Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

Oct. 10, 2021 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes

56:59

Edition 580 - John Tantalon

A new guest to The Unexplained - Edinburgh paranormal researcher John Tantalon with chilling tales from the capital of Scotland... including spooky cinemas - and the ghost of a legendary actress...

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes, and this is The Unexplained.
	Lovely sunny day as I record this.
	Just making the last most of the sunshine here because it's going to go, we know that.
	But let me just feel back.
	I've had to close the curtain.
	It's so bright while I'm recording this.
	Let me just have a quick look out there.
	It's absolutely fab at the moment, and I'm in here recording, which of course I love to be.
	Hope to get a sniff of fresh air later.
	Hope everything is good with you as we move into the autumn and winter here in the northern hemisphere.
	I hope that whichever part of the world you're in, life is good.
	Thank you very much for all of the recent emails that I've had.
	If you want to get in touch with me with thoughts about the show, guest suggestions or anything, go to the website theunexplained.tv, follow the link and you can send me a message from there.
	And guest suggestions, gratefully received.
	I know I've mentioned to you many times about the great work setting up guests, actually booking them that Haley has been doing for me.
	For various reasons, Haley's not going to be able to do that in the future going forward.
	So I'm doing those things myself at this point.
	But I'd just like to thank Haley for all that she has done.
	Basically, the way that this show works, I've mentioned this before, I think, is that at the beginning of the week, I have to come up with all of the ideas and contact details for all of the people who appear in the radio show and also spew out some ideas, spew out, it's more genteel than that.
	Roll out some ideas for podcasts and how to contact those people.
	And, you know, at the moment, I've got John doing the radio shows, so he books the people and Haley's been booking the podcasts.
	And I find that absolutely invaluable.
	I'm used to doing that because I worked on news desks, but it's not a part of it that I enjoy particularly.
	So it's been really good to have Haley doing that for me for the podcast.
	And for a while now, I'm going to be doing it for myself.
	So it's a roundabout way of saying that your guest suggestions are always welcome if you have ways to contact those guests.
	It's going to make it easier for me going forward, as they say here on The Unexplained.
	If you've made a donation to the online show recently, thank you very, very much for doing that.
	All helps to keep it going.
	And I might have some news about the way things are going to develop for the show or shows, but not yet.
	More towards the end of the year, I think we're going to find those things out.
	And I'll tell you where we're going with it all when I know and can roll it out to you.
	All right, the guest on this edition of the show is John Tantalon in Edinburgh, Scotland, who deals with great stories, with great finesse, of hauntings, paranormality, and strangeness in one of the most haunted places on the planet, Edinburgh, in Scotland, the capital, of course, of Scotland.
	Never been to Edinburgh.
	Been to Glasgow many times.
	Got to go there.
	John Tantalon, I think you will enjoy very much indeed.
	Thank you very much for being part of my show, for everything that you've done for me.
	Thank you to Adam, my webmaster, for his hard work.
	Don't forget, when you get in touch with me, please tell me who you are, where you are in the world, and how you use this show.
	I've had some really nice emails from people everywhere, including a Scotsman who is currently resident in Canada.
	Stuart, nice to hear from you and so many, many others and people who've been telling me that these podcasts have been a little bit of escapism for them during the awful times that we've all endured.
	And I've been there too.
	I'm still enduring it this last year and a half or so.
	So it's nice to know that we've been helping each other.
	All right, let's get to Edinburgh now.
	John Tantalon.
	John, thank you very much for doing this.
	First question for you in Edinburgh is, is it Tantalon or Tantalon?
	It's Tantalon, as in similar to Tantalon Castle and the famous watcher of Tantalon Castle.
	Okay, I must admit that's a story I don't know, but that's my fault for not knowing it.
	I thought when I saw that name, I kind of thought of Cornwall.
	No, it's down by North Berwick, so when you're on the sort of road to the start of England to Berwick Bond Tantalon is sort of near Dunbar.
	It's a small place with a castle that overlooks the Bass Rock.
	Oh, I know exactly what you mean.
	That's you go beyond Anak, don't you?
	Up the coast.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	It's that sort of direction, yes.
	And then you're heading for the border.
	Yes, that's right.
	And the bridge.
	Okay, how is Edinburgh today?
	Edinburgh is lovely.
	It's delightful.
	Nice and sunny.
	Quite mild compared to yesterday's weather was atrocious.
	But yeah, not bad.
	I mean, can't complain for this time of year in October.
	It's quite splendid.
	Do you know, I've got to say that I've been to Glasgow many times because I used to do the training for Radio Clyde.
	So got up to the Clyde Bank Business Park many times.
	I never got across to Edinburgh.
	And I'm guessing, and I grew to love Glasgow a great deal, but I'm guessing Edinburgh is very different.
	It's very historical.
	I mean, it's a very old city.
	Glasgow has its charm as well.
	But Edinburgh, it's got certainly with the old town and the new town, it has a very different character to it.
	The old town's very old indeed, and always finds something interesting whenever you visit there.
	But yeah, Glasgow's got its charm as well, that's for sure.
	Now, we're recording this in the morning time.
	Sunny day here, sunny day there too.
	I spent a nice couple of hours leafing through, if you can do that with video, looking through some of your videos online.
	You are a great storyteller.
	Talk to me about you then.
	What's your background?
	Thank you very much.
	Well, the stories have been with me a long, long time.
	My grandfather was a trawler man.
	He was in the merchant navy and then went on to trawler boats.
	So he had many stories from the sea, from when he used to do the journeys.
	And the one that always stuck with me was a ghost story that he told me when I was very young about a sort of sailor, a sort of unlucky 13th man on board the ship.
	The story was called Slandy Var.
	It was an interesting tale.
	After that, you know, I just kind of got the bug.
	I started, you know, talking to sort of local people of the area.
	And before you knew it, I had a host of sort of ghost stories and, you know, history from the area that hadn't really been well documented.
	And I decided to put it into the format of the first book, North Edinburgh Nightmares.
	And then the videos came and the website and there was a demand for it.
	So I've been doing it for a number of years now.
