The Guide to Mysterious Aberdeen

INTRODUCTION

I cannot tell how the truth may be; I say the tale as t’was said to me.

Inscription on Downie’s Cairn, Old Aberdeen

The man who died of fright … the witch who never was … a Pictish god standing in the reception of a council foyer … alleged secret tunnels under ancient sites … a talking statue … giant frog submersibles … wedding celebrations mistaken for an alien invasion fleet … the lions that became a stone circle … legends of William Wallace’s dismembered limbs … spontaneous human combustion … sightings of river monsters and mermaids … bodysnatching professors … golf with giant skulls …

Aberdeen is full of mysteries, marvels and strangeness, and this book is a comprehensive guide to them all. Within, you will encounter magic, witchcraft, folklore and superstitions; contemporary urban legends; gargoyles and graveyards; graverobbers and murderers; stone circles and prehistoric burial sites; UFOs and freak weather; and tales of horror, madness and dangerous porridge.

The Guide to Mysterious Aberdeen is organised geographically, with everything paranormal and odd described on a street-by-street or suburb-by-suburb pattern, ideal for exploration. The individual sections set out all the history, legends and associations of a particular place, along with descriptions of what can be seen now. A few stories do not fit into the geographical framework so are collected in this introduction, while witchcraft is such a major topic in Aberdeen it has its own interlude. Cross-references between locations are shown in SMALL CAPS. There is an emphasis on locations that can be visited, such as museums, cathedrals and public buildings. The degree of wheelchair access for these locations is described, along with opening hours and other visitor information. A good streetmap is recommended. Aberdeen traffic is notorious. If you can, take buses (day and weekly passes are available) or walk. With the exception of the link to Dyce there are now no suburban railways.

The book covers the entire area of the City of Aberdeen; exploring the arc of rural areas on the western fringe is best accomplished using the 1:25000 Ordnance Survey Explorer maps 406 and 421. National Grid References are given for hard-to-find sites. The county of Aberdeenshire is covered in my companion volume The Guide to Mysterious Aberdeenshire, published in 2009. Tales of ghosts and poltergeists are gathered together in another of my books, Haunted Aberdeen (2010).

A few words of caution. Aberdeen has the same problems as most major cities. Parts of the city centre (especially the ‘underground city’) are best explored in daylight, while the most advantageous time for visiting some cemeteries is in the morning, before the arrival of the alchoholically-enhanced.

THE TOP TEN

If you want to skip to the ten top ‘mysterious’ sights to visit, I would recommend:

1. St Nicholas Kirk and Kirkyard, and St Mary’s Chapel (pages 65-76)

2. The Masonic Temple (pages 84-90)

3. St Machar’s Cathedral and Graveyard (pages 172-7)

4. St Mary’s Cathedral (pages 102-4)

5. Tyrebagger Stone Circle (page 163)

6. The Zoology Museum (pages 170-1)

7. St John’s Church (pages 91-2)

8. The Tolbooth (pages 32-5)

9. The Winter Gardens at Duthie Park (pages 129-31)

10. Provost Skene’s House (pages 49-54)

Two very different pairs of angels. St John’s Church in St John’s Place (above left) … and the Masonic Temple in Crown Street (above right). (Both Ségolène Dupuy)

USEFUL CONCEPTS FOR THE EXPLORER OF THE WEIRD

Apotropaic – ‘That which protects against evil.’ Apotropaic actions and items are scattered throughout this book, from a cat buried beneath a hearth, to grave goods at ST NICHOLAS CHURCH, and the words spoken in various ‘charms’.

Liminality – ‘That which is betwixt and between,’ a transition between one thing and another. Liminal times and places are crucial to magic – Hallowe’en, Midsummer and Rood Day all feature in the witchcraft episodes, as do doorways, thresholds and field boundaries – while liminal events such as the launching of a ship have their own special customs. In some ways the ‘underground city’ beneath Union Street is a liminal zone.

Water-spouting gargoyle in the Winter Gardens at Duthie Park. (Ségolène Dupuy)

Magical Thinking – If you are buried close to the altar in a church, you will get to Heaven quicker (see ST NICHOLAS KIRK). If you drink water in which charmed bones have been washed, or that comes from a holy well blessed by a saint, the power of the bones or saint will transfer into the water and cure your illness (see the witch ISOBEL STRACHAN and the well at CHAPEL OF STONEYWOOD). If you point a ‘killing bone’ at someone, they will die (see MARISCHAL MUSEUM). Magical thinking is central to witchcraft, folk magic, superstition, and a great deal of ostensibly Christian practices.

