On Wednesday 31st August I’ll be the guest on The S-Files, a community radio show broadcasting out of Leith, Edinburgh, with a remit that runs “from the paranormal to psychics, myth to magic, ghosts and much much more.” Presented by Ewan Irvine, the show runs from 10pm to midnight. If you’re in the Edinburgh area you can listen live on 98.8 FM. Elsewhere, pick the show up live online at http://www.leithfm.co.uk/listen. Expect me to discuss bodysnatching, hauntings, and other Scottish mysteries.
Category Archives: Talks and Events
In which the author appears on the ‘History & Mystery Show’ on RedShift Radio…
On Tuesday 30th August I’ll be the feature guest on the ‘History & Mystery Show’, a weekly broadcast from the online community radio station RedShift Radio, based in Crewe. My interrogator will be the estimable ghost tour guide Mr. Tim Prevett. The show goes out from 10-11pm on Red Shift Radio and can be heard for the following six weeks on the station’s Listen Again facility – only without the music. Yes, I get to choose some of the tracks played during the show, so expect classic clattery-ah post-punk-ah from Manchester-ah, beautiful driving Krautrock, and bonkers Italian film soundtrack horror-prog. Yay!
As for the topics, Tim will be quizzing me on the Vampire with Iron Teeth and other stories covered in Paranormal Glasgow. Be prepared for urban legends, crypto-Communists, monster-hunts, Spring-Heeled Jack and city hobgoblins.
In which the author broadcasts on International Paranormal Investigators Radio…
Over the night of Wednesday/Thursday the 29th/30th June I’ll be yabbering away on IPI-Radio, the net-based radio show run by the fine folk at International Paranormal Investigators. More details at www.ipi-radio.info. Things kick off at midnight UK time, which is early evening for the audience in the USA and Canada. I suspect Paranormal Glasgow will be discussed, along with much else relating to the rational analysis of alleged paranormal phenomena.
The live event is fully interactive, with listeners/viewers sending in questions via chat and webcams. So if you want to ask me about vampires with iron teeth, miraculous fasters, the cabinet-maker who channelled Hafod, Prince of Persia (and companion of Jesus), big cats, the Maggie Wall Witchcraft Monument or anything else from my casebook, come along to www.ipi-radio.info/ipi-live-video/ for live chat across two continents. Apparently electronical technology is involved, including something the youth of today call ‘the internet’. We’re living in the future, I tell you.
In which the author is about to give a mysterious talk in Aberfeldy…
This Thursday (26th May) I’m at Aberfeldy, giving a talk at the Breadalbane Community Campus at 7.30pm. The subject is ‘Mysterious Perthshire’ although I’ll be concentrating exclusively on the Highland part of Perth & Kinross, with episodes ranging from Pitlochry and Moulin through Strathtay to Loch Tay and Ben Lawers.
On the slate will be: Big Cats in Highland Perthshire, including a photograph of a big cat print in snow; UFOs, especially the notorious Calvine/Pitlochry Incident of 1990; and the Alleged Haunting of Ballechin House, a Victorian ghost investigation by the Society for Psychical Research that led to scandal, rows, and angry letters to The Times. All these will be taken from my recent book Paranormal Perthshire.
A big thank you to Bruce Paterson for letting me witter on for his show on Heartland FM.
Tickets for the talk are £5, available from the Breadalbane Community Library, or by phoning 01887 822405. The event starts at 7.30 and lasts for about an hour, and there’s free parking. Oh, and I’ll also have books for sale, as managed by my glamorous assistant.
In which the author turns into a pathetic fanboy…
Anyone interested in great writing should pop along to the Steps Theatre in Dundee’s Central Library on Thursday night (May 19th), because the splendid Denise Mina is giving a talk. I will most certainly be there.
Denise Mina is primarily known for her bestselling crime novels set in Glasgow, and I’m very fond of one of her unconventional heroines, investigative journalist Paddy Meehan. But my fanboy sense is tingling because she has also penned two graphic novels featuring Hellblazer himself, the man with the trenchcoat, permanent fag-end and surly attitude – occultist John Constantine.
Since making his appearance in Alan Moore’s version of Swamp Thing in the 1970s, John Constantine has been one of the most fascinating of comics characters, a working-class former punk who looks like a degenerate Sting, makes as many mistakes as he does right moves, and spends his time in magical conflicts with demons, angels and other nefarious beings.
Denise Mina brought the London-based Constantine to Glasgow in Empathy is the Enemy and The Red Right Hand darkly puckish tales of misery-eating demons and grim apocalyptic cults. The climax in the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery is a classic. I mentioned the graphic novels in The Guide to Mysterious Glasgow and The Guide to Mysterious Iona and Staffa.
Crime and John Constantine – what more could you possibly want from an author event?
Steps Theatre, Central Library, Wellgate, Dundee, DD1 1DB. Thursday, 19 May 2011, 7.00pm – 8.30pm. Tickets are free and available from Central Library (01382 431500) and Waterstones, Dundee.
In which the author becomes a museum piece…
(c) 2011 University of Aberdeen, Kings Museum, ‘100 Curiosities Exhibit’
Badass big cats. I love them, especially when they turn up in areas where they have no right to be, to perplex and bamboozle us with their out-of-place predator-feline activities. From the Surrey Puma and the Beast of Bodmin to more recent sightings of alleged panthers and pumas in Scotland, these cats have been an enduring cryptozoological mystery.
So when Scotland’s newest museum, the King’s Museum in the University of Aberdeen, asked if I would choose an object for their opening exhibition 100 Curiosities, I knew exactly which specimen to pick. The exhibition draws on the massed collections within Aberdeen’s several museums, and I knew that nestling within the glass cases of the city’s stupendously wonderful Zoology Museum was a stuffed and mounted Kellas Cat, which has a tangential if fascinating relationship with the whole question of just what these cats are.
Here’s the description I wrote for the card that accompanies the cat in the King’s Museum:
“Out-of-place animals such as ‘ABCs’ or Alien Big Cats hold a special attraction for researchers of the supernatural and strange. Are pumas, panthers, lynxes and other exotic felids roaming our countryside? In some cases the answer is definitely yes, as physical specimens have turned up in Inverness-shire and the Borders. The Kellas Cat – named after a Morayshire village – isn’t an ABC, as it’s actually a bad-tempered hybrid of the domestic moggie and the Scottish Wildcat. But I suspect this black-furred bruiser is responsible for some of the reported sightings of ‘big cats’ in the North-East of Scotland. Nice kitty…
Geoff Holder, author of The Guide to Mysterious Aberdeen.”
Early museums grew out of the strange and bizarre ‘Cabinets of Curiosities’ assembled by wealthy gentlemen (there is a splendid recreation of one in the British Museum), so it is only appropriate that the King’s Museum is acknowledging the past with this opening exhibition. You should go, as admission is free, and the eclectic collection is definitely worth a visit.
The King’s Museum opened in April 2011 and can be found at
17 High Street,
Old Aberdeen,
Aberdeen AB24 3EE
Tel 01224 272000
Opening hours are 9.30am-4.30pm Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, 9.30am-7.30pm on Tuesday, and 11.00am-4.00pm Saturday.
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/kingsmuseum/
And while you’re in the area, check out the Zoology Museum. In weird creature feature terms, it’s utterly scrumptious.
I would like to thank the King’s Museum for the invitation to choose this specimen. And if any other museum curators out there want to get in touch, I have an idea for an exhibition entitled Dinosaurs, Daleks and Druids…