	I think there is a demand for it.
	And if I look in my own family, including myself, I think everybody's got a ghost story.
	I've got one.
	My dad had quite a few.
	He was in the army and then the police.
	So you can imagine, you know, just like your dad, he came into contact with another side of life.
	So he had his stories.
	My listener's bound to ask me.
	So let's do it now.
	That story on the trawler, the story itself, what exactly was that about?
	So we can get that dealt with before.
	Okay.
	Okay, here we go.
	So they used to do many voyages from Granton Harbour in the north of Edinburgh, where I live.
	And they'd sail out as far as the Shetlands, Orkney, over to the Faroe Isles.
	And then one of their journeys, there was a member of the crew went over with a freak wave.
	He was at the back of the boat.
	And he was a seasoned sailor.
	And surprisingly, he came right over the other side of the boat and landed on the deck, saving his life.
	And they rushed over to him.
	And his name was Geordie Walker.
	They said, what happened to you?
	What was I?
	He says, nothing happened.
	He says, somebody pushed me.
	They either came over to push me or pull me.
	He says, it was a new guy.
	He said, I've never seen him before.
	So I remember him right down to the tattoo on his hand.
	On his hand, he had a thistle and above it, the word slangy var.
	Good luck.
	So the rest of the crew were bamboozled.
	They were like, there's no other man.
	There's no 13th man.
	They're a superstitious bunch.
	And my granddad knew different.
	So when they landed their catch and they went to a nearby pub called the Granton Tap, he sat Mr. Walker aside and spoke to him.
	He told him a story that the previous year they had been on a voyage out to the Faroe Islands or Shetlands.
	And there was a tragedy.
	A man named Mr. Ross was ascending the ladder coming off the vessel named the Alma and he slipped, he lost his foot and crashed on the deck of the Alma.
	My granddad rushed to try and save his life holding his head together.
	Terrible wound.
	And as they came over to, you know, to save him, it was too late.
	The man had passed.
	And one of the crew was holding his hand as the man passed out of consciousness and eventually died.
	And it was the same hand with the tattoo with the word Slanjee R upon it.
	Right.
	So that person made an impact.
	And that impact remained.
	Yes, indeed.
	I mean, that was the story he told me all those years ago and it stuck with me.
	It was a cracker, you know, just about the mysterious 13th sailor and the, you know, the tattoo of the dead man.
	I thought it was a cracker.
	So that's got to be the inspiration.
	You know, I've got to say, and I can say this because I've got Welsh and Irish and Scottish in my background.
	Not very much English, but plenty of those, you know, very Celtic.
	You know, the Scots are great storytellers, though, aren't they?
	You know, it is possible, isn't it, for things to emerge 500 years ago and through the storytelling narrative tradition for those stories to persist, whether they've been added to or embellished over the years, but to persist for not just 100 years, but for hundreds of years.
	Oh, yes, it's fascinating.
	Some of the historical tales of Edinburgh that are still going around today, and especially associated with the old town.
	You know, around the, you know, Greyfriars Kirk, you know, the body snatchers, you know, all these sort of tales that I've covered.
	You know, they're fascinating and hundreds of years old.
	Now, Edinburgh is reputed to be the most haunted location in the United Kingdom.
	I know that there are people who would say that there are other places that are.
	They would point me to Hampton Court Palace and all sorts of things, but Edinburgh apparently takes the crown.
	Why do you think that is?
	Probably because of its age.
	It's a very old city.
	And with regards to the old town, it does suffer some pretty poor states in the past.
	When you look at the Covenanters prison, what happened to the men in there, there's supposedly a lot of angry souls going about in that direction, then onto the grass market where they carried out the witch trials, the executions and stuff.
	There was a lot of misery back in those days, which may have led to the lost souls still wandering old Edinburgh.
	That may be one theory.
	And I can see why that is credible.
	There was a major investigation that I think you'll be aware of that was done on streaming video.
	It was a very brave thing to do of Mary King's Close last year.
	I don't know whether you saw that, but Mary King's Close is reputed to be an incredibly active place.
	Yes, I've been three times and it is.
	It's fascinating.
	I've never sort of seen anything supernatural or spooky any of the times I've been.
	The first time I went was in 1995, before it was opened to the public, and I went on a tour of the city chambers.
	And that was probably the best time to have been.
	It was pitch black.
	It was just torches.
	There was very little power.
	There was no props, anything.
	It was just like it would have been hundreds of years ago.
	But yes, it's meant to be a very active place.
	You are centering, aren't you, your current work, I think, on the north side of Edinburgh.
	Why is that?
	Well, what happened was the first book, North Edinburgh Nightmares, focused on all the sort of unheard stories of the north of Edinburgh, because I had quite a few that I'd gathered from people over the years.
	The second book, the one I'm working on now, is going to cover other parts of Edinburgh as well as the north.
	It'll be covering sort of places such as Portobello, Queen's Ferry, the Old Town, the New Town, a bit of everything.
	Whereas the first book generally just covered 16 tales from the north.
	Well, before we work our way through some specific stories, maybe you can give me just a little bit of a handle.
	Is there a teaser that you can give me for the new book?
	Yes, the new book is entitled Beyond North Edinburgh Nightmares.
	And it's going to feature a lot of the stories that have been covered over the last year on the videos, on the YouTube videos.
	I had lots of Interviews with people with excellent unheard ghost stories.
	So many of them will feature, and I've done it sort of geographically that you know they're sent around different parts of the city.
	So there's something for everybody.
	But some of them you will not have heard before.
	There's some brand new ones, there's some that have appeared in the videos and a bit of everything really.
	And that should hopefully be out for Halloween.
	I'm still working on it right now.
	Give me an example of an unheard so far or a little heard story that's in the book.
	Okay, here's a cracker.
	There was a lady came on one of my ghost walks I do around the sort of north of Edinburgh.
	And she used to work in a hospital, a nearby hospital.
	She's retired now.
	She worked there for many years.
	And when it was demolished and rebuilt, one of the wards had lots of reports of a dog on people's beds.
