Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 388: The Vampire Hunters of Highgate Cemetery

Episode Date: October 26, 2019

Today we explore the story of two legendary vampire hunters named Sean Manchester and David Farrant who, back in the early seventies, engaged in a serious rivalry concerning a certain vampyre that stalked the rows of London's Highgate Cemetery. Was it a spectre with psychic draining abilities or a flesh and blood creature of the night preying on the young girls of Highgate? Tune in to find out! 

Tune in October 28th for a special episode about the new movie Dr. Sleep. We interview director Mike Flanagan on the episode and get details behind the next chapter in The Shining. Don't forget to see Dr. Sleep in theaters November 8th. There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk. On the left. Why? I love your glade. That's when the cannibalism started.

What was that? Hello. My name is Theodore. I am a sufferer of porphyria. There's a lot of people I want to say due to my yellow skin, elongated teeth, elongated nails, that I am a vampire. But in fact, I am not a vampire. I am suffering from a disease. It's slowly turning me into a smelly lizard. And honestly, I don't really appreciate no one's home being called a vampire. At least I'm immune to all the weird flesh diseases you can get from flesh.

But at the same time, my flesh is already melting. Oh, that's sad. Please stop calling us vampires. Alright, welcome to the last podcast of the Leftover When I Am Ben, looking at Marcus Parks. Hello. And poor lizard skin, Henry Zabrowski. What happened, buddy? It's not because of the folklore of garlic that I cannot stand it. It is the acids in the actual smell of garlic that irritates the pores in my skin that are slowly loosening.

Oh my. I am not a vampire. Well, you're going to find love, buddy. Don't even worry about it. No, I will not. Let's be fair. Let's really just be honest with it. But I really am having a lot of time with the new Call of Duty. Oh, that's very nice. Modern warfare. I cannot wait to play that game. Maybe we could play online. Outer Worlds is fantastic.

That's what I've heard from you specifically, Mr. Marcus Parks. Okay, well, we have a great story today. Why is Henry Zabrowski doing Discussing Vampires? Well, because that's what we're talking about today. Very good. Specifically, we are talking the Highgate Vampire. Today, we'll be covering the tale of the infamous Vampire of London's Highgate Cemetery. I don't want to hear the word vampire today. Really? We've talked about this. Dog Me and I went back and forth. This is not a story of vampires.

This is a story of vampires. What's the difference? A degree in parapsychology. Which you can get from online universities. Okay, all right. Vampire it is. But really, the vampire is incidental to the real story here. Where the meat of all this story really lies is in the two competing vampire hunters who took it upon themselves to kill the beast.

But this is not the story of two dueling Van Helsings in Victorian England. This story takes place in the early 1970s. All right, like all good stories. Early 1970s. And instead of the dashing figures of yore, our two vampire hunters were a Wiccan high priest named David Ferrant and a fake bishop from the old Catholic Church named Sean Manchester. And yeah, the old Catholic Church, it is sort of real. Sort of, but he is allowed to just put on a costume and say I'm a bishop. Oh, okay.

Sean Manchester is a real life version of the priest from Dead Alive. This is a man that truly does believe I kick ass for the long. Very cool. Now, what does an actual bishop have to do? How many pedophile rings do they have to participate in before they can firmly be crowned bishop? I think you have to be able to play Ave Maria on the assholes of ten little boys without stopping. Like you have to, it has to be recording level. That is a very bizarre episode of America's Got Talent. America's Got Bishops.

Now, David Ferrant actually hated the term vampire hunter. And he looked at the Highgate case as more of an investigation into an occult phenomenon. But Sean Manchester looked at this scenario as a physical battle between himself and a dangerous bloodthirsty monster. That's a much more fun way to look at it than just being like a fat nerd running around the woods. Ferrant is a skinny nerd running around the woods. Okay, I'm sorry. He looks like Marty Feldman. But all of you, as David Ferrant looks like Marty Feldman from Young Frankenstein, he is gaunt.

He has to bring for every interview that he did, unfortunately he did pass away. But for every interview that he did, he had to bring extra microphones. Did you see the two interviews that he had where he's like, forgive the extra microphones. I am a soft-spoken individual. This is not just for my vanity. I mean, he was laughing about it, but he literally had to have two extra mics pointed to his face like a bunch of penises in a bukkake contest. Oh my goodness. I love David Ferrant.

He's such a great character. But what both men had in common was that both of them fell for the satanic panic of the 70s and 80s hook, line and sinker, albeit in different ways. See, Ferrant believed in dangerous satanists because it made the occult world that he ran around in more fun. If there were baddies around. But in keeping with his good versus evil persona, Manchester followed more of the Mike Warnke, Michelle remembers style of satanists, who sacrificed babies and flushed children down toilets. And Mike Warnke, for those that don't know, is a former successful stand-up comedian turned completely insane preacher,

and then I believe wife Peter. Oh yeah. He was a horrible problematic character, but he did have a funny joke about airplanes. He did. He did. Michael Warnke, he's a terrible human being, and one day we'll get to him. But these guys needed satanists to be real on either side, because on one side with Sean Manchester, it created the true villains that he's been going for all his life, or what he says is all his life,

that he's been hunting after diabolical satanists. And then you've got Dave Ferrant, that it's more of a, he's concerned about the use of the research, the nature of the magic of the satanist. That's what's, he's more mad that all of this research is being perverted. Yes, and if you want an example of a Warnke joke, it's, if nothing sticks to Teflon, how does Teflon stick to the pan? How do you know if yogurt's gone bad? Shut up, shut up, shut up. Oh my. But no matter their motivation for believing, both Ferrant and Manchester believe that satanists or diabolists, as Manchester called them,

which is a fucking sick name, I identify as a diabolist now, because it's more of like, I have an interest in being diabolical. I go with my binoculars down to the park and in order to go push old ladies off of bikes, like take trash cans and empty them in the middle of sidewalks, diabolical. Indeed. Well, both of these guys believed that diabolists were wreaking havoc on both London and England at large in the 70s and beyond in one way or another. Manchester even condemned the British government's decision to repeal the Witchcraft Act of 1951 because Manchester believed it gave, as he said, covens of the most dubious kind caught blanche to recruit youngsters without hindrance. Wait a second. Yeah.

So these people are diabolists, they believe in the devil, they're satanic to their core, but they wouldn't be bad because of a law, because they're like, ah yes, I would eat children, but that one pesky rule. But it was a hindrance, and that's the thing, is that he decried it because the Witchcraft Act provided a hindrance to these people, but when it was repealed in 1951, that hindrance was taken away. Okay. But Ferrant had no such misgivings about the repeal because Ferrant was in fact a Wiccan high priest, and his belief in what Satanist could do was far more metaphysical than Manchester's murderous diabolists. And because of these sorts of differences, high priest versus bishop, Wiccan versus Christian, metaphysical versus physical, Ferrant and Manchester eventually clashed and grew to absolutely despise each other. It's a decades long feud.

I love it. These motherfuckers can't stand each other. And I think as we analyze their relationship, I think it's mostly because David Ferrant, he was trying to pull an Elizabeth Warren. He was trying to say, yes, these are foul entities, but we have plans. We will create an orderly research, we will have a team go there and we will properly investigate the, we will get the evidence on all of our various machines and use candles. And Sean Manchester is like, we shall kill it. Immediately excited. We will find the vampire and we will kill it.

And the two of them were trying to, David Ferrant thought that he could be super, like, I'll be measured and everyone's going to come to me as the rational head of this story. People are going to be so excited to hear from somebody who knows what he's talking about. Not one of these flashy guys. And then Sean Manchester shows up and says, nope, I grew sideburns to steal attention from you. That's cool, man. It sounds like if Sam Raimi directed a movie about spy versus spy from Mad Magazine. Cool. And thankfully, though, both men wrote books about their experiences with the Highgate Vampire.

Manchester's, which was self-published in 1985 after numerous publishers passed it over due to its potentially libelous content, is titled The Highgate Vampire, the infernal world of the undead unearthed at London's famous Highgate Cemetery and environs. Yeah, dude. Ferrant's, on the other hand, was published in 1991 under the slightly less hyperbolic but no less verbose title of Beyond the Highgate Vampire, a true case of supernatural occurrences and vampirism that centered around London's Highgate Cemetery. Well, because Sean Manchester made his story all about his hunting and murdering of an actual vampire. David Ferrant wants, it's more about what can we learn about lay lies from this story. And what's a more compelling story, Kissel? I mean, honestly, I gotta go with the guy who just screams, let's kill it, because I just feel like that's a more fun trip to be on. Yeah, yeah.

Well, both of these books just happened to be in Neil's library over in England, so we were lucky enough to get to read both. Ferrant's reads like a fairly typical occult volume, at least until it gets the parts where Ferrant has to explain away his alleged criminal activity. But Sean Manchester's book reads like the pompous diary of a full-on hammer-horror Christopher Lee stalker of the vampire. More in line with other accounts written by men who truly believe that they grapple with minions of Satan, like Malachi Martin, who wrote about his adventures and exorcism in Hostage to the Devil. Here is a little clip of Sean Manchester's from his book that I just loved, his description of himself. As it has been my destiny to explore those aspects of the occult, which by their very nature defy all attempts at logical explanation and scientific examination, and having had the unique, though sometimes harrowing experience of discovering a facet of the maligned supernatural thought to have vanished centuries ago, if it existed at all. The task now befalls me to commit pen to paper and attempt a description of those incredible events, which, to quote my predecessor in these matters,

to the feather fool and lobcock, the pseudo-scientist and materialist, these deeper and obscure things must of course appear Grandham's tale. Oh my goodness, for some reason I just picture him in really shiny blue shorts with a big Johnson T-shirt, flip flops, little sunscreen on his nose and a backwards cap. I don't know why. Well Manchester truly believes that he belongs in this pantheon of God's earthly foot soldiers, as is evidenced by his dedication of his Highgate Vampire book to Montague Summers, who is the first person to do the English translation of the witch hunting manual, The Malleus Maleficarum, aka The Hammer of Witches. Cool. Montague Summers also wrote two books on the vampire, The Vampire, His Kittenkin, and The Vampire in Europe, and in full disclosure, Summers was also a pedarast and proud member of the Iranian poet movement who believed in the Greco-Roman practice of man-boy love. Um, Marcus, hey, listen, I think you're really simplifying the Iranian poetry in their movement, okay, because yes, maybe they were trying to restore the holy relationship between an older man and his young boy servant, but also they really concentrated on conservative verse forms. So I'd like to think, what's really important here? Is it important that a group of very famous authors all got together at some point in the 1860s writing about vampires and having sex with a bunch of little children, or what about the conservative verse forms?

