Stray Ghosts

Extract from Seán Manchester's autobiography Stray Ghosts:

 “There was also a young woman afflicted 

by Satan; for that accursed wretch repeatedly 

appeared to her in the form of a huge dragon,

and prepared to swallow her. He also sucked out

all her blood so that she was left like a corpse.”

~ The Gospel of the Infancy of the Saviour

W

  

As the 1960s blurred for a while into the 1970s, I took a long sabbatical from commercial photography and playing the saxophone professionally. The lease on the studio expired. The premises became a jewellery shop. Much had happened by that point. Much more was about to happen. More than anything, I sensed that an almost mystical transition was in progress. I was to be taken even further along the path I had embarked on. Like a medieval knight entering upon a mystical quest for the Holy Gail, I hoped that I was prepared for the challenges ahead.

The tomb of a vampire had been located in August 1970, as revealed in the 24 Hours programme, a  BBC television film documentary, transmitted on 15 October 1970, and later confirmed in Peter Underwood's The Vampire's Bedside Companion (1975 & 1976) and Exorcism! (1990), plus J Gordon Melton's The Vampire Book: Encyclopedia of the Undead (1994), and my own The Highgate Vampire (1985 & 1991). Three years and three months following the BBC documentary, the primary source was properly exorcised in the traditionally approved manner. Several 35mm photographs, some of which are reproduced in The Highgate Vampire book, were taken of the demon's corporeal manifestation in its final moments of dissolution. These pictures have also been transmitted and discussed on various television programmes in the United Kingdom.

“Among the many people who contacted me,” I recounted in the first complete account of the case, “was the sister of a beautiful twenty-two-year-old woman, whom I shall call Lusia” (The Highgate Vampire, 1985, pages 45-46). She is someone who has never been identified — a photographic model, and later actresses, would portray Lusia in representations and reconstructions of her part in the case. This was due to a need to preserve her identity in perpetuity, which has been successful.

There has been a great deal of speculation about her because, in the aftermath of the case. Her story evolved into one of the more extreme metaphysical outcomes that will not surprise the trained and seasoned demonologist, exorcist and priest, but is certainly a difficult area for almost everyone else.

My initial discovery of her was one of sheer delight tinged with a terrible sadness that grew stronger until it finally eclipsed her. Within the sombre tones of an apt piece of music she became enshrouded. I wrote: 

“Her cascading flaxen tresses caught the dull illumination of the moonlight in their pale reflection. Somewhere, in the background, I could hear the dying pulses of Strauss’ solemn orchestral work, Metamorphosen. It haunts me to this day” (The Highgate Vampire, Gothic Press, 1991, pages 70-71). Lusia entered my life as a young female of Nordic extraction, living in north London, who, being touched by what lies beyond earthly confines, became part of an unfolding array of nightmarish visions and visitations associated with Highgate at that time. I glimpsed an indistinct figure toward the end, a figure swathed in a white cerement, her face the colour of marble save for her mouth, which seemed full and wanton. This was not the Lusia I had first known. It was something else. A shade of something that had been sucked dry of life.

The seventeenth century alchemist, Michael Sendivogius, wrote some fitting words: 

“All these things happen, and the eyes of ordinary men do not see them, but the eyes of the mind and of the imagination perceive them with the true and the truest vision.”

As I was no longer tied to the photographic studio with the responsibility of taking care of staff, I was free to do other things. Saxophone performances dwindled, so I recorded tracks of mostly experimental and unstructured music. The 1960s had been a time of revolutionary extremes, not least of all in music.

The flat in Holloway Road was now functioning as offices for my research organisation, which later translated to premises in Pond Square in Highgate Village. I spent much of my time in Highgate at this time, and would reside there until I purchased a house in Southgate. Later I bought another property overlooking Hampstead Heath. In an interview given to the magazine of the Gothic Society, Udolpho, I reflected on what had evaporated with the passing of the much nostalgically talked about Summer of Love:

“That season of peace and love was all too brief. The chill wind of winter cynicism soon blew away seeds of hope borne of that mythical moment. Those of us who remember still yearn for another harvest of dreams that have a place to call their own. But the winter of greed and materialism seems to blow as cold as ever. In the counter-culture of the Sixties many sought an alternative to the conservative values of the war generations; they sought something — though they knew not what — and looked for its fulfillment in all manner of belief systems that promised a touch of magic in a world denuded of Romance. The naivety of the flower children was ruthlessly exploited. The dream was shattered. The moment was lost” (Interview with the Vampyre Hunter, Udolpho, Gargoyle’s Head Press, Spring 1996, vol 24, page 31).

In one sense I could understand the rebellion against the war generations, as reflected in this passage from my novel: “Scenes of supposed glory were quickly reduced to quagmires of squelching blood and stinking corpses. Europe, before long, was awash with a sea of sacrificed victims whose blood has ever since been synonymous with endless fields of red poppies. … [England] now belonged to history. It had irrevocably disappeared. The moral standards, high values, and much of the English tradition [that generation] knew and upheld was about to erode and vanish for ever” (Carmel, Gothic Press, 2000, page 13).