	And, you know, they'd come through and they'd ask her, say, excuse me, you know, my dear mum loves animals, but she wants to go to sleep.
	Could you get this wee dog to come off her bed?
	She'd certainly.
	And of course, there was no dog to be seen.
	So when they demolished the hospital, beneath that ward, they discovered a box containing bones of a dog.
	And they take it, they put it back and, you know, covered it over.
	But a bit of digging, years before that, there is a video, a short film called The Chief's Day Out.
	And in The Chief's Day Out, it's a famous policeman from Edinburgh called William Merryleys.
	And he comes to the site of this hospital, which used to be a children's home for crippled children.
	And he brings a real-life movie star with him to visit.
	And that movie star was the dog who played Grey Friars Bobby in the 1961 Disney film.
	And from what we gather, the dog remained there.
	You know, it lived there the rest of its days.
	So putting two and two together, the lady that was telling me the story thinks that it may be the ghost of Grey Friars Bobby that haunted the hospital and may still do to this day.
	And I thought it was quite a tale.
	That one will feature in the book.
	And that's a nice one, isn't it?
	Because it's an Edinburgh ghost story, but it's not something that's hundreds of years old.
	This one is like, what, 50, 60 years old?
	Yeah, yeah, that's it.
	I mean, it's a very nice story.
	It's a very loved tale of Grey Friars Bobby, you know, in Edinburgh and the film has been adored by, you know, many people.
	And, you know, there is sort of proof of the dog actor visiting the place with the children.
	It's a great story, and it's not far, just down the road.
	Okay, let's get into some of the stories that I know you are most familiar with and best associated with.
	I know about this one.
	I think it was pretty widely reported at the time, but like most things, these things get forgotten through the mists of time, don't they?
	1979, Warriston Cemetery.
	Have I pronounced that right?
	Yes, yes, exactly.
	Warriston Cemetery.
	BBC Scotland started to film a brand new series.
	The Omega Factor tells the story of the fictional department 7.
	The government created a group to investigate paranormal phenomena, ESP telekinesis, all of that stuff, poltergeist possession.
	And you say, even though nobody was there, a dark hooded figure reported sighted lurking through the camera view finder in one late night shoot.
	I mean, this was, I think it did get some media coverage at the time, but this was scary stuff.
	Oh, yeah.
	There are a few really good stories associated with Warriston.
	What happened was with regards to the Omega Factor, I did an interview last year for Edinburgh Evening News, and the chap that was doing the interview, he knew the story really well.
	He's a big fan of the Omega Factor, as so am I. And it was about 1983, did an interview with somebody to do with the show, and they told him the details of all what happened.
	And it included a tomb giving way.
	I think a camera operator was injured.
	There was a camera was damaged.
	It fell in a grave just, you know, from out of nowhere.
	But the best one of all was the fact that they kept catching sight of a dark hooded figure when they were doing the specific shot in the cemetery.
	And whenever they checked, there was nobody there.
	And every time they looked, said, there's the person there.
	Can you get them to move?
	And I thought it certainly sends a chill down the spine, even just thinking about it.
	But there are other sort of stories with the graveyard too.
	There's the famous Mary Ann Robertson tomb, which she's known as the Tomb of the Red Lady.
	And in the 70s, the tomb was vandalised and desecrated.
	And since then, what is thought to be the Red Lady has been seen on occasion wandering the grounds, which is quite an interesting tale.
	Okay, and the TV crew clearly had the impression, didn't they, that they were being harassed by something that they couldn't explain when they were trying to produce this series?
	Yes, from what I gather, there was all kinds of weird coincidence when they were making it.
	And obviously, you know, when it came to do season two, it never happened.
	There wasn't a season two.
	I don't know if that was to do with the Powers It Bee that, you know, they didn't like the dark tone of the show or if they felt they were actually, you know, being cursed or, you know, a bad omen above them as they filmed it.
	I don't know exactly, but they didn't do a second series, certainly on those grounds.
	That's amazing.
	Yeah, sorry to jump in here, but I worked at the beginning of my career and my associations working for the BBC were not particularly the happiest ones of my career.
	I've always done better in commercial radio.
	They tend to be a little bit serious about all things and they don't have the entrepreneurial view of things that I do.
	But I remember getting interested in trying to do some stuff in the early 80s on a BBC station that I was working at.
	And I was always interested in these things.
	And there was enormous pushback.
	So I'm surprised that the BBC were even considering doing something like this and actually made a single series.
	Yeah, I mean, in BBC Scotland in the late 70s, I mean, it was the time of Doctor Who and so other shows.
	But yeah, it was pretty dark for the subject matter.
	You know, I mean, you had on ITV and, you know, the Hammer House of Horror and you know, other you know, shows I like, but this, you know, Omega Factor touched on some pretty sort of dark stuff: demonic possession, and you know, telekinesis and poltergeist activity, Ouija boards, you know, all kinds of stuff.
	That, and I can't remember what time it was shown on the telly, you know, if it was pre-watershed or you know, when it was on, but it's certainly got a lot of complaints.
	I mean, even today, you do get a certain amount of pushback if you work in mainstream broadcasting and try and do these things.
	But I think we're a little bit more enlightened these days.
	Just before we move off Warriston Cemetery, is there anybody famous, you know, in particular, a number of people who are buried there?
	To tell you the truth, just now, my mind is a blank because the last episode I did was all about cemeteries.
	So, you know, I was around so many that, you know, I really can't remember.
	There are many, but I'd have to kind of put my mind to it and, you know, work out.
	But the most famous one with regards to North Edinburgh Nightmares are concerned is Mary Ann Roberts and the Red Lady, because that's certainly the ghost, you know, of the Warist.
	And that's the main one that we focus on.
	Yeah, it's quite a tale.
	You're very now, Edinburgh, Glasgow as well, full of heritage for theatre and music hall, cinemas, you know, places of entertainment, very much.
	Some wonderful buildings certainly I know in Glasgow.
	I haven't seen the ones in Edinburgh, but I've seen the footage on your website of some of these places.
	So let's work through some of these stories of haunted places.
	A great one is the story of the Ritz Cinema.
