen, unnoticed.
They are the night stalkers, the urban legends, the modern day vampires.
But aren't they just myths, or could they be real?
Welcome to Urban Vampires, do night stalkers lurk in modern cities.
I'm your host, Robert Cavalier, and tonight, we're diving into the dark heart of the urban
landscape to uncover the truth behind one of the most enduring legends of all time,
the vampire.
Vampires have haunted our imaginations for centuries.
From the bloodthirsty Count Dracula to the brooding immortals of modern pop culture,
they've always been a symbol of our deepest fears and desires.
But what if they're not just characters in books or movies, what if they're out there,
right now, blending into the crowds, hiding in plain sight?
Tonight we'll explore the chilling possibility that vampires aren't just creatures of folklore,
they could be living among us in the very cities we call home.
But before we go any further, let's set the stage.
Imagine this, it's midnight in a sprawling metropolis, the streets are alive with the
hum of traffic, the glow of neon signs, the murmur of late night crowds.
In the shadows, something stirs, a figure moves silently, watching, waiting.
Pale skin, sharp features, eyes that seem to pierce the darkness.
Is it just your imagination, or is it something else?
This isn't just a scene from a horror movie, it's a reality that some people claim to have
experienced.
From the Highgate Vampire of London to the rumored Manhattan Vampire Gland, urban legends
about vampires that persisted for decades.
And then there are the real live vampire communities, people who identify as vampires
who drink blood or feed on energy and who live hidden lives in the heart of our cities.
But why cities?
Why do these stories thrive in the urban jungle?
Well think about it, cities are places of anonymity, of constant movement, in a crowd
of millions it's easy to disappear, to go unnoticed, and in a city that never sleeps,
the night is always alive, perfect for creatures of the dark.
Over the next hour we'll hear from experts, researchers, and even members of the vampire
subculture.
We'll delve into eyewitness accounts of vampire-like figures stalking the streets, we'll explore
the history of vampire legends and how they've evolved to fit the modern world, and we'll
ask the question, are these stories just urban myths or is there something more to them?
But before we go any further let me point you to this, in 1970 London was gripped by
a wave of vampire hysteria.
People reported seeing a tall dark figure with glowing eyes lurking in Highgate Cemetery.
Vampire hunters patrolled the graves, armed with stakes and holy water, and while the
panic eventually faded, the legend of the Highgate vampire lives on.
Was it mass hysteria, a clever hoax, or was there something or someone real behind the
stories?
Tonight we'll uncover the truth behind the legends, we'll hear from those who claim
to have encountered vampires in the modern world, we'll explore the philosophy, the
psychology, and the cultural significance of these stories, and we'll ask, could vampires
really be lurking in our cities?
So grab your headphones, turn down the lights, and join me as we step to the shadows, because
in the world of night stalkers the line between myth and reality is razor thin.
Welcome back to the Phenomenal Case Files Podcast and tonight I'm excited to dive right
into this vampire subject I've been really wanting to do an episode like this, it's
been in the works for a while, and we're going to talk about real vampires, do they exist,
in urban setting modern day cities.
But let's get a little bit of background before we dive into that aspect which is going to
be the meat of the episode, and look into a little bit of the background of vampires,
of vampirism, and as we all know we associate them vampires with the Slavic Eastern European
lore, which of course is really interesting, and the word I looked it up, it does originate
from there, there are other possibilities, Greek, Turkish, but nobody can be really sure
about where the stories really originated, where that word really originated, it's important
because it leads us to where did it all start, and indeed in Eastern Europe in the 18th century
there was a peak of these stories, you could call it the vampire hysteria epoch, as some
of the researchers that I've bumped into have dubbed it, and even before that it's predated,
in fact it's predated by thousands of years all the way to the Babylonians, the Egyptians,
even the Indians have this vampire lore, and I'm not going to get into that aspect as
much even though it is exciting, maybe we'll do that a little later on, but for now I really
want to look at how these mythical figures, or these legends, these really just horror
stories of a long time ago, seeped into our modern world, and of course we know that that
happened through fiction, most famously Dracula, and other novels, and just there's a plethora,
there's an abundance of things to draw on, but it is thought that vampires first, when
we were less situated in cities and most of the world was really rural, that those stories,
those legends had a more rural beginning, in other words there were these vampires,
stocking victims at night in villages, and the famous scenes come to mind of villagers
with pitchforks and so on, and that's where it came from, and as time went by and more
people moved into cities, becoming more and more the focus of daily living, so did vampires,
and we start seeing that especially in the 18th century, we start seeing that, and that's
really when we're talking about, well, the 1700s and then really moving into the 1800s,
which was the 19th century when Industrial Revolution was really kicking up, we see
these bigger cities supporting a bigger population, and so did these stories that they brought
from their villages, or we could look at it another way, if this is real, and if you think
this is real, and that's what we're going to dive into and talk about, vampires maybe
just followed people into a better place, a better setting to stock, to hide in plain
sight.
Some of the things I want to overview are the Highgate Vampire of London, the Manhattan
Vampire Clan, the Chicago Vampire Scene, and the Parisian Night Stalker. I may only cover
the first couple of these and really just highlight the Highgate Vampire because that is one
of the latest and most modern accounts that I was able to find. I'm interested in city
accounts in particular because that's where most of us live, and I'm just really interested
in to know if anybody has seen a vampire in modern days, especially the 80s, 90s, 2000s,
all of these years where we have been so focused on these metropolis, New York City, I was
really hoping to find those stories. I found other sources, and I'm hoping still to have
some stories come in. Cities are a magnet for all kinds of commerce and enterprise and
people of all walks of life looking for opportunities to prosper. According to an article on timeout.com,
New York City is the best city for vampires. This is a fun little article and I'd like
to just highlight it before we head into more serious grounds. The article even, of course,
it's tongue in cheek. It goes into the statistics and the criteria of why New York City would
be the optimal place for a vampire to live in, followed by Chicago, and I agree with
that. I think Chicago would be great. Seattle is number 13, so there's about 13 cities.
There's a map on the website on timeout.com of this fun little article, which if you get
a visual of the US, you see that the top sites are pretty much the eastern board right there
by the latitude of New York and neighboring states like Pennsylvania, DC, and other places
in Chicago. Then as you move far, far west, you don't see as many, although I was surprised
to see some in the southwest that ranked higher than I would have expected, given the warmer
climate and the more sunlight, the sunnier. That's a fun thing. It says here that the
worst cities for vampires are, number one surprise, Arizona. Arizona just takes the
first about six or seven slots, then Nevada, and then Lancaster, California, Huntington,
Beach, California. It doesn't mention LA, but I think LA would be a good place for vampires.
What do you think? Going back to the best, not just New York, Chicago, Philadelphia,
LA is listed as number four, so I take it back. They did look at that. San Francisco.
We'll talk about a little bit about San Francisco because that reminds me of a series that took
place there, an old TV show. Then Pittsburgh, and then Baltimore should have been higher
too with Edgar Allan Poe, Lore, and all that. The criteria is fun and won't spend too much
time on it, but the cities that have the most blood centers, the fewest blood centers,
that's not as optimal. It goes in like most casket suppliers, fewest casket suppliers,
highest share of homes with basements. I'm not sure why that's important. I guess that's
where you would put a basket. It's got to look an infographic that you look at. If you're
a vampire, you might make your decisions based on this. Nightlife options are going to be
great in New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, all these kinds of places. I don't think Las Vegas
would be good for a vampire. It's too hot. Who knows? Maybe they can hide in plain sight.
We'll talk about that. That is a little bit silly. Even the article says here, while this
might be silly to you, New York City has some history with vampires. In the 1870s, people
used to drink blood collected from slaughterhouses, especially one on 34th Street by the Hudson
River. They drink cups of blood collected straight from the necks of freshly slaughtered
steers. They believed the blood could treat all kinds of diseases. Wow, that's a little
nugget among all this fun thing. I cannot fathom people actually thinking that this
would have a therapeutic benefit to them. Pretty gross.
