Crieff shop staff are spooked by strange events.
By Richard Burdge.
An expert in paranormal phenomena has been called in to investigate a series of unexplained happenings in a Perthshire shop. Moving objects, strange sounds and uneasy feelings of an unnatural presence left the staff of City Prices, Church Street, Crieff, fearing that a poltergeist was at work.
Proprietor John Randalls was working late one night last week restocking his shop when he heard a loud cough close behind him. Although he knew he was alone in the shop, Mr Randalls checked to see if anyone was there. “The hairs on my neck bristled as I looked – the room was empty,” he said.
This was the latest of a series of unusual occurrences. From inside the shop he and his partner, Liz Cramb, and staff have heard the heavy front door open noisily only to find it locked tightly shut. At other times it swings wide open, then closes on its own. Perhaps most typical of poltergeist activity is that clothes and other items have been found in disarray in the morning and goods on the shelves disturbed. Voices and bangs have been heard from the empty flat upstairs and Liz felt a hand brush against her shoulder when no one was near.
A neighbouring shop-keeper has also heard unexplained noises and a fleeting figure has been spotted on the store’s video camera. The experiences have been alarming, but staff feel the presence is perfectly friendly if a little mischievous.
In an effort to get to the bottom of the mystery, David Cowan, a local author and researcher of unusual phenomena, was called in to investigate the site. He said, “If there is one place in Crieff where I would expect to find paranormal phenomena it is just here. Adjoining the back room of City Prices is the old burial ground of the parish church, which may well be a factor, especially as the burial ground has been recently landscaped with heavy machinery. A powerful ley line runs through the shop from Braefordie standing stone near Comrie, up Crieff High Street, through the town clock and stocks, then the parish burial ground to another standing stone at Aberuthven, and yet another further on at Dunning, all in a perfectly straight line – a powerful ley line in other words.”
Mr Cowan expresses some caution about believing that all the accounts stem from some unnatural presence at work. “From experience, when poltergeist activity begins, it is natural for the victim to attribute everything unusual to poltergeist behaviour.” he said. An underground stream, the Kincardine burn, which passes beneath the shop should also be taken into account, he says. It is his experience that underground streams and geological fissures encourage unusual phenomena. The energy emitted has been blamed for health problems and muscular spasms which may give people the impression that they have been touched, or even pushed, when no one is around.
Mr Cowan is unsurprised by the latest happenings as Crieff is an old town with a sometimes violent history. As the focal point of a number of ley lines it is full of unusual phenomena, he believes. His research into ley lines and paranormal phenomena, he believes. His research into ley lines and paranormal phenomena around Perthshire led to his book Ancient Energies of the Earth, while his work on earth energies and ill-health is included in Safe As Houses.
Dundee Courier, 4th December 1999.
Ghostly resident in Crieff shop.
The tiny, tightly packed City Prices store in Church Street, has an unwelcome and ghostly resident. The proprietor, John Randalls, working late one night last week to restock his shop, heard a loud cough from close behind him. Knowing perfectly well that he was alone in the shop, he nevertheless turned round to check if anyone was there. “The hairs on my neck bristled as I looked in – the room was empty.”
For some time he has been puzzled about other unusual occurrences. From inside the shop he and his partner, Liz Cramb and staff sometimes hear the heavy front door open noisily, and upon checking, find it locked tightly shut. Occasionally it swings wide open, then closes on its own. Clothes and other items are sometimes found in disarray when he enters early in the morning, and shelves previously stacked neatly with goods, especially at one side of the shop have obviously been disturbed, with some items obviously missing, typical of poltergeist behaviour. Occasionally, he can hear the fan in the vacant shop next door running noisily, and sometimes, late at night, voices and bangs from the empty flat upstairs. When he goes outside, however, he finds that there are no lights or signs of any occupation.
Liz, one day at the rear of the shop, felt a hand brush lightly on her shoulder and was surprised to find no-one near her. The proprietor of the camera shop next door, Hugh Mailer, has also heard noises from the flat above when he suspects the premises are empty. Much more interesting is the figure of a person walking in the restricted floorspace which Liz has occasionally seen on the video camera. The presence, according to the staff, seems to be perfectly friendly if perhaps a little mischievous.
