Sean Manchester

And these accounts kept piling up in the local paper, the Hampstead and Highgate Express, to the point where people started calling paranormal investigators.

There was one guy named Sean Manchester, claimed that he discovered who the entity was.

He said it was a medieval Romanian nobleman who practiced black magic, that his coffin was brought to England in the 18th century, and it was in Highgate Cemetery.

So the hype around this was amplified by the media.

So there was like this rising vampire hysteria that kind of gripped the nation at that time.

So much to the point where like random people gathered a bunch of vampire hunting groups and went to the cemetery and dug up some dead bodies to stake through the heart.

and it gets crazier the Sean Manchester I mentioned there was another guy who I think was like a vicar in the Church of England who also fancied himself like an exorcist who did this sort of thing a lot he formed a rivalry with Manchester because they were basically going fighting against each other to try and find the vampire to find that nobleman and be the one to slay that vampire

yeah

Witnesses' descriptions varied, but many described a very tall, black-clad figure, red or glowing eyes, a hypnotic presence, a feeling of dread or paralysis.

The story exploded after paranormal investigators David Farrant and Sean Manchester publicly argued that a vampire was responsible.

Newspapers picked up on the claims and hundreds of people began searching the cemetery at night.

Reports soon included alleged sightings, animal carcasses and stories of open graves.

On February 6th of 1970, a letter concerning an unusual figure appeared in the Hampstead and Highgate Express and recorded in the archive of paranormal investigator David Ferrant.

Soon after, on the 27th of February of 1970, the local newspaper published the headlines, Does a Vampire Walk in Highgate?, And figures like Ferentz and Sean Manchester offer a different interpretation of the events, with Manchester publicly arguing that the phenomenon was a vampire.

And on Friday the 13th of March of 1970, an ITV program called Today featured a discussion on the Highgate reports bringing the story to a national audience.

And later that night, a large crowd gathered gathered outside the cemetery.

This is the definition of a vampire.

Sean Manchester describes himself as a bishop in the mysterious, rather glamorous sounding Old Catholic Church.

He also signs off his correspondence as the Bishop of Glastonbury and claims expertise as an exorcist.

He and Farrant were friends in the late 1960s.

They drank in the same North London pubs with the same tight-knit group of paranormal enthusiasts.

The earliest public mentions of Sean Manchester describe him as a photographer who had moved to London from his native Nottinghamshire in his early 20s.

In later years, he would take to dressing head to toe in religious garb.

But at the beginning, he's more restrained, earnest, and solidly built.