Cities are moving on from the tongue-in-cheek and the fun of that article. If you think
about it in logistical terms, cities would provide the perfect cover for vampires. There's
an anonymity there as a city dweller. The darkness, the constant movement, the way in
which city dwellers, including myself, are usually distracted with something else. We
have somewhere to go. We don't want to talk to anybody. We want to just be in our own
little world, reading a book or on our phones or listening to music or pretending we just
don't notice people when we actually do notice them. We look at them and we observe that's
the fun part about living in a city, watching people, what are they doing and judging them.
Maybe there's a vampire judging us and I think they would. What are these people doing? I
think that those logistical aspects of a real vampire, not the mythical, not the Hollywood,
but the real deal, would likely look at a city as a perfect place to hide in plain sight.
This brings me to, I touched upon a little bit on a series that I remembered and I'm
kind of just excited about talking about this. This whole thing is just a preface for me
to talk about some geeky stuff from the past. I remember a show that's based on, some people
might know this one, it's based on a role-playing game that I never played or knew about back
then. This was in the, like, this show was called Kindred the Embraced. It came out in
1996 and I believe it was on Fox, I'm pretty sure. It ran for eight episodes and the ninth
was never shown. It got cancelled really fast but it was a really, really good show. I was
kind of a kid back then, pretty young and I got sucked into it. I loved it. I loved
the way some factions were presented. These are city-dwelling modern vampires, that's
the premise, but they have figured out how to live among people and with the benefits
of being immortal. Even if you lived just 150 years, you could accumulate quite a bit
of wealth. If you did that across time and develop some kind of clan system, some kind
of secret society, even some modern investments, some land acquisition, you could buy land
really cheap in, say, San Francisco in the 1800s and then turn around 100 years later
and it's just worth millions and millions. Not that hard to get rich if you make some
conventional choices along the way and if you live a very long time. The trick then is
how do you hide all of that, how do you hide the fact that you're not aging, you're not
dying and you're living way past your years. In this show, it's based on about five factions
and they're called Torridor and so forth. I'll go into it a little bit more. Maybe
I loved it because each faction has its own characteristics and each faction has an agreement
or a truce of non-violence at the minimum, say, like the Nosferatu which are under city
dwellers and they can't really go and have the benefit of, say, like the Torridors or
something which are more artistic and they don't have the stigma or the disadvantage
of looking really disfigured. I don't know if I would call Nosferatu disfigured but they
have these long ears, this bald head, this gray skin, these long fangs, picture the famous
1920s silent movie Nosferatu and that's what they look like in the show. I'm still talking
about the show but I like the show because the show is based on and I learned this way
later on a role-playing game in which all these factions have to compete or collaborate
or ally or fight each other to some degree. The series starts with a detective that because
of the piloting, he becomes aware that vampires are real. These are real vampires and then
he gets sucked into the society as he investigates a little bit more and there's a beautiful
woman and a beautiful actress in there too who gets involved with one of the main vampires.
The big criticism of the way that the show was deployed was that people compared it to
kind of the godfather of vampirism and just, I didn't think that it was bad and they could
have maybe done it a little bit better. It wasn't like, it was a bit like a mafia system
but it makes sense for vampires to have a secret society like I said before and to accumulate
wealth and to figure out a way to coexist first among themselves with really strict
rules that they must enforce such as there are rules of who becomes, who gets to increase
their numbers in their clan or their faction by adding a new member who gets to do that
and wonder what circumstances and it's strictly something that needs to be agreed upon. It's
a bit like a guild system. It's a lot like that actually and it makes sense just in the
economics of it and it makes sense also because you would have a small circle of friends that
in the show for instance they own nightclubs and restaurants and have a lot of wealth.
Doing that is the ultimate protection. Money is probably the greatest power that we at
least humans could at least touch upon in our limited lives and if you're an immortal
then that really sort of doubles up because then yes you could be exclusive. You don't
have to be front facing with people. Your group of people that you know would be small
enough because you don't have to have unless you're really not a well performing vampire
or something, I don't know, a day job. Obviously you couldn't because you're a vampire but
if you wouldn't have to have an office job you would have to just make sure that you
stay within the confines of certain behaviors that are expected from you and survive that
way and persist at least for a long time really and especially in a city. People don't really
delve into other people's business as much. In a city like New York City that should be
easier and if you're just interacting with people that are mostly vampires and maybe
some people that are not, they come in and out, you know that's not hard to pull off.
That logistical part of the series I liked a lot. I know I'm talking a lot about it
but it's just exciting and it was exciting back then. As it turned out the public was
not really that ready even though I think it was growing the actual thing that got the
show cancelled was that the lead actor, he actually died in a motorcycle accident. He
was a cool guy and whatnot and he died in a car accident so they couldn't go forward.
I think they could have still gone forward without him. I mean he was alright but they
didn't and that was the end. I always wanted to know if the 9th episode is similar. I actually
own the DVD mini series collection of that from way back in the day. It's probably 20
something years old. When it first came out I said I'm going to get this and I got it
and it's probably worth a lot more now because that's how things go. But as I said it's based
on this masquerade game, Vampire the Masquerade game which I've gotten a chance to actually
observe. I was taking an English course a while back, a literature course a while back
and I got to know really cool types and they were all into all different kinds of things
and one of them invited me to a Vampire the Masquerade role-playing game that I'd never
seen because he got to talking about vampires and as it turns out he and I may have him
on later on, he writes vampire fiction. So the game is really cool and it takes a long
time and it's a great way to delve into this culture and you can go to www.theworldofdarkness.com
and it has been revamped. It's not the old Vampire the Masquerade role-playing game but
it's got more factions. I believe there's 13 and each one of them has a corresponding,
each clan then has a corresponding book. I'm not going to judge, it's a little bit pulpy
but it's alright and it goes into each and every clan's lore and it kind of weaves a
big story out of these 13 series books. There's 13 in the series because there's 13 clans
and then it got revamped into what it is now. I think they made a video game of it and it's
considered sort of like a flawed gem because it's people that are in this subculture of
gaming and role-playing games. They really appreciate things that come new but sometimes
they're not completely workable. In its most recent iteration it looks to me amazing. I
don't have time to really delve into a lot of these things as I'm preparing for these
shows and writing myself and doing all sorts of things but man if you do have a chance
to get into that or want a new hobby I think that would be a great way to meet new people
because they do it in person and that's a great way. You have a few beers, you play
and you get to participate and dive into this lore and create lore. They're creating a story
as they go along based on the parameters of the game. Having said that I wanted to look
seriously at vampirism and that takes us to some very different grounds because if vampires
are real then we have to start to begin to understand them as any real ecological phenomena
as something that exists just like anything else that has its own prerogatives, its own
reason, its own motivations and they maybe very, in fact they should be or would be very
very different than yours and mine. Their style of survival and their style of living
would be completely different and you always think as a person, as a mortal, as a mere
mortal well wouldn't it be nice to live a long, long, long life say hundreds of years
but even if you're already just middle age or somewhere along the line you have to think
how and at what point do things just become repetitive? How do you keep alive the impetus
for living? Of course in the lore of vampirism that kind of living that they're doing is
really not living but it's almost like a cursed kind of a living. It's tied to the need to
feed and to in some cases become so isolated that any remnant of humanity becomes more
and more vanishing as time goes by and you could imagine all kinds of mental health challenges
and problems emanating and just exacerbating becoming even more troublesome. The mind of
a vampire that's say 300 or 500 years old versus one that's 150 might be very very different,
two very different generations and the definition of generations even being completely turned
upside down if they do interact with each other in some kind of basis as they do in
this sort of thought experiment or game of vampire masquerades or if they exist now
what kind of life do they live? Are they isolated? Do some choose to as a way to survive or some
choose to just go it alone and have a very small amount of friends or do some become
involved with humans, have friendships, develop them, lose them, have to walk out on them
at some point because otherwise they'll be privy to the fact that they're not aging and
that's a premise of another show Highlander which is not about a vampire but it's also
delving into these ideas of immortality and the pain of if you in the show, in the show
it was a show too and then before it was of course a movie with Christopher Lambert as
a Scotsman, a Frenchman as a Scotsman, well it was the 80s and I loved it but you have
to you start to look at this and it becomes this very interesting thought experiment.