My goodness. But no matter their taste in heroes, both Farrants and Manchester's books are great reads if you can find them, and it's through these sources that we'll be telling the tale of the Highgate Vampire today, which means that everything you're about to hear has to be taken with a massive grain of salt. Yeah, like a burrito-sized grain, a single grain, like a rock of salt. Now sadly, David Farrant passed away just this last April, may he rest in peace, but Sean Manchester, to this day, claims to go everywhere with a personal vampire slaying kit complete with stakes and a hammer, just in case. Um, sir, you cannot board the airplane with this briefcase full of dildos and vodka. No, no, no, it's my vampire slaying kit. This slaying kit is what allows me to see through the ruse of said vampire such as you. See you say, Agent Johnson? Vampire, quap! Sir, you're hitting me with a dildo.

Now suck on it a little bit. Vampire. Manchester also claims himself to be a direct descendant of the poet Lord Byron, which is a dubious fact that gets shoehorned into every nook and cranny of its Highgate Vampire book. In writing about the day his involvement in the Highgate Vampire story broke in the press, Manchester wrote, quote, And indeed, on the morning of 27 February 1970, I woke and found myself famous in a manner not entirely dissimilar to that of my ancestor, whose celebrity arose instantaneously with the publication of an epic poem in March 1812. I don't know if you've heard of him. His name is Lord Byron. He invented butt sex.

No kid, which is true. It's true. Wild. I mean, did he take a DNA test? The door's at ancestry.com back then. I think he said that it was rumored that Byron had a daughter named Lucy and Manchester had an ancestor also named Lucy something or other. Definitive proof. And Manchester absolutely revels in all the press he's garnered over the years. It shouldn't be totally unfair to say that a good chunk of his Highgate Vampire book is just his own press clippings coupled with a fair amount of bragging about his numerous television appearances.

It is, it's almost, you say bragging, it is weird, it's just a categorical series of him explaining that I've been on TV. It's like me talking to a casting director. I've been on TV. I've done stuff. You have to start yelling it, which then puts you in a weird defensive position. Because the more you scream I've been on TV, you realize you are screaming I've been on TV, which is the saddest thing on the face of the planet. And then the director is like, that's fine, Henry Zabrowski. Again, we're doing beefcake casting couch. So just drop, trow, sit on the couch, let's see you play with yourself. Alright, I'm playing the horny magician.

Hi, hello, friendly grocer, I bet I can make your cock disappear. Unfortunately, we're going to go the other way. Sorry. Well, in writing about one TV presenter calling Shawn Manchester Britain's number one vampire hunter, Manchester boasts that quote, He was by no means the first to offer this description and he would certainly not be the last. Ah, vampire. I mean, he's the best. He's the best at what he does.

And Manchester takes great care to differentiate between the creature feature version of the vampire that stalked Highgate and its environs, and the human blood fetishist posers prancing around Dracula capes. Vampiroids. That's what he calls them. He calls them vampiroids. That needs to be a video game immediately. I would play vampiroids or it sounds like you just went and you have a really, really horrible new version of, Oh my God, what? Hemorrhoids?

Hemorrhoids. You actually have the worst kind of hemorrhoids. It's hemorrhoids that don't shoot blood, they suck blood. But he got such a hard on for these vampiroids. He's so mad at anybody that he could even want to identify with being a vampire. He hated Goths because he went at all of these vampire societies and he would like, he would get into public fights with them. It's just people who like to dress up like vampires. So we talked a little bit when we did our vampire, we did our psychic vampire episode earlier this year.

But the actual vampire, according to Manchester, is a gaunt lean creature with pale skin, full red lips, horrible stinking breath, and razor sharp teeth. It's Prince Charles. That's absolutely lame. I wish I could die. And according to Manchester, these creatures are all over the goddamn place. And where else does he source this claim from the December 2nd, 1980 edition of the Weekly World News? Yeah, buddy.

The Weekly World News, though, but you know there's some hidden truth in there. Yes, maybe like, maybe Batboy isn't now Rudy Giuliani, but there is, I guarantee you, I want to believe in a world where like the CIA goes to page like 13 and they're like, look in the lower left-hand corner, you're going to see the story and that, my friend, is your new mission. That's incredible. That's awesome. That was in Men in Black. Yeah.

Most of my ideas are just Men in Black. Now, for our younger listeners, the Weekly World News was a fantastic supermarket tabloid that we all grew up with that was most famous for the discovery of the so-called Batboy among hundreds of other stories about cryptids, aliens, and Elvis. It's got great old-school Photoshop in it. I love it. No, no, no. Weekly World News, like, that's where I first saw Ted Bundy's execution photo.

Like, Weekly World News, I would argue the show might not exist without it. We've made this claim before that we're the Weekly World News for children now. Yeah. We've done this. As soon as I grew out of Mad Magazine and Cracked, I went right to Weekly World News. I loved it. And my grandmother thought it was all real. Yeah.

And that's the thing. It did kind of prime a whole generation of boomers to be unable to tell a fact from fiction when it came to the news. I mean, you know, it did kind of do that. It was in the shape of a newspaper. Yeah. And it was by the newspapers. But after checking out the current website for Weekly World News and seeing a story about a chimp that picks stocks, I gotta say, they still got it, man.

They still got it. Get me that chimp! But the story that Manchester plucked from the Weekly World News as fact was vampire killing sweep the United States. This story claimed that 6,000 deaths a year in the United States can be attributed to the vampire. I will say, if you do spend enough time in the UK, they are definitely gaunt enough. Especially at this time period, they're very thin. They got the big Adam's apples. That's still a thing.

Yeah. And they still got the hello, hello, hello. There's still enough of those around that you could go, vampire! And then throw garlic at them because they also don't like spice over there. But we don't think it tastes good, Henry and I, but Marcus loves it. I love it. I mean, it may not be full of spice, but it's certainly full of flavor, my friends. Vampire!

Vampire! Well, to give this story in the Weekly World News a sheen of respectability, the Weekly World News quoted Dr. Stephen Kaplan of the Vampire Research Center of Queens, specifically Elmhurst. He said, quote, There's no doubt that some of these creatures need as much human blood as a pint of day. That's a lie. They can't buy it.

It requires a prescription. And you gotta go on them pharmacies, them spooky. Because you can get the blood because you can also get a bunch of cobwebs in your jaw. You can get a cape that got a Superman-ess on it. Man, them pharmacies are crazy, yo. They got these glasses you can put on that makes your eyeballs muck out. They got all these fun little tubs of gank. You ever tried that gank and you put your fucking fingers in it, it makes that pussy-fartin' noise.

Anyway, I gotta go teach them a vampire school. I'm pretty sure that pharmacy is just Halloween adventure. Oh, yeah, it's where I got my prescription filled. You should have, I went and they said I was going bald. I went there and wrote a prescription for myself for a week. Well, Manchester then goes on to describe a different murder. That of Myra Mides. In this case, a 20-year-old man murdered an 83-year-old woman and as an excuse, the man said, quote,

I did it to protect my girlfriend. The old lady is a vampire. Whoa, that's a hell of an accusation to just throw around a willy-nilly. So, since so many goddamn vampires were just walking around, Sean Manchester, who was a member of the British Occult Society, relaunched the Vampire Research Society, which operated under the umbrella of the British Occult Society. Now, it's been reported that David Ferrant was a member of the British Occult Society, but he was actually a member of the British Psychic and Occult Society,

which was a completely different organization, believe me. It is a different organization, and it was for David Ferrant. He is the lifetime president, according to his Facebook page. Is it completely different? It seems like I can see a similarity. Have I sent you a picture of them? I saw one of the last group meetings that they had. I think it was in July of 2016, and it looks like they all call Alan Moore a brad,

you know what I mean, where they all look at Alan Moore like he's an alpha male who gets all the chicks. They are all together, 110 pounds, of graveyard hair. That's the only way I can really describe it. They're all knees. They're all knees and noses, and they wear a lot of brown. But they are scientists of the occult. Okay. And it's with David Ferrant that we'll begin the story of the Highgate Vampire. The legit story.

So, when rumors of some sort of supernatural being stalking the rows of Highgate Cemetery in northern London began in the late 60s, David Ferrant's life was what you might call a bit of a downturn. Hmm. According to one of Sean Manchester's many takedowns of Ferrant, because I actually don't know if this is true or not, this is just what Sean Manchester said. Okay. David had gotten into the occult, and a fellow occultist had run away with David's first wife, right after a tobacco shop David had inherited from his father had been forced to close down.

Oh. I do think there's some truth in there. Only because we know what happens in ufologist's lives, is that the truth makes it so you're too hot to handle, too cold to hold. Right? You have to be alone. So, David Ferrant technically had got a favor done to him by being cucked out by one of his fellow occult researchers. It was probably a guy with one of those big old like black fedora hats,

but like a skull duster. You always are going to get skanked by one of those guys because you're hanging around trying to be legit. You're just covering crystals. Right. And for some reason, you and your lady have to be in the same amount of crystals. Yeah. And own the same amount of crystals in order to stay together. How did the tobacco store close?

