Spent some time today in the Mystery Room in the County Buildings, Cupar. It has jail doors, but why would a jail from the 1800s have fine stonework and 2 fire places? Why does the room have 2 fire places….it doesn’t need them? Why does the room have 2 doors from the same corridor? No evidence that it was ever 2 rooms. Found some answers today, but every answer raised more questions!!
I also had a nice wee write up in the local press last week 🙂
I am featured as a guest writer on the Spooky Isles website again this week, read about the ghosts of St Andrews here
It’s been a long time coming, around 20 years between first starting to gather the ghost stories of the town to finally finishing the research and compiling the tales into one volume, but finally Supernatural St Andrews is finished. I am really pleased with how this book has come out, and I believe it to probably be the most historically complete collection of ghost tales from the town, with the background to all of the main ghosts uncovered and long forgotten spooks and stories re-discovered.
With maps and plenty of photographs, readers can easily visualise the various locations as they read about them, and people visiting the town can follow the routes or I will be more than happy to offer personalised tours for small to medium sized groups whenever possible, please use the ‘contact’ section on this page if you are interested.
The book is available on Kindle now, with the paperback to follow soon. This book is also the first in a new venture, Haunted Publishing. Loads of work ahead of me!
As part of the research for my new book ‘Supernatural St Andrews’, one of the key things I wanted to do was to gather as many photographs as I could to allow the reader the be able to visualise the locations behind the stories. A picture is worth one thousand words, as they say. Unfortunately repairs have been ongoing at one of the key sites, the Haunted Tower, home of the infamous White Lady of the cathedral, and where a secret chamber was discovered containing coffins with well preserved bodies, giving the appearance they had just been buried, despite the fact that in the two hundred years of earlier records available, there was no mention of the tower ever being used for burials. A request for the fencing around the tower to be removed to allow me to take a photograph was granted, although one section had to be left due to shuttering around a tombstone making it difficult to move.
While seeking permission, I also asked if I could view inside the tower, which is kept locked and is not open to the public and, after some form filling, Historic Scotland said yes! The chambers inside are far smaller than I ever thought they would be, and it is difficult to see how up to twelve coffins could have fitted inside, but I am reliably informed they were placed in a standing position lining the walls. In such a small, cramped space it was also difficult to take decent photographs, but I managed to get a couple, with the one below being the alcove that Dean W.T. Linskill, the recognised authority of his time in local ghostlore and author of the 1911 book ‘Haunted St Andrews’, stacked the coffins after he had the crypt, which had been bricked up, opened in the late 1800’s.
The coffins, which had been found to be empty at that time, had started to disintegrate. What happened to the bodies in the twenty years that had passed since the chamber was last opened remains a mystery. Despite the difficulties their size caused, I really did feel quite privileged to stand in these tiny chambers, where so few have ever stood before me and where so much mystery still lies, to experience the atmosphere for myself. The full story of the tower will be in Supernatural St Andrews, available for pre-order very soon.
O
It took me a while and guidance from someone familiar with the estate, but finally I found the statue of a mother and baby, hidden in the gardens of a country mansion house. To give readers an idea of the scale of the task, the garden grounds included lakes and a miniature island village (now sold to form a country park for the public) and 330 acres that were recently sold to create a golf course, and there is still a fair bit of land left! The statue itself was already placed deep in the foliage of the garden and, having been abandoned over ten years ago, it is only accessible by ripping yourself apart pushing your way through thorn bushes, but it was worth the effort.
So what’s so special about this statue? The answer to this lies in the mystery surrounding it. The garden was extensively decorated with statues, but this one was not in a prominent position. Why? The story is that one of the senior males in the house got one of the maids pregnant. Fearful that his wife would find out, he hid the pregnancy and spurned his lover. Unable to deal with the rejection, when the baby was born the maid threw herself from the roof of the house, with the baby in her arms. An alternative version tells that the father had the baby disposed off, leading the maid to take her own life. Full of remorse, the father had the statue made of his love and their child, and hid it in the garden where no one would know where it was so he could spend quiet time contemplating what might have been if he had acted differently. The story however does not end there. His wife found the statue and the story came out. She allowed the statue to remain but had the stonemason make some alterations.
Hoofed feet were added to the baby to represent the fact it was born out of sin. The ghost of the mother can still be seen and heard wandering through the house and gardens, searching for her baby.
While this may be folklore, and some suggest the statue is the goddess Penelope with her son, Pan, the story has persisted through the years. An anonymous historian once stated ‘truth is in folklore, you’ll not find lies carried down the years’, so just maybe there is truth in the tale of the married man and his jilted mistress.
