Category Archives: zombies

In which the Author embarks on a Halloween tour of Scotland…

From 26th October to the 12th November I’m back in Scotland for a ‘Halloween tour‘ of lectures, talks and events. I’ll have books on sale at each event.

1. SATURDAY & SUNDAY 26TH & 27TH OCTOBER, SCONE PALACE, PERTH.

TALK: ‘THE BODYSNATCHERS OF SCONE (plus the puma, the witch and the severed head)’

Join Geoff as he delves into the dark world of the Resurrectionists, the strange collaboration of hardened criminals and respectable medical men who broke into coffins and stole bodies for the dissecting tables of the anatomists.

Bodysnatching ahoy!

Time: 1pm

Tickets: £10 (include grounds admission) – 01738 552300 or  visits@scone-palace.co.uk or  www.scone-palace.co.uk

SPECIAL: On the Saturday the talk (and the subsequent visit to the Palace graveyard) will be filmed by TF1 (the

French equivalent of BBC1) for a ‘Halloween in Scotland’ special to be broadcast in France on 2 November. Come

along and be on television!

 

2. THURSDAY 31ST OCTOBER – SKEPTICS IN THE PUB, EDINBURGH.

TALK: ‘SCOTTISH WITCHCRAFT’

Scottish witchcraft has by now developed its own mythology, a set of ideas that ‘everybody knows’. Geoff’s talk

will attempt to separate fantasy from historical reality, which is both stranger and more sordid than most people

suspect. By way of illustration he will detail his own groundbreaking investigations into the famous Maggie Wall

Witchcraft Monument in Perthshire, a B-listed historical monument (and favourite trysting spot for the Moors

Murderers) that, as the painted inscription states, supposedly commemorates “Maggie Wall burned here as a

Witch 1657”. The key word, boys and girls, is “supposedly”.

Venue: The Banshee Labyrinth
 29-35 Niddry Street
 Edinburgh 
EH1 1LG

Time: 7.30PM

Free – More details at http://edinburgh.skepticsinthepub.org/Event.aspx/1768/Witches-in-Scotland

3. SATURDAY 9TH NOVEMBER, GLASGOW – SCOTTISH SOCIETY OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH ANNUAL

CONFERENCE.

TALK: ‘SEX, LIES AND PARANORMAL GLASGOW’

Venue: Hilton Glasgow Grosvener Hotel, 
Grosvener Terrace, Great Western Road / Byres Road, Glasgow

Time: from 10 am to 4.40 pm

Tickets: £35: http://www.sspr.co.uk/index.html

 

4. TUESDAY 12TH NOVEMBER: THE EDINBURGH FORTEAN SOCIETY.

TALK: ‘ZOMBIES FROM HISTORY’

Zombie culture didn’t start with George Romero. Here be medieval chroniclers’ sworn-to-be-true tales of the

plague-spreading undead; the pugilistic zombie of Paisley; archeological evidence of Anglo-Saxon and Romano-

British fear of the walking dead; several ‘Ladies with the Ring’, all supposedly revived in the grave by jewel-stealing

gravediggers; the man who was hanged and buried – and then revived; the Cumbrian Crusader whose corpse was still bleeding 800 years after his death; and the bog body that solved a modern murder mystery.

Warning: contains corpses. 

Venue: The Counting House, 38 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DD

Time: 7.30pm

Cost: £1 – http://www.edinburghforteansociety.org.uk/index.html

Poltergeist Over ScotlandParanormal Perthshire11 - Maggie Wall monumentzombies cover for blog

Paranormal GlasgowScottish Bodysnatchers - A Gazetteer

In which the Author appears on Into the Dark Radio (again) to talk zombies…

Those estimable gentlemen Steve Rogers and Shawn McMahon recently allowed me to blether on about Zombies from History: A Hunter’s Guide on their podcast-tastic Into the Dark Radio show. We talked anti-zombie weapons, where best to ride out the forthcoming zombie apocalypse, how the zombie of Charles Darwin would probably be writing Great Exhumations and David Potter’s Field, and other fun stuff, not least the exploding corpse of William

the Conqueror.

(It’s great being an author of the strange and peculiar: you can write “the exploding corpse of William the

Conqueror” as if it’s the most normal sentence in the world.)

You can listen to the podcast via iTunes or Stitcher, or go to Into the Dark Radio itself.

into the dark zombies

In which the Author has a new book published (this one’s on zombies)…

Zombies from History: A Hunter’s Guide has just been published by the History Press. 

Here’s the back cover blurb:

Are you worried about the zombie apocalypse? Kept awake each night imagining you’ll only manage to take out a

few before that chap at No. 9 gets you? Well, fret no more! Clasp a copy of this book and get a better class of

horrible death from one of Britain’s best-loved historical legends. With full zombie-hunting details – including the

locations of tombs, any wounds and weaknesses, and a carefully calculated difficulty level – no apocalyptic history

lover should leave home without it!

FULL DETAILS of where to find –and how to kill – all of Britain’s most historic zombies.

FACT FILES on the undead in history, including ROMAN REVENANTS, people who were BURIED ALIVE and some RESURRECTED ROYAL CORPSES!

HIGH-PROFILE TARGETS including JANE AUSTEN, HENRY VIII, RICHARD III and WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

And here a few zombies for your delecatation… Oliver Cromwell, Charles Darwin and St Patrick respectively:

happy hunting….

oliver cromwellZombies-52 USEZombies-2 USE alt

In which the Author leaves some rotting tuna out for a zombie cat…

The world clearly needs more zombie cats. To further this laudable aim, we present the zombie of Hodge, Dr

Johnson’s favourite cat.zombie cat

Samuel Johnson is probably the second most quoted person in the English language, after Shakespeare. His A

Dictionary of the English Language made him one of the major celebrities of Georgian London. A Life of Samuel

Johnson, the biography written by his friend James Boswell, cemented his status as one of the most mordantly

incisive – and quotable – thinkers of his age. Having been often bitten by poverty himself, Johnson was frequently

kind to those less well-off than himself. He was also – very unusually for his time – affectionately disposed towards

animals.

A statue of Hodge, his favourite cat, stands outside his house at 17 Gough Square in London. The idea of a zombie Johnson, surrounded by a legion of re-animated moggies, is an appealing one.

As with other zombies in this series, the zombie of Hodge comes from the forthcoming book Zombies from History: A Hunter’s Guide. 

zombies cover

In which the Author himself becomes a zombie…

The talented folks at The History Press have been busy zombifying images of the good, the bad and the ugly from British history for my forthcoming book Zombies from History: A Hunter’s Guide. Some of these gruesome images have already been shared in previous posts on this very blog.

And now it is the turn of the humble author himself. Here’s my zombie portrait as it appears on the inside cover of

the book. To me, it seems a distinct improvement on the original…

Zombie-Geoff_MONO

Here's the original

And here’s the original…