The 1970 television interviews with David Farrant
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Two
photographs from the Thames Television’s Today programme, transmitted at 6.00pm on 13 March 1970.
David
Farrant’s first ever television appearance occurred when Sandra Harris
interviewed him for Thames Television’s Today programme. This very brief
interview in Swains Lane was one of a number where people who had alleged to
have seen a rumoured vampire gave their account. The Today report mostly
featured the findings of the British
Occult Society and its president, Seán Manchester, who warned on the
programme against Farrant’s proposed vampire hunt in Highgate Cemetery. The
lone incursion nevertheless went ahead five months later, resulting in
Farrant’s arrest. The second television interview with Farrant consisted
largely of a reconstruction of that event. David Farrant was not a member of
the British Occult Society which, until its dissolution in August 1988, was
strictly an organisation for the examination of alleged occult and paranormal
phenomena. It did not countenance occult practices. Its president was an
exorcist who, in later years, entered holy orders.
Today was transmitted at 6.00pm on 13 March 1970. The
unabridged text of the Today interview with David Farrant follows:
Sandra
Harris: “Did you get
any feeling from it? Did you feel that it was
evil?
David
Farrant: “Yes, I did
feel it was evil because the last time I actually saw its face, and it looked
like it had been dead for a long time.”
Sandra
Harris: “What do you
mean by that?”
David
Farrant: “Well, I mean
it certainly wasn’t human.”
Farrant
wore a black mackintosh during the interview and carried no accoutrements
normally associated with vampire hunting. That would all change by the time of
the second interview following his arrest in Highgate Cemetery. Now he wore
over his dark jumper a Roman Catholic rosary around his neck, carrying with him
a sharpened wooden stake and a Christian cross. Pictures and quoted text that
follow are from the BBC 24 Hours interview with David Farrant, first
televised at 10.30pm on 15 October 1970. Three decades after it was first
broadcast, the same film report containing Farrant’s second television
interview was shown again in its entirety as archive footage, along with the
footage of Seán Manchester, on 23 May 1999 at 10.40pm during a vampire bonanza
on BBC Choice lasting from 8.00pm until 11.00pm. The evening was called Bite
Nite. Laurence Picethly’s interview with Farrant was sandwiched between an
interview with Seán Manchester, President of the British
Occult Society, that had been filmed at the Society’s north London
headquarters and on location at Highgate Cemetery.
The television report begins
with Farrant entering Highgate Cemetery, removing the cross and stake from his
belt, then stalking the vampire.
Laurence
Picethly: “On August the
seventeenth, Allan [known locally as ‘Allan’ ~ his
correct name being ‘David’] Farrant decided to pay a midnight visit
to the cemetery to combat the vampire once and for all. At the cemetery,
Farrant was forced to enter by the back wall [footage
shows Farrant entering via the rear of the cemetery],
as he still does today. He armed himself with a cross and stake, and crouched
between the tombstones, waiting. But that night police, on the prowl for
vandals, discovered him. He was charged with being in an enclosed space for an
unlawful purpose, but later the Clerkenwell magistrate acquitted him. Now, in
spite of attempts by the cemetery owners to bar him, Farrant and his friends [none
of whom were discovered by the police, or subsequently identified by Farrant]
still maintain a regular vigil around the catacombs in hope of sighting either
the vampire or a meeting of Satanists.”
The reconstruction continues
with Farrant demonstrating his stalking technique, and concludes with a brief
interview with Laurence Picethly.
David
Farrant: “We have been
keeping watch in the cemetery for … [pauses]
… since my court case ended, and we still found signs of their ceremonies.”
Laurence
Picethly: “Have you ever
seen this vampire?”
David
Farrant: “I have seen
it, yes. I saw it last February, and saw it on two occasions.”
Laurence
Picethly: “What was it
like?”
David
Farrant: “It took the
form of a tall, grey figure, and it … [pauses]
… seemed to glide off the path without making any noise.”
The
interview with David Farrant ends at this point. It is reproduced above in its
entirety. He was acquitted of the charge that had led to his arrest, it being
that he was found in an enclosed area for an unlawful purpose. Highgate
Cemetery, by any stretch of the imagination, could not be described as “an
enclosed area.” The film now returns to Seán Manchester and the BOS.
Laurence
Picethly: [continuing
to narrate as images of Seán Manchester conducting an exorcism appear on screen] “But Seán Manchester regards Farrant as
an amateur, and has taken it upon himself to exorcise the evil personally.”
President of the British
Occult Society, Seán Manchester,
during the BBC’s filmed
reconstruction of an exorcism rite.
A
filmed reconstruction of the spoken exorcism conducted by Seán Manchester two
months prior in the Circle of Lebanon follows Laurence Picethly’s interview
with independent vampire stalker Farrant. A full description of this exorcism
can be found on pages 87-94 of the current hardback edition of Seán
Manchester’s The Highgate Vampire (Gothic Press, 1991).
When
interviewed by Laurence Picethly, following the exorcism reconstruction
footage, Seán Manchester pronounced:
“This place we are now
is really a battlefield between the powers of good and the forces of darkness.”
And
so it proved.