INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE HUNTER

(This article was first published for NorthWest Magazine (London), issue 92 October 2004. )

Halloween is soon upon us, with stories of shots and ghouls a-plenty. L.B. meets local ‘vampire hunter’ and paranormal investigation David Farrant. Be very afraid …

Making my way across town to the home of ‘vampire-hunter’ and psychic investigation David Farrant, it’s fitting that the route passes very close to the scene of what was to bring about his enduring epithet - Highgate Cemetery. Born and raised in the Highgate area, he grew up with an interest in spiritual matters (his mother, who died when he was barely into his teens, had been a member of the local Spiritualist Church) and ‘things unexplained’. So it was natural therefore that his interest was piqued when, in the late 1960’s, reports started to circulate of a ‘tall black apparition’ seen lurking amidst the tombstones in the once beautiful, now long overgrown and vandalized, cemetery. Eager to investigate and having paid several visits to the site during daylight hours to find nothing untoward, he then planned a night vigil.

“On that occasion I definitely saw something,” he reveals as we sit in his top floor apartment. A tall, rangy figure now in his late middle years (“I make a point of never discussing my age”), with piercing blue eyes and sandy hair, he could easily be taken for a slightly eccentric, scholarly professor rather than a man whose work takes him into graveyards and spending the odd night or two in haunted houses. He lives alone (an early marriage, producing two children, ended in divorce), surrounded by the various tools of his trade as an investigator into the occult and paranormal; his new book, Dark Journey, documents a selection of some of his investigations of strange phenomena.

Taking up the story, he goes on, “It was a very cold December night - I’d like to say there was a full moon, but sadly there wasn’t! I’d been walking around for a while and was just passing the top gate when I suddenly caught sight of a dark shape on the other side of the gate. It was stationary and appeared to be at least six or seven feet tall. Standing there, I was aware of the air around me becoming icier and I had the sensation of being drained of all my energy. Then as quickly as it had appeared, it vanished and the air returned to normal. I have never before or since encountered anything like it.”

Strangely, perhaps, for a man who has been tagged a ‘vampire-hunter’ for the last 35 years, Farrant is reluctant to describe what he saw that night as vampirical. “I don’t even believe in vampires as such. Certainly not the bloodsucking, stake-through-the-heart thing that we’ve become familiar with through those early Hammer Horror movies. No, I don’t accept that at all. But I think I’m forever labelled a ‘vampire-hunter’ because of one incident that got out of hand.”

The ‘incident’ he refers to was the night he was arrested after he and members of the British Psychic and Occult Society (the organisation he founded to investigate cases of psychic phenomena) entered Highgate Cemetery to hold a séance in the cemetery grounds to contact whatever the entity was. The group was not long inside before the police arrived and Farrant - in possession of various paraphernalia such as incense, candles and a wooden cross inscribed with protective symbols (which was to become the stake for killing the vampire, according to subsequent reports in the sensational press) - was arrested and charged with ‘being in an enclosed area for an unlawful purpose’. The case was eventually dismissed when it came before the court in September 1970, but by then the tabloid headlines had already tagged Farrant the ‘vampire-hunter’.

What was the so-called Highgate Vampire? Farrant believes the figure may have been a 17th century eccentric named William Powell, who would walk everyday from his Chelsea home to the top of Highgate Hill. Witnesses claim to have experienced a ghostly figure rushing past, who then disappeared at the top of the hill by the North Gate - the very point at which the Highgate Vampire was seen.

Ghosts and vampires aside, he has a strong affinity with the area. “You can’t get much better in London,” he says, referring to the open spaces of Hampstead Heath and Highgate Woods. “But I also like the sense of community here, particularly around Muswell Hill, it’s like entering a little village.” He admits that most of his work and social life revolve around his interest in the paranormal in some way, whether researching and writing, giving talks, or of course, the actual investigating itself. “When investigating cases of unexplained phenomena the first thing I look for is some logical explanation. My rolse is to objectively assess and present subsequent facts.”

One of the cases in Dark Journey is the haunting of a flat in Alexander House on the Hillcrest estate in Highgate. The cries of a baby, a menacing presence, eerie murmurings and objects moving of their own accord were just some of the unexplained phenomena that the resident family experienced. So afraid were they of what force might also be living there with them that they called in the local priest which, says Farrant, “only made things worse and the disturbances increased in their intensity. More chilling was that on the three occasions that the sound of a baby was heard crying in the front room it preceded the deaths of three residents on the estate.” He later discovered that the site where Alexander House now stands was once the burial ground to an old Victorian convent.

Do ghosts and ghouls really exist? Farrant is convinced that there is something else out there. “I have experienced many instances of psychic occurrences which could not be explained by normal means.”

As I start to pack my notebook and taperecorder at the end of the interview, he leans forward and says he hopes I’ve “got all that down”, meaning recorded. I laugh nonchalantly and agree. It’s only later when transcribing the tape that I realise part of the interview seems to have been mysteriously deleted. The machine was never switched off at any point during the interview, but it quite clearly stops just as he is discussing the psychic investigations he’s worked on, and picks up again 10 minutes later.

Very odd. But as David Farrant says himself, some things just can’t be explained.

Dark Journey by David Farrant is published this month (£5:95).
For further information, send a SAE to BPOS, P O Box 1112, London N10 3XE