The decline that had probably begun at the opening of the twentieth century was certainly in strong evidence by its close. Britain, once the leader in world affairs with a vast Empire second to none, had become a lack lustre nation without hardly any faith or identity, believing only in its own dissolution, whose fate bounced between absorbed oblivion within a European super-state, or as a simpering satellite of America. More affluent than they have ever been in their entire history, its inhabitants had become less happy and more depressed. It was as though the soul of the nation state was withering. Some felt it has already withered. That the distressed cry of the voiceless, the disenfranchised and the forgotten would ever be heard, was risible. Yet when that rare opportunity afforded itself on 23 June 2016 with every vote (voice) being heard, something unique happened. 

Aware of this dichotomy even back then, I searched for a third way. I rode horses, my favourite was named Thunderbolt, and learned disciplines to prepare me for the struggle ahead. I had joined the Royal Life Saving Society, and was a lifeguard during the summer season that lasted just four months. This left me with eight months of the year clear to devote full-time to other matters already in progress. Working as a lifeguard allowed me to remain mentally and physically agile. It was a necessary relief from the stress of any ongoing investigation. I was quickly promoted by the second season at Finchley Open Air Swimming Pool to head lifeguard where I supervised the entire staff of approximately fifty males and females, everyone except the catering staff, who were part of an outside franchise, and the gardeners, who were a completely different department. Two unheated open air pools at differing levels of landscape were surrounded by trees and fields, and on a busy day up to fifty thousand people would visit this superior leisure facility. Mostly it was a relaxed atmosphere where people came to exercise, have picnics, sunbathe and partake in social activities.

Finchley Swimming Pool, originally built for the 1948 Olympics, sadly, no longer exists. It was demolished and developed into a private sports complex long after my time as its head lifeguard My deputy, a Swedish fellow, took over after I had gone and became the satblishment's manager. Jim (known as “Little Jim” to distinguish him from another, somewhat taller, lifeguard with the same Christian name) fought a valiant battle begun by myself to save the public pools from closure. Though widely supported, he was tilting at windmills.

Healthy outdoor pursuits kept me fit and sane in the face of the increasingly sinister goings on elsewhere.

The seasons in the sun at Finchley Open Air Swimming Pool were not always carefree. There were many dramas, including fires, bomb scares, people falling out of trees, others having epileptic fits, sun-stroke victims, and the inevitable drunks and trouble-makers for whom uniformed dog-handlers patrolled the grounds. The ultimate responsibility for all this fell on my shoulders, including the training of staff with regular first aid and life saving drills. Full time workers were helped by part-timers and volunteer helpers whom we gave concessions. On a busy day this number could reach fifty or significantly more. On quiet days the number of staff on duty was a mere fraction of that at weekends and on bank holidays. One thing about which I am most pleased during my time as head lifeguard is the fact that, under my supervision, not one life was lost, a record sadly not maintained following my departure. Health and safety were always my priority.

Fun and laughter were never in short supply among the staff who eventually appreciated the discipline I instilled during my time as their leader. I had an office next to their communal staff room. Both were extremely spartan. Adjoining each was a large area ostensibly for storage. This we converted into a basic gymnasium where volley ball and exercise took place. Those who joined unfit would leave fit by the end. Weekdays — especially before July when the schools broke up for their summer holidays — found all manner of actors and other celebrities visiting the pool to catch the sun, take a dip in the cooling water, between reading scripts.

Life at the open air swimming pools was a million miles from my private research and mysterious investigations; yet it provided a safety valve at a time when I was still relatively inexperienced. However, I was fast becoming trained and seasoned with the happenings at Highgate Cemetery, not least my being flung into the deep end of unearthly occurrences when investigating the experiences of Elizabeth Wojdyla and Barbara Moriaty, two convent schoolgirls who had first reported spectral figures rising from their graves in early 1967. Plus, Lusia and innumerable others who were subject to related experiences and eerie discoveries.

Interviewing Elizabeth during the summer of 1969 brought me into contact with her boyfriend — Keith Maclean. He had arrived from Tilehurst, Berkshire, in September 1968, and made the acquaintance of seventeen-year-old Elizabeth at the 100-Club in Oxford Street, London’s West End. She was on her own listening to a live band. Keith Maclean would become an integral part of the Highgate case at its inception.

*       *       *

  

The young live in hope, and never more so than in the 1960s. But that revolutionary decade was now spent. 

John Lennon, icon of that time’s artistic and musical sub-culture who would be assassinated a decade later, declared: “The dream is over.” The dream had translated by now into something more akin to a nightmare.

Yet a real nightmare had already unearthed itself in residential Highgate, as further reports of a demonic spectre continued to fill the newspapers with lurid headlines and even more shocking revelations. 

Everything worth recording about the case of the Highgate Vampire has already been written, and I have no intention of trawling through it yet again. For decades I recounted this thirteen year full-time investigation, wrote books about it, gave television and radio interviews, and made film documentaries. The number of interviews on this single case alone ran into hundreds. That notwithstanding, the amount of false and misleading commentary in print over the last two or three decades from persons totally unconnected to the case has, of course, merited some mention in passing, if only to provide an epilogue to a fast growing mythology.