What is the feasibility of a creature like that actually existing, actually lurking
and what kind of strategies is it deploying to survive, to make it among us and to figure
out its own existence, you know, very often we think about vampires especially nowadays
more as a tragic figure, somewhat romantic figure, a figure at conflict with itself,
an antihero and Carl Jung might have referred to them as not an archetype but a subset of
an archetype, something like the emanating from the shadow, the shadow people, the shadow
man, you know, something that represents an archetype of darkness, of conflict, of evil,
of descent and as we've lived with these stories we've also changed them and we have to wonder
have we changed them because fiction changes and our attitudes change and that's just
the way it goes or is it based on something real?
Did we have we experienced, are we experiencing anything in the modern age that we could approximate
to that?
So I want to take you to some very interesting tidbits that I found, some clips and regarding
first witness accounts because that's what I really wanted to find and the first one
actually all the clips are related to the first event that I mentioned earlier and that
was the High Gate of London, that was a cemetery, it was back in the late 60s, right around
69 and I'll preface by saying that this was an event that was very well documented although
the sources of how it was documented and what started everything going, we'll get into that
too because there's a little bit of perhaps showmanship, perhaps hysteria and perhaps
real accounts.
One of those accounts comes from a young man named David Farrand and David was a local
young man who was drawn to the paranormal at the time and it's late 1969 when he starts
hearing whispers about strange beings at the cemetery, strange sightings.
On one of those occasions he claims to have bummed into two people, I don't know at which
times, it looks like he had interviewed them because he was investigating and the first
account of that is from an older lady and this is David Farrand recounting that.
We set the stage a little bit before I get to the clip, the cemetery had actually served
pretty well off people since about the 1800s or earlier, it's a really beautiful cemetery
and it was even more in its heyday containing elaborate mausoleums, huge statues of angels,
tall trees, well taken care of gardens but by the time David Farrand makes his way there,
in the 1960s and late 1960s and before that, it had fallen into disarray and it was known
that it had been trespassed and subject to some vandalism and some graves that had even
been disturbed.
There were also rumors of rights or secret rights carried out by different groups so
at that time I found some footage of different retelling this account and it's a bit rough
so bear with me and let's listen in now.
I am David Farrand, a psychic investigator and over 20 years ago I began an investigation
into what was one of the most chilling accounts of vampirism in the 20th century.
It was the case of the Highgate Vampire circulating about a tall dark figure that had been seen
in and around Highgate Cemetery.
It invariably took shape of a tall figure and many witnesses described it as wearing
a cloak.
Apart from this, many people remarked on its eyes.
One old lady that I interviewed personally in 1969, for example, was walking her dog
at Swain's Lane, late at night and suddenly when she reached the main gate, the dog suddenly
stopped and refused to go any further.
The wind had turned around and the price of her treats.
At this moment the old lady looked up and just inside the main gate she described a
tall dark figure with glaring red eyes which seemed to be floating towards her.
Obviously she didn't stay much longer than that and she quickly went back down Swain's
Lane with her dog.
She also told me that the surrounding area had turned icy cold.
The first account is very brief and atmospheric but there is that important detail if you
noticed toward the end of the temperature plummeting.
Let's keep that in mind as we move on to the second account.
This is about a man who had also wandered into the vicinity of the cemetery.
Here again, David Ferrant in his own words.
Then again there was the case of a 45 year old accountant who I referred to as Thornton
because he asked for his correct name to be the Keld.
And he had gone into Highgate Cemetery at around this time really just to look around.
It was a late afternoon and at that time Highgate Cemetery was open to the public.
Unfortunately perhaps for Thornton he became hopelessly lost and he couldn't find his
way back to the main park.
He was quite near the large circle of tombs in the middle of the cemetery known as the
Colombele and he heard the bell go so he thought the best thing to do was just to make his
way towards the sound of the bell and then go to find his way out.
All of a sudden Thornton became aware of something behind him.
At this stage he didn't know exactly what it was but he had an overwhelming sense that
someone was watching him and again he noticed that the temperature in the surrounding area
had dropped quite considerably.
He swung around and he described Thornton's dark figure which was looking at him with
intensity.
He told me that it was almost as if this figure was trying to hypnotise him in any event.
He seemed to be losing control of his normal faculties.
At this point without warning the figure suddenly vanished and Thornton stumbled around in the
cemetery and eventually he found the main park and he never returned.
Notice the details in the second account.
It gets much more physiological, the impact, the atmosphere, the plummeting of the temperature.
All of these are interesting and they come about in different accounts of encounters
with a paranormal.
David Ferrand is retelling this many years later and there's reenactment of the sounds
and so forth.
It's pretty choppy and I appreciate you listening to that.
It's important because it's very rare to get an account of a vampire sighting.
I looked and looked and looked and even people I thought would make up something and tell
their dubious accounts.
There weren't many.
There's a lot of sightings of ghosts, cryptids and all kinds of things but vampires are hard
to find.
These accounts, if true, are really a gem and really unique and we need to pay attention
to what they're sharing.
If there's anything to find out about these, the urban vampire is really a very, very mystical
and very, very cunning creature that, because of its intelligence, knows how to hide well
among people.
This one seems to be a little bit different.
I want you to pay attention to the details that Ferrand shares about him because it's
not as though he's trying to hide this sighting.
He's a very eerie and very intent predatory feeling to the whole thing.
So Ferrand, again a young and petrous man at the time and interested in the paranormal,
decides to do his own investigation.
He spends the night at the cemetery.
This is Ferrand in his own words.
I suspected it could have been maybe a large animal which descriptions are distorted.
I even suspected that it could have been some very human person, dressed up with the intention
of frightening people.
But whatever, it was around midnight, late in 69, and as I passed the top gate of my
cemetery, I became aware, I caught sight of something out of the corner of my eye, and
I looked up.
Well rather I looked around and I saw a tall figure.
It must have been about seven-thorieth tall.
I couldn't tell but it's almost as if it was floating just above the ground.
But I distinctly saw its face, or rather I saw two points of intense red light which
I took to be its eyes.
At first, it was so real that at first I thought it was somebody dressed up as a vampire.
But the area turned icy cold.
It was almost as if you had steps into a refrigerator.
More important still, a figure or whatever it was seemed to be draining me of energy.
I too seemed to be losing control of my normal faculties.
The best way I can describe it is if I was living a vivid dream and I wanted to wake
up but I could not.
Realizing I was under intense psychic attack, I mentally repeated a capitalistic incantation
which is used to repel potent evil forces.
And just as suddenly as it had appeared, the figure was no longer there.
It was after my sighting of the figure that I decided that the reports were indeed true.
And we decided that is members of the British Psychic and Occult Society decided to launch
full scale investigation.
It's a remarkable retelling of his own experience and it's also notable because he shares a
defense that he deployed when he felt he was under psychic attack.
Well, if this is true, there is a way to fight back.
But David Verrant was so shaken up by this experience that he felt compelled to share
the details of his experience even against the for sure negative attention and stigma
that might follow him especially back in those days.
What became known as the Highgate Vampire, David Casilton in an article tells us that
in February 1970, Verrant wrote a letter to a local newspaper, the Hamstead in Highgate
Express.
Also known as the Ham and High, asking if anyone had seen anything similar.
A number of people responded saying they had glimpsed apparitions in Highgate Cemetery
and Swain's Lane.
These phantoms though were of a variety of descriptions including a tall man wearing
a hat, a ghostly cyclist, a lady dressed in white, a face grimacing through the bars
of a gate, a person waiting into a pond and a gale-gliding entity.
There were also reports of the sounds of bells and voices calling.
