Tag Archives: perth

In which the Author takes a Halloween tour in Scotland (and looks for further gigs)…

Are you in Scotland and looking for a speaker during Halloween week? In the last week of October I’ll be knocking the French mud off my boots and venturing back to Scotland for a series of talks, and there are a few gaps in the

schedule, so I’m looking for some other opportunities.

Here’s the skinny:

On the evening of Tuesday 28th October I’m talking about ‘Supernatural Scotland’ at the Breadalbane Library in

Aberfeldy, Perth & Kinross.

On Wed 29th (evening) I’m presenting my crowd-pleasing ‘Zombies from History’ to the Edinburgh Skeptics at the Banshee Labyrinth. Warning: may contain corpses.

Thurs 30th (evening) I’m in Perth with the Filmmakers Club.

And in the afternoon of Friday 31st, Halloween itself, I’m at the (drum-roll) Scottish Paranormal Festival in Stirling,

giving a talk entitled ‘Sex, Lies & Poltergeists’: expect scenes of destruction, pointless violence and icky fluids from the very beginning.

So, if you are looking for a Halloween speaker on all matters ghoul and ghast anytime between Monday 27th

October and Saturday 1st November, please get in touch.

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 works on his library tan…

 

 

It’s hot, hot, hot, as Caribbean songsters Arrow once sang. And as Britain broils, bakes and burns, your humble author is spending his time… hidden away in libraries. (That’s right, I get to devote large amounts of time to doing things I love. Pity me.)

 

I’m delving deep into the research for Poltergeist over Scotland, and so librarians and archivists from Perth and Glasgow to Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Cambridge have learned to fear my hunger for request slips.

 

 

 

 

Amazing stuff is being dredged from the archives, including episodes and facts that haven’t seen the light of day for more than a hundred years, if at all. Who would have thought that the history of Scottish poltergeists could be so extensive?

So if you see a pale figure tottering from bookstack to bookstack, his pallid skin untouched by scorching sun, you might just have glimpsed the elusive f=entity known as Ye Poltergeist Hunter of Olde Scotlande…