Two sides of the same coin

The hatchety goodness continues on Friends of Bishop Seán Manchester. Every so often, its anonymous author likes sprucing up (i.e. revising) his blog entry, 'Anthony Hogg'.

The latest version features a colourised image of me wearing a vampire mask—the background texta-ed out—except, this time, it's captioned: 'Anthony Hogg wearing his mask that reveals his own demonic eyes.'

This echoes the Manchesterian habit of comparing enemies and/or critics to demons. Manchester, himself, dubs his adversary—David Farrant—'The Devil's Fool', also literally painting him as a demon. 

When describing former friend, Kevin Chesham, he adds, 'If you live by the Buddhist philosophy you would obviously want to avoid bad karma as depicted in my portrait of a Buddhist I once knew for many years before he inexplicably turned to treachery and allied himself with the Devil's own.' The 'Devil's own' segment of that sentence links to one of the FoBSM's blog entry on Farrant.

The FoBSM's blog entry on myself goes onto note, 'Anthony Hogg is not just pathologically obsessed with Bishop Manchester and the bishop's adversary, but is also too stupid to resist Mr Farrant's machinations despite being the subject of ridicule in comics distributed by the latter.' The comic in question, is The adventures of Bishop Bonky—with an updated version called The new adventures of Bishop Bonky. 

It features a character—'Cousin Hoggy'—who is 'The bishop's Australian cousin. He leaves his pet kangaroo Skippy at his Billabong home to travel to England. His aim? To 'avenge' the bishop, and verbally defeat the infamous David Farrant.' It was created by a rather 'eccentric' fellow who thinks I am Seán Manchester in disguise.¹

However, despite the character sharing a similar name and Australian background—albeit, a stereotyped version—it's clear 'Cousin Hoggy' isn't a representation of myself, as the comic's disclaimer warns, 'None of the depictions, characters or stories herein are real, nor are they intended to harm living persons. Fictional names are used, except in cases where public figures are satirised. Any use of real names is accidental or coincidental.' Phew, that's a relief.

Therefore, the FoBSM's criticism of the comic is somewhat odd, considering the entry's accompanied by a picture of a pig's head grafted onto the body of an Iraqi woman who wanted to be a suicide bomber for al Qaeda. She was murdered by her father before she had the chance.

Google

The blog entry's author labelled his doctored picture 'StalkerHogg'. The same entry claims I am a stalker. Why would the entry's anonymous author criticise a cartoon pig, yet publish something of such poor taste? Despite these antics, the FoBSM is still endorsed by Bishop Seán Manchester.

On a not-unrelated note, the porcine representations—and, one could argue, the demonic ones—reflect a political attack called zoomorphism, 'a very common theme throughout the world. To abuse one's adversaries, one dehumanizes them by turning them into animals.'

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^{1. The author of the article gives his name as 'Joe', but was actually a member of the James Randi Educational Foundation Forum named 'CLD' aka 'Cecil Lamont-Dwiggins'.↩}

Victorian sources—a lead?

Amazon.co.uk

On Thursday night, I was reading J. A. Brooks' 'Highgate' chapter and came across allusions to the cemetery's haunted past: 'Highgate Cemetery has long had the reputation of being one of the most haunted, evil places in London.'¹ But for how long? 

According to David Farrant, 'Some interesting facts came to light' during his investigation. 'Firstly, it became apparent that stories of an apparition in Highgate cemetery had by no means begun with the then current sightings. Indeed, similar tales dated from the Victorian Era and interestingly enough more of them had "vampiristic" connections.'²

Did Brooks—an independent source—cite elusive 'evidence' confirming Highgate's Victorian era reputation for hauntings?

'One of the earliest of the strange incidents that have taken place her [sic]', Elizabeth Siddal's exhumation on 5 October 1869.³ She was the wife of Pre-Raphaelite poet, Dante Gabrielle Rossetti. He'd buried a book of poetry with her when she died in 1862, but later wanted it back. Upon exhumation, her body was 'described as perfect upon coming to light.' But Rossetti was not present.

As noted elsewhere, the witness—Charles Augustus Howell—had a decidedly nasty reputation and his testimony is somewhat suspect, as a result; especially as he was personally invested with publishing the book and perhaps easing 'Rossetti's guilty conscience'. Brooks listed no other 'strange incidents' from this period.

After discussing the Highgate vampire case, Brooks states 'There are more orthodox supernatural activities that occur in the cemetery apart from those involving voodoo and vampires. An old madwoman distractedly searches among the tombs for the children she once murdered; a tall man with a black hat mysteriously fades into the walls of the Cemetery at Swain's Lane; and a ghost with bony fingers lurks near the main entrance.'⁴

Despite claims of spectral consistency, such diversity upholds Bill Ellis' observation that 'the most impressive detail is the sheer amorphousness of the Highgate traditions'.⁵ In other words, different people saw different things there.

