Source of the Antipathy

"Little is sacred in these pages ... The critique aims high, low, and in between, tackling everyone from academic icon Leslie Fiedler to vampire-hunter Sean Manchester ..."

— Douglas E Winter (Introduction to both editions, 2002 & 2015, of Ramsey Campbell, Probably)

Douglas E Winter

Douglas E Winter (born 30 October 1950, in St. Louis, Missouri) is an American writer with a lifelong interest in horror which has led him to develop a career as horror writer and horror critic. Winter edited horror anthologies Prime Evil (1988), and Revelations (1997) as well as the interviews collection Faces of Fear (1985, revised 1990). He is also the biographer of Stephen King and Clive Barker. He is a lawyer, concentrating on complex litigation, product liability, and entertainment law. 

This very early photograph of Ramsey Campbell shows him sat in what appears to be a graveyard before a vandalised stone angel memorial. Why would he want to have such a picture taken? Moreover, why would he want to share it. It is reminiscent of early images of David Farrant who took it a step further by being photographed alongside desecrated monuments and coffins that had been broken open. He, too, shared his pictures with all and sundry, including the press who swiftly contacted the police. Farrant was arrested and jailed after an archive of similar material was discovered at his home which also included a black magic altar. Neither Campbell nor Farrant are sympathetic towards Christianity, especially where it is traditional and Catholic. This might explain their shared loathing of Seán Manchester who, as a Traditionalist, is at the far end of that spectrum.

"Our man has usually been able to trace any attempts to discredit him back to Satanists, not least David Farrant of the coal cellar," Campbell informs his readers without so much as a hint of an explanation as to what Farrant was doing residing in a coal cellar in the first place. (It was due to bankruptcy, and being evicted from his Highgate flat in 1969). Yet Campbell has nothing negative to say about the man of the coal cellar despite there being such a wealth of seemingly horrific material.

Born on 23 January 1946, David Robert Donovan Farrant came to prominence in February 1970 when he wrote a letter to his local newspaper claiming to have had three sightings of a ghostly apparition as he passed by the gates of London's Highgate Cemetery.

The Daily Express, 19 August 1970, reported that Farrant told the police (as read out in court from his statement): "My intention was to search out the supernatural being and destroy it by plunging the stake [found in his possession when arrested by police on the night in question] in its heart."He later reconstructed what he was doing on the night of his arrest for BBC television's 24 Hours. While inside prison, Farrant had written to Seán Manchester to request support from the British Occult Society to which Farrant owed no connection. He was visited while on remand and told that the Society could not countenance his behaviour. Soon afterwards, Farrant began to falsely associate himself with the BOS, which immediately led to rebuttals appearing in various newspapers. It was only a matter of time before Farrant began to fraudulently describe himself as "president of the British Occult Society."

Readers letters to the Hampstead & Highgate Express in early 1970 included reports of a ghost wearing a top hat that had been seen in Swains Lane and just inside the gates at Highgate Cemetery. With the benefit of hindsight we now know that some of these letters bore the names and addresses of friends and acquaintances of Farrant. Phoney letters were sent to the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 13 February 1970, using the names and addresses of Farrant's friends Audrey Connely and Kenneth Frewin. Farrant wrote those letters in order to give his hoax some credibility. He used the names and addresses of friends with their consent. He used his close friend Nava Grunberg's address in Hampstead Lane, but her name was changed to a pseudonym. He also used Nava Grunberg, now adopting the nom de plume "Nava Arieli," when she used an address in Rosslyn Hill, Hampstead, belonging to a friend of hers. Residents and passers-by might have witnessed Farrant in his familiar black mackintosh pretending to be a ghost. It has since been confirmed that he wore an old grey topper and ghostly make-up to convince local people that the cemetery was haunted. Then Farrant heard tales of the legendary vampire in pubs he frequented and decided to board what he perceived to be a publicity bandwagon. The rest is history. The vampire sightings and experiences by others were genuine enough. Farrant was not. His part in the saga was utterly fraudulent. He pretended to be a "vampire hunter" for the next few months before turning his attention to malefic pseudo-occultism which guaranteed a far bigger return in the publicity stakes. This quickly led to criminal convictions which included indecency in Monken Hadley churchyard under the Ecclesiastic Courts Jurisdiction Act 1860. Victoria Jervis was also found guilty. Her revelations under oath when called as a witness during Farrant's Old Bailey trials two years later are damning, to say the least. 

