24 HOURS - THE UNCENSORED TRANSCRIPT
First broadcast by the BBC on 15 October 1970, a rather selectively edited version
of Laurence Picenthly's interviews with Farrant, Manchester and Law was made
available on a number of Vampire Research Society audio cassettes throughout
the 'nineties. What follows is a full transcript of what the participants
had to say for themselves ....
LAURENCE PICETHLY (VOICEOVER) Highgate Cemetery, officially opened in 1839,
was once described as the most beautiful cemetery in London. There are
two cemeteries now. the one where Karl Marx is buried has become a Communist
shrine. But the other, the older private cemetery across the road is now
a forest of graves.
In the last few years, vandals, stalking around the undergrown tombs have
done over £9000 worth of damage. Statues have been swept from their
pedestals, and coffins disrupted and desecrated. (c/u of a clearly vandalised
Cory-Wright vault/ cuts to a cemetery official inspecting the latest damage).
To the general foreman of the gravediggers, WILLIAM LAW, who has worked
here for 23 years, this has worsened an already harrowing job.
WILLIAM LAW This plate glass up here used to cover all these blocks here. That one there, they smashed the glass, smashed in there, vandals got through there, crawled through, broke open a coffin, emptied the corpse on the floor and took the metal container he was in.
LAURENCE PICETHLY (Voice over as he strolls along with Law) In the vaults of the old catacombs, where Victorian families built their private sepulchres and the bodies of the long lamented were embalmed and set in coffins on the shelves (C/U of Cory-Wright vault again) other kinds of vandalism have occurred.
WILLIAM LAW Down this part here, there was two tombs broken into. One on the left hand side here, the doors were broken open and a coffin was half pulled over, and a big iron stake stuck through into the coffin.
LAURENCE PICETHLY The stake impaled the mummified heart. Other outrages
were to follow, even more bizarre, even more violent. Last August three
schoolgirls came upon the decapitated corpse of a woman scattered across
this path here, outside the tomb where it had lay for nearly a hundred
years. A week later the body was removed from the tomb twice in a single
day. This desecration was utterly different to anything that had happened
before at Highgate Cemetery. This time there was no lead missing from the
coffin and there were pentacles and other Satanist symbols chalked here
on the walls.
These indications of a black ritualism at work aroused the curiousity of
Sean Manchester, twenty-six year old president of the British Occult Society
(SM and LP at gates; cuts to interior of 553 Holloway Road) an organisation
which practices the art of white magic to combat evil. (Manchester bows
theatrically to altar, lights some powder in a bowl, it flares up, etc.)
The Society opperates out of this small incense smelling living room in
North London. Among other accourements (muffled) ... practice, Manchester
keeps an alchemy set of chemicals in bottles and several magical circles
inscribed with the many titles of the powers of good (C/U of pentagram
on wall; cut to Highgate Cemetery)
SEAN MANCHESTER Our first report indicated that there may be a vampire in Highgate Cemetery. A spectre was seen at that gate there, appearing to come from here, which leads to the catacombs.
LAURENCE PICETHLY Was seen by whom ?
SEAN MANCHESTER Passers by, residents, people whom we interviewed. It was even seen by our members.
LAURENCE PICETHLY What does this creature do ?
SEAN MANCHESTER As far as we know, it has only physically attacked one male person who had passed by the gate. But there are others who amply attest to having been visited by it in their beds at night. One young lady sports two puncture marks on her neck, just here, close to the jugular vein. She woke in the morning to discover two red marks on her neck after experiencing, not a nightmare, but an evil experience, not something she could describe herself where she thought she was being visited by something exceedingly wicked.
(Cut to Archway Road)
LAURENCE PICETHLY On August 17th, the former associate of Sean Manchester,
Mr. Allan Farrant, who used to own this Tobacconist Shop in Highgate, 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
(C/U of DF leaping into the cemetery), as he still does today. He armed
himself with a cross and a 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 all attempts by the cemetery owners to bar him Farrant
and his friends still maintain a regular vigil (of the ?) catacombs in
the hope of sighting either the vampire or the Satanists.
DAVID FARRANT We have been watching the cemetery since my court case ended and we still find (muffled)
LAURENCE PICETHLY Have you seen this vampire ?
DAVID FARRANT I have seen it, yes. I saw it last February, and I saw it on two occasions.
LAURENCE PICETHLY What was it like ?
DAVID FARRANT It took the form of a tall, grey figure, about eight feet tall, and it seemed to glide off the path without making any noise.
LAURENCE PICETHLY But Sean Manchester regards Farrant as "an amateur" and has taken it upon himself to exorcise the evil personally from the tombs. For protection, he adorns himself with laurel and garlic leaves and a Christian cross.
(C/U of Manchester brandishing his cross at the camera)
SEAN MANCHESTER Satan, get thee behind me and be gone from this place forever!
(cut to Manchester talking to Picethly again)
SEAN MANCHESTER This place where we are now is really a battlefield between the powers of good and the forces of darkness. This is where it has all been happening. The vampire dwells very close to here. We believe that the Satanists, through their black magic, have attempted to resurrect an undead body.
LAURENCE PICETHLY Undead? What do you mean by the Undead ?
SEAN MANCHESTER By undead we mean not of the living and certainly not one of Gods true dead but one of the Devil's undead. Some hideous afterlife and twilight zone between life and death.
LAURENCE PICENTHY Well, you've talked about exorcising evil. How do you destroy a vampire? How do you destroy these spirits?
SEAN MANCHESTER The only certain remedy against vampirism, the only certain way of destroying an undead, is by driving a wooden stake - like the one I have here - straight through the heart with one blow ...
LAURENCE PICETHLY What, like this ?
SEAN MANCHESTER .... and decapitation.
WILLIAM LAW I think they're nutcases actually. That's my opinion. These sort of people who come and do this sort of thing, I mean, well, you can't really put into words what they're really trying to get at. I think the best thing to do when you catch one of these people, to stop this nonsense, is to get one and put them in one of these tombs and lock them up and leave them here all night, and see if in fact they can find a vampire.
LAURENCE PICETHLY The owners of Highgate Cemetery regard Mr. Manchester,
his society and freelance vampire hunters like Farrant as a "thoroughgoing
nuisance".
The rituals, the publicity, the court case have attracted to Highgate all
kinds of undesirables who disrupt the tranquillity of the tomb. In all
their years, no gravedigger here has ever seen a winged creature, a ghost
or a black magic circle. But so long as bodies are violated and pentacles
chalked on walls, the cauldron of the occult will continue to bubble. Mr.
Manchester and his associates count among the last surviving relics of
an age when every flutter in the dark was reported to be a 'vampire'."
