Eerie Edinburgh

Join me this Halloween for a night of Victorian ghost stories, as we travel back to 19th-century Scotland to explore three strange and rather disturbing accounts.

Our first story takes us to Perthshire in 1874, where a mysterious figure dressed entirely in black began appearing beside a railway line near Ballinluig. The sightings frightened local travellers, until a group of young men decided to confront the supposed phantom.

Next, we visit Dundee in the 1880s, where an Irish clergyman and his wife spent a night at an old inn. What began as an unpleasant smell coming from a bedroom cupboard developed into one of the most grotesque ghostly encounters I've come across - involving the apparition of a disembodied human head.

Finally, we travel to Aberdeen, where a man named Scarfe agreed to spend a night in an allegedly haunted house near Great Western Road. Accompanied by a borrowed dog, he experienced something that would eventually lead to the discovery of a long-forgotten tragedy.

Three accounts from Victorian Scotland, each with its own mystery, and each offering a rather different explanation for what witnesses believed they had encountered.

So, settle in, turn down the lights, and enjoy A Night of Victorian Ghost Stories.

📖 MY NEW BOOK - THE NIGHT SHIFT

If you enjoy the stories featured on Eerie Edinburgh, you might also be interested in my new book, The Night Shift: True Hauntings from Scotland's Hospitals and Care Homes.

Drawing on accounts of strange experiences in Scottish hospitals and care homes, the book explores some of the ghostly encounters reported by those who have worked in these buildings.

It's available now on Amazon in paperback for £9.99.

👉 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HNRHB8YH

In this episode we investigate several strange accounts from the popular Nottinghamshire holiday village.

A couple reportedly wake in the middle of the night to find a hooded figure moving across their bedroom, before watching it disappear through a wall.

Another guest describes waking with the sensation of someone standing at the foot of her bed, followed by the frightening feeling of something holding her ankles.

And then there's the family whose holiday became increasingly disturbing. Mysterious tapping at the windows, footsteps outside an isolated lodge and a series of incidents that eventually persuaded them to leave early.

But just a few miles from Center Parcs stand the ruins of Rufford Abbey, a former Cistercian monastery with its own centuries-old history and stories of a ghostly monk.

Could there be a connection between these strange encounters and the abbey's haunted reputation?

Join me as we explore the reported hauntings of Center Parcs Sherwood Forest, the history of Rufford Abbey and one of the most recognisable figures in British ghost folklore - the hooded monk.

A little while ago, I was chatting with Rob from How Haunted and Icy Sedgwick, and somewhere along the way we came up with an idea - why don't the three of us get together and have a proper chat about ghosts?

Many of you will already know Icy from her brilliant Fabulous Folklore podcast and her work exploring folklore, history and the supernatural, while Rob is the man behind the excellent How Haunted? podcast.

I've known both of them for a while now, and we all approach the subject from slightly different directions, so we thought it might be interesting to sit down together, hit record and see where the conversation took us.

#GhostStories #ScottishGhostStories #Folklore #ScottishFolklore #Paranormal #HauntedScotland #Supernatural #Ghosts #DarkHistory #EerieEdinburgh #FabulousFolklore #HowHaunted #icysedgwick #robkirkup

In 1859, Scottish writer Catherine Crowe published a remarkable story said to have been told to her by a sheep farmer named Sandy Shiels.
Decades earlier, on an isolated farm in the Lammermuir Hills, a young farm servant named Rob set out through the winter landscape for the village of Gifford.

He never came home.

But in the months that followed, Rob’s disappearance became connected to the strange behaviour of his sheepdog, Coullie. 

This episode explores Catherine Crowe’s The Sheep-Farmer’s Story - a haunting 19th-century account of disappearance, suspicion and a remarkably loyal dog, set among the remote hills of southern Scotland.

Was there something supernatural happening at the Shiels farm, or can the events be explained without it?

As always, I’ll leave that for you to decide.

#EerieEdinburgh #ScottishGhostStories #GhostStories #ScottishFolklore #CatherineCrowe #LammermuirHills #Paranormal #HauntedScotland #TrueGhostStories #victorianghoststory #hauntedhighlands #hauntededinburgh #edinburghghosts #trueghoststory #scarystories #paranormal #spookyscotland #scottishhistory #scotland #apparition

In 1835, Captain Molesworth and his family moved into a house in Trinity, Edinburgh.

Not long afterwards, strange noises began to be heard around the property. Knocks, footsteps and other disturbances were reported, and before long the case had drawn in neighbours, military officers and the landlord himself.

At the centre of it all was Molesworth’s daughter Jane, who was already seriously ill. Her sister Matilda had died only a short time before the disturbances began, and some came to believe there might be a connection.

What followed became one of Edinburgh’s strangest and now largely forgotten supernatural cases.

In this episode, I look at the original account, the later additions to the story, and what we can still piece together about the family at its centre.