Local researcher of unusual phenomena and author, David Cowan, investigated this site and said: “If there is one place in Crieff where I would expect to find ‘paranormal phenomena’ it is just here.” He went on: “Adjoining the back room of City Prices is the old burial-ground of the Parish Church, which may well be a factor, especially as the burial-ground has been recently landscaped with heavy machinery, and a powerful ley line runs through the shop from Braefordie standing stone near Comrie, up Crieff High Street, through the town clock and stocks, then the Parish burial-ground to another standing stone at Aberuthven, and yet another further on at Dunning, all in a perfectly straight line – a powerful ley line in other words.
“It is possible, however, that the noises from the vacant flat above are simply the owners returning on occasion. From experience, when poltergeist activity begins, it is natural for the victim to attribute everything unusual to poltergeist behaviour.” David says that also to be taken into consideration is an underground stream, the Kincardine burn, which passes beneath this shop. He has often found that underground streams and geological fissures encourage unusual phenomena of this sort. An underground stream emits a wave of energy vertically to the surface, and another two at 45 degrees, one on each side, giving in effect, three lines of earth energy on the surface. The stream also emits spirals or vortices vertically upwards, the centre of the spiral being directly above the stream, and its width is determined by the two outer lines.
Apart from poltergeist activity, both the spiral and waves can cause ill-health to the occupants above, especially if they happen to be sleeping in such an energy – he calls them black spirals. They may also act as very primitive radios, causing a noise, like a door closing, for instance to be relayed to a different area, to upset the occupiers of a house further down the line of spirals.
One Crieff lady, for instance, complained of the noise of a Christmas party in her house when she was alone. She could hear the sound quite plainly in one room, but on investigation, that room, all the other rooms and outside the house were quiet.
At City Prices he found a black spiral of earth energy close to the wall where most of the poltergeist activity takes place, and the connecting line between this spiral and its neighbour passes through the spot where John heard the cough. Also at the centre of the black spiral the staff say there is a cold spot, which is a typical effect of black spirals from underground streams.
Another local lady told him of another type of phenomena which took place a little further down from City Prices, in Bank Street, between the Parish burial ground and the brick wall of the last remaining World War II air raid shelter in Crieff (at the entrance to the Co-op car park). She had been walking along this road with her husband when she was suddenly enveloped in what she described as ‘a black cloud’. She thought she was there for some time, 10 minutes, perhaps, trying to struggle free, and when she eventually managed to get out of it, found her husband still walking beside her. Terrified, she asked him what had happened, only to be told that he had noticed nothing untoward at all. This was possibly an effect on the human brain caused by electrical and magnetic fields above the Kincardine burn, which can cause what can best be called a waking dream, or nightmare.
Another effect of these energies is to cause a muscular spasm, giving the person the impression that he or she has been touched, even pushed, when no-one is around. John Sharkey, an archaeologist, for instance, sitting inside a burial chamber on North Uist, watching a geiger counter, was violently thrown across the chamber by a vicious ‘kick’ in the kidneys. He wrote: “I was lucky to escape with minor injuries from the large protruding stones, for the sudden nervous shock and a sore back for days afterwards were more than sufficient to repay me for my morbid curiosity.”
Crieff, an old town with its sometimes violent history and underground streams, at the focal point of quite a number of ley lines, is full of unusual phenomena. David has walked over 3,000 miles following the ley lines around Perthshire, using divining rods to tune into these strange energies. He has found that our ancestors had no knowledge of science, but they did use this ancient art to find powerful natural energies, and using standing stones, stone circles and rocking stones, etc., and they built a highly sophisticated system using the planet’s natural energies, basically focusing them through their burial-grounds, and to a lesser extent, their homesteads and villages. Their ley system has been developed into a quite brilliant, highly organised and motivated culture, not a golden age, simply a different culture. The more we understand the earth energies around us, natural and artificially constructed by our ancestors, the more we understand our megalithic culture, and the more the frontiers of so-called ‘paranormal phenomena’ are being pushed back.
For more information on Earth Energies and ill-health, read David’s books Safe as Houses by Gateway publishers and for ley lines and paranormal phenomena around Perthshire, Ancient Energies of the Earth by Harper collins, available at local bookshops.
Strathearn Herald, 10th December 1999.
Letters to the Editor.