Not only did Brooks give no indication these are Victorian sightings, but one of the spectres was seemingly fused from two, different—and comparatively modern—sources. In 1975, Farrant mentioned 'One of the common tales of that time [the Victorian Era] told of a "tall man dressed in black" who used to disappear mysteriously through the cemetery wall.' ⁶ Rather than being one of the 'common tales of that time', it likely stems from a letter written by R. Docherty—in 1970: 'Many tales are told, however, about a tall man in a hat who walks across Swain's Lane and just disappears through a wall into the cemetery.'⁷

Interestingly, Docherty was exposed as a friend of Farrant's—later confirmed by Farrant, himself. Add Victoria Jervis' testimony on Farrant's behind-the-scenes machinations, the hoax tape allegations and we're certainly left with a disturbing picture.

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^{1. JA Brooks, Ghosts of London: the East End, City and North, Jarrold Colour Publications, Norwich, U.K., 1982, p. 32.↩}

<sup>2. D Farrant, 'Invoking the vampire', New Witchcraft, vol. 1, no. 4, 1975, p. 34.↩  

3. Brooks, pp. 32–3↩</sup>  

^{4. Brooks, p. 36.↩} 

^{5. B Ellis, 'The Highgate Cemetery vampire hunt: the Anglo-American connection in satanic cult lore', Folklore, vol. 104, no. 1-2, 1993, p. 22.↩} 

^{6. Farrant, p. 34.↩} 

^{7. R Docherty, 'The ghost of N6', letters to the editor, Hampstead & Highgate Express, 13 February 1970, p. 25.↩}

Challenger has entered the ring!

There's a new Highgate vampire forum in town: The Highgate Vampire Appreciation Society. It's a closed Facebook group, though, so you'll need to request membership. I might grant it, too—I'm one of its admins. Ha!

I really didn't want it to be a closed group, but because certain folk seem superkeen on hunting down personal info of their critics, it was really the best option.

It's also good to see a new Highgate blog on the scene. It's called The (Highgate) vampire exhumed!. Its creator—The Dark Spectre—discusses his personal 'journey' with the case and is 'resolved to try to get to the bottom of it all and discover just what was true and what was plain fiction.' Now that's a cause I can get behind! All the best, DS!

Medium, identified!

A little bit of this and not so much of that

As part of a ritual which allegedly took place at Highgate Cemetery in 1971, David Farrant recruited the services of a medium to summon the Highgate vampire: 'To the North of the Circle a small "sealed" triangle was cast (also containing a small fire) where the entity would be summoned to appear, and hopefully, be able to "communicate" with a psychic medium who would be inside the protective Circle.'

'As midnight approached, the medium began to make the Commands for manifestation'.

The temperature in the Circle suddenly dropped. The candles blew out. A misty shape began to form. The only thing missing? Thunder and lightning.

'The medium spoke aloud, attempting to aid "its" materialisation and all at once, two eyes could be seen at the top of the moving black form.' Farrant had seen these eyes before: 'They were the same eyes that I had witnessed inside the gate, dull red and almost diabolically evil; only this time, they had increased in strength to such a degree that it was like being confronted by some "living presence".'

The medium decided enough was enough of this supernatural tomfoolery, so Farrant and the medium 'performed a rite of banishment during which the entity promptly vanished.'

Who was this androgynous, anonymous medium? How are we supposed to verify the claims and their experience? Unfortunately, Farrant's account doesn't name our psychic sleuth. We've reached a dead-end.

Or have we? As it happens, I have an article he wrote in 1975 which reveals the medium's identity.

It turns out, the medium's name was—David Farrant. 'I arose to begin the Commands of manifestation'¹, 'I spoke aloud, trying to help its materialisation . . . Seeing the dangers involved in prolonging the ceremony, without hesitation (though with some effort) I performed a ritual of banishment during which the entity vanished.'²

Despite being published only four years after the supposed manifestation, the article relates no familiarity with the smoky entity's eyes, suggesting a latter-day revision to add 'atmosphere' to the tale.

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^{1. D Farrant, 'Invoking the vampire', New Witchcraft, vol. 1, no. 4, 1975, p. 37.↩}  

^{2. ibid., p. 38.↩}

Revamp

After I shut down Diary of an amateur vampirologist and started a new blog, I've decided this one could do with a shake-up, too. It's been a while a while since I've toyed around with it.

To see what the blog looked like till now, click on the image to the right. But it's not just the layout I want to change with this thing, but the 'tone', too. Some of it. I want it to have more of a scholarly tone. The previous entry gave a taste of that.

Now that I know how to create footnotes in HTML, the main text won't be encumbered with intrusive author-date referencing.

I've also been wondering whether I should merge this and my WordPress blog of the same name. We'll see.