"This place we are now is really a
battlefield between the powers of
good and the forces of darkness."
The Author (BBC Television, 15 October 1970)
Not long after my taking a leading rôle in a society for occult investigation, a knock came on the door of my flat. It was Anthony Hill - later referred to by the man he cuckolded as “Hutchinson” - who had once worked full-time in the darkroom at the Kilburn branch of Jerome Portraiture, but was now a milkman in the mornings, leaving his afternoons free to work at Seán Art Sudios’ darkroom. I was impressed by his ability to quote Byron’s poetry at length. His favourite poet, however, was Shelley after whom his daughter was middle-named. His wife, Elizabeth, wore a silver hakenkreuz necklace, which he had purchased not long after they married in 1966. The photographic studio was always busy on Saturdays, which might explain why I was not invited to their wedding. Friday evenings at their home witnessed séances with all the dinner guests. A member of my studio staff was present on a number of these occasions, and almost fainted when the wine glass used at one séance allegedly lifted up in the air and shattered. Yet another incident involved an electric plug suddenly exploding in its socket with an ensuing shower of sparks just as contact was made with the alleged discarnate spirit. Anthony thought he was receiving messages from a nineteenth century spirit until it told him to go away in no uncertain terms. “Adieu” was all he received via the ouija-board thereafter. On hearing about these incidents, I felt then, as I do now, that the only spirits to be evoked at séances are malevolent ones. His wife became disturbed by these strange experiences, and further attempts to contact the dead were quickly abandoned. Anthony once told me that he believed in the Devil because he had seen his form manifest in cigarette smoke inside the Kilburn studio’s darkroom. This incident occurred before I knew him. He also admired the poet, climber and diabolist Aleister Crowley who featured, along with many others, on the cover of The Beatles’ album Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. Crowley had shocked an entire generation in Edwardian Britain, only to become an icon of the 1960s. It was Anthony, part-time employee in my studio darkroom and self-styled occult dabbler, who now came knocking at my door. Nothing would ever be quite the same again. Anthony failed to return to work after the affair - something he described as the happiest six months of his life - and instead opted to take jobs other than darkroom work, including another milk round before becoming a newspaper vendor. Mary returned to “Allan,” but left to live with her parents two days after giving birth to a second son in August 1969. She eventually filed for a divorce. Anthony returned to his wife and their Highgate flat in London.
He stood alongside an attractive dark-haired woman, not his wife, who held a baby, not his baby, in her arms. They wanted the use of my flat for a brief period before going off together to goodness knows where. Anthony referred to the cuckold as “Allan,” which, although not his real name, was the name by which he was generally known. I vaguely recognised the female, Mary, as a barmaid from The Woodman pub on Archway Road where I had played tenor saxophone in a jazz group on a couple of occasions. Now she and Anthony were asking me to collude in their “elopement.” Put on the spot, I made a split-second decision to resolve this dilemma by declining.
Nothing would ever be quite the same again. Anthony failed to return to work after the affair - something he described as the happiest six months of his life - and instead opted to take jobs other than darkroom work, including another milk round before becoming a newspaper vendor. Mary returned to “Allan,” but left to live with her parents two days after giving birth to a second son in August 1969. She eventually filed for a divorce. Anthony returned to his wife and their Highgate flat in London. The bizarre twist to this episode is that “Allan,” now having been made homeless following his eviction from a nearby flat, sought refuge in Anthony’s coal cellar. Partial to alcohol, “Allan” would later be arrested and held on remand for shenanigans not entirely unrelated to his drinking in the following year. A handful of months before the arrest, he wrote to his local newspaper, at the behest of Anthony, to declare that he had seen a ghostly figure some nights as he “walked home past the gates of Highgate Cemetery.” Thus he became one of a number of people I interviewed, and was briefly interviewed in the press and on a television programme along with various other witnesses. I immediately noticed an obvious flaw, however, in his overture to the press. It is physically impossible to “walk home” from any of the pubs he frequented in Highgate Village and pass by the cemetery gates in Swains Lane. A map of the area confirms his cellar lodgings in Archway Road to be located in a completely opposite direction. But, then, “Allan” was not the least bit serious when he wrote his letter of 6 February 1970 to the Hampstead & Highgate Express. It was fraudulent. The exercise was nothing other than an attention-seeking prank. To that end it succeeded. These facts would be confirmed by the contents of the envelope pressed into my hand by Anthony as we bade farewell on the day of Diana’s funeral. The envelope contained a cassette tape whereon the voices of Anthony and “Allan” could be heard conspiring to concoct a counterfeit ghost story for local newspapers.
It would seem that “Allan” had discussed faking another news story with Anthony who certainly showed interest, but only up to a point. It was decided by “Allan” to invent a story about the escape and recapture of his macaw, Oliver, now in the care of someone else. This was hardly original. Goldie the eagle had escaped from London Zoo in 1965, only to be later recaptured. This became a major news story at the time. “Allan” believed he had found a bandwagon on which he could catch a ride. Anthony, unimpressed by the Oliver story, jokingly suggested a fake suicide attempt from Archway Bridge with a no less fraudulent “rescue.” This, too, was unoriginal because a piece about the actor and comedian Peter Sellers dissuading a depressed person (about to jump off Archway Bridge) from committing suicide had also made the news headlines. While “Allan” was thinking about how to go about manufacturing one or possibly both stories, he happened to hear rumours of an alleged vampire in Highgate Cemetery on his visits to the Prince of Wales and various other pubs in the vicinity.
