Tag Archives: fortean

In which the Author is the guest of the Scottish Society for Psychical Research…

This Saturday (9th November) I’m talking at the National Conference of the Scottish Society for Psychical Research (SSPR), a fine institution if ever there was.

The day long event promises to be a belter, with talks including:

Anthony Peake ‘Cheating the Ferryman: A New Blueprint for Post Mortem Survival’

P.G. Maxwell-Stuart ‘Poltergeists and Witches: Unruly Sisters’

Brian Allan ‘The Dark Messiah: Magick, Gnosis and Religion’

And a guest panel featuring Joan Charles.

As for your humble author, he’ll be waffling on about ‘Sex, Lies and Paranormal Glasgow’ – expect the usual coalescence of vampires, poltergeists, zombies and scepticism. Plus sex and lies of course.

sspr copy

The event is at the Hilton Glasgow Grosvenor Hotel in Glasgow’s West End, and runs from 10am to 5pm. Tickets and more details here.

In which the Author talks Scottish witchcraft for Skeptics in the Pub…

Halloween… where better to spend it than in a pub with the words ‘Banshee’ and

‘Labyrinth’ in its name, deep within Edinburgh Old Town, talking about Witches in Scotland?

The nice people at Skeptics in the Pub have invited me to give a Halloween special as part of their round of talks.

I’ll be discussing the historical reality of Scottish witchcraft as contrasted with its typical

portrayals, and outlining my investigations into the possible truth behind the famous Maggie Wall Witchcraft Monument in Perthshire.

The illustrated talk is free and kicks off at 7.30, at The Banshee Labyrinth, 29-35 Niddry

Street, Edinburgh EH1 1LG. I’ll be bringing books for sale, as usual.

11 - Maggie Wall monument

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 talks about mummies and ghosts in the Sunday Herald…

 

Glasgow’s Sunday Herald did a full-page feature on Haunted St Andrews in their 8th July edition. I tried to look windswept and interesting for the photo shoot in the Cathedral ruins, and gabbled on in my usual windbag fashion. The full piece can be read here, courtesy of the Sunday Herald and journalist Cate Devine. I’ll be doing a book signing at J & G Innes on Market Street in St Andrews on Saturday 21st July.

Read the full article by clicking here, or the image to the left!

In which the author adds another ‘Fortean Freak Out’ podcast and does a book signing in Carlisle…

 

 

Carlisle, I see you. On Saturday 21st April I’m doing a book signing for Paranormal Cumbria at the Waterstones bookshop, 66-68 Scotch Street, Carlisle. I’ll be there from 11am to 3pm, so come along for a chat – but if you can’t make it on the day, call 0843 290 8217 to reserve a copy of the book and I’ll sign it for you to pick up later.

 

Paranormal Cumbria covers subjects such as the Cursing Stone of Carlisle – which brought beliefs from the Middle Ages into the Millennium – plus witchcraft and folk magic, twentieth-century sightings of fairies, examples of psychic powers, the phantom airships of World War One (which seem to be cultural precursors of the phantom UFOs of later decades), and the enduring mystery of the ‘Cumberland Spaceman’. The book has been covered recently on both BBC Radio Cumbria and Lakeland Radio.

 

And talking of matters Cumbrian and strange, the next edition of the Fortean Freak Out podcast is up and running, and its subject is taken from Paranormal Cumbria – the infamous Vampire of Croglin Grange. Which was probably not a vampire. Listen to my conclusions here.