I mean, in Europe, half of the people's blood supply is just nicotine. I just don't understand it's the most, tobacco has the most addictive substance in the world in it, which is nicotine. How does it close? I don't think David Ferrant was the best businessman. No. No, no, no. He's like, he looks like Emo Phillips if he was very sick.

Emo Phillips. Great stand-up comedian. Weevils get in the tobacco. Yeah. Weevils. Yeah, weevils. The bugs. Yeah.

But still, David hadn't let the experience sour him on the occult. You know, the guy ran away with his wife and when an accountant going under the pseudonym of Thornton contacted the British Psychic and Occult Society saying he'd seen a tall black apparition lurking in the cemetery, Ferrant was intrigued. Hmm. This is the equivalent of Ghostbusters of him getting a call and him going, we've got one. This is it. Yeah, of course he turned to the occult.

All his life is now is ghosts. Right. You're alone, you're just with the ghost of your former relationship in your European studio, which is the size of a coffin, which is also scary. Of course you turned to the occult. Absolutely. That's what Sam Darnold said he saw, the quarterback for the New York Jets. He said that the New England Patriots had him seeing ghosts out there.

Wow. So isn't that interesting? I think he's got a brain injury and he's going to kill his fucking family. Honestly, the way the Jets are playing he might. Thornton claimed that he was walking through the cemetery one night when a seven foot tall specter hovering above the ground and surrounded by an evil aura hypnotized him. And for several minutes, Thornton was unable to move. He said that he felt completely drained of energy and once the being had taken its fill,

the entity disappeared and Thornton slowly returned to normal. Ooh. This account was intriguing to Farron for two reasons. One, the witness was an accountant and therefore not prone to flights of fancy. It would also be very advisable for you to maybe take a look at some of my accounts. Yes, I'm a vampire hunter, but I am not really a tax deal hunter. And two, the specter seemed to actually seek out a victim to cause physical harm, which is an exceedingly rare, if not unheard of thing for a phantom to do.

If you sit back and if you're if you're cheeped out right now in your home, it's kind of fun to just imagine like I was getting creeped out. Just the idea of like projecting it in your own fucking eyelids of like walking past a high gate like one of these weird old cryptic gates and then you just see this formless shadow with two glowing eyes like approaching and then you're like like bound by its psychic energy. You know, that's got to be kind of fun all bound there and you can do whatever he wants to you.

I don't know, buddy. It doesn't sound very fun because then he got all tired. So this is a psychic vampire attack. Well, quite possibly. Kind of sort of. Kind of sort of. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. What is that? Yeah. Then a couple of weeks later, an old lady reported seeing the same entity while she was approaching the cemetery gates with her little dog. She said the tall man glared at her from the entrance with those dark, dark eyes then vanished within seconds.

You get any but late? Those were the sightings that brought the story to Farron's attention. The ones that brought Highgate into Shawn Manchester's life were, as they will be again and again, decidedly more cinematic. Yeah. So you got to add like drama music to this. Yeah. Because Shawn Manchester went everywhere with the Christopher Lee Dracula themes going

on in his background and his brain at all times. Yeah. You got to. Yeah. I mean, the soundtrack of your life should just be John Carpenter. Yeah. Because he is incredible. Do you think the old lady was walking to the cemetery to just kind of like see where,

like pick out a gravestone or anything like that? Yeah. Are you going to do that? If you get buried? I want to be buried here. Are you listening? Are you listening? Is anyone there?

But a lot of people do that. Yeah. Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, I'm going to pick out a plot. Yeah. No, I'm going Forest Hills. Forest Hills. Nice.

Next to Scooter Rizzuto. Really? You're going to be buried on the island, huh? Life from your grave. Life from your grave. The first sign that something weird was happening at Highgate in Manchester's world came when two 16-year-old girls claimed to see graves in Highgate open up, followed by bodies rising from their coffins.

That would be fucking so cool. And there's nothing more reliable than two 16-year-old girls. Absolutely. And after witnessing this scene, one of those girls said she was plagued with nightmares featuring a pale, deathly face. Then a few weeks later, a different couple were walking home from the pub when they happened upon the northern gate of the cemetery. Once there, the woman started screaming.

Whoa. And when her fiancé turned, he saw a figure standing a short distance away, staring at them with a look of what Manchester called, quote, Basilisk Horror. Yeah. Cool. Then the creature slunk away into the night. Do you get any bills? No.

Now, right here at the beginning, you'll notice a clear difference between what these two men perceived the vampire to be. David believed it was a more supernatural, ghost-like figure, while Sean was convinced it was a creature out of a folktale, more like a cryptid than a spirit. Hmm. Well, it's also, it's what they wanted it to be. Yes. Because Sean Manchester was really looking forward to stabbing something in the heart,

which I totally get. Like, I'm with you. If there's a vampire out there, if there's a hunt going, fucking sign me up, I'll be a spotter. Like, I'll help. I'll be like, there he is. Like, that's what I'd be good at. He's in this tube.

Like outside. You go get him. I bet he's sleeping. He's in this tube. He's in this tube right here. He's in this tube. That's it? Yep.

I hope nothing wakes him up. But then David Ferrant was trying to be legit. So his whole idea is that it's a noxious entity that just kind of vacuums off psychic and living energy off of things. But again, David Ferrant's going to have to go look for a fucking plot line to figure out what the hell this thing is so that he could tell everybody. I think I would like it to be a spirit. Yeah.

I think I'm going to go spirit as opposed to solid cryptid. Well, the interpretation of the nature of the supposed beast influenced how each man approached his investigation. And David said that the cemetery was an absolute mess when he first showed up for his preliminary. During the David, one vault had been completely opened and it was possible to see the remains of a skeleton where someone had removed it from the coffin. And another open vault held the remnants of a coffin that had been set on fire. It's just, it's, it's, I honestly think it's, it's a crime.

It's really, really sad to desecrate a graveyard like that. I mean, even though they're all dead and no one has any clue what the fuck's happening to them. But I think still, I still think it's sad, but this is out of a fucking movie. Yeah. This is starting to really heat up. They're seeing vampires and then you walk into this fucking cemetery and all these graves are just fucking skeletons or just lying out of caskets and shit.

That's awesome. Right. Just a bunch of Mountain Dew cans, some Twizzler packages. David also noticed that the cemetery was littered with dead foxes lying in the middle of the pathway of the cemetery itself. And these foxes had seemingly died sudden violent deaths. And yes, I do. Yes, the fox was very, he was stiff to the touch, but I still attempted a little bit

of CPR on it. And I pushed his little chest to the tune of, huh, huh, huh, huh, staying alive, staying alive. That's how I know to keep the rhythm. And then I put my, my lips around here, which is very rank, little fox lips. Oh, it's so cute to kiss the dead little foxes. It seemed to be not natural how he died, but it's definitely natural how I laid him in my living room to sleep next to when I sleep on the couch.

And so Ferent decided to spend the night in the cemetery to see if a full investigation was warranted. The spot he chose was where the accountant Thornton had seen the entity. And the date Ferent chose was December 21st, the winter solstice, a time when the barriers between the spiritual realm and the earthly plane are especially thin. Cool. So at 11 o'clock that night, Ferent scaled the walls of the cemetery and started searching. I just think, just think of him climbing the walls of the cemetery.

Just, I mean, that must have been very difficult. Yeah. I have never done it pull up before. How do I get my knees up? And then the gate just falls forward. Yeah. And before long, Ferent said he was face to face with the alleged seven foot tall specter. Whoa.

Ferent said the creature was largely without form, but he could clearly make out two eyes, which indicated what Ferent called, quote, an alive presence. It was at this moment that Ferent realized he was under psychic attack. But just as Ferent realized this, the entity vanished. And that was the end of Ferent's experience with the vampire on this particular occasion. Oh my God. In the only way to defend yourself against a psychic attack, you got to get one of those beer helmets.

The helmets that have the two beer cans on the side, and then you got to be slamming that because then it closes your third eye. It does do that. That's what's important to know. If you've got six or seven BLs working in your gut, you are immune to psychic attack. But David Ferent was like, he's a very sensitive man. Very. He's so sensitive.

He went and he, but just talk about being vulnerable to a vampire, where as soon as you go looking for a vampire, it immediately attacks you. Damn. And the features investigation, on the other hand, featured a whole set of secondary characters. He started to build a world, a lot of girls, a lot of teenage girls. For his initial investigation, he brought back one of the school girls who had first seen the vampire. This girl's name was Elizabeth, and upon meeting her, Sean said that her features had

grown cadaverous, her skin was extremely pale, and her voice could barely be heard. Nowadays, that means you're just turning into Lana Del Rey. No kids. Come on. Come on. Come on. Yeah. It's one.

But over the course of a lunch date, Manchester was able to discover a few details about the creature that was draining her of her life's energy. See by this point, it had been a couple of years since that first sighting, and the nightmares had recently returned after this girl had moved out of her parents' house. And with the return of the nightmares, came a terrifying bout of sleep paralysis. Ooh. I tell you what, there's no one who can properly save you except for me, Reverend Manchester. And so the first thing we're going to do is presently draw you a bath.

Then I'm going to put you in this slight cheerleader's costume to give you the type of optimism that it would require for you to enter a scenario where I am a high school principal. No, listen. It is a long process to stop a vampire. I don't understand how that's going to stop the vampire, but I don't know. Well, this girl had all the symptoms of sleep paralysis. She couldn't move. She couldn't speak.

She just opened her eyes at night and just beat stuck. But the vision she saw was that of a gaunt gray face with glaring eyes and sharp teeth. And soon after she saw it, she said she'd feel something icy cold touch her hand, followed by a falling sensation and everything would go black. Upon a second meeting at Elizabeth's apartment, she elaborated further, saying she'd had incidents in which she felt the urge to rise from her bed in the middle of the night and walk out the door to where else but Highgate. Yeah.