There was little coherence in the types of specters people claimed to have seen.
But another local young man with an interest in the supernatural, Sean Manchester, was
intrigued by what he read and this is important because it sets forth a whole host of cause
and effect that converges upon the Highgate Cemetery.
So Manchester would soon make public his ideas about what he thought that apparition in the
graveyard might be.
And thus was born, I think, at that time, the legend of the Highgate Vampire.
Though Verrant had never claimed the dark figure he'd encountered was a vampire, Sean
Manchester had little doubt that a genuine Nosferatu was stalking suburban north London.
Manchester contacted the Hammond High and on 27th February 1970 the newspaper published
an interview entitled Does a Vampire Walk in Highgate?
In which Manchester outlined a theory to explain the monster's presence.
Manchester alleged that a king vampire of the undead was buried in the graveyard.
This vampire, who in life had been an aristocrat and practitioner of black magic in medieval
Romania had been transported to England in a coffin by his followers in the early 18th
century.
The vampire had been interred on the side that would later become Highgate Cemetery and
his followers had also purchased a house for him in London's fashionable west end.
The reason for the Highgate Vampire's reappearance Manchester said was that rituals recently
carried out by Satanists in the cemetery had reawakened this evil presence.
Manchester claimed to have spoken to local people who'd experienced vampiric activity.
A schoolgirl Elizabeth Wadila had seen the vampire when walking down Swain's Lane.
Wadila began having nightmares in which something evil tried to come into her bedroom.
Eventually two wounds appear on her neck and she started to display symptoms of anemia.
Manchester and Elizabeth's boyfriend filled her room with garlic, crucifixes and holy
water and soon her condition improved.
Manchester spoke to another young woman called Jacqueline who said she'd woken in the night
to find something cold clutching her hand.
The next morning she noticed deep tears in the flesh where she tried to force her hand
free.
Jacqueline and her younger brother soon developed a fascination that kept drawing them to the
more dilapidated western side of Highgate Cemetery where Manchester suspected of an
empiric infection had occurred.
Manchester claimed that after details about the Highgate Vampire became public more people
contacted him all describing a similar tall dark being with blazing eyes.
We have to ask could there have been any truth to the claims about occult rituals at Highgate
Cemetery because that was part of what was going on then.
Many things made different phenomena some just people enacted were converging upon this
graveyard if you recall even years before this and the cemetery though at one point
very well taken care of had become dilapidated, there was graffiti, there were mausoleums
that were disturbed and graveyards that were disturbed.
But Manchester, remember Manchester is another young man interestingly enough takes over
the original account by Ferrant and he himself sort of propels the story forward.
In an interview Manchester didn't supply any proof to back up his ideas about the vampire
coming from Eastern Europe.
He would later state this part of the article was a journalistic embellishment but in a
book he published in 1985 the Highgate Vampire Manchester does mention a foreign nobleman's
coffin being brought to Highgate.
However appears to be more solid evidence concerning the occult ceremonies Manchester
believed were taking place in the graveyard.
Ferrant said that in Highgate Cemetery he often found the discarded remains of sagnus
rituals, stubs of black candles, satanic markings on the floor, tombs.
In one small chapel like tomb with a marble floor and stained glass windows an inverted
pentagram had been drawn on the floor.
Like Manchester Ferrant felt such activities might have walking along dormant presence.
Ferrant claimed his research showed that though the dark figure had not been glimpsed for
many years before the rash of sightings in the 60s and 70s people had seen a similar entity
in the Victorian epoch.
According to Manchester the police were well aware of black magic practices going on in
the cemetery.
It's worth pointing out that Ferrant himself was a member of a group that used to do rituals
in the cemetery, though they were believed to be pagan wicka ones rather than anything
satanic.
Ferrant stated that his group never interfered with graves of bodies but as many of their
rituals had been conducted outdoors they used a cemetery because it was a secluded open
space.
The late 1960s and early 1970s saw a revival of interest in all aspects of mysticism and
the occult including paganism, eastern mysticism, satanism, witchcraft and the t-
of Alistair Crowley as well as the emergence of a number of less conventional Christian
sects.
It's clear that an overgrown and secluded place like Highgate Cemetery could offer those
engaged in the more outlandish aspects of this resurgence a suitable atmospheric space
to carry out their ceremonies.
But little concerning the Highgate Vampire was likely to stay secluded for long.
That is because the Hampstead and Highgate Express continued to follow the vampire story,
re-interviewing Ferrant and Manchester several times over the next months.
In an article published on 6th of March 1970, Ferrant said he'd found dead foxes in the
cemetery but couldn't work out how they died, though he thought a vampire might have been
responsible.
So there he's just offering speculation.
This is carrying on months and months.
The newspaper is getting a little bit of juice out of this and rightly so, this is like I
said a true account and corroborated by a few witnesses and on top of that a very very
rare thing to see.
Not many stories coming forward about urban vampires.
I told you I expected a plethora of accounts and found very few.
This is why we're focusing so much on this Highgate Vampire and later on we'll focus
on some other lore and some other real accounts or accounts that have a high fidelity to them
and that could be coming in a second part to this urban vampires segment or not segment
but follow up or sequel of the series.
But back to what was happening at this Highgate Cemetery, Manchester had claimed he'd also
seen the foxes and suggested the vampire may have been using them as a food source.
So if we have a vampire that's feeding on wildlife, it seems to me that it's a vampire
that's doing its best to avoid hurting people.
And then when he encounters them as he did with Ferrant, which obviously didn't result
in a fatality, nor did it with the other two, the old lady and the accountant or the man
dubbed the accountant.
So there's a reason to think or could we ask maybe he's just this vampire, this entity,
if he was even a vampire because he's described as seven foot tall and I've never heard of
a vampire being described as such a gigantic figure.
And again, this could be some shape shifting or some mental capacity, some way to make someone
believe that something's so much bigger, much in the way that animals or cats make their
bodies big, could an entity like a supernatural vampire at sometimes just as a defense mechanism
just make himself look much bigger.
Seven foot tall is gigantic, and it's not easy to hide or hide in plain sight, being
seven foot tall doesn't behoove you to do that.
If he really was seven foot tall, maybe that's why he just haunts around cemeteries and hunting
wildlife to make it because he can't get close enough to people.
Either way, soon it was alleged that the animals had been found drained of blood with their
throats ripped open.
So there's something I like sharing with you about the stories in that is that there's
many signs and you can make up your mind about what could have happened.
And again, keep in mind that these are rare accounts.
Reports of the Highgate Vampire commotion soon reached the national and even international
media.
Articles appeared in the national press, television programs were made by both ITV and the BBC
and even the international news agency Reuters featured the case.
So this is really taking off.
The anxiety commensurate to the national attention and now international attention around the
Highgate Vampire was part of a growing obsession with such creatures in British society.
A number of TV programmers and horror movies had focused on vampires and I meant to say
programs, sorry I spoke.
One film in particular, the Hammer Horror production taste, The Blood of Dracula, this
was in 1970 had actually been shot in Highgate Cemetery just a year before the Highgate
Vampire incidents began.
More chillingly, on the night of Halloween 1968, an act of desecration was discovered
in nearby Tottenham Park Cemetery.
Flowers had been taken from graves and arranged in circles with arrows pointing to a new grave
which was uncovered.
A stake had been driven through the coffin lid and into the heart of the corpse.
As interest in the Highgate Vampire mounted, a rivalry grew between David Ferrand and Sean
Manchester with each belittling the other skills as an exorcist and each stating that
he would be the one to expel the specter lurking in Highgate.
So here we go, we have all the atmosphere, the whole background and even a budding competition
for paranormal investigators at the time, if you could call them that, they seem to
be rather amateur but interested and at the right place at the right time.
So all these distinct forces are now converging on Highgate Cemetery and it's significant
because what comes up next is going to change a lot of the history of this account and it's
going to be a significant mark in the history of vampire hunting, paranormal investigation
for many years to come.
Before we head that way, this is a lot to process so I think we should take a very brief
pause.