	And if I may read this, actually you would, well, you haven't got the words in front of you.
	You'd read it better, but let me do it anyway.
	This is from your website.
	The Ritz Cinema closed, I think, was it, in the 1970s?
	It was 1981.
	Okay.
	And the last, funny enough, the last film was The Exorcist, wasn't it?
	Yes, Exorcist II, The Heretic.
	Now, you tell a story about a guy called Paul, who you interviewed, who had an experience, and he had been, I think, to the last performance there or one of the very last performances at The Ritz.
	Yes.
	And you say, suddenly, Paul froze in terror as the sight of a shadow appeared, moving frantically from the corner of where he stood.
	The shape moved awkwardly and accompanied by a terrible moaning sound.
	The shadow stumbled as if intoxicated.
	It slid along the wall and slowly into the path of the lane.
	The terrible, agonizing moans of a man crying in agony filled the terrified man with dread.
	He stood afraid, anticipating what would finally appear before him that night.
	Suddenly, without appearance, the sound ceased, and with it the terrible shadow was gone for the alleyway.
	Paul, stunned and puzzled, didn't hang about.
	Instead, he fled as fast as he could, and upon reaching the street lights of Ayr Place, continued to run.
	I mean, that's one hell of a story in itself, but the backstory behind that is even better.
	Tell me the backstory.
	Well, first of all, the chap that told me this story, he's never returned to that lane ever again.
	That's the first thing that was, you know, quite comical when he was telling me, he says, I'll never set foot in that place.
	You know, you can walk around.
	It's a very eerie sort of dark alleyway and you can walk around it.
	But yeah, I mean, what happened was he didn't know this at the time.
	I did a bit of digging and asking sort of older people.
	And there had been a few bad tragedies in the area.
	There was a murder adjacent to the alleyway in the late 80s of a shopkeeper.
	There was an old lady found in her armchair across from it who'd sat there for five years dead.
	But the worst, the sort of connected one that I discovered was in the 50s or 60s.
	And there was a murder fitting similar description to what Paul's account was, where a chap was stabbed.
	He dragged himself along the path and died or was discovered at the point where he encountered the disturbance.
	Again, these details are from sort of old people of the area that have relayed them.
	I mean, some of them are in print.
	You can look them up.
	But that one, you know, it's just done from memory.
	But I thought, what a coincidence.
	And when I told him, you know, he said, I'm still not going down that alley.
	When you interviewed him, presumably you did it face to face.
	Yes, I mean, he's a local guy.
	You know, I've known him for years.
	When he told you that story, how did he look?
	Okay, I mean, No, not really.
	I mean, you get a sort of laugh out of people when they're telling you the stories, but you know, it's a nervous one.
	You know, deep down, you know, they're kind of serious about it.
	There was another chap I spoke to earlier in the year, and it was about a sight and then a kind of haunted piggery, a haunted farmhouse.
	And he'd never relayed to anybody what he saw.
	And now he's a grandfather.
	He's an old man.
	And he still wouldn't tell me what he saw that day.
	It's still with him.
	And he was laughing as he said this.
	But as I said, it was a sort of nervous laugh.
	Which brings me back to the point that ordinary people really do experience extraordinary things.
	And, you know, I'm lucky because I do this and I find that out.
	And you're lucky because you do what you do because you find the same thing out too.
	You know, you're not talking about people who are paranormal investigators or serial experiences here.
	We're talking about people like Paul.
	Yes.
	Okay, that's the Ritz cinema, isn't it?
	Yes.
	The playhouse.
	The playhouse opened in the 1920s, a theater.
	Massive and astonishingly detailed building.
	I mean, it was quite an amazing place.
	You call it in your video a super cinema.
	Yes.
	But it became a theater because, you know, cinemas were having problems.
	We know this through the 50s, 60s, 70s because of the onset of television and other stuff for people to do.
	So it became a theatre in the 1970s.
	And there was a ghost of somebody called Albert, man in grey.
	Talk to me about this.
	Yes, Albert, as has been reported for many years and there'll be many sightings over decades.
	They reckon that he was at one time a stagehand that worked at the playhouse.
	I don't know if he died in an accident or took his own life, but there has been many instances of people meeting a man claiming to be Albert.
	There was one time in the 60s, I believe, when the police turned up to an alarm, a door alarm going off, and it's right across the road from the playhouse, Gayfield Square Police Station.
	And the policeman that went in and checked the place, he said that the chap that let him in was called Albert.
	And the next day, when he returned, they were saying, well, we know an Albert, but it's not that one, you know.
	So that was one of the instances.
	There's been others in the 90s when the police dogs were clear in 97.
	They were clearing the stalls.
	And I think it's always in Row 6 or something.
	And the dogs wouldn't go near it.
	So what they did was they got the dogs from Edinburgh Castle down to do it instead.
	And supposedly they're used to sort of spooks and spirits because they live in the castle.
	That was as the story goes.
	The most recent one of all was back in August or July.
	It was just after the theatres were reopening.
	And a friend, a longtime friend of mine that works, he's been there 30 years.
	And he actually managed to capture a picture.
	What he thinks possibly is Albert.
	I mean, it's entirely up to the viewer what they make of it.
	Well, no, this is, I mean, obviously weird in sound only, but I've looked at this picture.
	It's a weird face.
	It almost looks like something from Mount Rushmore.
	You know, it's a big angular face that is close to what I think is an air conditioning vent or something like that, isn't it?
	Yes, it's in the, I think it's in the top of the building.
	It's an old extractor unit.
	And as you can see by the picture, it's not been looked at for a while.
	There's old bottles sitting around.
	They look ancient, very old.
	And I don't know if they were just doing a general go around the building because they hadn't been in in so long.
	And he took a picture of that for some reason.
	I don't know if they were, why they were taking the pictures, but he says, this will be interesting to you.
	Check this out.
	And it's, you know, there is what appears to be a face at the rear of the extractor unit.
	So possibly Albert.
	Possibly, Albert.
	I mean, who knows?
	It sounds to me like the kind of place that professional, so-called professional investigators, or even people connected, you know, with your own Edinburgh University would be interested in going to check out.