The title says it all, it’s been a while since I posted! An ongoing and worsening shoulder injury has made the work on my new book slow going! Still, it’s almost there, and at around 45,000 words and 70 plus photographs will be a decent sized book. I now have a mock-up for the cover, which I’m pleased with though might want to change the font for the text.
After introducing Cyril in my last post, I have now started to carry out some tests on him to see if the doll really does have the spirit of Cyril attached to it. Initially I left the doll beside the EMF meter and waited, after a few minutes, the meter activated, showing there was a change in the electro-magnetic field. This lasted about a minute before all went quiet again. I waited a bit longer and again the meter measured an increase in the electro-magnetic field for a short while.
Cyril making his presence known?
After the emf meter had been activated a few times, I switched it to communication mode and waited again. Once it found a connection, I started to ask questions, asking that the needle is activated once for yes and twice for no.
In the above video you will note the meter does register a positive response to the question ‘is your name Cyril’. An earlier test gave a negative response. To try to rule out a fault in the meter, I repeated similar questions several times, but switched between asking for the meter to be activated once for yes and twice for yes. Every time the same negative or positive responses came up for the same questions, including the name.
I can’t say 100% that the doll does have the spirit of Cyril attached. What I can however say is that in repeated tests, the meter indicted the same answers to the same questions with me varying the number of times the meter was to be activated for the responses. Interesting times are ahead!!
After looking for a while for additional material for some of the talks I do, I finally managed to secure something ideal. A small porcelain jester or clown doll, named Cyril, or more correctly, a doll that is said to be the host of the ghost of Cyril.
I have been wary about the numerous ‘Haunted Dolls’ that are put up on offer. I didn’t want one that was simply said to be haunted, I wanted one which had some form of detail as to who haunts it, and some form of evidence. Having missed out on one, I found Cyril, and he ‘felt’ right, which was odd as I don’t generally like dolls or clowns! After discussing the details with his owner, a member of the circle of professional clairvoyants, I managed to secure him. The information I was provided was that Cyril had come from a deceased estate. He had been passed to the grand-daughter, but she was uncomfortable with the doll and felt he was laughing at her. He was then passed to the member of the circle of professional clairvoyants, who studied him for 6 months. During that time, it is said he was found to move, laugh and release an odour. The name Cyril was given, and that in life he had been a drayman, a driver of a flat bed wagon pulled by horses. This would fit in as the house he came from was a converted coach house. Cyril is said to have stated he was under 40 when he died, and he has been attached the doll for a ‘long time’. The doll itself certainly appears very old. His spirit was felt to be very angry and bitter, although the reason for this is not yet known.
I have only had Cyril for a short time, but he so far indicted that there is indeed something odd happening with him. He is kept under glass but the first time I took him out during a talk, within 5 minutes the EMF meter, which was sitting beside him, activated. I had placed the meter beside him in a pile of books, and nothing had been moved. After a minute or so the meter went back to normal readings, but activated again several more times, frequently peaking at the maximum reading. This was witnessed by the audience. I have since repeated the experiment in private and again the meter activated and peaked.
 The above photograph shows the meter as ‘off the scale’. I have also tried using the meter on communication mode, and it has indicated a yes answer to the question of whether he worked with horses and whether he is angry. Interestingly though it indicated no to the question whether his name was Cyril. I tried the question a few times, varying between asking for one or two flashes of the light for yes, and every time it answered ‘no’. I tried an EVP session, but nothing was detected.
This is a curious one for me. As an ‘open minded sceptic’, I will not immediately accept the doll is indeed the vessel for a spirit. I equally however cannot exclude the possibility. There is a plausible background, unexplained activations of the EMF meter and seemingly positive responses to the information I have already been provided. But if he is not Cyril….who is he? I will continue to monitor him and try various experiments to see what other evidence I might be able to find, and I will off course report from time to time how progress is going,
The research is pretty much all finished for the new book about St Andrews and it’s ghosts. Time to start writing, and I’m looking forward to this one! Spectral monks, nuns and abbots, phantom pipers, heartbroken widows, women of great beauty and women badly mutilated; ghostly figures on the golf courses and horse drawn carriages in the narrow streets, underground passages, spirit animals and many people who have lived and worked in the towns landmarks and who have not yet left, angels and possibly even a demon, they will all be included! Several books have covered St Andrews supernatural side before, but I hope to make this book the most complete yet, with not just the ghost stories, but the history behind them, all richly illustrated with numerous photographs.
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