Dark Matters Radio

The internet can be a wondrous thing. I occasionally just wonder around to see what I can discover and this past weekend I discovered something that ended up shocking me. Back in the day when I was in the U.S. Army, I was a member of the Army Security Agency. ASA was pretty much a “spooky” outfit, dealing in intelligence matters. During the war in Viet Nam the U.S. Government denied that ASA was even in Viet Nam, but it was of course.

When I was first sent overseas I was stationed at a site in Okinawa called Torii Station, or FS Sobe. Torii was referred to as the “Big Ear” in Asia, dealing with intercepting communications and data being sent out by the America’s enemies. North Viet Nam, Communist China, Soviet trawlers, well you should get the idea. This was very serious stuff and Uncle Sam took it seriously. All the military services had their “intell weenies”, the Marines, the Navy, and the Air Force. Kadena Air Base on Oki flew B-52 airstrikes out to Viet Nam, and the super-secret SR-71 flights brought back intelligence from China, Korea, and of course Viet Nam. Torii Station was involved in all that.

The real story (as far as I was concerned) was what was happening in Nam. After being stationed at Torii for a while I began requesting transfers to RVN. For some damn reason I was convinced I would regret it if the war was concluded and I didn’t get there. Sometime after sending in a number of requests the Cosmic Fairy Godmother granted my request and I received my orders transferring me to The Republic of Viet Nam or South Viet Nam.

ASA had their own process for its members and there was a detachment in Saigon just for us ASA dudes. I was there (I think) for a couple of days then assigned to Phu Bai or the 8^th RRFS (Radio Research Field Station) Culture shock after the relatively civilized Okinawa. It was cold, wet and very MUDDY in Phu Bai when I got there. Phu Bai was way – way up north. But as I was to find out, Phu Bai was much more “civilized” than where I would finally end up, further north.

The 8^th RRFS had another detachment in Quang Tri, the 407^th RRD. I was sent there shortly after hitting Phu Bai. This was above Hue City, getting very close to the DMZ that separated South Viet Nam from the communist North. Things were pretty quiet then, oh there would be occasional rocket strikes and the like, but at that time President Nixon was withdrawing American combat troops, turning over the duties to the Viets. Well, that was the word. Now don’t get me wrong, there were some damn fine South Vietnamese combat troops, but it seemed (to me) that there were more South Viet’s that weren’t worth a damn. It was rare to see a South Vietnamese officer that climbed the ranks because he was good, promotions were too often given on the officer’s status or family connections. That was the rot that caused most of the problems throughout the ARVN.

After hitting Quang Tri I learned the ropes there and grew to respect the detachment CO, Warrant Officer 2, Wilson. He seemed to be a low-key guy, quietly competent, and he didn’t hassle the troops. There was a Mac-V detachment there, team 155. This area had been under the control of the 5^th Mech, but everybody was now pulling out. Several years earlier, the Marines were all over the place, now they were mostly gone too.

One regret that I’ve carried for years was my failure to ship back hundreds of photos I took. I had purchased a very good camera in either Okinawa or Phu Bai and was really doing the shutterbug thing. I would finish up a roll of film and then toss it into my footlocker. Later after I was wounded I only ever was able to salvage a roll or two. Most of those photos were lost. The pictures on this entry were ones I was able to salvage.

I went home on emergency leave around the holidays and when I returned I was sent back to Quang Tri, then all the way north to A-4. Now A-4 was a ASA detachment out of Quang Tri and it was on the ass-end of the entire damn smelly country. We mostly ate c-rations, were limited to only having drinking water (the “dinks” had blown up our water tower) we were sitting in a firebase with the South Viets providing our security. And we had all kinds of top secret gizmo’s and were running our intel ops. There were 9 of us, mostly young GI’s, and many of the guys were getting “short.” That means they were soon due to rotate out, back to the world. (U.S.) I hope your caught up now.

So anyway, this past weekend I am dinging around on the net’ and was checking out the 8^th RRFS site on Yahoo. I discovered a link to a site I had never seen before, one for the 407^th! I gotta tell you, my heart jumped into my throat. I was looking for names I remembered and then haunted the photo albums that some guys put up. I found a photo of “Loser.” Up at A-4 Loser was our team mascot. He was a mongrel dog, and had gotten the name because of the number of times he was wounded. The South Viets would eat a dog in a cold New York minute, and a number of times that had tried to take Loser. And if my memory is intact, he had been hit on the muzzle by shrapnel. Anyway his name should have been Lucky having survived so far, and we shared our rations with him. And I really liked that dog.

