So it turns out my break was much shorter than anticipated, many blessings in my life currently, despite the quarantine situation. I'll be in-and-out for a while, taking time off twitter is just as addicting as the app itself. Feels good to be away.
I return with a thread!

THE HIGHGATE VAMPIRE

First, background. Highgate Cemetery is a cemetery in London, England. It's now a De Facto nature reserve as its covered in weeds, vines, trees, foxes, rats, owls, all make their dens there. All the trappings of a creepy cemetery. 36 acres in total, it's a huge necropolis.

Back in the 60s, Highgate was in a much worse condition than it is today. The Victorian era graveyard was overgrown with weeds, ivy, and wildlife. Foxes made dens all over the cemetery, as did rats and other animals. While not abandoned, it fell into neglect for years.

Enter David Farrant. Local young man fascinated with the paranormal. After the news began to pick up on potential hauntings in and around Highgate, he spoke with two individuals who supposedly saw the a shadowy figure stalking about. First sightings date back to 1969

The first witness was an old woman walking her dog. She traveled down Swain’s Lane, a road running through Highgate. She witnessed a figure cloaked in darkness with glowing eyes seemingly float towards her. She reported that the air became extremely cold.

She ran as fast as she could out of the cemetery, the figure stalking her all the while. It never left Highgate, and slipped back into the shadows when she left.

The other witness was an accountant who got lost in the cemetery. (Remember its 37 acres and overrun with weeds, ivy, and trees). He heard a strange booming sound, resembling bells or drums, and followed it hoping it was coming from outside the cemetery.

Didn’t take long for him to realize the sounds were coming from inside the cemetery. A moment later, he recalled that “the temperature plummeted” and he reported a cloaked figure standing a ways away, staring at him with burning eyes before disappearing.

Farrant decided to go to the cemetery himself to check out what was going on. He spent a night there, at midnight he saw the creature. He reported the same description everyone had. Tall, cloaked, dark, glowing eyes, which Farrant described as “two points of intense red light.”

Farrant then claimed the figure used an intense psychic attack to drain Farrant and put him into a trance-like state. He repeated a Kabbalisitic chant used to repel evil, and the figure supposedly disappeared after that.

Farrant wrote a letter to the local news, Ham and High. They ate it up, and asked readers if they had their own stories. Sure enough, hundreds poured in, all describing strange and ghostly encounters they'd had at Highgate.

This gained the attention of “Bishop” Sean Manchester of the Old Catholic Church (A church that schismed from the RCC during the late 1800s). He said that the vampire was a “King of the Undead,” awoken by all the black magic rituals that occurred in Highgate.

Immediately, he entered into a rivalry with Farrant, but I won’t discuss that in too much detail, it’s not as interesting imo, and Farrant was a bit of a nutcase. Both of them are, to be honest, but the story is entertaining.
Anyway...

Manchester performed a sort of vampiric exorcism on a woman named Elizabeth Wojdyla. She purported that she encountered the vampire on a walk home from school as she passed the cemetery.

For nights afterwards, she had terrible nightmares and claimed that something tried to enter her room. Two wounds were found on her neck and she displayed symptoms of severe anemia.

Her boyfriend and Manchester covered the room in garlic, holy water, and crucifixes, and her condition improved. It should be noted that Manchester is/was a supposed ‘vampire hunter’ and so knew how to deal with such attacks.

Another attack came and Manchester spoke with the alleged victim. Her name was Jacquelin, and she was actually attacked in her bedroom at night. Something cold clutched her hand and tried to silence her.

She tore the hand away, and the next morning thought it was a dream. Until she saw deep tears on her skin where she tried to get the hand off. Her younger brother and her developed a fascination with the cemetery, and wanted to be there at all hours.

Manchester saw it as some kind of hypnotism and mind control the vampire cast on Jacquelin and her brother. Manchetser was determined to destroy the vampire for good.

