Ghostly Glasgow

MYSTERIOUS goings on and things which go bump in the night seem to be part of life - and beyond - in our city and JONATHAN RENNIE discovers that there are many tales of the unexplained in everyday places.

WHA'S like us? Damned few an' they're a' deid ... or are they? Not if you speak to author Geoff Holder. The writer has spent the last decade hunting tales of spooks, the paranormal and the unexplained across Britain ... and Glasgow is a capital for ghosts and odd goings-on.

"Glasgow's a great city for stories and the unexplained," says Welshman Geoff who has just released a book called the Guide to Mysterious Glasgow.

"I don't know if it is the habit of being good storytellers, but there really is a tale to be told with almost every place in the city.

"The newspapers have been full of great stories. I spent weeks going through old editions of the Evening Times, the Citizen and The Herald at the Mitchell Library, and there have been tales with supernatural edges.

"Honestly, I thought it would be a challenge finding tales of ghosts, murders, the unexplained and UFOs, but I've managed to find a story for almost every street.

"And there's the whole connection with great horror. Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, gifted Glasgow School of Art a medal for the most imaginative works.

"Frankenstein and the ideas of bringing bodies back to life was something doctors at Glasgow University were doing with bodies which had been hanged at the Tollbooth!"

Plenty of people have passed Geoff anecdotal tales during his research, but it is the newspapers stories that have really grabbed his interest.

According to the Glasgow Herald on November 14 1979, an elderly couple had been moved from their council flat in Partick after suffering a haunting lasting three years.

The unidentified flat had been built seven years previously on the site of an old haunted house. The ghosts were apparently a doctor and his wife and their three children. As well as apparitions, the couple had been pushed by the ghosts and the wife had been medically examined by the phantom doctor. The rest of the couple's family had seen the ghosts too and objects had been moved around.

The situation was deemed serious enough for the couple to be rehomed and for a priest to be asked to conduct an exorcism.

Funnily enough their home was close to an old Quaker burial ground in Partick.

Stuck in the middle of a housing estate, it has a reputation for being haunted. Apparently at midnight, voices can be heard coming from the grave of Quaker Meg but in typical Glasgow fashion there's a sense of humour attached. Dying of malnutrition, ask her gravestone at midnight what she had for her tea and she'll reply "nothing".

Another newspaper report appeared in the Evening Citizen on August 19, 1971 reported that 12 Nairn Street in Yorkhill was haunted. The tenant, a Mr Towson had seen apparitions in the house of his grandad, grandmother and aunt.

Hospitals are usually about real life rather than the afterlife but both the Royal Infirmary and the Western have trouble with ghosts.

The Western was the base for one of Glasgow's most eminent surgeons, Sir William McEwan. A pioneer of brain surgery in the late 1800s, he refused to operate on a local artist who was suffering constant migraines.

The pain drove the artist to throw himself down four flights of stairs to his death. Apparently his ghost can often be seen standing outside the hospital's operating theatres.

Another ghost at the hospital was reported in 1975 by ward sister Mary McLellan. She was reported to have seen a "tall silver-haired man wearing a blue dressing gown and standing near the doorway of the ward opposite". The man turned out to be a patient who had died two days earlier.

Ghosts in the Royal Infirmary's corridors are well documented.

In 2004, Judith Whalley saw a nurse coming towards her on the top floor corridor of the old building. As she walked by she said evening sister.

"Then I realised I could see her only from the knees up" said Judith.

He's Behind You has been shouted many a time at the city's Pavilion Theatre, but sometimes the call has gone out for something a little more macabre than a pantomime punchline.

Apparently the ghost and the scent of perfume of a dancer who, it was said, died when her dress caught fire, passes through the upper stalls.


	The Necropolis, above, and the city's Royal Infirmary, above, left, have left many with haunting images and spirits from a bygone age

But sighting with more substance comes in reports of customers and staff seeing a large grinning man wandering through the place. The man looks like the old comic Tommy Morgan, who had his ashes scattered in the theatre.

And infamously, a seat in Row F of the stalls, is reported to swing down by itself.

The Theatre Royal has a ghost of its own ... a fireman.

On November 2 1969, an electrical fault started a fire in a space underneath the stage. It took 99 firefighters and 22 hours to get the fire under control. One man died, sub-officer Archibald McLang.

Since that day different members of the RSNO have reported seeing a fireman in 1960s uniform standing around, staring into space.

But don't think it is all old buildings and graveyards which are haunted. Modern developments seem to suffer from ghostly goings on too.

On January 26 2001, staff at recruitment firm Melville Craig in Blythswood Square reported that they were haunted by the ghost of Madeleine Smith.

Smith, who lived at 7 Blythswood Square back in the 1850s, was accused of murdering her lover Pierre Emile L'Angelier in 1857.

Staff at Melville Craig claimed kettles were switched on and off, strange noises were heard, and one room, the room where Smith was said to have poisoned Emile, was always cold.

Oran Mor in Byres Road is no stranger to bad chat-up lines and its bar has hands-on spooks.

The paranormal investigation team, Ghostfinders, conducted a study there on April 10, 2006. The nightclub produced unexplained noises, and high definition sound recordings uncovered a voice saying Fraser'. A seance in the auditorium resulted in cold draughts and touches and a sense of something moving around ... and the name Fraser was repeated again.

But the most modern development to apparently be haunted is the Hilton hotel in William Street.

Staff claim a male spirit in the bar moves glasses and switches lights on and off and others talk of a blonde woman in a blue dress wandering the corridors of the 13th floor.