I want to share with you a little bit about what I've been up to and I've got a very,
very brief message to share with you, listen to that, take a glass of water and then we'll
be right back because what's coming up after the small message, the most promo of my work,
it's going to be pretty big.
You're going to want to hear this.
One man's solitary mission into the mysteries becomes an obsession.
Coming this fall, phenomena.
A new novel by Robert Cavalier puts you in the shoes of Julian Carr, a crime reporter
turned paranormal investigator who almost loses everything that once mattered to him in his
search for the truth in what could be his one last case.
Published by the Wildman's Press, stay tuned for release news on phenomenacasefiles.com,
on X at Phenomenax Files and for advance copies at Amazon and Kindle.
This story is spreading about a vampire, a specter lurking around Highgate Cemetery
and being shared by common people, rumors starting to spread.
Plus, we have these two paranormal investigators, quite young at a time, possibly amateurish,
vying for control of the story and competing with one another to be the one that would
expel the vampire at Highgate Cemetery.
This really started to build and it builds so high that it was actually surprising that
what comes next was not anticipated.
But let's listen a little bit more to what David Cassiton describes as the final unleashing
of the buildup produced this.
On the evening of Friday the 13th, March 1970, a program aired on ITV featuring Ferrant,
Manchester and others claiming to have seen supernatural figures around Highgate.
As Friday the 13th is an ominous day according to British superstition, this date is often
chosen to broadcast programs dealing with the occult.
The program even included live outside reporting from Highgate Cemetery.
Within two hours of the program being shown, hundreds of would-be vampire hunters showed
up at Highgate Cemetery, intent on catching the vampire.
They began arriving at Highgate in increasing numbers.
They surged over the locked gates and walls of the necropolis despite the efforts of police
officers to stop them.
This is how big it gets.
We're talking about a modern day pitchfork crowd and you could almost be transported
back to the 13th century or something like this.
Let's go on.
The vampire hunters, many armed with weapons, searched frantically among Victorian tombs.
Those interviewed at the scene appeared to genuinely believe in the vampire, saying they
were determined to find the monster and put an end to its diabolical actions.
The mob caught no vampires that night.
The sum insisted they glimpsed the tall, dark figure.
So more anecdotes that we didn't get to collect.
I don't think they were interviewed.
I will try to see if there's even more to this, individual accounts, people that survived
that time, but we still have rumors of rumors and we have the original accounts that cost
the anxiety and terror to certainly become very real among this community.
Manchester would later say the Highgate vampire furor provoked panic and fear and disbelief
on a scale which one might anticipate if an alien had landed from outer space.
The collective imagination had no defense against what we unearthed back in the late
60s in Highgate.
Forraunt, meanwhile, still unconvinced the spooky presence was a Nosferatu, complained
that media, hysteria and local superstition had turned the Highgate entity into a vampire.
I want to give a little bit of props to Forraunt because remember he never really explicitly
claimed even the accounts that he had seen a vampire, not at least at that stage.
I think many years later when this has become quite a popular event, he does I think lean
into the vampire legend quite a bit more, but at that point at least he has some healthy
skepticism.
And I like that because when we investigate anything, we should just take what we see and
report what we see.
Not drawing a conclusion because if you remember I'm adamant about this, a conjecture is based
on a cursory observation followed by a conclusion.
I saw a silhouette, it must be a vampire.
That's not the way we want logically to follow through.
So I'll give him props for that.
I like that.
But going on, on that Friday the 13th, as the amateur vampire hunter swarmed over the
cemetery, Manchester and some companions made their way to the entrance of one particular
catacomb.
Manchester had previously been there, or been led there actually by a sleepwalking girl
who claimed to have been bothered by the Highgate Vampire and had been exhibiting symptoms
similar to Elizabeth's.
Unable to open the door, the group used a rope to climb down into the catacomb through
a window.
They found themselves in a vault with several coffins, one of which a sinister looking casket
made of nearly black wood didn't seem to fit.
Manchester and his companions performed an exorcism with holy water and garlic and sprinkled
salt around.
A few months later, on August 1st, the charred, decapitated remains of a woman were found
near the catacomb.
The police suspected this mutilated corpse had been used in a black magic ritual.
After this, both Ferrand and Manchester seemed to become more active.
Ferrand was apprehended by the police in the churchyard next to the cemetery one night,
clutching crucifix and wooden stake.
Ferrand was arrested, but the case against him collapsed when it came to court.
Manchester and his followers, meanwhile, were led to a different family vault by a
female psychic helper.
After forcing open the doors, they found a black coffin similar to the one they'd seen
in the catacombs.
Manchester, suspecting it had been moved by black magic devotees, levered open the lid.
It was only when we discovered in the putrid chamber of that tomb in August 1970 what we
did and looked upon the horrific honours of what was inside, Manchester said, that we
had absolute confirmation of what we were dealing with.
Manchester wanted to drive a stake through the body, but a member of his entourage persuaded
him not to, as interfering with remains was a crime in England.
Instead, the group performed a ritual that used seven crucifixes, four white candles,
and seven cups of holy water in a ceremony carried out by four men and a woman, to banish
the spirit of evil or evil presence using the Latin formula.
News of the spoken exorcism did indeed bring a sigh of relief to many living in the area.
I'd like to note this bit about the Latin formula, and you hear this a lot in movies
and fiction.
There's always got to be some Latin-speaking spirit or demon or the exorcism itself, or
the exorcist, him or herself, use Latin words.
That's because not because Latin inherently is some kind of a warding off of evil spirits
type of language, but because many rituals that date back to the Roman Catholic Church's
origins did have, I wouldn't want to call them incantations, but the effect is similar.
There are phrases that have been in the Roman Catholic Church for this particular ritual,
for this particular right, really, holy right, for over a thousand years.
So that's why this pops up.
It could really be any language.
It could be contemporary language.
As long as there is conviction in the delivery and the deliverer is a person that is whole
in some sense and genuine, it seems to be what has impact on some supernatural event,
dissipating, vanishing.
And there's many things that we can speculate about that.
Is it, was there really anything there, or is just the act of that ceremony, of communion
with one another, a community coming together, a group of people with convictions saying,
no, go away, whatever you are.
Even if that is just in our minds, it's a powerful ceremony, a powerful effect, I think.
But going back to what was going on at Highgate Cemetery, Manchester says the cemetery officials
then bricked up the vault with the crucifix and holy water left inside.
When Manchester reflected, the vault didn't remain bricked up for long.
Ferrand and his group were also making efforts to deal with the strange presence.
Meanwhile, they decided to try to communicate it with the entity and discover its purpose.
In Highgate Cemetery, they conducted rituals using two circles, incense, candles, and a
medium.
The first time they tried this, the press interrupted them.
A year later, a whole year later, according to Ferrand, another attempt saw the entity
clasping the medium by the throat.
We had to break the circle.
The area turned cold.
She felt she was being enveloped by blackness.
She felt something was trying to strangle her.
That's Ferrand's quote.
Ferrand was now convinced the entity was malignant.
After hearing of incidents in which a sinister force had pushed people over in Swain's
Lane, he did more research.
Ferrand came up with a theory that the being wasn't a vampire at all, but an evil presence
that traveled along a ley line.
For those of you that don't know what a ley line is, and in fact, myself, this is rather
new information, maybe a couple of years old or a few years old when I discovered this
phenomena of the ley lines.
These are supposed to be natural lines on the earth that are set to be channels whereby
spiritual presences communicate more easily.
That's at least the lore.
Back in the day, and I'm talking back in the ancient days, many structures like the Stone
Henge and other structures that have very big religious or spiritual impact and influence
are set to be constructed along these ley lines.
That's what that is.
You can find out a little bit more, and I recommend it because that's a whole subject
in and of itself that I'd like to cover down the road.
Anyway, this ley line began at the Calambrium, a part of the cemetery where urns are kept
and ran across Highgate through two old public houses.
Highgate Wood and a block of flats built over a nunnery.