	Do you know whether there are any sort of plans to do anything like that there?
	I think there may have been previously investigations in the playhouse.
	Certainly nothing I've been involved with.
	You know, I've been to concerts at the Playhouse, but I've never been to do anything else.
	But I think there has been.
	I think I've read somewhere that they did, you know, kind of overnight vigils or whatever in the place, but I don't know the results.
	Now, there's something that happens every year for my North American listeners called the Edinburgh Festival.
	And it's very famous, as is the fringe.
	The events around the festival are just as famous.
	Sometimes they produce more famous people than the actual festival itself.
	We're talking comedy and all kinds of performance and entertainment.
	There is a place there that is still one of the Edinburgh fringe venues, I understand, called the Lyceum.
	And there is the ghost.
	This is a great story because it's got so many threads to it.
	A woman who wanders around the light rigging.
	I'll let you tell that story.
	Yes, they reckon it may be the ghost of Dame Ellen Terry, who her ashes lie in Covent Garden.
	And I believe she died in Kent, in Tarden in Kent.
	And a theatrical legend, we have to say.
	Absolutely, yes.
	You know, related to the Gilgood.
	Was it John Gilgood?
	But yeah, I mean, she did many performances up in the Lyceum.
	And they reckon that when they were looking for chalk during World War II, and they took all the statues away from the front of the building.
	And one of them was damaged, the statue of, you know, Dame Ellen Terry.
	And it was just her head remained and it rolled around for years to come.
	And they reckoned that perhaps that's one of the reasons that she haunts it.
	She's unhappy as to the effigy being disfigured.
	And it's the ultimate indignity.
	Yes, indeed, rolling around the head, you know, but there's also reports of her being in other theatres.
	Now, that's the interesting thing, isn't it?
	Because as far as I'm aware, this is the only ghost, so-called, or presence that is reported in at least three different places.
	Yes, it's like she's doing a tour.
	Yes, it is, isn't it?
	But yeah, I thought it was an interesting story.
	I mean, I don't know the sort of time span of when she's been sighted in the Lyceum, but I know it's a well-documented story and they, you know, think it may be Dame Ellen Terry.
	And I thought it was another quite nice story, even though it's, you know, a spooky one.
	I think there's a venue in Wolverhampton, which I know pretty well, that is also reputed to be one of the haunts, literally, of Helen Terry or Ellen Terry.
	The Embassy Cinema.
	This is in a place called Royston.
	It's been knocked down, but that hasn't stopped the phenomena from doing what they do.
	Yeah, indeed.
	What it was back in the day, it was actually very close to where my grandparents lived, around the corner at Royston Means Gardens.
	So I had lots of family would go to this cinema called the Embassy Theatre.
	They went there, you know, in the 50s onwards.
	It closed down in the 60s.
	It was demolished in the 70s.
	And then it became a supermarket called Laws.
	And there was a sighting, supposedly, of a man standing, clicking his fingers.
	He'd catch your attention as you went in, as if to say, excuse me.
	And he'd be gone.
	He'd vanish in the blink of an eye.
	It went on to be other shops after that.
	I can't remember quicksave or shop right or something.
	And there was other people claimed to have heard, certainly heard the clicking at the entrance.
	Now, the connection is that would have been, if you look at the pictures of the theatre, the cinema, that would have been the spot where the man would have greeted you.
	I can't remember the term, the ush.
	I mean, back in the days of grand cinema, and I can still remember one or two, you know, in the glory days of the big Liverpool cinemas that my listeners, some of them might remember, you know, the big, big London-style cinemas with the grandiose frontages and all the rest of it.
	There would still be a uniformed geezer who would be in the front of this, who would be there basically to point you in the right direction, the usher.
	And the very spot in the various cinemas this building became, various supermarkets this building became, was the spot where this man might have done his ushering duties.
	Yes, possibly.
	And that's purely through people I've spoken to that are older, that remember going there back in the day.
	And when you look at the pictures that exist of it, that would have been the spot where the man may have stood and possibly with the clicking of the fingers.
	I mean, the people I've spoken to, some people say they've seen them.
	Other people say that they've just heard the noise of the clicking.
	When it was, it's now a medical center, but when it was a shop, that was the area where you'd go in the door.
	They had a section where they'd keep cardboard boxes.
	In the glory days before recycling, which I'm sure is a great thing, but whenever I want to get a box, I can't get one now.
	In the old days, they used to pile the boxes by the front window of supermarkets and you could just pick them up, put your shopping in them.
	And that's where this apparition, this presence, this snapping-fingered whatever was known to appear.
	That's where a couple of people that I've spoken to all say they've witnessed them at the same spot with the boxes.
	And that would have been the entrance to the MBC cinema, you know, years ago.
	So it's just a possibility.
	I guess it's harder to check out now.
	It's a medical centre.
	It's harder for you to be able to speak to people and get allowed in there.
	But I wonder if things are still being imported.
	It'd be interesting.
	I thought of that.
	I mean, it's completely demolished.
	It's completely remodeled now.
	The layout's different.
	You know, it would technically be somebody's office.
	What was the entrance?
	So that would be the place where they may hear or see something if it is the case.
	But yeah, I'd love to, you know, speak to anybody if they know.
	Have you ever seen a ghost yourself?
	One occasion, what happened was, and only once, incidentally, in 2014, I was privileged enough to visit a massive stately, a castle in Edinburgh called Craig Crook Castle.
	I was able to get access to it.
	And I went three times and it was marvellous.
	It was, you know, it's currently up for sale, I believe.
	It was going to be bought by, I can never remember his name, Gerard Butler.
	He was going to buy it, I believe, but he didn't in the end.
	And the first time I went, it was marvellous.
	You know, it was about midnight, got some great pictures and stuff.
	The second time we went, we took a walk around the building.
	I was with a security guard.
	And the third time, we never even got that far.
	There was a sort of supernatural incident occurred on the second floor.
	And I was out of the building in a flash after that.
	And that is the only time that I think I've seen or witnessed something paranormal.
	Okay.
	And just what exactly was it, just to be clear?