This is what she said:

"I have tried to put most of what happened out of my mind. The false letters I wrote to a local paper were to stimulate publicity for the accused. I saw him almost every weekend in the second half of 1972 and I went to Spain with him for a fortnight at the end of June that same year. I was arrested with him in Monken Hadley Churchyard. That incident upset me very much. Afterwards, my doctor prescribed tranquillisers for me."

Facing David Farrant in court to address him, Victoria Jervis added:

"You have photographed me a number of times in your flat with no clothes on. One photograph was published in 1972 with a false caption claiming I was a member of your Society, which I never was."

On another occasion, she recalled, how she had written pseudonymously to a local newspaper at Farrant's request "to stimulate publicity for the accused."

Back in 1972 during the indecency case, "Mr P J Bucknell, prosecuting, said Mr Farrant had painted circles on the ground, lit with candles, and had told reporters and possibly the police of what he was doing. 'This appears to be a sordid attempt to obtain publicity,' he said." (Hampstead & Highgate Express, 24 November 1972).

Speaking at the April 1996 Fortean Times Convention, Maureen Speller commented: "The programme came up with ‘His investigations had far reaching and disturbing consequences’ which I said meant he’d been arrested a lot. Strangely enough, this is more or less what he said. God, I felt old being the only member of [my] group who could remember this nutter being arrested every few weeks.” 

“The wife of self-styled occult priest David Farrant told yesterday of giggles in the graveyard when the pubs had closed. ‘We would go in, frighten ourselves to death and come out again,’ she told an Old Bailey jury. Attractive Mary Farrant — she is separated from her husband and lives in Southampton — said they had often gone to London’s Highgate Cemetery with friends ‘for a bit of a laugh.’ But they never caused any damage. ‘It was just a silly sort of thing that you do after the pubs shut,’ she said. Mrs Farrant added that her husband’s friends who joined in the late night jaunts were not involved in witchcraft or the occult. She had been called as a defence witness by her 28-year-old husband. They have not lived together for three years.” (The Sun, 21 June 1974).

“All he talked about was his witchcraft. He was very vain.” (Julia Batsford, an ex-girlfriend quoted in the Daily Mail, 26 June 1974).

"Au pair Martine de Sacy has exposed the fantasy world of David Farrant, self-styled high priest of British witchcraft, for whom she posed nude in front of a tomb. Farrant was convicted last week by a jury who heard stories of Satanic rites, vampires and death-worship with girls dancing in a cemetery. Afterwards, 23-year-old Martine said: 'He was a failure as a lover. In fact, I think his trouble was that he was seeking compensation for this. He was always after publicity and he felt that having all these girls around helped. I'm sure the night he took me to the cemetery had less to do with occultism than his craving to be the centre of something.' ... While Martine told her story in Paris, customers at Farrant's local — the Prince of Wales in Highgate, London — chuckled over the man they called 'Birdman.' One regular said: 'He used to come in with a parrot on his shoulder. One night he came in with photos of Martine in the nude. We pinched one, and when she next came in, we told her he was selling them at 5p a time. She went through the ceiling.' ... Farrant called his estranged wife Mary, in his defence. She said: 'We would go in the cemetery with my husband's friends when the pubs had closed. We would frighten ourselves to death and come out again. It was just a silly sort of thing that you do after the pubs close. Nobody was involved in witchcraft or the occult'." (News of the World, 30 June 1974).

“I cannot believe for one moment that he is a serious student of the occult. In fact I believe him to be evil and entirely to be deplored.” (Dennis Wheatley, Daily Express, 26 June 1974).

“I think he’s crazy.” (Canon John Pearce Higgins, Daily Express, 26 June 1974).

“But for the results of his actions, this scruffy little witch could be laughed at. But no one can laugh at a man who admits slitting the throat of a live cat before launching a blood-smeared orgy. Or at a man who has helped reduce at least two women to frightened misery.” (Sue Kentish, News of the World, 23 September 1973).

“The jury were shown folders of pictures of naked girls and corpses, and told about a black-clothed altar in Farrant's flat with a large drawing of a vampire's face. When questioned, Farrant said: 'A corpse was needed to talk to spirits of another world'.” (George Hunter & Richard Wright, Daily Express, 26 June 1974).