*Also, quick note, Manchester had gone to Highgate, led into a catacomb by a sleepwalking girl. There isn’t a whole lot of info on this, but this girl is reported to be Jacquelin. Manchester and his group that accompanied him took the girl back home and plotted their next move.

The local news kept reporting, and Manchester was flooded with stories about supposed sightings of the vampire. All descriptions matched the original. Tall, dark, cloaked, burning eyes. The months went on with both Farrant and Manchester conducting their own research and rituals.

Manchester preformed his during the day, normally alone, Farrant at night with a group practicing Wicca
This went on for a while and the police just sort of let it happen, but that call came to a halt on March 6th 1970.

Both Farrant and Manchester found foxes strewn all over the cemetery, totally drained of blood. The police got involved and found there was truth to these claims. Not long after, national media ran with the story, and it spread like wildfire all across the country.

The frenzy was whipped up on the evening of Friday the 13th in March of 1970, Farrant and Manchester were on Television giving their testimony of the vampire, along with other witnesses. After the show aired, that very night hundreds of people swarmed into Highgate.
Countiued...

THE SAGA CONTINUES

On the night of the 13th, Manchester managed to get into Highgate along with a small group. They traveled back to the catacomb and descended into it from a window via rope climbing. Inside they found a number of caskets, along with one that stood out.

It was carved of black wood and was much larger than a normal casket. Manchester sprinkled holy water, salt, and garlic around it, performing another exorcism. They left the catacomb soon after.

Months later, the mutilated corpse of a woman was decapitated and set on fire near the catacomb Manchester had been found by the police.

Reports couldn’t determine whether this was a corpse dug up from the cemetery (as police couldn’t find a grave or tomb that was recently vandalized) or a recent victim who was murdered. Naturally, this added to the hysteria.

The police began to arrest anyone who was found inside Highgate after this event, and put it on lockdown.
This didn’t stop Manchester.

While Farrant was holding his own rituals (eventually coming to the conclusion it was a malignant spirit and not a vampire), Manchester was determined to put an end to the vampire’s terror. Traveling with a small group back to Highgate,

they were led by a spirit medium to a different family tomb. In the tomb, Manchester found the exact same black coffin as before.

Manchester opened the casket and found a man of extraordinary size inside. According to Manchester “we had absolute confirmation of what we were dealing with.” He was going to stake the body, but a colleague persuaded him not to.

Instead, The group underwent another exorcism, this one supposedly more powerful than the previous. Using “‘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 using the Latin formula.”

The police also bricked up the tomb to keep it from being further disturbed. This didn’t solve the problems though. As Manchester reported “Strange occurrences failed to cease and more horrifying incidents ended any hope that we’d quietened the disturbance with a mere exorcism."

Three years passed and the events of Highgate still occurred, but not as frequently as before. Manchester and his colleagues were performing exorcisms in an abandoned house on the border of Highgate and Crouch End. In the cellar, a familiar sight awaited them.

“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 I remembered it, far worse than even that time in the Highgate vault."

"Its burning fierce eyes, under the many-furrowed brow, were staring … yellow at the edges with blood-red centres, unlike anything imaginable. The mouth was set in a cruel expression, the lips drawn back.”

With a mighty blow, a sharpened shaft of wood impaled the creature’s heart. We witnessed the body shell cave in and quickly turn filthy brown and that itself soon became a sluggish flow of inhuman slime and viscera in the bottom of the casket.”

“Cremation is the ultimate deterrent to, he and his followers then burned the coffin and 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 winds of the earth

Reports of the vampire died down, but some still remained. The final confirmed sighting came in 1991. Giving this testimony “He was very tall, well over six feet in height, and very thin.’

He wore a long black cape-like 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 yet I heard no sound from him.”

Thus ended the nightmare of the Highgate vampire. manchester still styles himself as a vampire hunter, and has numerous successful hunts (according to himself). Highgate Cemetery is open to the public, but they don't talk about the supposed 'vampire' much. Bad publicity, ya know?