While browsing through all this stuff I found that another guy, Duane Whitman, had written an essay about the last 7 days of the Easter Offensive, March 27-28 thru April 2^nd. And I was mentioned in passing, not by name, but by incident. After A-4 was overrun by the NVA, everybody was evaced to Phu Bai. I volunteered to go back to Quang Tri and took up a case of thermite grenades to destroy our equipment if it looked like the NVA would overrun Quang Tri.

Now recall, I am working from memory dealing with stuff 37 years in the past. Mr. Wilson chewed my ass for coming back up to Quang Tri, then turned to more important things. The XO of the Mac-V team (Major Bundy?) gathered me up and informed me I was now the NCOIC of the camp reactionary team. He gathered up mostly Mac-V troopers and out came a 2^nd Lt. I had briefly met the night before. In the event the dinks hit us, we were supposed to lead this bunch to plug any gaps. Now, the dinks were running iron down the highway, (Russian tanks) and we didn’t have a damn thing to put a dent into them. The base had some LAWs there (anti-tank rockets) but these were a self contained unit having a rocket in a disposable tube, with a self-contained electrical firing system. Sitting in the heat and humidity had corroded them, they were useless. (In other words, forget them.) We took almost constant shelling, a flurry of incoming rounds, booms and bangs, then quit for a little bit … then more booms and bangs. Now, with the passage of all these years, I am ashamed to admit I almost forgot two of our guys that were killed during the opening of the Easter Offensive. Gary Westcott and Bruce Crosby were out on FSB Sarge. Sarge was another satellite site off the main of the 407^th in Quang Tri. Now thinking about it, I recall when we got the word, apparently a 122 MM rocket penetrated their bunker, blew, and set off explosives or fuel stored there. Like I said, it has been a long time.

What didn’t seem so long however was when I recalled it this past weekend, I still got the drop in my stomach when I remembered. Their bodies were never recovered.

It was later morning on April 02^nd when I was wounded. I ventured out of our bunker to do a perimeter check when I got hit. I got nailed good and proper, let me tell you. Later they pulled metal out of my chest just above my heart and lets just say that when I sit on my butt, my back is at an angle. I was telling a guy at the 407^th site about being hit just the other day and some asshole piped up stating something to the effect of “I heard enough fiction.” I am glad that asshole is in Ga., I was mad enough to … ah hell, there are assholes everywhere. My wife advised me to “forget it.” Well sometimes it is simply impossible to just forget it.

Anyway, I once again got it off my chest. It is hard to believe that almost 40 years have passed and now a lot of the above is as fresh today as when it happened. Let me just say this … If you’re a vet … Welcome home. Too many of us out of Nam never heard those words.

Today Boys and Girls, we take a different tack … we are gonna talk about Vampires!

Okay, my question is … “Who doesn’t like a great horror tale, especially if a little sex and T&A is thrown in? I do, so I hope this doesn’t upset your view of me. Now, I got a story to tell you! (And it has the advantage of being absolutely TRUE!) If you’ve been dropping by here for awhile, you know that several months ago I left a post about writing and my published horror novel “Past Sins.” Past Sins is a tale about what might happen if the American Intelligence establishment managed to get their hands on a “gen-u-wine, no bullshit, honest to God VAMPIRE”, attempt to weaponize it, and how it would probably turn out! (Here is a hint, not so bloody damn good.) Now, if you stopped for a second to wonder why a guy with my background would be interested in such topics, well here is the answer.

Back in the 80’s I was a cop and in “81-82” I was tasked to investigate several cattle mutilations. Part of the evidence on those cattle mutes was the fact that the animals were missing quite a bit of blood that could not be accounted for. What I just related is both very weird and also true. By the way, this mutilation phenomena is damn near world-wide and it has never been solved. But, during this time is also when I first heard about something called the “Highgate Vampire Case.” Highgate is a cemetery in North London that was first consecrated in 1839, and during the Victorian Era was the place to be buried in. Some very well known “heavy-weights” are planted there. (Karl Marx for example.) I could go on for pages about this subject, I did end up investigating the “so-called vampire” and here it is in a nutshell. Oh, and did I say … NUT Shell? Well lets just stop at NUT.

When I finally did manage to find some info out on Highgate it was the early 1990’s, and my first sources came from the internet. I discovered two names entwined with Highgate, one Sean Manchester and the other a David Farrant.

