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Gazetteer Of Scottish & Irish Ghosts

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The first comprehensive collection of uncanny legends and reports of ghosts and hauntings through the Highlands, Lowlands and isles of Scotland and the whole of Ireland.

Here are such varied phenomena as the "big grey man of Ben MacDhui", the haunted mountain vouched for by professors, doctors and mountaineers of considerable standing; or the curious disturbances at the Edinburgh home of Sir Alexander Seton subsequent to his wife's removing an ancient bone from an Egyptian tomb. Do you know where an vampire lurks in the shadows of a ruined church? Where giant footsteps cause panic to hardened climbers? Where the red glow of battle shines annually? Where corpses whisper? These and many other strange stories, legends and authentic accounts of ghostly happenings have been catalogued alphabetically for easy reference.

In addition to presenting a profusion of fascinating reports from the towns and valleys, lochs and lakes, mountains and rivers, historic castles and houses of these lovely countries, Peter Underwood draws on his twenty-five years of study and practical investigation to describe a rich patchwork of reported happenings that cannot be explained in material or scientific terms.

All in all, this book provides a unique reference book and guide to the ghost population of these lands; the result of many years of study, it is a worthy successor to the author’s earlier Gazetteer of British Ghosts (1971).

340 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 18, 2018

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About the author

Peter Underwood

89 books16 followers
(1923/2014): Author, broadcaster, historian of the occult; investigator of the paranormal.

Born in Letchworth in Hertfordshire, Underwood wrote prolifically on ghosts and haunted places within the United Kingdom, and was a leading expert on ‘the most haunted house in England’, Borley Rectory.

An early formative experience came at the age of nine, on the day he learnt of his father’s death; that night, he awoke to see an apparition of his father at the foot of the bed.

Around the same time, he was fascinated to learn of a ghost story associated the old house at Rosehall - where his maternal grandparents lived for a time; it contained a bedroom where guests claimed to see the figure of a headless man..

It was at this young age that Underwood's interest in hauntings and psychic matters began to take root.

On January 1942, Underwood was called up for active service with the Suffolk Regiment. After collapsing at a rifle range at Bury St Edmunds, a serious chest ailment was diagnosed. He was discharged, and returned to his employment at the publishing firm J.M. Dent & Sons.

One of his early investigations was the Borley Rectory haunting, where, over a period of years, Underwood traced and personally interviewed almost every living person who had been connected with the mysterious events surrounding the place.

Underwood built upon the legacy of the work of Harry Price, who had investigated Borley before him. Together with Paul Tabori (literary executor of the Price Estate), Underwood was able to publish all his findings in The Ghosts of Borley (1973).

In his autobiography No Common Task (1983), Underwood remarked that ”98% of reported hauntings have a natural and mundane explanation, but it is the other 2% that have interested me for more than forty years”.

Having joined The Ghost Club back in 1947 - at the personal invitation of Harry Price, Underwood was to become its President for over thirty years: from 1960 to 1993.

Underwood was a long-standing member of the Society for Psychical Research and the Savage Club. In 1976, a bust of him was sculpted by Patricia Finch - winner of the Gold Medal for Sculpture in Venice.

In recognition of his more than seventy years of paranormal investigations, Underwood became the Patron of The Ghost Research Foundation (founded in Oxford), which termed him the King of Ghost Hunters.

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Profile Image for Alex M.
43 reviews1 follower
November 30, 2024
Some ghost stories are definitely more interesting than others! There isn't really any separation between different stories from the same place so that made it difficult to read sometimes. There's also waaaay more Scottish ghost stories than Irish ones, and I was under the impression it would at least be a little closer to 50/50
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