And then when Manchester was preparing to leave on that visit, Elizabeth's boyfriend took him aside and mentioned that Elizabeth had a couple of marks on the side of her neck that had been there for quite some time. Uh-oh. You're like, weird, dude. I don't know what's going on. She's got like nipples on her neck, dude. I don't know what the hell is going on here, bro.

No, for some reason during this trip, Manchester paid the markings no mind. He's like, I'll take them. I'll check them out next time. It's fine. I'll check them out next time. Why not check them out this time? He was already on his way out the door. All right.

I mean, it seems pretty. That's pretty big proof. No time. Absolutely no time. No time to roll. I got to jump to another meeting. I've got to go. I'm just speaking to a unicorn later, so I have to go.

You have to go. I have to know. I have an appointment and then I have to get my sideburns. I have to get them sharpened. Oh, OK. OK. But two weeks later, the boyfriend called again after Elizabeth's condition had gotten worse.

The boyfriend said that she refused to eat and she could barely walk, and the only answers the doctors had were vitamins and iron pills. And so Manchester agreed to see her again and decided that this time maybe those neck marks might be worth a gander. He said when he looked at her neck, he saw two inflamed mounds of skin, and upon each mound was a tiny hole. Oh. That beer!

Sounds like it. And a few days later, the boyfriend reported even more strange behavior. Despite being seemingly near death, Elizabeth ran out of the house and made her way to High Gate Cemetery, where she sat staring at the iron rails of the entrance as if in a trance. Then she returned home. Well later that night, at about one in the morning, the boyfriend heard screams from Elizabeth's room. And when he walked inside, he found her gasping for breath.

And after he calmed her down, he saw that there were specks of blood on her pillow. Whoa. And after hearing this, Shawn Manchester knew for a fact that what they had on their hands was without a doubt a vampire. Vampire? No! And the only way we can possibly fix this is that I need you to sit on the couch. Now tell me, how old are you and where are you from?

I don't know how that's going to help catch the vampire. Oh, you're 18. You're from Moncatonko, Wisconsin. I'm new to London. Ah, yes, I see. You're searching for job opportunities. There was a, I don't know this firsthand, but there was a casting couch where the woman was from Wisconsin and she had a very thick accent and I was like, I just laughed.

Laughed and laughed. I was like, it's not going to work, but it's so cute though. But to break the news of the vampire to the boyfriend, Manchester brought along a copy of a book from 1733 called Dessertato de Vampires Serviensibius by a man named Heinrich Zapfius. Come on. This is real though. This is real vampire hunters.

You have to show up with the old books to show that you're legit. Yeah, and Manchester sat there and made the boyfriend do the reading. Okay, well that's good. He's like, I'm not going to continue until you do the reading and are versed on the ways of the vampire. You gotta do the reading. I had like a really hard time with where the red fern grows. You must learn Latin in order to date your very skinny girlfriend.

Cool. Well, after that, Manchester quizzed the boyfriend on how much Christian iconography had been present in the house where Elizabeth grew up. The boyfriend admitted that there had been quite a bit and Manchester said, ah, there's your answer. See, when Elizabeth first encountered the vampire, she was protected by all the crosses and such. So it was just nightmares.

But once she moved away from her Christian home into a secular apartment unadorned by the protection of Jesus Christ, the vampire was free to attack the young girl once more. Yeah, I'm kind of with Henry's characterization of this, dude. I'd be like, bro, I did not know there was going to be tests. Yeah, it is. That's like sucks. Hunt vampires. I'm like, not.

What is this? We're reading books. Whatever, dude. Well, what is this? Like, tranking my driver's class? I told that motherfucker, I don't need to take a test to drive, dude. I fucking get behind that wheel and go zoom, zoom, boom, boom, bro. So, without telling Elizabeth about the vampire at all, Manchester and the boyfriend took

to vampire-proofing Elizabeth's room. They sealed it with garlic and a crucifix, hung a handful of salt in a piece of linen along with the cross around her neck, wrote down the first fourteen verses of the Book of John and put the paper under her pillow, and finally sprinkled holy water around the room whilst reciting the Apostles Creed. Yeah. So, over a period of several nights afterward, the boyfriend sat with Elizabeth as she appeared visibly distressed every time the vampire attempted an attack.

Honestly, this is really a good old-school way of seeking attention. This is, you don't see this as much anymore. I mean, you see it all over YouTube. No, but I mean more people claiming, like, because, you know, sometimes the relationships break it up and you try to find kind of weird, some central conflict to blame it upon. So, having a series of vampire attacks is a really exciting way for the relationship to crumble. Yeah.

But eventually, the vampire gave up and Elizabeth returned to her happy, healthy state. Okay, it all worked. Meanwhile, David Ferrant was taking measures of his own. He'd taken his sighting of the seven-foot-tall phantom to the next meeting of the British Psychic and Occult Society, the BPOS, and he told them what he'd experienced in Highgate. And then these motherfuckers have to sit and take a vote about whether or not they're going to go and properly investigate the vampire sightings. They have to sit and talk about the pros and the cons and put together a supply list.

Sean Manchester, he's already fighting vampires. He's already doing it. Good Lord, it is literally every UFO meeting and every libertarian meeting. These are all the same people. It's crazy. After hearing Ferrant's testimony, it was decided that a continuous nightly vigil would take place at the cemetery by two society members at a time at the two places where the apparition had been seen.

This was to be a strictly observational endeavor as they did not yet have enough information to attempt direct psychic contact with the being that they believed was malevolent in disposition. They're about talking it out. So Manchester again, kill it. These guys are like, let's reason with the vampire. Can you ask it to leave it? I don't know.

They seem to think they are very, again, Jimmy Carter. This world. They're in this world of sort of like nice liberalism where they believe anything can be sorted out with a split of tea, a couple little crumpets, and then talking with the vampire in his home because they're going to his fucking house and talking about his fucking bullshit. Yes, exactly. But, you know, I mean, who knows?

We'll see what is proven to be more effective. Yeah, I think maybe just killing it. You just got to maybe do that. And so to gather more information about the entity, they sent a quote, non alarmist letter to the local paper. This letter? This thing is a vampire, but let's say there's a vampire at the Highgate Cemetery. How would you kill it?

I mean, anytime someone's like, not to alarm you, but there's bees in your ass. It is always horrible. Oh, man, I thought I was just sitting on the train too long. No, no. Oh, no, that's what it is. Oh, man. I'm a hive now. Yeah.

Not to alarm you. Not to alarm you. Oh, they're going out my dick. Oh, now you can be alarmed. Well, the paper was the Hampstead and Highgate Express, known colloquially as the Ham and High. Oh, yeah. And this letter was just written to see if anyone else had seen something a little weird

out at Highgate Cemetery, not wanting to alarm anyone, not saying there's a vampire here. I saw my first standing up 69 the other day, sir, no, we're talking about vampire sightings. I just wanted to tell somebody because then I tried to describe my wife. I turn around and she's not there anymore. With this, the Highgate Vampire got its first bit of press. But disturbingly, when Ferent and his team explored the cemetery further, they found evidence of what they believed to be satanic black masses. Oh, my God.

And Ferent said he could tell that these satanists were professionals, not just misguided amateurs. No, they're the of the highest adepts, because only they would know to draw a picture of Saturn on the ground. Indeed. Not to mention, again, all of the Mountain Dew, Mellow Yellow Bottles, the Sprites, a lot of them. I'm going to assume there's a lot of soda being drunk. Yeah.

That's a lot of it. Yes, adepts does require a certain amount of caramel coloring in order to properly speak to other entities. Absolutely. Well, the evidence for all this was that one tomb in particular had been converted into a small satanic temple. And judging from the magical signs and pentagrams inscribed on the floor, the temple was in regular usage.

See when Ferent examined the magical signs closer, he found that they could only be applicable in rites dedicated to the most maligned deities to rule amongst the old kings of hell, and that such rites could only be performed by the highest magical adepts. Adepts, and the vampire in such name as the entity they believed that it was specifically trying to reach was a thing called Valak, which is also what was the nun in the movie The Nun. And so it's an ancient demon that you could just get from, because this is also when he's saying the high adepts, they're the only people that would know how to summon these demons.

But I believe that the lesser key of Solomon was like kind of available in bookstores. I believe it's just available and you look up the coolest looking demon. And so this one's got like this little baby, it's got like a baby head and it's got dragon dick. It's like a thing, the whole back of it's a bunch of serpents, and it becomes an entity that you could basically summon that is like a vampire. Okay. Well, Ferent then reasoned that whatever it was that was attacking people in the cemetery

was an evil entity that had been summoned as a direct result of a satanic ritual, either brought from the depths of hell or awakened after a long slumber in a crypt somewhere in Highgate. Success. They did it. They did it. They were the first successful demonologists. I love it.

Then about two weeks into their investigation, two of Ferent's watchers spotted the creature on two separate occasions, once at the Thornton spot and once at the top gate, but both times it disappeared after only a couple of seconds. Meanwhile, in Manchester's world, the vampire, young girls around Highgate were being attacked night after night by the creature that he believed haunted the cemetery. One teenager said she was awoken in the middle of the night by something cold clinging to her hand. She said it took several minutes of wrestling with the creature before she was able to get

free, but once she finally got loose and out of the room, she discovered that her hand was dripping with blood and there were deep tears in her flesh where she tried forcing the ghoul's hand free. Now I don't want to accuse anyone of doing anything, and obviously I do believe this is a vampire situation, but do we know what David Bowie was doing during this time period? I just want to know. It's impossible. I just want to get a log of his pay because he might have been there recording albums

and he didn't really have total control of his faculties at the time, and this could just be just deep research for a vampire concept album that he might have wanted to put out. It's possible. Also, I mean, it does sound like Jimmy Savile just going through people's apartments, just holding their hands at night and being like, remember? Remember me? With any luck, they'll think I'm a vampire. And upon investigating this report, the icy hand and the ripped flesh and all that, Manchester

found that both the teenage girl and her brother were fascinated with Highgate Cemetery, and the girl in particular said she felt compulsively drawn to the graveyard. It looked beautiful though. I'm not going to blame that. It's a beautiful cemetery. Absolutely. Then, according to Manchester, even more dead foxes began appearing in the cemetery, and the autopsies that Manchester said were performed revealed that all of the animals had been

drained of blood through fang marks on their throat. Can I ask, is it remotely, even just within any realm of reality, that someone would go and just take a bunch of dead foxes they found outside and do a bunch of autopsies on them? I don't know. I feel like he's just saying stuff, kind of like how he just says he's a reverend and bishop. Because there's no records. There's no records of saying that he's a reverend or a bishop of any, he's never, he's not officially

anything. No. No. Eventually he's Sean. Yeah. Yeah. It's possible that it's a Lenny from Mice of Men's story where he just wanted to pet the foxes and then they keep on dying in his hands.