Oh yes, lest I forget .. there also seemed to be a feud between these two guys, a feud that spanned over 30 years! It still goes on to this day! Really. Did I mention that I also became somewhat involved in this feud? Well I did and brother let me tell you … American crazies got NUTTIN’ on British crazies. The upshot is that Manchester bills himself (to this day) as an actual, no kidding, honest-to-God, only gonna say this once, Vampire Hunter and Killer! ( Well that is if Vampires were living, which anybody that ever watched the old Hammer Film version of Dracula KNOWS that Vampires are the Dreaded UNDEAD!) Did I mention he loves to play “dress-up”?

Maybe I should just say a Vampire Dispatcher. Anyways ….

David Farrant is an actual, honest-to-God, no kidding around, bonafide Paranormal researcher who now claims he does not believe in real honest-to-God blood drinking and sucking Vampires, but does buy into spirits that go bump in the night, kind of like Ghostie thingies.

When I discovered these two guys I tried to contact Manchester to interview him. He wanted nothing to do with me. I discovered he had written a book about his alleged investigation and ultimate dispatching of what he claimed was a vampire that had been haunting the Highgate Cemetery, so I tried to find the book here in the U.S. but couldn’t so I ordered it from the U.K.

I read it (very turgid prose) and was still intrigued. One thing that he claimed was that this young and beautiful girl (he called Lusia) had been attacked by the vampire and finally turned into a gen-u-wine, honest-to-God, no kidding around, blood sucking Vampire! And then he staked her ass! (Had to save the world and all don’t you know!) This was almost too much for me, so I did what any self respecting cop would do, tried to track this babe down. (Yeah, the photos I found showed she did appear to be a babe. Sorry Ladies, a guy thing.)

No luck and I even had a research contact in the U.K. So anyway I was stuck until I discovered a podcast radio show that had both these guys (Manchester & Farrant) on their show at different times. These two guys appear to loath each other.

The babe’s real name turned up via Farrant, one Jackie Cooper. Wow! Now I had somewhere to go with this. Finally after this Manchester boob refused to allow me to interview him, I contacted Farrant and interviewed him on my show Dark Matters. This turned into a rollicking almost two hour show … and warts and all were exposed! Farrant admitted to spending several years in the Queen’s Pokey (prison) for grave desecration (and he claimed he was framed mainly by our boy Manchester, and Manchester proved to be an attention seeking whore who never missed an opportunity to get his name or face in the newspaper. These two “fought duels” with swords (supposedly) and had it in the papers, and at one time Manchester even faked his death and solicited funds to have his “body” shipped back to England from France!

(A very humorous sideline was when the CID (police detectives) dropped by Farrant’s “flat” to ask him what he did with Manchester’s body after he “killed him” in a duel, and Farrant, trying for that understated British quip, told them since this was out of the U.K.’s jurisdiction, they should contact INTERPOL! The cops were not amused.

I had an entire forum dedicated to this topic (at the time I was bored and needed the amusement) and was surprised at the people from all over the globe that ended up jumping into this topic! The Manchester bunch (probably he himself… oh yeah, now he claims he is a man of the cloth, a Bishop no less in the Old Catholic Church and he has tons of aliases) sent photos of Farrant cavorting with nude chicks,

holding “black arts ceremonies” and all kinds of juicy things. Then it turned out that the “Bish’s spouse” was at one time a “sacred prostitute” in some kind of Black Magic thingie. Geeze! I mean, how can this get any better?

Oh yeah, lest I forget … anybody who questions this Manchester guy gets internet stalked and threatened by his bunch. Now if you were to ask me my bottom line? Well back in the day (1970’s to the 1980’s) I think these two were simply trying to get laid. Told you it was my bottom line. However this “feud” has gone on so long that I believe these two forgot what it was all about and are so locked into this thing, they will both end up dying with it on their minds …..

Oh well, every once in a while I kind of go to their sites and lurk, read what is going on and then end up with a HUGE SMILE on my face …….. What the hell, its good for a laugh. Sad part is, I wonder if they know OR care how “BLOODY RIDICULOUS” they appear to the rest of the world? VAMPIRES???? Oh those Wacky Brits!

ADDENDUM

There is a Ton of Stuff on the so-called Highgate Case. If you plug that into Google or plug Farrant or Manchester into the mix you will find many hours or days worth of reading and wading through the material. Just try to separate the “wheat from the chaff” and you will see what I mean. But after I posted the above I did a Google on Highgate to see what new was up there. Remember ol’ Mr. Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show? Actor Anthony Head narrates a video put out by our “fearless Vampire Slayer” the Right Reverand and most Holy Joe, Sean Manchester. And!! Manchester manages to say he BELIEVES IN VAMPIRES! with a straight face! If you want to waste a couple of minutes …. here is the video!

Our Fearless Vampire Slayer!