“The judge said any interference with a corpse during black magic rituals could properly be regarded as a ‘great scandal and a disgrace to religion, decency and morality’.” (The Sun, 26 June 1974).

“Judge Michael Argyle QC passed sentence after reading medical and mental reports. He said that Farrant — self-styled High Priest of the British Occult Society [sic] — had acted ‘quite regardless of the feelings of ordinary people,’ by messing about at Highgate Cemetery.” (Hornsey Journal, 19 July 1974).

In the summer of 1974, David Farrant was convicted of malicious damage in Highgate Cemetery by inscribing black magic symbols on the floor of a mausoleum; offering indignities to remains of the dead via black magic rites in Highgate Cemetery where photographs were taken of a naked female accomplice amidst tombs; threatening police witnesses in a separate case where his black magic associate was subsequently found guilty of indecent sexual assault on a young boy. His associate, on his website, describes himself as a “master of the black arts.” Farrant was also convicted of theft of items from Barnet Hospital where the offender worked briefly as a porter upon his release from Brixton Prison where he had been on remand in August 1970. He was further convicted of possession of a handgun and ammunition kept at his address, which also contained a black magic altar beneath a massive mural of a diabolical vampiric face that had featured in various newspapers, not least full front page coverage of the Hornsey Journal, 28 September 1973.

Farrant received a prison sentence of four years and eight months. Two libel suits brought by him resulted in the News of the World (who had quoted his girlfriend's claims that his publicity-seeking antics were compensation for him being a failure as a lover) failing to produce their principal defence witness due to Farrant making sure she remained in her native France, and him losing against the Daily Express (who had accused him of being a black magician and also of being insane) where £20,000 court costs were awarded against him. He had also brought suits against Canon Pierce Higgins and Dennis Wheatley (who sadly died prior to the case) that failed. In the News of the World action, which he won on a technicality, he was awarded the derisory sum of £50 and ordered to pay costs. The newspaper’s star witness who failed to appear for their defence was Martine de Sacy, his ex-girlfriend who had been identified as the naked female in the infamous “nude rituals trial” at the Old Bailey in June 1974. He persuaded her not to make an appearance at court causing the newspaper to lose its star witness. 

Farrant's blatant exploitation was a parody aimed at garnering maximum publicity. It fooled nobody, but, unfortunately, his concocted claims gave the press something sensational, ie "naked virgins," to write about. This is what an article in the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 15 October 1971, recorded:

"Despite a warning from police that he could be prosecuted, occultist David Farrant said this week he might return to Highgate Cemetery to 'exorcise a vampire' and fight a black magic sect. In the early hours of last Friday Mr Farrant, who is founder of the British Occult Society [sic], performed an exorcism ceremony involving six other young men and two naked girls at a chapel in the cemetery. After the ceremony, one of the girls claimed she saw a shadowy figure which Mr Farrant said was the cemetery's vampire, 'the king of the undead.' ... Armed with a crucifix, a bible, herbs such as camomile, dill and garlic, and holy water taken from St Joseph's Church in Highgate Hill, and accompanied by six other society members, he had climbed over the cemetery wall just before midnight ... etc."

Later in the article one of the alleged naked females is identified as Farrant's girlfriend Martine de Sacy. The newspaper reported: "He denied the ceremony involved sexual practices." Then it quoted Farrant explaining: "That's black magic, which involves getting your rewards before you die — wealth, prosperity, sex. Christian belief is that you get your reward after death. The elaborate things involved in the exorcism were purely symbolic, the most important thing was to have people present who believed in God and the bible. The girls were naked as symbols of purity — they were virgins."

This, at least, is what he had told the Hampstead & Highgate Express in October 1971. Four years later, however, he told readers of New Witchcraftmagazine, issue #4, something far removed from the supposed exorcism with naked girls which he had stated did not involve sexual practices, as had been told by him to the Hampstead & Highgate Express. When describing the same ceremony is an unedited article penned at the behest of the magazine's editor from his prison cell, David Farrant now claimed:

"The intrinsic details regarding this part of the ceremony however, must remain secret; suffice it is to say here that the entity (in its now omniscient form) was to be magically induced by the ritual act of blood-letting, then brought to visible appearance through the use of the sex act. ... I disrobed the Priestess and myself and, with the consecrated blood, made the secret sigils of the Deity on her mouth, breast, and all the openings of her body. We then lay in the Pentagram and began love-making, all the time visualizing the Satanic Force so that it could — temporarily — take possession of our bodies."