	Okay.
	So what we did was we went up to the second floor.
	The chap and would do a walk around of the building every hour just to make sure it was secure.
	And we went up to the second floor along the first and to the second.
	And the first thing that happened was a door opened by itself.
	And, you know, you think to yourself, debunk, what could have happened?
	You know, you could have stood on a floorboard.
	The door could have pushed itself because of that.
	And we continued along with torches.
	So the second thing that happened was right next to us, a big brass handle fell off a door at the side, caught our attention.
	At that point, my friend, the security guard, a door into a bathroom behind him slammed open with full force.
	And a massive smell of flowers filled the hall where we stood.
	And at that point, that's where we ran for our lives.
	Did you?
	Yes, indeed.
	He came downstairs, sweating and trembling.
	He said, I put the kettle on.
	He says, no, you're not.
	I'm out of here.
	I'm staying.
	And, you know, it has got history, Craig Crook Castle.
	That floor on the second floor is supposedly where Lord Francis Geoffrey has been sighted and heard by people over the years.
	So that is the area where you're supposed to see a ghost.
	The ease, isn't it, with which the other side or spiritual dimension or something that's imprinted in a location can impinge upon our reality.
	You know, I have no doubt when I've spoken to people who've experienced these things, including my own father, who used to, when he retired from the police, work for Comet, you know, the electrical discount warehouse chain, which I don't think exists anymore.
	But they had a building in Bold Street in Liverpool.
	And, you know, Liverpool has many parallels with places like Glasgow and Edinburgh.
	A lot of the architecture is the same.
	This building had been a music hall.
	And when I used to go meet my dad there, if he'd been calling in on that branch, because he did the whole north of England, but a security manager.
	And I used to meet him there and he would say it's happened again.
	And he would tell me stories of people who worked there who wouldn't go upstairs.
	There were swinging double doors that used to be up to the balcony, but now was used as a storage area for, you know, in the days when televisions were big, heavy things and fridges and stuff like that.
	And people, not just one, but many people, would report a coldness in that place and would report boxes the size of television sets being moved around the place.
	There was even a security guard.
	He was a Scottish guy, funnily enough, with an Alsatian dog who used to look after the place at night.
	Sometimes we'd go down there late on a Saturday night to relieve him so he could take the dog for a quick walk around Liverpool just to stretch its legs.
	So we'd give him a half hour break and we'd sit in this place.
	And the dog, you would take it to the stairs, to go up to this balcony as it used to be.
	The dog was a big, tough dog.
	I mean, if there was any trouble there, that dog would be handling it.
	Dog wouldn't go near the stairs.
	So these things, I think, impact upon everyday, ordinary life in ways that perhaps we don't always acknowledge.
	Yes.
	The other instances, like with that story with Craig Crook, was, you know, the chap, the security guard, how he told me about and says, you might want to look into this, was the first day he went there and he was, you know, it was on overtime, you know, looking after the place.
	And every time he had to get up, leave the little office they had, and go and do the walk around of the building.
	And every time he came back, the drawer was open.
	And this happened six or seven times.
	And, you know, he was the only one in the building.
	And that's what he says.
	He says, oh, come, you know, no, putting my hand up for this again.
	It's too much.
	But yeah, there's, you know, lots of activity going on.
	I think there's an awful lot of this stuff.
	Do people write to you, phone you up with stories all the time?
	Do you keep getting, you know, bombarded with them or do you have to go out and find them?
	A bit of everything, really.
	I mean, nine times out of ten, I'll be speaking to somebody about a story and an experience and they'll say, oh, that's a good one.
	But I've got a better one if you want to speak to and put me in touch with somebody with a good story.
	And, you know, that's generally how they come about.
	But people do email me.
	They get in touch.
	People that have been on the ghost walk that I do and come to you with some of them amazing stories.
	Some of them just purely by coincidence that you'll find out about them.
	And you're able to document them from there.
	Yeah, we also talk about, you talk about many haunted theatres and venues.
	And one great quote from, I took this off your website, screens beneath the silver screen, ghostly footsteps on the stage.
	I mean, these things, these things do occur and people love these stories.
	Yeah, I mean, Edinburgh is blessed with some great stories of the theatres, it really does, and the cinemas too.
	I mean, there was many other ones that I could have got into the nuts and bolts of, but a lot of them weren't open due to the pandemic.
	They were still closed and I couldn't get access.
	I mean, I know the Cameo cinema and the Film House, they've all got stories too.
	So yeah, there was lots of other ones that remain to be kind of investigated.
	Can you give us an idea of some of those that you weren't able to get to, but you're going to?
	Well, I got in touch with the Film House, which is a famous Edinburgh cinema.
	And they've got reported stories of hauntings.
	But the problem being is because I think they were just about to open, they didn't have staff to really meet with me and go through it.
	And also there was the, you weren't really meant to be meeting with people because it was still sort of during the, you know, the kind of latter days of the pandemic.
	But yeah, the filmhouse certainly has got sort of stories of, you know, kind of happenings.
	I may look into them in the future and find out more.
	And we have to be further that what you do is not just ghosts.
	It's also strange stories from history.
	Again, the kind of thing that people love.
	One of the things you talk about is the case of Deacon Brody from Bucklew Cemetery, a dame, Deacon William Brody, 1741 to 1788.
	People did not live long in those days.
	So he made, what, 47?
	A pillar of Edinburgh society, cabinet maker.
	I mean, this guy was connected, as we would say today.
	Oh, yeah.
	Unfortunately, this geezer had a dark side, didn't he?
	Yes.
	He liked to seek the sort of darker side of Edinburgh, I believe.
	Behind his kind of sterling personality, he'd be out doing all sorts of hanging out with many rogues and getting up to all sorts.
	And he turned to robbery, didn't he?
	Did he rob a bank, I think is the story, isn't it?
	Yeah, he was a locksmith.
	So he had access to all the locks in Edinburgh, all the keys.
	He had the best apprentices to help him.
	And he'd visit people's homes, so he had access there as well.
	So yeah, he was just a general thief from what I gather, but a bit of a wrong.