The escaped bird and fake suicide attempt stories were instantly ditched. “Allan,” helped initially by Anthony, now decided to exploit the five-year-old word of mouth reports of a vampire by writing a letter to the editor of the Hampstead & Highgate Express in early 1970, ending with the frank admission: “I have no knowledge in this field and I would be interested to hear if any other readers have seen anything of this nature.” Readers of the newspaper were certainly able to confirm plenty of sightings, but it was apparent from the audio cassette transcribed covertly in December 1969 that “Allan” plotted to use his friend Nava Jehan’s address along with a certain Kenneth Frewin’s address to write bogus letters using pseudonyms about sightings of a ghost. These fake letters are easily spotted with hindsight, and at least one of his collaborators - someone who did not use a nom de plume - is instantly identifiable.
The Highgate phenomenon was nevertheless a story about to snowball. This had the unfortunate side effect of dragging me into the forefront of something I had decided hitherto to keep a lid on. I felt that it was incumbent upon me to make some sort of statement in view of all the press speculation. Thus, on 27 February 1970, following batches of readers’ letters, I appeared on the front page to summarise the view of the British Occult Society. It did not make easy reading for a lot of people. Two weeks later, I featured on Thames Television’s Today programme for the same purpose.
The author during a televised exorcism at Highgate Cemetery in 1970.
“Allan” also made an appearance on the same transmission, along with several youngsters who allegedly witnessed a vampiric spectre at Highgate Cemetery. Sandra Harris, interviewing him, asked: “Did you get any feelings from it? Did you feel that it was evil?” Now calling himself David, “Allan” replied: “Yes, I did feel that 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 asked: “What do you mean by that?” “Allan” answered: “Well, I mean it certainly wasn’t human.” This was his total contribution to the Today report. Like the letter to a local newspaper, he employed his true nomenclature. He was captioned “David Farrant” - his real name - and he made no claim to any association with the British Occult Society. Needless to say, David aka “Allan” was not a member, associate or participant in the activities of the British Occult Society, which existed purely for the purpose of investigating the occult and supernatural phenomena. It did not countenance nor engage in witchcraft, magical ceremonies and occult rituals. The following year found Farrant fraudulently claiming membership. The claim was immediately refuted in the media by the British Occult Society. Farrant next absurdly claimed to be both “president and founder.” Disclaimers followed press reports whenever he was so described, invariably with the editor adding the prefix “self-styled.” In 1983, weary of being exposed in the press as an interloping charlatan who had hijacked the name of an extant organisation, along with the title of its current president, Farrant altered the name of his non-existent “society” to the “British Psychic and Occult Society.” Nobody was fooled. He had spoken in the media about his “thousands of followers” (Hornsey Journal, 23 November 1979), and even went so far as to proffer the notion of a number as high as twenty thousand members (Finchley Press, 22 February 1980). In the same report the following appeared: “On Monday, Seán Manchester, president of the British Occult Society, disclaimed any connection between Mr Farrant and the society. Questioning Mr Farrant’s claim to have 20,000 ‘followers,’ … Mr Manchester believes that Mr Farrant’s activities - including the libel action [which Farrant lost] - have been publicity-seeking.”
This had also been my assessment in early 1970 when I first made his acquaintance while interviewing witnesses to the widely reported Highgate spectre. It was the conclusion of almost everyone. The eminent researcher Peter Underwood would comment in a book published five years after Farrant had launched himself in the media: “Publicity of a dubious kind has surrounded the activities of a person or persons named Farrant and his - or their - association with Highgate Cemetery. … Mr Allan Farrant was caught climbing over the wall of Highgate Cemetery carrying a wooden cross and a sharpened piece of wood. … According to the Daily Mail Allan Farrant saw ‘an apparition’ eight feet tall in the cemetery that ‘just floated along the ground’ when he was on watch one morning waiting ‘for the vampire to rise.’ He believed that there had been a vampire in Highgate Cemetery for about ten years. … Less than a month later a Mr David Farrant was guiding Barry Simmons of the London Evening News on a night-tour of Highgate Cemetery armed with a cross and wooden stake which he carried under his arm in a paper carrier bag. In fact the whole project seems to have been a somewhat dismal and depressing effect - even the cross, created from two pieces of wood, was tied together with a shoelace.”
In a home-produced, stapled pamphlet, somewhat unimaginatively titled Beyond the Highgate Vampire, self-published a quarter of a century later, Farrant strongly denied his vampire hunting antics with a cross and stake. He merely wanted to measure out a circle, he rather unconvincingly claimed, with the wooden stake and a piece of string.
Even so, pictures of Farrant brandishing his “vampire hunting” items had been appearing in the British press since 1970. A nine inch tall photograph of him, holding a cross in one hand and a stake in the other, appeared on the front page of the Hornsey Journal, 28 June 1974, beneath a banner headline stating: “The Graveyard Ghoul Awaits His Fate.” The picture’s caption read: “Farrant on a ‘vampire hunt’ in Highgate Cemetery.” The report began: “Wicked witch David Farrant, tall, pale and dressed all in black, saw his weird world crumble about him this week. Farrant, aged 28, the ghoulish, self-styled High Priest of the British Occult Society [sic], was found guilty by an Old Bailey jury of damaging a memorial to the dead at Highgate Cemetery and interfering with buried remains. … Mr Richard du Cann prosecuting, accused Farrant of ‘terrible’ crimes and at one stage described him as a ‘wicked witch.’ … One of the witnesses for the prosecution was Journal reporter Roger Simpson. Farrant had given him a photograph of a corpse in a partly-opened coffin. Because of the nature of the picture, the paper decided not to publish it, and it was handed to the police.” However, the son of the investigating policeman in this case recklessly showed his father’s confidential file to all and sundry at a Highgate pub.