Tradition and Truth – Who invents urban myths? Who first comes up with a notion that eventually transforms into a tradition, its origin apparently lost in the mists of time? Who mutates rumour into legend and – when enough time has passed – into history? Who makes all this stuff up? Who believes it? The answer is … me. And you. And everyone you know, and everyone you don’t. We’re all in this together. Some traditions are true. Some ‘truths’ are lies. This book might help you discriminate between fact, fiction, fable and folklore. Well, that’s the rumour anyway.

PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY

(Most of the following paragraph appeared in my 2008 book The Guide to Mysterious Glasgow; as it applies equally to Aberdeen, I have included it here, with just a few changes to localise the description.) There are as many definitions of psychogeography as there are psychogeographers. For myself, it’s about the way the physical environment has an unexpected, even spooky, effect on the mind. It’s something about the ways the power of place – of specific places – seeps into the parts of our brains that conjure fear, imagination, wonder, curiosity and the sense of the uncanny. It’s about why certain places are haunted, and others are haunting. It’s about memory and surprises. It’s about seeking out places where extraordinary events once happened. It’s about walking the streets of the city and accidentally spotting a winged monster on a metal drainpipe or finding a tree decorated with drinking mugs. It’s about the surprising, the hidden, the obscure and the ignored – and the weird. It’s about what this whole book is all about.

TIMELINE OF SIGNIFICANT EVENTS

THE CONTEXT – ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY

1. THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

Aberdeen today is a triumph of engineering in transforming the environment. Up until the eighteenth century the River Dee and its estuary flowed much further north than it does now. The railway station, Market Street, Union Square, not to mention most of the dockland area, was beneath a vast sheet of water. The town’s geography was dominated by Castle Hill, St Katherine’s Hill and the Gallowgate Hill, and limited by the ravine of the Denburn to the west and a loch to the north. The western approaches were beset with marshes and moors.

Then the Denburn was bridged and culverted, St Katherine’s Hill was removed to make way for the Union Street thoroughfare, the river was tamed, the estuary reconfigured, the docks built, and large tracts of land drained. These days the modern road pattern obscures the topography, but beneath Union Street you can still see how the ground level slopes southward to the sea. The city to the east is bounded by an extensive beach facing onto the North Sea, and the River Don forms the northern physical boundary. Both the Dee and the Don are crucial in Aberdeen’s story.

2. FROM PREHISTORY TO THE DARK AGES

In the Neolithic period (from around 3800 BC onwards) and the Bronze Age (from about 2500 BC onwards) farming communities constructed burial cairns (such as the ones near KINGSWELLS and TULLOS) and stone circles (for example, at MILLTIMBER and KIRKHILL FOREST). Many – but not all – of the single standing stones dotted around the city date from this era as well. The Romans left only one significant trace, at PETERCULTER. Little is known of Dark Age Aberdeen, although it would have been Christianised at some point, possibly even as early as the sixth century AD (see ST MACHAR’S CATHEDRAL).

3. THE MIDDLE AGES

Certain knowledge of the early medieval period is hard to come by, but we know that the town was ravaged in 1153 by a Viking named Eysteinn. There was a castle on CASTLEHILL (although some think an earlier version may have stood on St Katherine’s Hill) and a community around THE GREEN and CASTLEGATE. Four monastic institutions (Trinitarians, Carmelites, Dominicans and the Grey Friars) set up shop, and ST MACHAR’S CATHEDRAL and ST NICHOLAS KIRK rose to greatness. The citizens supported Robert the Bruce in his wars and leased valuable Stockethill lands from him. King’s College was founded, the third University in Scotland. Plagues and epidemics ravaged the land. In 1411 the townspeople joined in the defence of Aberdeen at the bloody Battle of Harlaw, checking an army from the Highlands and Islands. This was seen as the definitive moment in the ongoing conflict between the warlords of Gaeldom and the Scots-speaking Lowlanders of prosperous Aberdeenshire.

4. THE REFORMATION

So much of Aberdeen’s later history, and the various associated strange religious beliefs and actions, can only be understood by knowledge of the Reformation. By 1559 the Catholic Church, the former universal religion, was tottering in Scotland. A mob of ‘Reformers’ swept into Aberdeen from the south, destroying the monastic buildings and sweeping away ‘idolatrous’ images (not to mention pocketing some valuables during the looting). The following year Protestantism became the state religion, and Catholicism outlawed. The Reformation was not strong in the hearts of many Aberdonians, so wonderful buildings such as St Nicholas Kirk, St Machar’s Cathedral and KING’S COLLEGE survived without too much damage, although their function and use had to change. MARISCHAL COLLEGE was founded as an explicitly Protestant alternative to King’s, and Catholics were discriminated against. Catholic images were destroyed or mutilated, hence any survival from pre-Reformation times is historically rare and valuable.