Except their throats are cut. Well we don't know what Lenny would have done with the rabbit if he was not stopped. And so as a service to the public, Sean Manchester himself went to the Ham and High Express with his absolute conviction that a vampire was roaming Highgate, which resulted in a full article about the phenomenon. And once the Ham and High went with the story, more and more people started coming out of the woodwork with stories about the Highgate Vampire. Meanwhile, the Satanists were getting perturbed at David Ferrant.

According to David, the Satanist who had been using the cemetery sent letters to the BPOS signed in blood demanding that the investigation at Highgate Cemetery end or else. You know, there is nothing scarier than a perturbed Satanist. They're not going to beat you up physically, but they will cast a lot of spells, they will do things. Amen. When I get mad, I mostly just get, I go, oh, I'm going to, oh, I'm in your territory. But I do believe the letters were genuine.

They did receive letters from Satanists. But then they realized as they checked, it was like, I can't believe these were signed in blood. This is black magic and it's, wait a second, I see little seeds. This is jam. Oh. Well, the proof was that the secret magical signs adorning these letters, again, letters signed in blood, were so advanced that only people with a great deal of magical knowledge

would know how to use them. But still, the BPOS poo-pooed the Satanists and continued their investigation. Nothing gives more umbrage to a Satanist than a poo-poo from a psychic researcher. Oh my goodness. But honestly, some of the ancient symbols that they used, Wade David Farron explained it was like the most dreaded, most dreaded symbol of all. It was the number eight, followed by several parenthetical dashes with a capital D at the very end, and squiggles for the effect of it coming.

The squiggles were the most damning aspect. Even though Farron was the one who really went hard on the Satanist angle when it came to the Highgate Vampire, Manchester also believed that evil forces outside of the vampire were at work in England during this time. In his book, Manchester quotes a Daily Mirror article from 1972 that seriously claimed that there were 10,000 witches in Britain at the time who worshipped evil. I mean, any time an article starts with the words seriously, there are, I'm being serious. Serious.

Seriously. Serious. Manchester also claimed to have exposed a group called the Ordo Astrum Serpentis in one of his other books from Satan to Christ. And as a result, the group was forced to change their name to the Temple of Olympus. Oh man, you made him change his name? You know that they're not a really evil organization if they feel like they need to change the name that they've been called out.

Yeah, that's true. Did they have like basketball teams and stuff like that with these groups? They're fucking apologizing like goddamn dominoes. Oh, dominoes did apologize and they made things right, and now they're paving our roads. This group, Manchester claimed, advertised in occult book shops and magazines and used soft core paganism to slowly roll teenagers into hardcore devil worship. And the whole thing was led by a convicted sex offender named Dr. Ray Boggart, aka Dr. Satan.

Dr. Satan! What is soft core paganism? They just show boobies but no genitalia. Is that it? Yeah, boobies, no bush. Yeah, yeah, they always got, they have aprons on her pants because it costs extra money for all the merkins between the shots to keep their vaginas warm. But with soft core paganism, it's kind of like what I used to get in high school.

It's like I got a book on wicca and you kind of look through it and you learn a little bit about the goddess. You learn a little bit about what baphomet really means. And that's really it. It's just, it's having candles. Yeah. Right. They're even bought into all the phony baloney, Mike Warnke style stories of babies being

sacrificed during graveyard blood orgies and teenagers sacrificed by their own parents while their girlfriends hung from crosses looking from up above. Yes! That's the thing with Mike Warnke, yes indeed. I do believe every story that he has told about witchcraft and satanist and also, if nothing sticks to Teflon, how does Teflon stick to the pan? Why do you park in a driveway and drive in a parkway? I don't know!

I don't know! My college professor told that joke every day and man, he thought he was very unique. How many boys was he convicted of molesting? I'm actually not sure. He used to go to a rock a lot and teach karate, um, so I'm not sure. Fly from your clay. Fly from your clay. But when it came to the vampire at Highgate, Manchester seemed to be focused solely on

the creature and its victims. He wasn't really bringing the satanist into it a whole lot. The pivotal character in Manchester's story was a 22 year old woman named Lucia. Lucia and Sean Manchester are a perfect combination of attention giver and attention seeker, attention wanderer and attention neater, they are a very good combo of, because Sean Manchester, you need, with a vampire story, and I do believe this, and this is why he then won the narrative. Because with a vampire, you need like a hot brunette, a hot redheaded woman, and a hot blonde. You need one of each stripe for the, for the vampire victims. Interesting.

Like a psychic-emotional feeder-gainer relationship in some ways. Some what? Interesting. Now everything with Lucia had begun with sleepwalking, which soon turned into a ravenous craving for raw meat, which Lucia gave into only when she was alone. Hold on a fucking second. I think there's a vampire in my house because I have that same craving every night. Raw meat?

You're just fucking chomping down on raw ground beef every night? The problem is I have to walk by my refrigerator when I go to the bathroom, and then I have to do a little pit stop into the refrigerator, and then I eat on the toilet. You're slowly becoming Elron Hubbard when he started working with the Writers Association, where you're just going to be eating weird like pan-cooked hamburger meat and drinking nothing but tomato soup, which is just hot water and ketchup? And because of Manchester's appearance in the Hammond High article, Lucia reached out. So when Manchester arrived at the house, he said that he found Lucia staring vacantly

out of her bedroom window, and far off in the distance, Manchester said that he could hear the fading echoes of the Strauss composition metamorphosin. Mia. Mia is my Lucia. There she is wearing nothing but a curtain. She must be a victim of a vampire, for how pert her nipples, what a wonderful afternoon. So he claimed that he actually heard, he essentially said that he showed up and a soundtrack began. Maybe it was the world's saddest high school dance.

I think she played it on a boombox or on a record player as he was showing up. She's been like, now comes the hook. So after he stared at her staring out of the window for about half an hour, Manchester examined Lucia a little closer and found that there were two tiny pinpricks along her jugular vein. So, Manchester graver a crucifix and said, I'll be back later. I'll be back later? That's what you're going to tell me?

But when Manchester returned two nights later, he discovered that Lucia had left the house wearing only a robe, and it wasn't difficult to guess where she was heading. Lucia was going to Highgate. Ooh, I thought you were going to say Subway for 4.99 foot long subs. So when Manchester arrived at the cemetery, he found Lucia gliding through the cemetery gates with her sister following behind. So Manchester followed as well. Finally, they found Lucia standing in front of a gigantic iron door that opened into the

largest tomb in the catacombs. Lucia then ripped the crucifix Manchester had given her from her neck and flung it to the ground. That was a gift. A moment later, Sean said he saw a gray veil obscuring his vision, followed by a low, booming vibration. Figuring he was probably dealing with something diabolical, Sean reached into his pocket and threw a big silver cross in the general direction of the entity.

Somehow that snapped Lucia from her trance and Sean was able to lead her back home. Dude, it's like fucking Castlevania. Honestly, it's crazy. But with this encounter, Sean Manchester had discovered what he'd been searching for all along. The layer of the vampire. Which is much scarier sounding than the studio appartment of the vampire. So Sean Manchester started making plans for what he called a major vampire hunt.

It's going to be absolutely incredible. It's going to be a massive, massive, tremendous vampire hunt, the biggest anybody's ever seen. The date was set for March 13, 1970 and naturally Manchester went to the press with the plan. She said, quote, we would like to exercise the vampire by the traditional and approved manner and drive a steak through its heart with one blow just after dawn between Friday and Saturday, chop off their head with a grave digger shovel and burn what remains. This is what the clergy did centuries ago, but we'd be breaking the law today, so my hands are tied.

I mean, honestly, if they do try to kill David Bowie, I'm going to be pretty pissed off. And that was the rub of Manchester's plan. It was actually illegal to open up a grave, even if there was a vampire inside. So Manchester had to wait until the vampire showed itself before he could make a move. It was around this time that the press extended to television programs. And a British show called Today ran a story on the Highgate Vampire that featured interviews with both David Ferrant and Sean Manchester. Now Ferrant's interview was a little more subdued as he said that it was BPOS policy

to not release any information on an investigation until it was complete. But he did give his personal encounter during the interview. Because the BPOS would not give him permission to appear on behalf of the BPOS, so he was allowed to talk about himself. But again, he said, the audience does not need all of this on the pomp and circumstance and in grandisement. They just need facts and people with a plan to fix these problems. And I have a plan to fix the vampire.

We will speak with it soothingly. Okay. And he thought that that was it. Everyone's going to be like, finally, a rational voice in the world of the paranormal. But then Sean Manchester shows the fuck up. Sean Manchester showed up and said that Highgate Cemetery was home to a King Vampire. A King Vampire. Now that's good television.

Let him go. Let him roll. Let him roll. Then he produced a crucifix and a homemade steak on camera and said, I'm going to behead the vampire with a gravedigger's shovel and burn that motherfucker tonight. Woo! And David Ferrant's like, no, no, we have to have a conversation. We want you to attempt to bridge the gap between us and the other.