On his 1975 article, Farrant later recalled (to his friend and collaborator Kevin Demant): "When I had time to spare I wrote a few articles. I sent one to New Witchcraft which was used, and I mean, every single word was used. It was written on old scraps of paper, anything I could get together because obviously, they wouldn't have given me official writing paper to do that, apart from which, it would have been stopped anyway. That was smuggled out and used. I also wrote one for Penthouse, because ... they'd played up the sex angle in court and all the papers were implying ... I thought, well, it's a magazine, they could be half-serious. I mean, bloody hell, it was sold in W H Smiths!"

At this point, Farrant had contrived an infamous persona where necromantic diabolism overshadowed his earlier attempts to mimic Seán Manchester. He adopted a phoney form of witchcraft where he manufactured quasi-satanic stunts for the benefit of the media, principally newspapers. These cost him his liberty and he ended up being sentenced to four years and eight months imprisonment in 1974. Though similar publicity stunts ensued upon his release, he would never again catch the attention of the media in the same way as he did prior to and during his notorious trials at the Old Bailey, and slowly returned to the bandwagon he originally boarded in 1970. Once again, David Farrant began to impersonate Bishop Seán Manchester, having temporarily publicly eschewed the trappings of manufactured devilry. In May 2011, he published pictures of himself dressed as a Christian priest carrying a bible. Such impersonation, needless to say, is illegal in the United Kingdom.

David Farrant was arrested in December 2002 and charged with the harassment of Seán Manchester, Sarah Manchester, Diana Brewester, and Keith Maclean. The Crown Prosecution Service did not proceed with their case, however, due to him taking great care to stagger the frequency of incidents so that they fell just outside the remit for the minimum number of offences required per month for a case to be successfully prosecuted via the precise charge brought under the section of the Protection from Harassment Act invoked. This was confirmed by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. Had the police merely charged him with sending malicious mail, Farrant would have undoubtedly been found guilty but his punishment could only be a fine. Whereas the actual charges for harassment brought by the police were more serious, and if the CPS had allowed the case to be taken to trial it could have resulted in a custodial sentence.

Diana Brewester sadly died of cancer in December 2003, having been harassed and libelled by Farrant in her latter years. Farrant invariably sends his malicious pamphlets to his victims. One such item contained Diana Brewester's private address which he published and circulated viathe pamphlet. He also published false and disgusting claims about her private sexual life, none of which were true. Farrant has absolutely no regard for the way he maligns people, steals, lies and causes grief to whomsoever he pleases. Throughout his life he has not shown any remorse for his behaviour and crimes. Indeed, he has always sought to capitalise on them; bragging to the press and regurgitating them in self-published pamphlets crammed with libel and copyright infringement. His entire life has been predicated on the execution of grievances, vendettas and depraved pranks. Apart from a week or two as a porter in late 1970, he has received state benefits throughout his entire life. Yet this is the man who has incredibly managed to hoodwink some latter-day academics, writers and journalists.

Wendy Jane Paterson is the CEO and Founder at House of Isis (2003 to the present) and speaks from her own personal experience. Her observation appeared on Facebook (16 January 2014):

"David Farrant is nothing more than a silly alcoholic. I've met him on numerous occasions and he is a drug infested alckie. As for Della, their flat is flea ridden pit of filth."

David Farrant openly worships Lucifer, as seen four minutes into this video clip — the naked female is Colette Sully aka Colette Gee whom Farrant married three years after his release from prison in 1976. She became his second wife, and espoused a form of witchcraft. They divorced after a short marriage. He did not remarry — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlCSrqSsaJw

Farrant would later claim a third marriage to a certain "Della Vallicrus" (not her real name), but this turned out to be a sham, as "Della" (real name thought to be Anna Hinton) is believed to be a lesbian practitioner on the Left-hand Path with a disturbed history of seeing "ghosts" and fantasising.

At least two people Ramsey Campbell relied upon for material regarding Seán Manchester for the expanded version of his 2015 essay are strongly connected to Farrant, the source of all the antipathy.

Those drawn to the dark arts, no matter what the excuse, will eventually find emissaries of the dark arts being drawn to them. It would appear to be the case with that author of so much gratuitous horror, blood and gore in print, Ramsey Campbell ...