Are you troubled by strange noises in the night? Do you experience feelings of dread in your basement or attic? The caretaker of a former Fife mill certainly was, so who did he call? Two novelists and part-time ghost hunters, that’s who, as Michael Alexander found out.
Hugh Mackay says the very first sign that something peculiar was happening in the converted 17th century Fife mill house came just two weeks after he started work there as a caretaker.
The building in countryside near Kennoway had been deliberately chosen by the directors of a German not-for-profit foster care company because they liked its authentic Scottish heritage and because its relatively remote location was seen as ideal for the respite needs of their young clients.
But the oppressive atmosphere of the building quickly took on a whole new meaning for Hugh, his family, and the German directors after a series of unexplained incidents left them wondering if the historic structure was haunted.
“We’d only been here a fortnight when the first incident happened less than two years ago,” says Hugh, who originates from the Outer Hebrides and now lives in East Wemyss with his wife Anya and their five-year-old daughter Aleisha.
“I was upstairs doing some initial paintwork inside. My wife went out to B&Q and left me working.
“Twenty minutes later I heard someone coming up the stairs. The stairs in winter time sort of creak and I heard someone stop at the top of the stairs. I shouted ‘is that you Anya?’ And all I heard was ‘No’.
“I thought, ‘oh that’s a man’s voice’, which made me get up on my feet and have a look around. I checked inside the house. I checked outside. But there was nobody there.”
Hugh didn’t think much else of it. But then a week later, his daughter, who was only four at the time, claimed she saw a figure standing at the bottom of the stairs. She also said a ball of light passed through the hall door into the bedroom – and later told her parents it had a face on it.
Later, says Hugh, a co-worker visiting from Germany awoke and reported seeing a figure sitting at the bottom of the bed saying her name. She was so upset she locked herself in another room and stayed awake all night.
Hugh, who believes in ghosts, accepts there could be logical explanations for these and some other reported incidents, including over active imaginations within the general oppressive atmosphere of the old building.
But he says the final straw for him came two months ago when he came up the driveway one morning and was shocked to see an upstairs window fully open and the curtain flapping out. With the building empty at the time and as the only key holder, this alarmed him – especially as the windows are difficult to open.
Days later when he was in the property alone, he says the TV volume fluctuated violently up and down, apparently by its own volition. “That was the only day I got out of the house quick,” he says. “I didn’t even have my lunch – I just left.”
Now his wife won’t be left alone in the property. And, to use the old-Ghostbusters movie adage ‘Who you gonna call?’, she picked up the phone and contacted a pair of Fife authors and part-time paranormal investigators with a reputation for recording ‘real’ evidence of spooky activity.
Anya had first got to know St Andrews-raised ‘Haunted Kirkcaldy’ writer Greg Stewart, 46, now of Cupar, and Leven-based ‘The Weem Witch’ writer Lenny Low, 49, when they gave a talk on local ghost stories a couple of years ago.
After making several visits to the property, the pair – who operate without charge under the title The Ghost Writers – now claim to have hard evidence that something, albeit unexplained, is going on there.
After recently setting up motion sensor cameras in the dead of night, they claim to have captured an unexplained image which, they believe, could be a human figure. And Greg, who has been fascinated by ghost stories since he was a boy, says he also saw a hooded figure for himself.
“It’s a bit like a fishing trip,” says Lenny, who has investigated numerous paranormal incidents and insists he and Greg are “not mugs”.
“You can sit there for hours with nothing then when you least expect it something bites.”
Needless to say The Courier didn’t see any ghosts when given a tour by Lenny, Greg and Hugh. The image they showed was also inconclusive.
But there was no doubting the atmosphere inside this old building with its thick stone walls and small windows.
Describing himself as an “open minded sceptic”, Greg, who drives a Vauxhall Astra rather than an ‘Ectomobile’, says: “I believe (in ghosts). But I don’t believe. I know what I saw and I’ve heard the evidence. But I can’t say 100% it was a ghost. I think the term ghost is too wide. What is a ghost? We can’t categorise ghost if we don’t know what a ghost is!”
Greg adds that he prides himself in historical research and that is where his focus has now turned – not only into the history of the former 17th century flax mill, but also statistical records of who lived in the area over the centuries. Already some progress has been made with records of an old farmer called James Swan who lived in the property around 1852.
“There’s no point in just saying the house is haunted,” he adds. “We need to know why is it haunted, who’s haunting it, what happened here? A ghost – if it is a ghost – doesn’t just go ‘I fancy popping in here for a laugh.’ There’s got to be a reason it’s here. We trawl the record books. It’s about trying to get to the original stories and just piecing it all together.”
Logical explanation?
The Courier contacted two parapsychology experts to investigate whether there could be more down to earth reasons for reports of ‘ghostly’ experiences.
Perthshire-born St Andrews University graduate Professor Caroline Watt, who holds Edinburgh University’s Koestler Chair of Parapsychology, says: “Research has shown that people’s expectations can influence how they react to naturally occurring ambiguous sights and sounds in their environment.
“For example, one study by researchers from the University of Illinois at Springfield took two groups on a tour of a disused theatre.
“One group was told the theatre was haunted, while the other was told it was under renovation.
Intense
“Both groups reported unusual sights and sounds, however more intense paranormal-type experiences were reported by the ‘haunted’ group. In that study, each group member toured the theatre individually. However the same researchers have found evidence to support their theory that fear and anticipation of ghostly experiences can be socially ‘contagious’, leading to an increased number of ‘false perceptions’ of ghosts.
“Furthermore, young children can very rapidly pick up on anxieties being expressed by the adults around them. So I’d advise anyone investigating claimed ghostly experiences to be very careful not to make matters worse.”
Professor Christopher French, Associate Pro-Warden (Research Integrity) and Head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at the Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, is an expert in the psychology of paranormal belief and ostensibly paranormal experiences, belief in conspiracy theories and false memories.
He says sceptics would be right to accept there often “mundane explanations” for such incidents.
“Sometimes, just by chance, you’d expect to get a run of such mildly “anomalous” events over a relatively short time period,” he says.
Physical explanations
“Some of the events probably have physical explanations – for example, the TV volume fluctuating is probably nothing more than a fault in the equipment. Others probably have psychological explanations. Hallucinations, such as hearing voices, are very common even in psychologically healthy people.
“The nocturnal apparitions may well be examples of sleep paralysis, a scary but harmless hallucinatory experience that is common in both children and adults. “As for the ghost-hunters, as your report says, the photograph is “inconclusive”. “In my experience, such people, despite referring to themselves as “sceptics”, are in fact true believers desperate to find any evidence, no matter how shaky, to support their belief in the paranormal.”