	And he lies in Bucklew Cemetery.
	Yeah, there was quite a funny story attached to that, too.
	When I was making the, yeah, Bucklew Cemetery, I mean, it's up at the south side of Edinburgh, and it's a small, kind of unspectacular graveyard.
	It's a shame because it's not very well kept.
	It's a bit abandoned.
	And there's some famous faces in there.
	Andrew Duncan from the Andrew Duncan Clinic in Edinburgh.
	Some other faces there too.
	And when I went in that night, you know, to do some filming and take some photos and stuff, I was on the phone with my partner speaking to her for a bit.
	And I went to leave and they locked me in.
	They hadn't even checked and bolted the gates.
	I was trapped in Bucklew Cemetery.
	I had to scale the fence.
	I mean, I'm laughing about this because it wasn't me who was locked in.
	What did you do?
	I had to climb the fence with a bag full of recording equipment in front of diners that were, you know, up for the festival fringe eating their dinner.
	And there's me like some ghoul.
	You're very lucky.
	They could have called the polis, couldn't they?
	A grave robber.
	Exactly.
	Might have been days of Burke and Air back.
	He could have been rubbing the graves.
	Dear me.
	He's back.
	Yeah.
	So that was great comic comment.
	Do you have, as I have, the desire, I don't know whether I've got the intestinal fortitude, but the desire to spend the night somewhere seriously haunted.
	Maybe you've done that.
	Yes, we have.
	There's a group from Cheshire I'm friends with called the Spirit of Vision Paranormal Research.
	And they go up and down the country doing many overnight sort of vigils, sometimes for days, you know, investigating some of the most haunted places in the country.
	And we'd done some up in Edinburgh with those guys and that was quite fun, you know, overnight at a haunted pub.
	We did Warriston Cemetery with the Tomb of the Red Lady as well and the Dark and Night.
	So yeah, we've done a few instances of things like that.
	I wouldn't mind spending the night in a haunted pub.
	Oh yeah, it was something else.
	I mean, this is a very famous haunted pub in Edinburgh called Whistlebinkies, which is part of the Edinburgh Vaults.
	I'm sure you'll have heard of the Vaults.
	And we were lucky enough to get that, but it was closed during the pandemic overnight.
	And we did this investigation there.
	And, you know, they're seasoned veterans that, you know, this kind of stuff with all the equipment.
	I'm more into the stories than the actual investigation, but it was hair-raising events that night.
	Really?
	What happened in the haunted pub then?
	Well, the Whistlebinkies has got a couple of famous spirits.
	They've got one called the Imp and one called the Watcher, I believe, that have been around for years since 1990 or whenever it was opened as a pub.
	And they've been seen on many occasions.
	So they were doing like, you know, the first thing they did was there's these little booths where the activity's been, you know, the most prevalent.
	And they were sat there with equipment trying to speak to it.
	And it escalated.
	It was like a little ball sitting on a glass and it was escalating with the questions when the Sarah from the group was joined by the manageress and another female staff member.
	And it clearly liked the ladies of the group and it was, you know, speaking a lot more frantically.
	That was a bit creepy, you know, and when it was, you know, answering their questions.
	It went on all night.
	There was all kinds of things from sensors going off within the pub.
	When they were asking questions on the stairs that lead up to North Bridge, it was escalating when they were kind of asking it stuff.
	So yeah, it was some quite unnerving moments.
	They also recorded a sound, two sounds, the sound of a question, I think, and the sound of a child.
	They got all that on audio.
	And was that site always a pub or was it something else?
	It was part of the vaults.
	So it was lodgings.
	You know, a long, long time ago, it was very, you know, decrepit lodgings for people, but it was all, you know, it was many things.
	It was a place for gambling, prostitution, all kinds of stuff in sort of old Edinburgh.
	So it's got a very dark history.
	But then it was opened as a pub when it was all kind of rebuilt and reconfigured.
	It opened about 1990, I think.
	Kind of location that's got a million backstories to it.
	Is there anywhere in Edinburgh that you haven't investigated yet and you'd really like to and you've maybe planned to or you're having difficulty doing?
	You know, is there a holy grail case that you want to get into?
	There is.
	Next year, we will be visiting the vaults, like, you know, down from the pub we were in.
	We'll be going into, you know, sort of lower parts of the vaults that are very, very haunted.
	We'll be doing that in April next year with Spirit Vision.
	But there are some others.
	There's a place called the Gilmerton Coves, which is quite a famous Edinburgh location.
	A real mystery.
	Nobody really knows just how old it is or why it's there or what it was.
	It's reportedly been used as a hellfire club, as a place, a hellfire club.
	There's all kinds of ceremonial parts to it.
	What you mean like magic?
	Yes.
	But nobody really knows what it was used for.
	It looks like there's sacrificial chambers and all kinds of stuff attached to it.
	And it's open to the public.
	But it's just one of these real oddities called the Gilmerton Coves.
	So we'd love to get in there one time and possibly do an overnight bit of vigil.
	And this location, you say nobody really knows the full history of it.
	Not really.
	Nobody knows how old it is, how far it goes back.
	I mean, it's like an underground catacomb of tunnels.
	I've never been.
	I know people that have, but I've certainly read about it.
	And it looks quite a spooky place.
	You also talk about Grey Friars Kirk or church, named after a bunch of Franciscan friars who were there, I think, around the 1500s.
	It was also the home of a bunch of rabble-rousers, really, rebellious people, the Covenanters.
	And things are experienced there.
	Yes, that is quite a place.
	I've been on a walk at night there with the City of the Dead tours that do it.
	And they take you there 10 o'clock at night to midnight when it's at its peak.
	And they take you into the Covenanters prison, you know, which is, you know, spooky beyond belief.
	And who were just, so we can explain, I said they were rabble rousers.
	They were what, rebellious people?
	What were they up to?
	The Covenanters was a religious movement that were exiled after, I can't remember how many years of being active.
	And they were basically told you're, you know, against the system, against society, against the crown.
	We're going to put you in a jail.
	And that's what they did.
	They opened part of the cemetery and it was known as the Covenanters Prison.
