Tag Archives: geoff holder

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 26^TH & 27^TH 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 31^ST 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 9^TH 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 12^TH 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 Scotland Paranormal Perthshire 11 - Maggie Wall monument zombies cover for blog

Paranormal Glasgow Scottish Bodysnatchers - A Gazetteer

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.

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.

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…

And here’s the original…

In which the Author greets the zombie of Oliver Cromwell…

Oliver Cromwell’s body has already had two lives. firstly as Lord Protector after the English Civil War, and secondly two years after his death, when the corpse was dug up and ‘executed’ a second time, in punishment for the

beheading of Charles I. And now, with the imminent onset of the zombie apocalypse, he’s back for a third go,

possibly aided by thousands of Puritan zombie soldiers.

Oliver’s Army are on their way…

As with others in the series (collect the set!) Olly comes from the forthcoming

Zombies from History: A Hunter’s Guide.

In which the Author is honoured to meet the zombie of St Patrick…

Today’s selection from the forthcoming Zombies from History: A Hunter’s Guide is St Patrick, the patron saint of

Ireland.

The whereabouts of St Patrick‘s final resting place are disputed. However, as he supposedly banished snakes from Ireland, you could perhaps locate the holy herpetophobe by taking along a reptile or two.

As Indiana Jones said, “Snakes. Why does it have to be snakes?”

In which the Author says howdy to the zombie of Alfred the Great…

Here’s another historical zombie, in this case King Alfred the Great, who most people remember for incinerating

some baked goods, but who was actually one of the most able Anglo-Saxon kings of Dark Age England, taking on

the Vikings to boot.

As with the other images in this series, this regal zombie comes from the forthcoming