Anyone living in Highgate with a nervous disposition would have been stocking up on garlic in the 1970s. Supernatural activity had been spotted in Highgate Cemetery and there were serious concerns that there was a vampire operating in the area. The media made a right meal of it.
The story was fuelled by two young men who became rivals over the ownership of the story. David Farrant claimed he saw ‘a grey figure’ patrolling the graves when he spent the night of December 24 1969 camped out in the cemetery. Sean Manchester went as far as to declare, according to an interview with the Ham & High Express, that this figure was a King Vampire of the Undead, a medieval nobleman who had practised black magic abroad and who had been brought to London in a coffin by loyal followers in the 18th century and finally buried on the site of Highgate Cemetery.
