Two seemingly unconnected incidents occurred within weeks of one another in early 1967.
The first involved two 16-year-old convent girls who were walking home at night after having visited friends in Highgate Village. Their return journey took them down Swains Lane past the cemetery. When suddenly in front of them bodies appeared to be emerging from their tombs.
One of these schoolgirls later suffered nightly visitations and blood loss.

The second incident, some weeks later, involved an engaged couple who were walking down the same lane.
The female shrieked as she saw something hovering behind the gate’s iron railings. Then her fiancé saw it.
Its face bore an expression of absolute horror.

Soon others sighted the same phenomenon as it hovered along the path behind the gate where gravestones are visible either side until consumed in darkness. Before long people were talking in hushed tones about the rumoured haunting in local pubs.

Discovery was made of animal carcasses drained of blood. They had been so exsanguinated that a forensic sample could not be found. It was only a matter of time before a person was found in the cemetery in a pool of blood. This victim died of wounds to the throat. The police made every attempt to cover-up the vampiristic nature of the death.

Seán Manchester informed the public on 27 February 1970 that the cause was most probably a vampire. He appeared on television on 13 March 1970 and repeated his theory. Seán Manchester led the thirteen year investigation from beginning to end. In early 1974 he tracked the principle source of the contamination, known as the Highgate Vampire, to a neo-Gothic mansion on the Highgate borders. Here he employed the ancient and approved remedy (exorcism). No vampire has been sighted in or near Highgate Cemetery and its environs since that time.