Ferrand claimed he found evidence of disturbing supernatural activity in all these places.
Some people he spoke to said they'd glimpsed a tall, dark figure, and a manager in one
of the pubs apparently, saw sight so horrific it turned his hair white, and one of the flats
built over the nunnery had to be exercised.
Despite the ceremony that Manchester and his colleagues conducted in the tomb, any relief
was short-lived.
Manchester said, strange occurrences failed to seize, and more horrifying incidents ended
up any hope that we'd quieted the disturbance with a mere, spoken exorcism rite.
Further vampiric outrages were to follow.
Further vampiric outrages.
And I like that phrase because it has sort of a dual sense, you know, it is the outrage
because the community is becoming hysterical, or is it because it correlates with further
incidents that are supernatural and related to this apparition which is thought to be
a vampire.
Three years pass, and then Manchester claims that he and his associates discovered the
same ominous black casket in the cellars of an abandoned and suitably gothic mansion
on the borders of Highgate and Crouch End.
Manchester suspected the coffin had been moved there to avoid all the attention the media
and enthusiastic vampire hunters had focused on Highgate Cemetery.
Manchester group dragged the coffin out of the basement up the stairs and into the grounds
of the mansion.
So this was Manchester's group.
And they did all of that.
They'd taken this coffin out of the basement, and I don't know about the legality of all
of this.
Again, disturbing, sacred things.
People that have been buried in the ground.
That's a very, very, I wouldn't even say unethical.
It's patently criminal and don't do it.
But they had a belief in all and what they were doing.
And remember the context of this.
This is something that kept people up at night.
Remember that bit about that girl who felt that she had traces of a vampire's, I guess,
injury of where she had fed on her.
So these things are starting to manifest.
People are worried, and these kind of things tend to relieve that worry.
Or do they?
Do they just pour fuel into the flames?
You decide.
Manchester goes on to say, Don was about to break, starting to send spears of bright
illumination onto the macabre spectacle below.
When the lid was removed, we beheld the same thing we'd seen in August 1970.
This was now the early part of 1974.
Our quarry this time looked even more exaggerated, even more distorted than ever remembered.
Far worse than even that time in the Highgate vault.
It's burning fierce eyes under the many furrowed brow.
We're staring yellow at the edges with blood red centers.
Unlike anything imaginable, the mouth was said in a cruel expression, the lips drawn
back.
This is a lot to process.
This is a very precise description of this apparition, believed to be a vampire.
And as I keep saying, I found it very hard to find modern day descriptions of vampires,
of sightings of vampires.
There's plenty of other sightings, witches, even werewolves, and all kinds of things,
but vampires are a rare breed, apparently.
What does Manchester do next?
Manchester drove a stake into the Highgate Vampire.
With a mighty blow, a sharpened shaft of wood impaled the creature's heart.
We witnessed the body's shell cave in and quickly turned filthy brown, and that itself
soon became a sluggish flow of inhuman slime and viscera in the bottom of the cask.
As Manchester believed that cremation is recommended as the ultimate deterrent and preventative
to the vampire's nightly wanderings, he and his followers then burned the coffin in what
was left of the body.
This took several hours, after which all that remained was a great scorch mark and some
bones that needed to be ground down and cast to the four corners, or four winds of the
earth.
That last part is Manchester's quotes, his words.
And we notice, and I want to point out really the different methods that these vampire hunters,
these makeshift vampire hunters, drawn either from lore or from some other source, are using
to try to get rid of this vampire.
It's a ledged vampire.
And they included what?
The incantations, the ceremonies, the rituals, the incense, the medium, in Foran's case I
believe, and it escalates to this stake being drawn into the coffin as the other paranormal
or vampire hunter claims.
He drove a stake right through the coffin and then the coffin changed.
But that seemed to be good enough.
I don't think the only thing that was not done was the decapitation, although that is
a set to be, at least in the lore it's set to be effective against vampires.
And finally cremation is what Manchester surmised is the ultimate kill all.
There's a lot to that and there's methodology that's attached to any kind of cryptid or
supernatural being, different ways to fight back.
To me that's very interesting, very attractive because something can be very powerful, very,
very powerful, very scary and pretty much outrun us and outthink us in every which way.
But I like the idea that there's a way to combat, to fight back any kind of supernatural
attack.
Whether there's truth in it or not, I like this idea.
I like being able to find some kind of recourse, whether that is ceremony or faith or coming
together as a community, which is probably the most recommended thing and presented
in a unified front or whether it is this more esoteric and escalated behaviour that you
would call violent but then the person is already dead so it's just a disturbing of
remains which is really difficult to process.
But those are things that I think I would like to highlight.
I don't like it when if you watch a scary movie or hear a scary tale when it's just
always the person running away and having no idea, always just no chance to fight back.
But when you stop and you fight back or you find a way to control your emotions, to do
something, to make a stand, whatever it is, it gives it pause.
And this is true in the natural world too.
Most predators, this is consistent with that, most predators and by that I mean actual animals
that prey on things that are not diabolical and I hate things that paint them in that
picture, they are just following their instinct.
We are predators too and we eat meat, a lot of us.
But a lot of predators are always looking out to protect themselves.
They have precious things called teeth and paws that don't get to regenerate.
If they lose them, that's it.
So they are very careful about their attacks.
When they attack, first they stalk and then they find an opening, an opportunity to surprise
the prey and run them down and kill them as quickly as possible.
Depending on the animal, for instance a lion would be much more a fast killer or a tiger
with just snapping the prey's neck or something like that.
A quick way to go, it decreases the chances that as that animal is attacking its prey
that it will in turn get hurt.
And like I said, there is just no doctors for them.
You just, that's it.
You get wounded and you possibly could die as well in the act of trying to survive.
So very interesting things here.
There is a bit more to this story because it has repercussions on how we think about
fighting back or is this a response to hysteria.
I think there is a little bit of both here.
There is just a lot going on that I would make up my mind one way or another.
I am just saying.
I think there is enough going on here that points to something very strange happening
at this Highgate Cemetery in England.
It results years later in how we look at defenses, how we look at even investigations, how should
they be carried out.
This incident as you already followed, it spawned a few that lasted a long, long time
between these two, Manchester and Ferrant.
Ferrant coming first, Manchester coming later, both claiming they could deal with a vampire.
And then, don't forget the crowds.
There is even a picture that I found online in some newspaper picture of these youths,
these young people, mostly men, just climbing over a fence.
Just in that act of we are going to overrun this cemetery.
We are going to catch this thing.
It's like hound dogs after a fox.
But anyway, so years later, after all of this has happened, Manchester claimed to have destroyed
the Highgate Vampire.
And his claims did little to end though, the feud between him and Ferrant.
So it didn't end with that.
It didn't put a punctuation point on that.
There had been rumors that the two would meet in a magician's duel on Parliament Hill
on Friday the 13th on April 1973.
Can you imagine that a duel, an actual modern day duel over this?
I mean, it seems to be more about ego at this point and appropriating the story, the legend,
what is happening here than it does to try to help the community.
And that is my editorial opinion on it, but it just seems to be it.
I wonder what you're thinking.
Let me know.
But fortunately, this duel never happened.
Instead in 1974, Ferrant was jailed after being convicted of interfering with remains
and vanishing, vandalizing memorials in Highgate Cemetery.
There's a price to pay for all of this investigation and all this kinds of really high jinks.
And we're learning something here.
If you're interested in learning about things like this and interested in pursuing a mystery,
you also have to remember that there are boundaries and there is proprietary and there is a sense
of dignity that you have to give to all of these things that you're doing.
Later on, I want to think about it.
What is it?
Is it even ethical to be pursuing a vampire with the intent to kill?
After all, there were rumors that the vampire wasn't even feeding on people.
It wasn't even killing anybody, except for that one girl that claims to have lost sleep
and then they did a ritual on her.
And besides that, it seemed like there were rumors about animals being fed upon and all
that, which seems to me kind of benevolent when you compare it to actual people as prey.