	And it was basically a camp for them to die in.
	I can't remember how the figures of it, how many died in there, but it was vast.
	And years later, there was all kinds of kind of paranormal activity occurred after about 1999.
	There was a disturbance in a tomb of the man that condemned them.
	His name escapes me, the famous mine's a blank.
	But anyway.
	Oh, not the, I think I've forgotten the name too, not the famous hanging judge.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	George Mackenzie, George Mackenzie Rosenthal.
	Yes.
	You know, after that, there was a disturbance with his tomb where somebody bedding down for the night broke in and fell into his tomb and into his coffin, disturbing his remains.
	And they say that after that, all the, you know, the kind of the spirits, if you like, you know, the kind of activity it got went through the roof.
	There was people being marked, people being bitten, scratched, all kinds of stuff that go on the ghost walks in that specific area, Greyfriars, in the Covenanters prison.
	And you've got some photographs of that area by way of illustration.
	And I love the way that you use only black and white.
	It's much better that way.
	Because of all the spooky locations that you've got on that website of yours, that I think is one of the spookiest.
	I was just imagining what that would be like, you know, on a dark and misty Edinburgh night.
	Yeah, it's something else.
	It really is.
	The fact is that you're chained in as well.
	You know, when you go into the Covenanters prison, they lock the gate behind you.
	So, you know, you're in there.
	You're not getting out in a hurry.
	If anything happens to your tour guide, you're stuck.
	Which is just to add to the kind of spookiness of it all.
	But it's something to see.
	It really is.
	Oh, but you love it.
	This new book.
	Oh, yes.
	When is it out?
	Hopefully Halloween.
	That's what I'm aiming for.
	Oh, good.
	Excellent.
	Okay.
	Well, I might talk to you on my radio show because I'm on live that night, I think.
	If you're up for that, we might have a quick chat from Edinburgh.
	have a think about stuff that we can build into that, and we'll try and make that happen, John.
	Yes, that sounds excellent.
	Can you tease me, maybe?
	I know no author wants to give away the contents of a new book.
	You want to tell me enough to tease me, but want to leave all the detail, and I quite understand that.
	But can you tease me with something else from this book, just to leave my listener with something chilling?
	Certainly, let's have a look and see.
	Let's quickly get something up.
	He's got the book, Ben.
	He's got it right.
	There's nothing like preparation.
	So let's see.
	So, yeah, I said it covers many stories from over the years.
	Well, it's over the last year that I've discovered.
	There's a chapter on Queen's Ferry, which has some amazing stories down there, you know, on the coasts on the vicinity of the Forth Railbridge, South Queensferry.
	Amongst its many ghost stories, there is one of a ghostly monkey that haunts Lone House, which is quite a tale.
	There's also the story of the Bink Cemetery and the more Covenanters to do with that, that's cursed and a step that supposedly the blood has never washed away from.
	When a Covenanter was murdered, if you spit on it, the blood will show up, supposedly.
	And also the famous Burryman of Queen's Ferry that will feature in the book too, which is quite an interesting story.
	Every year he takes to the streets of Queen's Ferry and walking around dressed in thousands of burrs, in a sort of pagan tradition.
	That's going to be in there.
	They've also got a couple of stories at the end.
	There's one that features on my website about a haunting around Christmas time in 1986 in a property in the Leith area of Edinburgh.
	That's quite a chilling story.
	What happened?
	I mean, without giving away the details, because I know you've got this book coming up, but give me a rough idea.
	I mean, are we talking Enfield poltergeist here?
	Similar, similar.
	It was a young family, a lady and her husband and their young son.
	And it was almost like everyone turned against the child.
	You know, it was almost like something dark in the house didn't like him.
	And this in the story, it's her accounts leading up to when she left.
	And the family got out of there on Christmas, Boxing Day, 19.
	I don't know what year it was, but they never looked back.
	But it was just chilling events leading up to over the few years they were in there.
	There was all kinds of tragedies in the street.
	It was just quite an ugly tale.
	So that's quite an interesting story that's going to be in the book, as well as, you know, a few other good ones.
	But there's certainly plenty of new stories in there.
	And when you've done with Edinburgh, which is a gift that keeps on giving, I think it's going to be a long time before you are, there's the rest of Scotland.
	Yeah, I mean, my family actually live in Hampshire, so I spend a lot of time down there.
	Oh, really?
	You know, my partner and kids live in Aldershot.
	Oh, just down the road from me, okay.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So I'm interested in Hampshire and its haunted history too.
	And, you know, we're a stone's throw away from the home of the, you know, the famous Peter Underwood in Farnham.
	So there's lots of.
	What's that story?
	I'm not aware of that.
	Peter Underwood in Farnham.
	Peter Underwood, famous, famous author of ghost stories.
	Yeah, he lived in Farnham, which is just along the road from us.
	So, you know, he wrote many, many interesting books on Borley Rectory and, you know, all kinds of, you know, creepy stuff.
	So he was an interesting man.
	And I've got family on the Isle of Wight as well.
	So, you know, we travel there often.
	And the Isle of Wight's an incredibly haunted place.
	It's got many, many stories.
	Oh, stories around Bembridge, but all parts of the Isle of Wight.
	I know the Isle of Wight very well from my days.
	I was on Ocean Sound Radio years ago, and I used to spend a lot of time on the Isle of Wight and really miss it.
	Oh, marvelous.
	Well, we have a lot more to talk about.
	Thank you very much, John.
	What's your website so my listener can go and look at it?
	It's North Edinburgh Nightmares at wordpress.com.
	That's North Edinburgh Nightmares at wordpress.com.
	That's the one.
	John, thank you very much indeed.
	I hope the winter is kind to you and let's talk again soon.
	Brilliant.
	Thank you very much.
	It's been a joy to speak to you.
	And like I said in that, we'll make moves to get John back on this show.
	Your thoughts about him gratefully received.
	More great guests in the pipeline here at the home of the unexplained.
	So until next, we meet here.
	My name is Howard Hughes.
	This has been The Unexplained Online.
	Please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
	Thank you very much.
	Take care.

▲