No. Reason. This plan. I have a plan. But much to Ferrant's dismay, the TV program, which aired on the eve of the date of the vampire hunt, ended with the statement that David Ferrant would be the one returning to Highgate to slay the vampire. They got the two guys mixed up.

Now, David said that this was all just a misunderstanding. The first of many misunderstandings when it comes to David Ferrant, okay? He said that he had jokingly told the reporter that if the entity turned out to be a vampire, he would take any means necessary to ensure everyone could wink wink, rest in peace. That is a good joke, sir. I have been a grip on television shows for 15 years and that was the funniest joke I've ever heard. I'm not aware that I even spoke a joke.

I do not believe in a grandizement. It was just a fun grip. Keeper joke, you know? But people either took the report seriously enough or thought it sounded like enough of a good time where hundreds descended on Highgate Cemetery on the night of the hunt, half buzzed and armed with homemade weapons. Yeah, dude. Much fun.

Would that be to be a part of a Frankenstein's Stracula-style mob with pitchforks outside of the cemetery and be like, get the vampire, get the vampire? David Ferrant shows up like, and he could have done it like Sean Manchester did, kind of like the end of Ghostbusters, where he could have come in and been like, yeah, we got him. We're going to go get him. But David Ferrant got so mad because they were harsh in his mellow. Yeah.

I mean, I love it, man. I love it when the entire audience or when the entire crowd in the movie Waterboy shows up, when it's just Rob Schneider and all the other damned idiots. Well, the most interesting of these amateur vampire hunters was a schoolteacher from Essex whose real name was Alan Blood. Cool. That's a great teacher name. Yeah, Mr. Blood.

Mr. Blood? Oh, did you want to speak in Mr. Blood's class because we could speak after class? Well, Blood even brought along his students on a field trip to help with the hunt. I mean, obviously the coolest teacher of all time. Yeah. That's incredible. And Blood later told the Ham and High, quote, I have taken an interest in the black arts since a boyhood, but I'm by no means an expert on vampires.

So such a thing exists, it could be very dangerous indeed. Cool teacher. And so with hundreds of people milling about, getting drunk and waving shovels and steaks, Manchester stood up and made his way to the vampire's lair with a handpicked group of assistants. But once they got there, the iron door that Lucia had led them to weeks earlier proved a little sticky. I'm just going to have to use the scoring to take some elbow grease.

Come on, God damn it. Come on. Open up the tomb. Open sesame. God damn it. Who's got keys? So Manchester and his assistants were lowered by rope 20 feet down from the roof of the catacombs into the tomb.

There was a little hole up top. Oh yeah. I mean, these guys are just like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. There's no way that this is above their pay grade. Inside they discovered three empty coffins, but no vampires. So Manchester lined each coffin with garlic and tossed across inside each one before dousing all of it with holy water, fouling the vampire's lair. Hashtag lair fouled.

Lair fouled. I think that's also how Domino's fixed their pizza. Little bit more garlic, little bit of holy water. Then Manchester and his assistants ascended up the rope and told people what they saw. And right around the time Manchester was holding court, having the time of his life, cop showed up. Well that's the real goal here. They're going through me and like break it up, break it up, there's nothing to see here.

And they're like, there's a vampire hunting there. No shit. Now most people scattered and escaped by climbing over the walls of the cemetery. But Manchester claims to have stood his ground and he was at the very least not arrested that night, possibly due to the bishop's costume that he constantly wore. He's the only person I know that, like, the only person I've really heard of besides like a true child molester who just dresses a priest all day, like he is in character. He is Reverend Sean Manchester all the time.

But no one asked him for his papers or anything like that or what like story. Did priests have papers? I don't know. I don't know. I want to start asking priests for papers so I love to see, so when you see one on a plane and it was being like, nice collar, let's see your papers, you're a real priest, may God kill me. May God kill me.

Do it now. Do it now. The Manchester said the reason why he hung around was because he figured that if the coffins were empty, that meant the vampires were out and about doing their ghastly vampire business. That's what I mean. Driving for Uber. Whoa.

It's a hard, hard life even in a hard economy, even for a vampire. And sure enough, hours later, after everything calmed down, Manchester said right before the sun rose, he heard a low booming vibration, again getting louder and louder, until it suddenly stopped and nothing else happened. And when the sun rose, Manchester went back down into the catacombs and found that the coffins were still empty. Ain't no vampires got past him. Interesting.

He must have been pretty athletic to go up and down with this rope. He's in shape. Yeah. He must have identified that he had at least driven them away. Manchester dropped the case, as did Ferrant, at least temporarily. But about four months later, something actually very real occurred at Highgate Cemetery. On August 7th, 1970, two 15-year-old girls discovered a burned, headless body lying in the middle of a cemetery pathway.

Ooh. And this was not a murder victim. The pathologist who examined the body surmised that the corpse was most likely a Victorian who had been buried or entombed in Highgate Cemetery some 100 years before. But besides just the missing head, it was found that the body also had a stake driven through its heart. That along with the burning, meant that somebody had emulated Manchester's method of killing a vampire using this poor old corpse.

Vampire fever shot through the city. So this was like a thing. Like people were now going and actively, they were actively destroying the cemetery and going through and pulling open coffins and shit, and it became a hot spot. So David Ferrant, even though the whole time, in the beginning of his book, he's so upset about the desecration of the graveyard, but then he kicked off hundreds of people coming and destroying it further. It's kind of sad.

And so this wasn't a Victorian vampire. I don't think so. Okay. I don't. Did they kill her like that though? Or did they kill the body? I don't know. We don't know.

There's a lot of stuff. There's a lot. It's fucking loaded. It's a loaded conversation. Was there garlic in her butthole? That was just because she was Italian and that's very traditional. Now of course Ferrant blamed the Satanist. Manchester though figured that this was his cue to return to the tomb of the vampire.

But when he lowered himself into the tomb once again, he found that one of the three coffins was now missing. It's just sitting in Alice Cooper's house. So at a loss, he returned to Lucia to see if he could use her to bring the vampire out of hiding. Now Sean knew that it would take some doing to get Lucia to return to Highgate, so he arrived at her home and used the old I must paint you ruse to get her relaxed. Dude.

I must paint you ruse. Dude, think of this line. This is the ultimate goth pickup. Don't listen to this. All right girls, ladies, men, anybody does this. I understand. They are. It could be real.

It could be the most romantic afternoon in your life, but if a man who's a fake reverend shows up who's also a vampire hunter and he says, you're simply so beautiful, I must paint you in this grave. Know that if you go with him out to a tomb where he's basically saying, I want you to take your clothes off, sit on this tombstone while I paint you, which is a long process. Because now at least you could just take a picture and it's kind of hot and kind of fun. But you'd have to sit on top of that grave for a really long time. And that's if he is trying to paint you and not trying to murder you.

Well, Manchester was not trying to paint Lucia in the graveyard. He was just using this as a kind of calming technique. Yeah. Women love to be head on. They really do. If they're against their will, it really calms them. He was doing preliminary sketches of her and was just sort of speaking with her very calmly. And that is how he convinced her to return to Highgate.

But upon their arrival back in Highgate in broad daylight, Lucia's voice grew deeper as they got near the tomb. And she started repeating the phrase, you should never have come here over and over and over again. How did she even know that I came in my pants? Then she smiled and started repeating, I'm coming. Then she laughed and screamed, where are you? She then went for the iron door to the tomb, grabbed the rails and kept screaming, where

are you? Where are you? Over and over and over again. Is that what she sounded like? Where are you? Where are you? Where are you? Then she walked to the catacomb entrance where the headless body had been found and Lucia

collapsed to the ground. And here was where Sean Manchester believed he had found the backup layer of the vampire. The storage shed of the vampire. Very cool. So choosing to hurry while they still had the daylight, Manchester and his assistant knocked down the door to the second tomb using the old shoulder heave hoe. At first, the tomb appeared normal, but as Manchester was examining the coffins inside, he saw that there was one coffin too many.

How did he know? How did he know? Because there is a list outside that shows you how many coffins are inside, whose coffins are inside. Sure. Let's see who's in the tomb. There's a table of context. There is.

There is a table of contents on a tomb. Yeah, this extra coffin was much larger and in much better shape than the others. And there was no nameplate signifying who was inside. And according to Sean Manchester, who claims 100% that all this happened and fuck you if you don't believe him. What? Yeah, because you were saying, you said you're better than him. You're saying it.

You're doing it. I'm just listening. When he opened the coffin, he found an actual, true to life, Nosferatu Vampire inside. Hey, can you close that coffin and let him try to sleep? I'm so sorry, Steve Buscemi. Manchester said that it had skin like parchment and it was stinking with the blood of others due to the fresh clots that still stuck to the edge of its mouth. To all appearances, the Vampire appeared to be a corpse at least three days dead.

But before you say, of course it did, it's a body in a fucking coffin in a tomb, Manchester said that when he pulled out a sharpened wooden stake and placed it over the Vampire's heart, an assistant shined a light in the Vampire's face and the light revealed long sharp teeth and glazy mocking eyes. You gotta kill it. That's a British corpse. Yeah, of course. But just before Manchester brought down the hammer to send the beast back to the hell

from whence it came, ah, yes, Vampire, finally I get to kill one, I get to kill one. The other assistant grabbed his arm and stopped him and said, Jesus Christ, Sean, this is illegal. Oh, I forgot this is against the law. It's a vampire. I can't do this. No, no, no. This is against the law.

I will not be breaking laws this day. Oh, so they had a chance to kill it? They had a chance to kill it. So they just closed the coffin, covered the tomb in garlic and holy water. Well, they just put some garlic on this. Don't worry about this. I also, I put some pizza rolls on it. That's mostly so the rats can come and kind of, you know, maybe that'll help guard it

and I also, here's the club. You guys remember the club? I love that. Protect your car. We'll put that on it. Yeah. So instead of killing the vampire, they opted instead for an exorcism on Lucia. They went back outside, placed Lucia in a circle of salt and yelled at her a whole bunch

while flicking holy water, as exorcists are wanting to do. Sure. It's fun. It's their habit. It's great. And during the exorcism, the same deep booming sounds came from inside the vault until Manchester finally shattered enough, enough. After which the booming sounds stopped and Lucia was seemingly fine at the time being.

