Out of the Shadows

"[Della] was my friend but now it seems no more (I participated in the cruel questioning of her identity and now she can't forgive me ! I wish to the gods that she could !!) Actually, I'm afraid Della and I are going to fall out even more ! There is strong evidence to suggest that Della Vallicrus doesn't actually exist per se - but is no less than old David Farrant himself, the cunning rogue!!! Therefore, dear reader, it is hardly surprising his defence (self-defence) is so good ! Della Vallicrus gave 'her' opinions about certain religious issues on a blog called The Supernatural World and - coincidence upon coincidence - they are almost identical to those of Mr Farrant !! Just who his current partner, 'Della Farrant', is I don't know as yet - but at least she doesn't call herself Della Vallicrus ! I would be quite happy to be proved wrong but, along with the perfume of incense, there is an underlying stench of Sulphur." — Geoffrey Basil Smith (Review of Farrant's Out of the Shadows, 17 November 2014)

"Anna Hinton, the girl haunted by the ghost of the talking mongoose, told me she was dating Jamie Farrant. Then she said they were not dating and had broke up." - Angie Mary Watkins (13 April 2021)

The picture of "Della" (above) was taken on 19 July 2015 outside the Highgate symposium venue. This is the only full frontal image of her without large, dark sunglasses, or a mask covering her eyes.

"Della" used a variety of nom-de-plumes when she first emerged from the shadows eleven years ago, all of them with Italian sounding surnames. She gave the impression that she hadn't met David Farrant yet, and wasn't in communication with Farrant's biological son, Jamie, who suddenly popped up out of nowhere at pretty much the same time as "Della." He hadn't had contact with his father for forty-one years. Angie Mary Watkins communicated with "Della" who was calling herself "Anna" at the time. She claimed to be a lesbian who was haunted by the ghost of a talking mongoose.

Jamie Farrant adopted the pseudonym "chatty-gef" as part of his email address and online identity. This was long before he is supposed to have met "Della." Back then, she was already talking about a "talking mongoose" and expressing a wish to meet David Farrant (on occult forums), eventually cooking up a cock and ball story of meeting him at a much later date. Ever since "Della Farrant" first manifested in the public consciousness eleven years ago she has been posting disparaging, derogatory and defamatory comments about Seán Manchester; especially on other people's websites, but also on her own blog. She and her collaborators, including Jamie Farrant, are believed to be the creators of a Facebook page called "Bishop Bonkers." Yet she has never met or communicated with Seán Manchester and would have only known what decidedly antipathetic people told her about him. We must then wonder who they might be.

The fact is that she shared quite a lot of fabrication and misinformation about a history that she is far too young to know anything about. It must have come from elsewhere. Yet what she was sharing on other people's websites was so easily recognisable, along with its source, means that it didn't take an Einstein to work out what was going on. Furthermore, it was the glaring error in her allegations that made their origin immediately identifiable. They only came from one of two people, and possible both.

The falsehoods about Welch, for example, makes it very easy to trace her mistake backwards. She even used the same foolishness, much of it libellous, at her so-called "Highgate Vampire Symposium," getting Paul Adams to be her patsy, making him the symposium's MC. It appeared as if Adams was making revelations about Welch before the audience, but all he was doing is repeating what he had been told by "Della" and, of course, Farrant who had been wound up by Tony Hutchinson three decades or more earlier. Back then, Farrant was the patsy. He had contacted the Hornsey Journal with all the fabricated nonsense he had been fed. Their senior investigative reporter, Roger Simpson, looked into it. He deduced that he was being led up the garden path by Farrant. He wouldn't forget, and the next time Farrant sent the same newspaper incriminating photographs of himself, instead of using them, or ignoring them, the editor, along with Simpson, forwarded them to Scotland Yard whose detectives paid Farrant a visit, and it was not too long after that before he was arrested, convicted and sent to prison, sentenced to four years and eight months.

It is that fabricated story about Welch that Paul Adams trotted out at the 2015 symposium which nailed the source. "Della" would mention black magicians operating at Kensal Green Cemetery, exactly what Hutchinson had told Farrant, who naturally repeated it. None of which was true. "Della" in those early days eleven years ago came out with much that was little more than wind ups.

She claimed to live in SW1, living on lobster, champagne and absinthe, when, in fact, she was in worse straits than Farrant in North London. Along with adopted names like Vallicrus and stolen images of a famous Latin pop star, which she eventually admitted was not her, and only done to hide her identity, everything began to unravel for "Della" who had been royally taken for a ride.

Why would she insist on being unrecognisable while obviously seeking self-publicity? Who was she hiding her identity from? It would seem only one person. Why? Because he would recognise the astonishing resemblance between "Della" and her mother. She didn't hide her identity from people like Gareth Medway, Redmond McWilliams and Kevin Chesham, all of whom quickly cooled towards her, as the penny began to slowly drop. Nobody, apart from David Farrant and Seán Manchester, knew what her mother looked like. None of the new crop of Farrantites had met her. Seán Manchester met her, of course, and it was he who straight away suspected a connection between "Della" and Farrant's second wife, Colette Sully, who was of Italian / French extraction. Hence "Vallicrus" used by "Della."

Only two people took charge of Farrant's death in April 2019. They were "Della" and Jamie Farrant. 

It all comes back to these two people, who remain in contact, as they slowly return to the shadows.

In her "Mistress of Death Interview" of 20 October 2014, "Della Farrant" [sic] was asked by Victoria Irwin:

"How do you gather personal stories and historical facts regarding the history of Highgate Cemetery and the surrounding area?"

She answered:

"My website, and that of my husband David Farrant, have generated many leads from witnesses, including people who have moved away from Highgate but never forgotten what happened to them there. As I mentioned, there is often a degree of apprehension among Highgaters who fear ridicule for discussing their own paranormal experiences. I have honoured requests to respect confidentiality, and this has resulted in some remarkable stories – usually from people who have never met, and yet have had encounters which are eerily similar. Many of these have occurred in the same clusters of streets around Highgate and have never made it into the press or into local gossip. And local gossip itself is of course incredibly important!"

In the same section, "Della" somewhat ironically, as would become apparent, offered this gem:

"... as The Smiths sang in Meet Me At The Cemetery Gates ‘The words you use should be your own : don’t plagiarise or take on loan.’ If one was to just rehash old ghost stories without investigating them personally one would be insulting one’s readers’ intelligence, as well as their book budget."

In Haunted Highgate, page 84, "Della" refers to the Hillcrest Estate on North Hill, Highgate, where "the recession of the early 1970s and 1980s contributed to low morale etc." In the next paragraph she moves onto an ex-resident of Hillcrest:

"Some seventeen years later, it was a cold, unfurnished top-floor flat in Wavell House which Deborah Meredith found herself relocated to by Haringey Council on, of all days, Hallowe'en, 1996. While the first six months or so of her tenancy at Hillcrest were uncomfortable and slightly unerving, the subsequent two and a half years were the stuff of nightmares."

Two pages in Chapter Five are then devoted to an alleged account provided by the ex-tenant of Hillcrest, having already been exploited on two pages in Chapter One, which is fair enough if all are agreed on everything published. Sadly, as with so much of what "Della" claims, that is not the case.

Who is Deborah Meredith? Her name is Deborah Cross née Meredith. After she became a widow, she used the name "Jessica Oliver" on Facebook. It transpires that she wrote an unpublished manuscript, The Spectre of Haunted Highgate, which she very unwisely shared with "Della" after having been in contact with her. So far, so good. However, like others who were duped, she regretted what followed, which might explain why she employs the pseudonym "Jessica Oliver" on social networks.