So Ferrant asserted that the damage had been caused because he was in trouble with the
law and he pointed the finger at Satanist.
He said, Satanist caused it rather than him.
But both Ferrant's imprisonment and the rumored duel served to keep the Highgate Vampire in
the public mind for several years.
Not only several years, now it's been like, it's got to be 49, 50 something, 53 years
or something like that, half a century.
And I think this legend will live on.
It's not a legend really because it did really happen.
So the quarrel between Ferrant and Manchester dragged on for decades, with each claiming
to be an expert exorcist while dismissing the other's abilities.
Both spent many years investigating paranormal phenomena and both produced books, articles
and websites and gave many interviews.
One of those I shared with you, that terrible footage, sorry about that, but that's the
best we could do.
It's really old.
But that was one of them.
And we're all about the Highgate Vampire.
It's becoming a bit of a franchise, this Highgate Vampire.
Each one of these two wants to really own it, own the story.
The two men and their followers, because now there's two groups that are adamant that
one has the right way and the other one doesn't, it's almost like two sects, you know, like
heretics, frequently sparred on social media.
David Ferrant died aged 73 in April 2019.
But Manchester still works as of the writing of this and the research of this podcast as
an exorcist and bishop in the British Old Catholic Church.
A conservative sect that broke away from Roman Catholicism.
Another interesting thing, because remember the rites are very Roman that I mentioned,
and there are not just one Roman Catholic church, which is what we most of us know.
There are also an American Catholic Church.
These are not cultic religions, they just separated from the Roman Catholic Church while
preserving many of the rites and traditions.
They just don't agree with certain things.
It could be merit, like the celibate, the celibacy of priests, or it could be something
to do with the Pope, most likely.
But they are carrying on the tradition having separated.
They're not very big, but they're here in the US and apparently also in England, because
it's the first time I've ever heard of the British Old Catholic Church.
After slaying the Highgate Vampire, Manchester maintains he has destroyed dozens of bloodsuckers.
I should say that again.
Not only did he claim Manchester to have dealt with the Highgate Vampire, but after that
he goes on for a long time.
So I'm going to focus on that on the second part of this podcast, because we go quite
a bit at length with this one and it needs to be that way because there's just so much
and it's a precious gem of an account.
But I want to go into the methodology, the origin, the impetus of what could be considered
modern day vampire hunters in part two.
I want to talk about one of those incidents apparently involved in a secondary contagion
from the Highgate Vampire in Finchley's Great Northern London Cemetery in 1982.
A bite from that infamous Nosferatu had corrupted the body of a woman called Lucia.
Arriving at the cemetery, Manchester saw a spider-like creature about the size of a
cat.
He stalked it and felt sure he'd put an end to the pollution of the Highgate Vampire
for good.
But has the Highgate Vampire or whatever it is really been laid to rest?
For on thought not, and ominously a number of sightings of tall dark figures with burning
eyes have occurred from the 1990s until the present day.
One witness who claimed to have glimpsed the spook in 1991 said he was very tall, well
over six feet in height and very thin.
I like this account because a seven foot tall vampire just seems quite a stretch but it
could be like I said or like I speculated if it's something that's an apparition it's
trying to ward off something maybe it's making itself look bigger just like a cat does.
But the description goes on, he says it wore a long black cape, light cloak and a top hat.
His dress looked Victorian in style and he appeared all in black.
He also appeared to glide and there was no sound.
The ground was littered with leaves, he had heard no sound from him.
It's amazing, so another account of the vampire or of a vampire-like figure and the way his
dress seems to fit.
Imagine if you're a vampire and you live a long time, how many of us are still stuck
wearing whatever it is the fashion that we liked at some point and it just haven't realized
that things have changed and people don't wear bell bottoms or people don't wear dye
jeans or whatever it is that the fashion was.
So they seem to stay stuck.
I like that detail, it's interesting.
I want to point us to whether there's any rational explanation of this Highgate vampire
because as colorful and dramatic as the accounts of Ferrant are and especially Manchester's
accounts, his vampire fighting, it's much more vivid.
You gotta remember Ferrant doesn't really go to all these lengths that Manchester does
and he's really outdoing him in the fighting of it all, the fighting of the vampire that
is.
There's quite a few of those even at that time that we're going to have a skeptical
mind and who would feel tempted to question the Highgate vampire narrative.
Are there any explanations, social, cultural or psychological that would account for the
hysteria and bizarre events of flicking north London in 1960s and 1970s?
The Highgate vampire was a strange case but below I want to go on or some attempts to
rationally understand the phenomenon.
One of them has to do with a phenomenon called legend tripping and by phenomenon I mean more
of a fad, more of a youth driven, dare type of thing.
Legend tripping is a term used by folklorists and anthropologists to describe a common pattern
of behavior in which groups of young people make expeditions to sites associated with horrific,
tragic and supernatural events, pretty much the premise of a lot of horror movies with
teenagers daring to go to the haunted house and break some windows and then start the
whole thing.
These visits which normally take place at night can be seen as rites of passage which
enable the youngsters to demonstrate their courage and daring.
In a modern world where we don't have a rite of passage from youth to adulthood, adulthood
that makes sense, especially for males.
The sites of such legend trips can include caves, tunnels, abandoned buildings and especially
cemeteries.
While most examples of legend tripping are relatively harmless, some expeditions may
involve trespassing, vandalism and even occult rituals.
Both forans and Manchester's entirages were groups of young people led by charismatic
young men and their escapades did definitely tend towards the ritualistic, and these two
groups were not the only ones engaged in legend tripping.
There were also the hundreds of other vampire hunters and those practicing the black arts.
Might one bug a bunch of legend trippers have been in competition with Manchester's
groups, hiding the vampiric corpse and doing their best to thwart Manchester's attempts
to track it down.
We have to speculate about all kinds of competitions.
We just highlighted two main opposing branches or factions of vampire hunters and by and
by Ferrand, David Ferrand.
To me he seems a little bit more honest, but at least a little bit more circumvent or less
in your face about his methods of approaching this vampire at a high gate cemetery than
Manchester does with his almost Hollywood-like gung-ho methods, which I think are just fascinating.
A related phenomenon to legend tripping is called ostentation, which refers to the literal
acting out of well-known legends and lore.
Such acting out can become a kind of game in which the borders of fantasy and reality
get blurred.
Do you remember I talked a little bit about that role-playing game based on the original
TV series, actually not based on the TV series, but based on this role-playing game that
also spawned the kindred, the embraced, failed, or cancelled show of the late 90s?
So there is a bit of that role-playing, at least that dimension of course the forum and
the method is so much more different with entertainment and communion and sharing and
living this sort of dark fantasy.
But here it could also be caused for a much more overt way of acting all this stuff out.
We humans, it's my opinion I guess, that when we encounter something truly scary we do tend
to appropriate some of it, act it out, absorb it, consume it, try to understand it that way,
bite into it, and see what it does.
I mean that's what Halloween is all about, isn't it?
We dress up for one night and act crazy.
But it's been noted by many that Highgate Vampire Saga bears strong resemblances to
Brown Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.
And Dracula, as many of us know, accounts mostly attacks young women and likewise young
men.
But Manchester Queen were those the Highgate Vampire chiefly pestered were women.
Brown Stoker's novel also includes sleepwalking victims, coffined vampires being discovered
in Putrid Falls, and the use of crucifixes, garlic, and holy water to repel such monsters.
Their similarities are the vampire's Eastern European origins, his purchase of a fashionable
house in the West End, and his red burning eyes.
The Highgate area itself features in Dracula, as it's where the aristocrat-made vampire
Lucy Wisterna is entombed.
The neo-Gothic mansion is a reasonable stand-in for Dracula's spooky castle and account,
like the Highgate Vampire is finally dispatched by a stake through the heart.
I want to pause and reorient us about this part that I just shared.
And while there are a lot of parallels, at least cursory parallels, it also does make
sense because Dracula itself was not just drawn up out of nowhere.