And then upon Shawn Manchester's recommendation, the vampire's tomb really was bricked up. After you know, they knocked down the fucking door. They bricked it up. Okay. And today you can still go to Highgate Cemetery and see the bricked up tomb, although I hear they don't really acknowledge it on the tour, nor do they appreciate you asking about it. Why not? Come on.

Come on. Get off. I want to know the juicy stuff. They don't like it. What do they like about it? They don't like the Highgate Vampire thing. Oh my God. Because a whole bunch of people just destroyed the cemetery back in the 70s.

Oh, you know. It was the 70s. Don't, everyone, don't go out to the Highgate Cemetery and destroy it. Be very respectful any time you enter a burial ground. No. Stand outside of it and scream, come here, vampire. Here, here, vampire. Come here, vampire.

Well, that was Manchester's battle with the Vampire at Highgate. David Ferrant's battle with the entity did not go quite so smoothly. See, Ferrant was also trying to protect the innocence, although his story was, again, far less dramatic. Ferrant had heard a story of a young woman who said that she'd been thrown to the ground outside of Highgate by a tall, dark figure with a deadly white face, and Ferrant figured he'd step in before the attacks got worse. And so he and a professional medium went the occult route and conducted a psychic seance

at Highgate to see if a psychic link could be established with the entity to discover its origin and purpose. Because they believe it's a problem to be solved and you could do it psychically. That this is obviously some kind of weird nefarious entity that needs to be moved along. Yeah. And if they could establish exactly what it was, then they could hold an exorcism to banish it, if indeed an exorcism was warranted. And so they chose August 17, the night of a full moon for their exploratory seance.

They entered the cemetery with a chosen number of BPOS members and settled on the Thornton spot as the most likely point in which to make contact. Then they made a magical circle consecrated with water and salt and adorned it with protective symbols. Finally, they made a smaller circle ten feet away and surrounded it with burning candles and incense. This spot would be where the entity would appear should their seance be successful. This is an old school right hand path magic.

This is very intense. They are really going to say we're going to conjure up this demon, it's going to show up in this other little port, we're going to ask it to leave and we're going to zip it to the other side. Now remember, Shawn Manchester just came in and started busting heads. They just started kicking open tombs and shit. They made a circle, they just made a circle with salt and they're doing it the nerdy way. They're just holding the hands and they've got a bunch of, they're trying to do it with

their minds. Yep, and then they dropped trow slowly and then one member said, let the circle jerk begin. And then they played a game of salty crisp because there's colloquial differences. Yes, oh, colloquial differences. Unfortunately, as Ferent and his team were only minutes into the ceremony, cop showed up. Come on!

What is going on? Isn't there any real crime that these cops have to be investigating? Put these nerds, nerds out in the cemetery. But the rest of them were screaming and shit and breaking open tombs and then flailing around. They literally were like, okay, now it's time for the incantations to- All right, you pieces of shit, everybody up against the wall. Ferent was faced with a dilemma.

It was dangerous to leave a protective circle during a ceremony, from a psychic point of view at least. Sure. But I also didn't want to deal with the fucking cops, so he ran. Tickets are very real. You know, citations? Tickets are real. Yep.

He gathered up what psychic paraphernalia he could, and he and the other members all scattered to different exits in the cemetery. Just the slowest run ever. This is all the robes and shit catching and everything could be all scramble. Everyone else got away, but Ferent took a wrong turn and got cornered by the police. Now David had tossed all the paraphernalia before being caught, but the cops had seen him drop all that shit, so they used all of it as evidence that he was in an enclosed area for an unlawful purpose, possibly a little corpse interference.

Now it was reported that David Ferent was caught with a wooden stake, but while he was caught with a pointy stick- Uh-huh. It was a pointy stick. It was a pointy stick, yes. The instrument was actually used, along with a piece of string, to measure out the magical circle. And you could just, you could hear the irels of the cops, of him trying to be like, no

this is not in fact, this is not a stake, that is not actually the proper way to get rid of that vampire. This is a measuring tool, like yeah, yeah, oh yeah. What if I push you down? What if I push you down to the ground and beat you with this stick? Well Ferent refused to snitch on anyone, and refused to give any details on the seance by decree of the BPOS. Okay.

So he let the press and the cops run wild with speculation that Ferent was in Highgate that night to slay the vampire single-handedly. Now David was eventually acquitted on all charges, this time, under the defense that there was no difference between hunting for vampires and searching for creatures like the Loch Ness Monster, so no harm, no foul. They literally had to have this conversation in a court, which is awesome. They had to sit with these lawyers, everybody's staring at each other as they're like, well people go look for the Loch Ness Monster, is that illegal?

They're allowed to go and do dumb shit in a cemetery if they want to. They're not ruining any of the tombs. There's a bunch of salt everywhere, but that's fine. You know what I mean? This is Britain, it's the only spice we use, but with Manchester, again, was breaking shit. So he says, I mean that's the other thing about Manchester, is that it's always, so he says. So he says.

I mean they did brick up that tomb, maybe he did break down the tomb, maybe somebody else did, but Manchester's is all, so he says, Ferent at the very least has friends. Okay. Good for him. He does have people that say like, yeah, we were out there, and Ferent is pretty honest about how things went down with him. No, he's unfortunately honest, he's just one of those poor men that because he is a good man and a genuine man, he just got rolled real hard by the paranormal community.

Yeah. But the press of the trial made it impossible to continue any kind of real investigation, so Ferent dropped it at least for the moment. Meanwhile, Manchester and Ferent were starting to snip at each other in the press. Ferent told the Ham and High that he was going to sacrifice a cat in order to banish the vampire, which caused Manchester to take the cue to step in on the side of God, saying that the true intent of Ferent's cat sacrifice was to raise a demon to destroy the bishop Sean Manchester.

Of course. Of course. And eventually this feud escalated to the point where the two men scheduled a magical duel on top of Parliament Hill in Hampstead in 1973. The Ferent agreed to it just so long as their quote-unquote seconds were the only witnesses. Okay. Why though? You see what everybody just see them slap fight outside?

And it was even rumored that these two men were going to battle it out with swords. In addition to using their magical talents. Oh my god dude, I'm fucking, I'm so mad, I'm so mad they didn't see this through. Now honestly Dana White from UFC could take a bit of a lesson from this. Make shit magical. Yeah dude. But the whole thing was cancelled after police approached both of these guys, after flyers for the event started showing up around town, the police told them, knock that shit off.

You can't, you can't go having sword fights in the park. Oh my goodness, it just doesn't work like that, it doesn't look like that, you fucking nerds. It doesn't work like that. Abby and Dennis Downer cops, I don't like them one bit. You guys couldn't use forks on each other, you guys not going to use swords? Then something else in the realm of the actually concrete occurred at the cemetery. Another body was found on one of the paths, but this time the person was an escaped mental

patient who was found still alive covered in blood and wounds from apparent stab wounds to the throat and chest, and the dude died in the hospital 10 days later. Damn. Now the coroner said that the wounds, although gruesome, were self-inflicted, and the man who had found the victim also said that the victim had told him that the wounds were self-inflicted. Pretty much everyone's in agreement that these wounds are self-inflicted. Sure. Yeah, but all of this is just witness testimony in fact, Marcus, they need the real story

from Shawn Manchester. He believed that it was the work of the vampire once more. See? Do you see? I don't need a feeling he would. But on the ferrant side, the suicide kept the cops at Highgate, and since the cops were around Highgate a whole bunch, David Ferrant was arrested again. Then people claiming to be the vampire started talking to the news.

That's what happens, because once you leave it open, like who the vampire is, like you don't know who it's going to be, you're really asking for it, because now everybody's got their funny things to say about it. Yeah. The whole thing, David Ferrant again, he just wanted to make a public display of paranormal research and give an air of legitimacy to it. He really was trying. Yeah.

He really was like, yes, there's a lot of people who want to call this a silly story, but I am trying to give a little bit of credence to all this, and he just got fucking buried. Yeah. Well, one group in particular, called the Hellfire Film Club, claimed that they were in fact the ones seen in Highgate, and the whole thing had just been a goof. They were just making an amateur vampire movie. Okay. But as dubious as that possibility is, after that, Ferrant's legal troubles started coming

hard and fast. Uh-oh. First, he was fined for indecent behavior following his arrest during a nocturnal necromantic right in the churchyard of St. Mary the Virgin. What's wrong with that? Yeah. What's wrong with that? Yeah.

He started slipping. Yeah. And Ferrant was arrested again after photos of him posing with opened coffins in mausoleums at Highgate made their way to the police. And David Ferrant was officially charged with damaging a burial memorial and charged with interfering with corpses. Ah. Seems like it's getting a little real for him now.

Yeah. And at the trial, Ferrant said that no jury would ever convict him because of his mystical powers. Yes. I mean, yeah, that holds. That holds, definitely. Yeah. I mean, it certainly worked well for Damien Eccles, you know?

Yeah. No. I mean, it took 20 years, but eventually it worked. Yeah. He's got to sit in it for 20 years. I guess so. And Ferrant made it even worse by firing his lawyer and representing himself. Ah.

That's smart. Because he's a wizard. Is your lawyer... Yeah, you have a law degree. But are you a wizard? I don't think so. I don't think so. Well, yeah, I am a wizard.

I'm making up that I'm innocent. Because I am. I'm innocent, y'all. And admittedly, David had been getting pretty weird with it. At the trial, the jury was shown folder upon folder of not just David with corpses, but also naked girls with corpses. Yeah, dude. David never snitched on the girls.