The enmity between Catholics and Protestants has left traces in places such as PROVOST SKENE’S HOUSE and SNOW KIRK. Further religious conflict broke out in the seventeenth century, with the Episcopalians (supporters of a Church governed by king-appointed bishops, not surprisingly popular with troubled monarchs such as Charles I and II) warring with the Covenanters (extreme Presbyterians who denied the role of bishops and favoured ‘bottom up’ Church organisation). Aberdeen suffered badly in these conflicts, particularly at the BATTLE OF JUSTICE MILLS in 1644. Further religious persecution was meted out in the seventeenth century to the pacifistic Quakers, who were regarded as a dangerous alternative sect.

The Catholic Church had tolerated and encouraged many practices which the Reformed Church later regarded as ‘superstitious’, even occult. These included making pilgrimages to holy wells (such as the one at CHAPEL OF STONEYWOOD) to seek healing. The tolling of a hand-bell at funerals had several purposes, informing the populace that a coffin was passing by, and to show respect, and also to keep away evil spirits. In 1643 Aberdeen Council passed an edict prohibiting the ringing of bells because it was one of the ‘superstitious rites used at funerals’.

5. THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES

In 1661 Aberdeen had a population of about 5,000 stretched over some sixteen streets. A century later its footprint was still essentially the same, but its population had expanded enormously, creating a squalid, overcrowded urban rookery. Eventually the city fathers and the engineers broke the bounds of the convoluted medieval town, laying out straight roads, erecting bridges and viaducts, building new suburbs, and by 1800 had dragged Aberdeen kicking and screaming into the modern world. Union Street, a true marvel of civil engineering, cut straight as a die through history and topography. Local granite became the stone of choice for the neo-Classical architecture of the revitalised economy, creating the distinctive look of the Granite City. The railway came, as did a new harbour and new industries. The population boomed. Old Aberdeen, a separate town since the Middle Ages, finally amalgamated with its brasher neighbour in 1891.

Aberdeen in 1661. St Katherine’s Hill, lapped by the river, dominates the area where Union Street is now. The Denburn valley forms the boundary west of St Nicholas Kirk (‘Great Church’). (Author’s Collection)

The centre of Aberdeen, today. (Jenni Wilson)

THE DEEP

Strange things come from the North Sea, or are seen in its waters. In early 2002 a giant squid was washed ashore – and speedily conveyed to the National Maritime Aquarium in Plymouth, whose Kelvin Boot delightedly commented, ‘I never believed I would see one in my lifetime. They really are the stuff of mythology’ (Independent, 7 August 2002). A Great White Shark was seen in August 2008 (Sun, 9 September 2008). And, most bizarre of all, a boat fishing 32 miles (51.5km) offshore in early April 1982 found the floating carcass of an elephant (Janet and Colin Bord, Modern Mysteries of Britain).

In November 2000 a seabed scan 95 miles (153km) north-east of Aberdeen discovered an unidentified trawler 450ft (137m) below the surface. It was built between 1890 and 1930 and its hull was lying horizontally, indicating it had sunk ‘flat’. The area, known as the Witch’s Hole, was a ‘pockmark’, a piece of rugged terrain unlike the surrounding smooth seabed. All this led marine geologist Dr Alan Judd of Sunderland University to conclude that the ship had been sunk by a giant bubble of methane.

The science of this rare and macabre phenomenon, as demonstrated experimentally in the laboratory, is that methane gas reduces the density of water; this means that ships can no longer float. The trawler would have sunk like a stone, possibly with no time to send a distress message. In addition, anyone jumping overboard in lifejackets would sink too. Judd had spoken to crews who had survived smaller gas emissions – their ships had temporarily lost some buoyancy and dropped a few feet in the water. Methane blow-outs from below the seabed were also thought to have sunk dozens of floating oil platforms. It was speculated that the phenomenon may be responsible for other shipping losses, such as those reported in the Bermuda Triangle. If the gas blow-outs reached the surface, they may even have taken out any aircraft flying above. The initial report was in New Scientist, quickly picked up by many newspapers, such as the Daily Telegraph on 30 November 2000. Dr Judd returned to the site in 2002 to make a documentary for the Savage Planet television series.

More extreme marine conditions hit a helicopter on 28 February 2002. The aircraft was severely buffeted by winds caused by a waterspout, the oceanic equivalent of a tornado, with a vortex of water reaching from the clouds down to the surface of the sea. The Super Puma helicopter was damaged but the pilots managed to regain control, and none of the eighteen offshore workers onboard were hurt. The case was reported in the Herald on 7 August 2003, when the Air Accidents Investigation Branch released its analysis of the incident.