It comes from lore, comes from the old Eastern European lore, and much of the vampire lore
is centered in Eastern Europe, the word Dracula itself, I'm sorry the word vampire itself,
is said or believed to be of Slavic origin.
There's also some Greek possibilities there, North, Northern Greece, all of that is not
even that far from Eastern Europe.
And of course we talked about even more ancient beginnings.
The fact that those things match doesn't mean that what was going on there is suspiciously
like an acting out of the novel, and the tropes in the novel, and so on.
It could very well be that that's what a modern sighting looks like, that it even, I would
say, corroborates some of this lore, if you believe that this account is true.
We can also make a little bit of a parallel that the name Lucy, and Lucia, which came
in one of the accounts in the secondary infestation of the great Northern London cemetery, is
connected to this story.
We can go on with this in trying to pick similarities between the book and what happened at Highgate,
but Highgate was a real event.
These things manifested, whether they were caused by the forces of some apparition, a
real vampire, people imagining things, people out of fear and panic, starting to build these
two other vampire hunters, Manchester and Ferrant, fending the flames, it did still
happen.
It was an event, it's a historical fact.
So whatever happened, and if it happens to fit with the lore, I think that we can't
discount it.
We might even look more deeply into this.
One question though, Manchester did downplay the similarities of his vampire hunting to
works of literature stating that, I certainly haven't encountered anything that can be
described as a bironic figure from a Gothic romance.
That tradition in fiction has a lot of bironic input largely due to John William Poitard's
novel The Vampire.
But no, the eyeless sockets of impenetrable darkness I've encountered bear no relation
to the glamourized image.
A little bit of separation is just standing in his ground, and I think that I can respect
that, just because it's a novel doesn't mean that it wasn't also part of the sighting.
Still it would seem that much of the Highgate vampire mythos may well have been molded by
the propensities of local youngsters for legend tripping and ostentation.
That's not my opinion, I'm sharing the opinion of some of the people that looked into it.
I don't think that that is the origin.
I really don't.
I just looked into so many different angles.
You could say that life imitates art, and then art imitates life again.
But it's worth pointing out that the popular culture at the time was awash with vampire
images, and we have scores of 1970s movies and lore and studios were creating lots of
things.
But I don't know about the 1970s, but it was between, I guess between 1950 and 1970 there
were a lot of movies.
The one that comes to mind about the Nosferatu was the first silent movie made about that,
which I think is just a masterpiece.
You gotta watch that.
In the aftermath of all of this Highgate drama, numerous TV programs and comics also featured
vampires before and after, and it just becomes part of the collective consciousness.
And there's something to that too.
I want to think about a little bit about that angle, whether a collective consciousness
is there anything to it?
Can it make something rise out of nothing?
And we see things that we wouldn't have seen because we are culturally bound to.
But again, I am hesitant to take that direction.
I want to share that angle, but I don't think that someone who may be aware of vampires,
all of a sudden it's just going to say, I saw a vampire, it's in Highgate symmetry,
it looks like this.
I just don't see that most people are going to be jumping from one thing that may be in
the back of their mind because they were exposed to the lore of vampires, and all of a sudden
there's a claim to see them.
If that were true, then I should have found a lot more accounts than I did in my research.
And you can try that too.
If you find something, let me know.
But I did not find a lot that was credible.
I was even hoping to find things that were just way out there because there are people
that will say whatever, and to try to dismantle what new or modern accounts were, but there
weren't any, hardly any really.
You could say that people who have some mental disease might think that they're a vampire,
like to see real proof of it, kind of like in Anne Rice's interview with a vampire where
somebody's interviewing a vampire and then, boom, you really know that they really are
one.
We don't see that coming through that much.
You could say also that there's a kind of shared social anxiety.
We live in an age, and when have we not lived in an age of social anxiety, I want to know.
But we can say that we live in an age of social anxiety in vampire legends, and they seem to
be associated with times of social beheaval and change.
Published in the dying years of the Victorian era, Bram Stoker's novel has ancient folklore
running up against innovations like railways, telegrams, phonographs.
The exotic immigrant figure of the count embodies fears linked to colonialism, immigration,
globalization, with frequent references to new women, revealing anxieties about the emerging
feminist movement, and changing gender roles.
The eroticism of the vampire could be connected to the fact that Victorian sexual mourners
were just starting to loosen.
This is interesting from the fictional aspect side of all of it.
Could this have seeped into the story of the vampire?
Definitely, I think.
Fictionalizations are going to absorb that writers are not immune to writers, and I'm
one of them, absorb things in many different ways, experience things in many different
ways, and yet I still don't think that just because we are exposed to stories all of a
sudden we're spotting a chubby guy down the street wearing red and calling him Santa Claus.
There's a big leap from one to the other.
You could look at the background of the 1970s.
It was still the Cold War.
It was writing the, well, they wouldn't know, but it was going to last up until 1986 or
something like that.
Oh, 1989, pardon me, something like that, when the communism fell down, but we're still
under the threat of, if any of you were children or grew up in that age, you know what it felt
like to be under the gun, under the nuclear gun.
But all of that has spawned some anxiety, some deep-seated anxiety about death and sort of
channeled it into visions of the vampire.
I think some might say that that's a stretch, but it's death, carnage, murder, ugly images
of dead bodies.
All of this stuff is happening in the backdrop of wars that were happening at the time.
Humans can be far more horrific than one tiny little aberration in one cemetery.
Think about the scale of what we can do compared to what we say exists out there.
And if they do exist, and this is something that will elaborate more in part two, what
is it that drives our fear to go to these extents, to go to a mob mentality?
Why can't we try to understand the vampire?
Is there something to that?
And I'm going to introduce you to some accounts of vampire hunters, modern-day vampire hunters,
which I'm very interested in, and also some of these real vampire, when I say real, quote-unquote
real, they're not the real supernatural beings nor claiming to be, but they're subculture
societies that have formed in places like New York, Chicago, and New Orleans, not surprisingly,
who make a part of their lives, this vampiric sort of lifestyle, farther than the quote-unquote
ostentation or the playing acting or the role-playing games or any of that, these people really do
engage in that lifestyle.
And they do it in a way that's very ritualized and very secret and very discreet, and I want
to be tasteful about how I cover them because I don't want to point a finger and laugh.
That's not what this is about or point a finger and say how weird.
I want to be respectful of their point of view.
I don't want to cover this in part one because part two is going to look into more of this
research about the vampiric societies and subcultures, and yet that's still not something
I'm going to go as deep as you might think because my angle is going to be if you're
a vampire and you know what humanity is like, you've lived even a hundred years, but say
you've lived hundreds of years, what methods would you deploy to survive?
What techniques would you draw on?
What insight do you have into humanity?
I would love to interview a vampire, not for just the questions about well where do you
sleep, sleep in a coffin, what kind of clothes do you wear, do you have big red eyes, all
of that, but also to gain the insight of a true alien, an entity that would see us in
a very different light or in a very different type of shadow light.
Who's afraid of whom in that scenario?
It seems that vampires are more afraid of humanity as many predators are in the animal
world than we are of them.
So I leave you with that thought in a little bit more.
I'm going to share a couple of more legends at the start of part two, but I want you to
think about the role of humanity in relation to the vampire, where we can speculate about
vampirism.
We don't have to wonder about the extents and the actionable steps that we take to defend
ourselves as human beings when faced with paranormal forces.
That's going to wrap up this episode of Urban Vampires, the modern vampires lurk in modern
cities.
We're going to keep the campfire going here at the Phenomenon Case Files Podcast.
Stay tuned for part two, where we'll delve into a few more accounts of urban vampires.
We'll peek into modern underground vampire subcultures and shed some light into the methods
of old and modern day vampire hunters.
Meantime, share, subscribe and spread the word to friends and kindred spirits.
And if you should find yourself walking through a dark alley between high rises and you feel
the burn of glowing eyes on you, look up.
You might just have sighted in a modern city vampire.