Things going bump in the night? Probably another ghost hunter
By PETER ROSS
AT LARGE
scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com
MOST people enjoy a ghost story at this time of year, but for some Scots the supernatural is a year-round preoccupation. There are an estimated 20 groups, from the Borders to the Highlands, dedicated to studying the paranormal.
Ghost Finders Scotland is a very active and high-profile team from Cumbernauld. In Glasgow, Alba Paranormal Investigations specialises in "psychic rescue" – which it defines as moving a trapped spirit on to the other side. Full Moon Investigations, meanwhile, has bases in both Edinburgh and St Andrews. Andrea Byrne, who heads Full Moon, spent her childhood chatting and joking with her grandfather – remarkable as he died when she was five months old. Full Moon's co-founder Ewan Irvine is a medium who makes regular appearances on Talk107, the radio station from which Tommy Sheridan was recently spirited away by police.
Make of all that what you will. I'm neither sceptical nor credulous. What I like about paranormal investigation groups is that their existence proves the British are interested in more than bingeing, whingeing and Strictly Come Dancing. The stuff we get up to in our spare time is actually kind of amazing.
Paranormal Discovery formed in Dundee last year. There are five in the group, three women and two men, and on a sub-zero day I meet the female contingent for a cuppa in the Overgate. This shopping centre may seem an unlikely place to discuss ghosts, but it was, apparently, built on the site of the graves of plague victims.
Katrina Boitz recently turned 40. She's a mother of three and works as a community nurse. Her experiences as part of Paranormal Discovery have changed her attitude to death. "I'm still afraid of actual dying and the pain. I see enough of that every day," she says. "But the idea of what happens afterwards doesn't scare me like it used to. I think there is something after you die."
Her sister, Natalie, is 33 and a nurse at Ninewells Hospital. A month ago she had a second child; the bags beneath her eyes are the result of being up with the baby rather than because she's been awake all night in a haunted house. Katrina and Natalie are joined today by Tori Bruce, a practising witch from Cupar. The sisters are wearing matching Paranormal Discovery polo shirts. Tori has a silver pentagram round her neck. She won't be celebrating Christmas, but will instead mark the pagan festival Yule with the burning of a log.
I ask what drew them into the world of ghost hunting. Katrina and Natalie explain that they both had the same frequent unsettling experience while growing up – "a shadowy figure in the dark leaning down over you in bed". This stayed with them and prompted their current interest.
Tori was 14 when she became involved with paganism, but it wasn't until her late teens that she started having paranormal experiences. On one occasion she was at home, tidying up after a party, and was alarmed to notice a pair of disembodied feet, wearing black shoes. When she moved to another property, the oddness continued. "Whatever was in the house didn't like me being there," she recalls. "I was pushed, things were pushed out of my hands, and I was even slapped once. Needless to say, I don't live there any more."
On average, between work and child-rearing commitments, Paranormal Discovery conducts one investigation a month. Their original plan had been to focus on Dundee, but they have had difficulty in getting permission to visit sites. They estimate that for every 20 places they contact, only one will allow them to investigate. There also tends to be rivalry for access between groups both local and international. Even though Scotland has no shortage of bloody history, there may, in fact, be more ghost hunters than ghosts. The popularity of Living TV's Most Haunted means new groups are materialising all the time.
Nevertheless, Paranormal Discovery has so far carried out investigations in 14 locations. Its members go armed with digital cameras and voice recorders, and post their findings on their own website and YouTube. As well as visual footage, they record audio material, known within the paranormal investigation community as Electronic Voice Phenomena. They say it is important that everything is done scientifically for the sake of their credibility. They even have a code of conduct which precludes the use of ouija boards, one reason being that these tend to frighten the owners of properties they hope to investigate.
Having finished our tea, we go on to visit the scene of a recent investigation – a former chapel which is now a karaoke bar. "I picked up a man there," says Tori. I'm tempted to reply that she won't have been the first, but that would be cheap; she is, of course, talking in her role as someone sensitive to the presence of spirits. This place doesn't look frightening from the outside – posters advertise big screen sport and thevenue's availability for hen nights – but the staff are apparently quite scared. The sight of a spectral figure in a black suit is often reported, glasses have fallen from shelves, and the ghosts of a boy and a girl are said to have been spotted in the stairwell.
We come, finally, to the scene of another investigation – the Frigate Unicorn, a 19th-century warship moored in Dundee's Victoria Dock, which has supposedly been the scene of poltergeist activity. I get chatting with Bob Hovell, the Unicorn's manager. After a busy couple of years it has been decided to close the ship to organised parties of ghost hunters.
"As far as we're concerned, the ship is the ghost," he says. "It's 183 years old and makes all the creaks and groans itself."
He laughs. "I've been here for 11 years and I hope that in the future someone will come here and do an investigation – they might find me."
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