Hello all. Re: the recent YouTube release of the Highgate Vampire Symposium: Introduction and Keynote Remarks. We have received feedback to the effect that my microphone was not picked up very well (this was addressed soon after!). We have therefore edited the video and re-uploaded, for the final time!
As the video record of this event is so important for posterity, we have re-recorded my audio and dropped that in.So here it is!
In the meantime, perhaps the following transcript may help people who were not there on the day get a feel for the proceedings:
Paul Adams: David, what would you like to get out of today’s event?
David Farrant: Well . . . I think it is an unique opportunity. Most people in London, or all over the world for that matter – thanks to the Internet – know about the Highgate Vampire. I’d just like to say, very quickly, right at the beginning – and I always say this at the beginning of any Talks I happen to give, and if people don’t like it I say . . . Well I won’t talk then!, but they usually say ‘go ahead’. But all I’d like to say is . . . I do not accept the existence of ‘blood-sucking vampires’. Psychic phenomena, (‘ghosts’ if we must call them that), phantoms entities, unseen apparitions . . . YES. But that is a completely different matter. I don’t deny the existence of those or I wouldn’t be running the BPOS but I do deny the existence of ‘blood-sucking vampires’. So what I’d like to get out of it really [the symposium] is for people to first try to understand, and stop associating my name with ‘staking vampires’ and all that sort of nonsense. And to try and understand that what appeared in Highgate Cemetery IS genuine, I’m not dismissing that. Its something that has been seen there for many, many decades – even generations, and I’d like people to understand that.
Paul Adams: Good, good. Now you’ve said that you don’t believe in blood-sucking vampires but we’re going to watch a clip now and some people in the audience might be confused by that statement. We’re going to watch a short clip from a BBC television programme “24 Hours” which was broadcast in August 1970. Now, this gives a real feel for the climate of Highgate in former times . . .
[Clip from BBC 24 Hours shown].
Paul Adams: David you said you don’t believe in vampires. Explain yourself in 20 words or less!
David Farrant: Well that last bit doesn’t really need a comment! I don’t accept the existence of bloodsucking vampires, no.
Paul Adams: But there was a reason for you being on that program?
David Farrant: There was a reason, but it wasn’t hunting a vampire. I went to court in 1970, the police charged me with hunting a vampire. I was acquitted of that charge. The press picked it up, branded me as a vampire hunter, which I’m not. I’m just a humble psychic investigator. That’s all. And even that film – when I was acquitted the BBC wanted me to reconstruct what the police said I was doing, which I wasn’t doing, which was vampire hunting. And so I agreed. And that – look – I’m no more a vampire hunter than the late Christopher Lee was a vampire, anymore than Peter Cushing, the late Peter Cushing, again, was a vampire hunter. That is what the BBC asked me to do for their film, which was about my court case. So that’s reason I was holding the stake and the cross, but people still think I was hunting vampires.
Paul Adams (to audience): So if you think the Highgate Vampire is basically what you have just seen on the screen – it’s not. The purpose of today is to go beyond the Highgate Vampire, and break down what this case is all about. So we move into our first slot …
All the best everyone, and part 2 will be up very soon!
David