Dear Editor, Following the story of the poltergeist in the City Prices shop in Church Street in a recent issue of The Strathearn Herald I have received more information on this phenomena. During a telephone call to my co-author, in which I mentioned that another subterranean stream flowed down, roughly 50 yards to the west of the Alligan burn (I mistakenly called this the Kincardine burn in the original story), which seemed to be partly responsible for the phenomena. She pointed out that underground streams and pipes bounced natural and artificial waves of energy down them (wave guides), and sinking a well into such an underground stream would channel that energy to the surface.
When I checked the capping stone of the Tibbertreoch well, a flat stone with the words carved into its surface, near the town clock (this area was originally called the goose dubs), sure enough, I could easily find a one metre wide stream of unhealthy energy waves coming from it, heading eastwards, through the GPO courtyard, and into the city Prices shop this type of energy seeks weak points in buildings, and passes through the door, which occasionally swings open on its own, then through the shop, into the vacant Indian take-away next door, and out of the rear via a ventilation duct (the fan could occasionally be heard to be working, even though the shop has had its electricity supply cut off) and out into the old graveyard, spiralling down into an old grave marked with a head stone.
It is almost as if the energy emitted from the Tibbermore well was forced to the surface, somehow compressing the spring in the door to open it and also operating the fan before being attracted back underground, into the Alligan burn, as a circuit of energy. It may also travel in the opposite direction, ie from the Alligan burn, through the old grave and on to the Tibbertreoch well. This reminds me of a very powerful and evil poltergeist outbreak in the town just a few yards away from a re-opened well a few years ago.
A previous owner of what is now the City Prices shop told me that when she had her hairdressers shop there some years ago, she suffered the same phenomena, but preferred to keep quiet about it until reading the story in this paper. The door, which is the same as the one in modern use, would swing wide open on its own, towels in a basket were in disarray when she opened the shop in the morning, tea bags and steel wool were jammed down the sink, and items, such as bottles of dye and in one case, £100 of television stamps, disappeared and reappeared a few days later in the most obvious of places.
About five years ago I was asked to investigate a very mild poltergeist outbreak in the High Street (voices and noises of drawers opening and shutting in an empty kitchen), and found that this particular flat was also near the stream which feeds the Tibbermore well. It seems that such subterranean streams have energies which are very strange indeed.
It will be of interest, I am sure, to the people in Crieff that there is a major underground river flowing from Pitlochry, south to Crieff Hydropathic, curving round the suburbs of Crieff before carrying on to Dunblane and further on to Peebles, with four Hydropathic spas taking the chalybeate waters with their health-giving properties. This was probably a wide aquifer, not a river, with the water slowly percolating down through an iron-rich strata of rock. This information came from an hydrologists map, and if my memory serves me correctly this aquifer was close to a thousand feet deep and several hundred feet wide. Has anyone out there got more accurate information on this?
David R Cowan, 48a East High Street, Crieff, PH7 3HZ.
Strathearn Herald, 31st December 1999.
TV May Lay the Ghost of Shop to Rest.
A spiteful poltergeist is plaguing a shop in Crieff. For the last 15 years there have been strange goings on at the general store in the town. Doors will bang by themselves, lights go on and off for no reason and goods on the shop’s shelves will suddenly jump on to the floor when there is nobody near them.
The store’s owners, who for the moment prefer to be anonymous, will also leave their shop neat and tidy at closing time only to discover in the morning that their ghostly squatter has trashed it.
But a controversial theory may be about to reveal that there is a scientific rather than supernatural explanation for the shopkeeper’s nightmare.
A Gaelic TV programme to be shown next Sunday is exploring unconventional opinions on ghosts. They consulted researchers to try to find an explanation for the apparent poltergeist activity in the Perthshire store. “One of the possibilities is that ghosts are somehow generated by environmental phenomena,” said show producer Geoff Holder, of Speakeasy Productions in Stanley. An expert will claim that the poltergeist activity is a similar phenomena to what is known as earth lights, where strange lights are seen after an earthquake. The lights are created by geological tensions within the rocks disturbed by the earthquake.
An Duthaich Dhiomhair will be broadcast on Sunday, August 24, at 7pm on Grampin and Scottish Television.
Aberdeen Press and Journal, 16th August 2003.