The Highgate Investigation - Part 3

 

Arrest

IN AUGUST 1970, there was another development in the Highgate investigation. That month, the body of a woman was dragged from a vault in Highgate Cemetery, staked through the heart, and left lying in the middle of a main pathway. The fact that this was discovered by two schoolgirls made the incident even more gruesome. The Hornsey Journal's reportage of this incident, perhaps also did little to allay the already public growing concern over reports of 'black magic' and vandalism at Highgate Cemetery.

Evidence of vandalism at the cemetery was, of course, no new thing. But the element of 'staking the corpse', seemingly as the aftermath of some black magic rite, pointed convincingly to the work of the Satanists and their possible connection with the phenomenon.

  
Soon afterwards, it was decided to conduct the postponed ritual; the object was to summon the entity, make psychic communication with it and then - if it proved to be malevolent, which seemed an obvious fact - banish it from the earthly plane by conducting an appropriate rite of exorcism. The view was held that, if indeed the author's personal theory was correct, and the Satanic group were in some way responsible for 'controlling' the entity's appearances by means of black magic, such an exorcism would also dispel much of this group's power by negating the evil they had summoned into existence.

It was almost full moon (three days preceding the full moon and those immediately after being especially favourable for conducting magical ceremonies), and it was decided to hold the seance at midnight on August 17th.

Accordingly, Highgate Cemetery was entered late one night on the appointed date, the purpose basically, to conduct this psychical seance. The place chosen was the 'Thornton spot' as this was secluded and well within the cemetery.

In requirements for this ritual, a large circle was inscribed upon the ground which was adorned by protective symbols and 'sealed' with consecrated water and salt. Some ten feet away from this, where the phenomenon would be summoned to appear, a smaller circle was cast with protective symbols (it had not been overlooked that we were dealing with a particularly lethal form of psychic energy).

When the preparations were complete, the seance commenced but after only a few minutes, torchlight's could be seen in the distance and there was the muffled sound of human voices. It was the police: still some way off but approaching the back gate of the cemetery. This presented something of a dilemma; for not only was it dangerous - from a psychic point of view - to leave the protective circle once the ceremony had commenced, but there was the very real problem of explaining such clandestine nightly activity and being believed, let alone being understood. Because of this, the psychic paraphernalia was quickly gathered up and respective members headed for different exits in the cemetery.

On a sudden impulse, I made for the back wall, which the police were approaching, thinking it was possible to reach this without being spotted and then scale this further along.  After all, this was the easiest way out. But not only that; I knew the people who lived in South Grove whose garden backed onto Highgate Cemetery, and I reasoned it would have been easier to have explained to them than why we’d been in the cemetery than risk possible arrest by the  police  ‘posse’.

Unfortunately, just by the wall, I was caught by a flashlight and quickly arrested.  Luckily, however, the police must have assumed their captive was alone and they made no attempt to look for other people.

Perhaps ironically, any concern about being arrested was not so much for fear of having done anything wrong or illegal, but because the seance would be misunderstood and such misapprehension could attract adverse publicity to the investigation and the Society.

For this reason, the ceremonial paraphernalia I was carrying (which included candles, incense, a wooden cross adorned with protective magical symbols and a small tape-recorder) was quickly discarded in the undergrowth by the back wall hoping this would go unnoticed. Unfortunately, this was discovered and was to form the basis of a police charge of 'being in an enclosed area for an unlawful purpose' - although this 'purpose' was not clarified in the charge itself.

The case came before Magistrate Christopher Lea at Clerkenwell Magistrates' Court two weeks later, although it had to be adjourned as the Detective Sergeant in charge, Neville Brown, had apparently suffered a mild heart attack. In any event, the police were unable to proceed and the case was re-scheduled for September 29th.

The main evidence put forward to support the charge was that the Defendant had been caught whilst leaving Highgate Cemetery with a cross and 'wooden stake' (this 'wooden stake' was, in fact, merely a pointed piece of wood used with string to cast - or measure out - a magical Circle), his intention (according to the Prosecution) to seek out and destroy the legendary vampire that slept in a coffin in the cemetery. During this process, the Prosecution claimed, coffins would have had to be opened to find the vampire.

Logically, of course, in principle some of this may have been correct, but, due to my reluctance to give details of the seance realising that these would never be understood because of their occult connotations, and my refusal to name members involved in the investigation, the facts had been grossly distorted.

It was not true, for example, that I had been arrested with just a cross and a 'stake' but the other items I had been carrying had 'mysteriously disappeared' and had not been produced in evidence. Neither was it true that there had been any intention to 'open coffins', but the established link between 'vampires' and coffins had been sufficient to give grounds to this allegation. Ignorance and superstitious assumption - and almost certainly a desire to produce a scapegoat for all the vandalism and desecration at Highgate Cemetery - had done the rest.

If I had any doubts about the latter these were quickly dispelled when Neville Brown proceed to read out a statement which amounted to a verbal admission by myself to the charge. The crux of this admission was as follows ...

At midnight I went with the Cross and the stake to St. Michael's churchyard" [which backs on to Highgate Cemetery] "to look for the vampire. Had the police not arrived when they did my intention was to make my way to the catacombs to search for it. I would have entered the catacombs and inspected the coffins in my search, and upon finding the supernatural being, I would have driven my stake through its heart and then run away.

How this statement had ended up in this form and in a vernacular totally foreign to that of the author's, perhaps indicates how the whole thing was proceeding. But this notwithstanding, the case was dismissed, the Magistrate (this time Mr. DJ Purcell) accepting a Defence denial of this 'admission' and a further submission that I had already been featured on the television in connection with the investigation; and that, in any event, it was just as akin to 'hunt for vampires' as it was for some people to spend vast sums of money trying to locate the Loch Ness Monster.