A different kind of strangeness can be found in the cases of ‘mystery coastal flares’. There have been several examples along the east coast of Britain of sightings of what seem to be distress flares, but when the search teams or lifeboatmen reach the area, nothing is found. These reports go back to the nineteenth century, and are so similar in form they may suggest some kind of rare aerial/marine phenomenon (perhaps the ignition of methane bubbles?). A typical example occurred on 20 November 1963. The coal-ship Thrift left Aberdeen bound for Blyth, Northumberland and was opposite Girdleness at 6 p.m. when the captain and three crew saw a pulsing red light around 15-30ft (4.5-9m) in the air, about a mile out to sea. When it was around three miles (4.8km) behind them the light suddenly went out. The Thrift turned back and searched the area for two hours, but found nothing. (The report is in The Taming of the Thunderbolts by Maxwell Cade and Delphine Davis.) On 20 March 1989 the Aberdeen coastguard put to sea after reports of red flares, but again there was no obvious source; the lights may have been caused by satellite debris falling that night, as there were many reports of lights, flashes and smoke trails along the north-east coast (Press & Journal, 21 March 1989).

UFOS AND STRANGE THINGS IN THE SKY

The mystery flares may be related to other aerial phenomena reported around Aberdeen, then again, they may not. UFO-spotting is something of a local pastime, possibly inadvertently encouraged by the large numbers of helicopters flying to and from the rigs and the proximity of Aberdeen airport and RAF bases, and definitely influenced by the current fondness for releasing small armadas of aerial fire lanterns at celebrations. The various online UFO forums are clogged with reports of silent orange lights floating in groups above the city. Great excitement is caused when the lights suddenly go out or appear to disintegrate. The lanterns are fragile paper spheres that rise because the flame at their centre heats the enclosed air. Sometimes they catch fire and fall apart, but usually the fuel simply runs out and the lanterns ‘wink out’ and fall to the ground. They are beautiful, but they are not mysterious. Reports of them are so common that one of the UK’s most respected UFO organisations has simply stopped logging sightings of them. That being said, some genuinely odd things have been seen.

On 19 March 1719 the people of Aberdeen witnessed:

… a great Lightning amongst the Clouds, which were of divers Colours, as Red, Yellow, Green, &c. And there was great Fire amongst the Clouds, which issued out from them like Sheets enfolding one another. The People thought that the Cloud touched the Earth, and Came down with a great Noise, which made many of the beholders run into their Houses, for fear the Fire should have devoured them.

The report was in a single-sheet broadside entitled ‘Strange and Wonderful Apparitions’. A report in the Statistical Account of Scotland stated that in November and December 1792 ‘many of the country people observed very uncommon phenomena in the air (which they call Dragons) of a red fiery colour, appearing in the North, and flying rapidly towards the East.’ And on 8 Aberdeen 1850 a dark red object with a yellow-orange plume ejected a small object that was seen to travel at right angles to the original course. A similar red object trailing sparks and dropping a dark mass was seen on the same day over the Cote d’Azur in France; presumably it was a meteor shedding parts of itself as it burnt up in the atmosphere (La Chronique des OVNI by Michel Bougard).

More recent sightings are perhaps more problematical, because the ‘extraterrestrial hypothesis’ is now so much part of our culture that when some people see odd things in the sky they automatically conclude that an alien craft is responsible, when meteorology, military activity, modern technology or misperception are more likely to be the cause. In 1966 the magazine Flying Saucer Review reported that eleven people had seen three unidentified craft in Aberdeen on 5 August 1948. In July 2006 the website www.ufoevidence.org had an eyewitness report from a man who as a boy had seen a large (100ft/30.5m diameter) orange-red sphere floating above the city centre in 1977. The report stated that there had also been a ‘mass sighting’ of a similar object in 1998, but I have not been able to track any report of this. Another website, www.ufo-casebook.com, logged sightings over Aberdeen on 23 October 1998 (two shiny silver spheres), and 3 and 4 April 2001 (red, blue and green twinkling star-like object).

SPONTANEOUS ATHEISTICAL COMBUSTION!

An Aberdeen man attempted an incestuous relationship with his sister, then, rebuffed by her objections based on Christian morals, proceeded to denounce God, the Devil, Heaven and Hell as nothing but fictions designed to cow the weak and easily-led. No sooner had he uttered the blasphemous words than he was consumed by a great fire that, over two hours, burned him slowly to death, so that he suffered the torments of the damned in the very pit of Hell.

This, at least, is the event described in a ballad from around 1600, entitled A wonderful Example of God’s Justice shewed upon one Jasper Conningham, a Gentleman born in Scotland, who was of opinion that there was neither God nor Devil. The title gives the game away – this is a typical example of a seventeenth-century moral tract inveigling against the evils of atheism. And very gorily the ballad makes its point too. Having bewailed his fate and – at great and poetic length, considering he is being consumed by fire – Jasper finally admits the existence of the Supreme Being and the Adversary:

…with these speeches,

his eyes fell