Never snitched on them. Their faces weren't shown, but David never snitched on them. Oh, that's very good. But for his final crimes at Highgate Cemetery, David Ferrant lost his second wife and was sentenced to five years in prison. Where does his wife go? How do you lose a wife? She left him because he'd been in the cemetery taking pictures with corpses.

Yeah, dude. I get it. And it freaked her out a little bit. No, I understand. You got to carefully choose your spouse in this life. And really think about, are we growing together? Are we on the same path? Do we both like corpses?

Because you have to both really enjoy corpses for one to pose with a lot of pictures of with them and the other just to watch. You got to really choose. It's probably the naked girls she didn't like too much. That's a whole other conversation. But David Ferrant only served three and a half of those five years, but he still did three and a half years in prison. Damn.

Okay. So, what are you in for, vampire hunting? What does that give you? Massive amounts of respect? Or are you like everyone's wife? I honestly think, maybe ex-cons will listen to the show and tell us, email us the side stories LPOTL to tell us if you think that this is correct or not. But I would say is that as a vampire hunter, you could use that as like to your advantage

in jail. I think that they would look at you as highly impressive because we're like, vampire's dog? Man, I met some vampires before and I had to kill them and it turned out it was my daughter and my wife. You're like... That's bad. Well, after Ferrant was released in the late 70s, he settled into a comfortable life as a local character living in Highgate.

And there he eventually befriended fellow Highgate resident and Monty Python alumni, Graham Chapman. No kidding. Yeah, they were good friends. That's great. That's why I think David Ferrant had a bit more of a sense of humor about all this shit than Shawn Manchester. Sure.

He had a good deal of... I watched a good deal of footage of David Ferrant and he is a really... He does seem like a very genuine man. He believes in his story. He's not super comfortable in front of a camera or in front of a microphone. But he was a dude that really, you know, you could see him being a cool guy. Yeah. Okay.

But Shawn Manchester had not gone quietly into the night. He maintains that the Highgate vampire story was by no means over and done with upon the ceiling of the vampire's tomb. He claims that after Highgate's cemetery was cleansed of the vampire, the creature merely retreated to a deserted mansion near the cemetery on Avenue Road. And that was where Manchester finally tracked down and killed the beast. So the vampire was just like, oh, I guess I'll go to the mansion. Oh, I guess I'll go to my summer house.

Yeah. This is an excerpt from the book detailing the final strike. With a mighty blow, I drove the stake through the creature's heart. Then shielded in my ears, there's a terrible roar emitted from the bowls of hell. This died away, as suddenly as it had erupted, because it all became still. We witnessed the body shell cave in and quickly turned filthy brown, which soon became a sluggish flow of inhuman slime and viscera in the bottom of the casket. It's fucking cool, and if you look at the book, they have pictures of the body decaying

in front of them. Did you see this? Yeah. Did you see this, Marcus? Yeah. It is very funny because it's just the oldest version of Photoshop, but it's pretty fun. It's really fun. And following that, Manchester and his companions built a bonfire in the garden out back, placed

the coffin containing the vampire on top, covered it with gas, and set it on fire. All right. As the coffin burned, Manchester said, I hear with consign be to the bottomless pit, the pit filled with everlasting fire, until judgment day. May thou be burned in the everlasting fire, thou wilt be forced into that fire, and eternally consigned and held there, for ever and ever, amen. Now who brought the s'mores? But that was not quite the end of it, not yet.

Even though Manchester had killed the king vampire, the creature had managed in the intervening years to turn one of his victims into a vampire herself. Lucia, who had led Manchester to the vampire's tomb in the first place, had become a vampire. Get out of here. No, she got it. Even though it appeared to most people that she was just dead. She did die. And it was at her graveside in the Great Northern London Cemetery that Manchester had his final

exorcism involving the Highgate Vampire. Manchester said that while he was performing the exorcism on Lucia's corpse, her ghost appeared and turned into a tangible, gigantic spider demon the size of a cat. But since Manchester was inside the magic circle, the spider couldn't get to him. Manchester said it just circled him, just hissing and spitting. I listened to an interview with Sean Manchester and they were like, so you saw a spider come out of the casket. He's like, yep.

Yes, it was the size of a cat. And they all just rolled with it. He was rolling it like that with no one laughed, no one made any more. I was like, you know what, at least he's specific. Yeah. Then Manchester made his move. I seized the sharpened stake and thrust it with all my might through the centre of that hideous black shape, using the blue, silphurous light to assist my aim.

This was accompanied by the most heart-rendering screech I have ever heard. It will haunt me for the rest of my days. Then with the approaching dawn, Manchester said he saw the gigantic spider slowly transform into the dead body of poor Lucia, who now showed all the appearance of being a years-long dead corpse. Now, as far as Manchester and Ferent went, they never, ever stopped hating each other. But they also couldn't stay away from each other, especially when the internet made instantaneous antagonism a reality.

This is like Big E and Tupac super nerd version. Yes. Yes. Well, in his later years, Ferent created a comic strip called The Adventures of Bishop Bonkers. Got him. It's a diss track. Which portrayed Manchester as evil and delusional, while Ferent plays the hero who foils the

bishop's plans using his charm and guile. It's actually pretty funny. Cool. Yeah. Actually, Ferent's whole shtick is pretty funny. On the Bishop Bonkers website, Ferent had a game of Highgate Vampire Bingo that you could play along when you listened to debates between Ferent and Manchester. The bingo spots included words and phrases like bandwagon ear, axe to grind, cabal, convicted

felon, a bensit, cold cellar, cuckold, asinine, milk float, liable, interloper, ham and high, and teapot cozy. These are the only words that matters to a vampire hunt. You ever call me a milk float again, I'm gonna make you, I'm gonna come on your knees. And in response to all this chicanery, Sean Manchester began a series of paintings that depicted David Ferent as a hideous demon, which are all available to see over on his blogspot blog. It's very humorless.

I love it. But as I said at the top of the episode, David Ferent sadly passed away this April at the age of 73. He was survived by his third wife and two children. He had married his third wife I think in the 80s or something like that, lived a great fucking life. He was just like, he was a British character in the occult. Every once in a while, TV show, get ahold of him.

He'd speak very softly for a little while, but you know, just kind of lived a cool little life. I love it. That's the dream. Yeah. And here is Sean Manchester's tribute to his old rival posted where else, but Sean Manchester's official Facebook page. Oh.

David Robert Donovan Ferent, with whom for half a century I was acquainted, died at 9.20pm on April 8th, 2019, after a sustained period of very poor health. An obituary will follow, but suffice to say, I feel sadness at him shuffling off this mortal coil before we could meet one last time. I had approached some of his friends in recent months to inquire after his well-being. Those who claimed to know told me he was in good health, my intuition told me otherwise. Though he might not want my prayers, he has them anyway, may he rest in peace. Oh, it seems like they made up at the end.

I think, I think they had, like, I think it was turned into a really fun rivalry. Where like, yeah, it might be like one of those old married couples were like, now that Ferent's gone, like Manchester might die within like a year. Yeah. Oh. He kind of matters less without his other half. The other half is kind of what made him beat, like, this story is about the two of them, because they, this became their fame to claim for forever, like that's what they did from

then on. They were high-gain vampire experts, because the phenomenon at the time was fucking huge. It popped off in the UK. Hmm. It's like June and Johnny Cash. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, same amount of kissing.

Yep. Same amount of kissing. All right. There it is. The Highgate Vampire. That is a hell of a story. And again, that was attributed to Neil, right? Yeah.

Thank you, Neil. Thank you, Neil, for, for giving that information to the boys. Awesome. Everyone. I hope you enjoyed that episode. I love good characters, and my goodness, was that episode full of them? Oh, it was, man. Plenty of characters in the Highgate Vampire story.

Absolutely. Unfortunately, no vampires. That's okay. That's okay. Well, this is one of those cases where I like not even trying to worry about the actual paranormal aspects of it, because there were people that saw stuff, and obviously they had said the Highgate Cemetery was haunted for many years, but who knows. And then Swan's Lane, which was the street, like outside of Highgate Cemetery, also apparently

have had many reports of ghost sightings, but it's also the UK. Yeah. It's the whole fucking things haunted. Yeah, it is. Yeah, none of the, it was said that like no grave digger ever saw anything at Highgate Cemetery. Leave them alone. Yeah, they were just, the people who actually worked at Highgate, they're like, no, there's

nothing here. Yeah, it's spooky. It's a spooky old cemetery, but there's nothing here. All right. Leave the graves alone. That's what I say. Always be respectful when you visit a burial ground. Absolutely.

All right. Well, we have a bunch of shows coming up here in the very near future. We're excited to see everyone on the East Coast. I think that we're all sold out for basically everything. We might be, but I actually, I don't know. I don't know. I think we still got New Orleans. No.

Yep. So I'm going to give those. I think we still have Toronto tickets. Yeah. Toronto, maybe Detroit. I'm not sure. Maybe. I don't know.

Yeah. Go to lastpodcastintheleft.com and click on shows to find out where we're going to be for the rest of the year. I know we're pretty much sold out of this Northeast tour that we got going on, but there might still be some tickets left. So be sure to check it out. That's going to be here in a couple of weeks. That's right.

And the final shows of the tour. And then in New Orleans, we're going to be filming this year special. So come on out. Watch the show. I love this live show and the audiences have been incredible. So that'll be it. That'll be the last time it's ever performed on stage. So come on out and enjoy the last performance of the year.

It will be a good time. So excited to come back to New York for Halloween. It's coming, man, can you feel it in the air? Good and spooky. Next week, we've got some fucking blood for you. Awesome. All right, everyone. Well, thank you all so much for listening, for supporting all the shows here on the last

podcast network. And I guess that's about it, huh, guys? Yeah. All right, everyone. Hail yourselves. Hail Satan. Hail game. Magoostalations.

Hail me. Hail me. My vampiroids are really... It's nice because they leave me dry. Yeah, that is nice. Isn't that crazy? It's crazy. The Bible.

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