The Magistrate added that there had been no intention to 'damage coffins' and that the cemetery was not an enclosed area in the strict legal sense.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the police were none too pleased at this decision or the publicity the case had attracted; although any publicity had only been forthcoming because they had brought the case to court in the first place and introduced outrageous statements throughout about 'staking vampires' attributed to myself which had no relation to the real facts of the investigation. It is little wonder that such outrageous statements were seized upon by the Popular Press, but the fact that many of these statements found their way into print but were not retracted afterwards when proved to be false by very virtue of my acquittal, (and even today, many of these earlier newspaper accounts lie erroneously on record), merely confirmed that serious psychic investigation could not be entrusted to the understanding of the police, or the Press.

In fact, some newspapers had a 'hey day' with all this sensationalism and some let their imaginations loose beyond the bounds of credibility. The Daily Express said, for example, that the Society had 'over 100 members looking for vampires all over Europe'! Belief in vampires may well have been prevalent all over Europe in the Middle Ages, as originally stated, but this historical fact was certainly not the immediate concern of the British Psychic and Occult Society!

With a little more sobriety, although not without a hint of sarcasm, the Baltimore Sun observed that apparently it was 'no longer a crime to hunt vampires in England'.

But the publicity brought by the court case made it impossible, at this stage, for the investigation to continue. Attracted by reports of 'vampires', scores of people visited Highgate Cemetery and desecration and vandalism of graves and tombs increased to an alarming degree. People flocked to the cemetery in droves and police were frequently called to evict groups of hooligans or self-professed 'vampire hunters'. Indeed, the situation had become so grave, that on Hallowe'en night, 1970, police literally had to throw a cordon of police cars around Highgate Cemetery to prevent people from entering on the night of the undead.

Police presence was strong around Highgate Cemetery in the early 1970s. Photo copyright BPOS

One small group of aspiring occultists, however, seemed to have evaded the ongoing police presence and claimed to performed a 'secret exorcism' at a tomb in the cemetery that had been desecrated by Satanists; although the only 'evidence' to support this was a photograph that had been sent to the Hornsey Journal showing a man dressed in an evening suit brandishing a crucifix and wearing a 'garlic necklace' posing outside some unrecognisable tomb in the cemetery.

Contacting the Society for comment, the Hornsey Journal were informed that we recognised the person concerned as a well known prankster and, if in line with his past record, the whole thing was just a well timed publicity stunt.

Unfortunately, a sad side to all this activity at the cemetery, at least, as far as some elements in the police and the media were concerned, was that the Society itself was held directly responsible for influencing its occurrence. This was an especial irony, when I had already stated publicly on several occasions that this sort of activity was to be deplored and had nothing to do with genuine psychic investigation. Indeed, in a article I was to write for a local paper scarcely a year later, I stated that the growing menace of Satanism in general - especially at Highgate Cemetery - was a 'very real menace indeed'. (This article appeared in the Islington Gazette on September 29th, 1972, and in it I also pointed out that it was the young, with their tendency to think they were invulnerable, who were most at risk to the dangers of Satanism. Attracted by some 'dare-devil' instinct to the challenge of Satanism, some would became entrapped in a web of corruption and degradation from which there was usually no escape).

But before the publication of this article, BBC Television decided to mount their own investigation and sent a team of cameramen and reporters to see if they could locate the 'vampire'. Although they were unsuccessful, what they did find was a mass of desecrated coffins, many of which had been deprived of their lead. Invited on the programme, I explained that although most of the desecration was the work of vandals, the activities of the Satanic group was a very real problem, as was the existence of the 'vampire-like' entity that had been witnessed there. This programme was televised on October 15th, 1970 and went some way in vindicating my claims that black magic was being practised at Highgate Cemetery.

But regarding the threats from the Satanic group, they had apparently given up. The threatening letters suddenly ceased and it was likely that - as they saw it - the damage done by the Society in exposing their activities to the public view had already been done and so there was no point in continuing their vendetta.

Meanwhile, there was a major development at Highgate Cemetery. Reports were coming into the Society that a young nurse had been 'attacked' by the 'vampire' in Swains Lane which runs alongside the cemetery. Eventually, the girl's identity was discovered and I arranged a meeting with her. Although reluctant to discuss the matter at first, I assured her anonymity and she gave the following account:

She was returning home in the early hours walking down Swain's Lane. As she passed the cemetery, a little way further on, she was suddenly 'thrown to the ground' with tremendous force by a 'tall black figure' with a 'deathly white face'. At that moment, a car stopped to help her and the figure 'vanished' in the glare of the headlights. She was taken to Highgate Police Station in a state of severe shock suffering abrasions to her knees and elbows. The police immediately made a thorough search of the area but could find no trace of her attacker. More mysterious still was the fact that where the figure had vanished, the cemetery was lined by 15 foot high walls.

On hearing this, I felt a tinge of apprehension. Until now, the 'vampire's' appearances had been mainly confined to frightening people. It seemed now, however, that the 'creature' was becoming 'bolder' and presented a real threat to innocent people. If it had attacked somebody once, it could do so again. Only next time, with more disastrous consequences.

It was decided to conduct a full scale ceremony in Highgate Cemetery whereby the phenomenon would be summoned and then banished back to its preordained place of existence.

This time, however, the Ceremony would involve the use of High Magic as a means of communicating with the demonic entity. It was not dared to use less than an advanced form of ritual. At least, if the ritual was not successful, it would be possible to control the entity, whereas Low magical techniques - albeit less complex - could not have afforded adequate protection.

TO BE CONTINUED…