Gregor Stewart - Haunted Kirkcaldy

I T would be nearly impossible to write a book of this nature without a lot of assistance from other people and resources, and I would like to personally thank the following for their help.

To Fife Council, who proved to be an invaluable source of information, with their libraries in Kirkcaldy and Cupar providing great resources for the research, as well as their archaeologist, Douglas Spiers, who was able to provide historical data.

To Mr and Mrs Bell of the Kingswood Hotel near Kinghorn, for their help in piecing together the details of the grey lady that haunts the hotel and the roadside outside. Their verification of the reports of haunting and personal input was of great assistance and I wish you all the best with the hotel and restaurant.

To Leonard Low, author and historian specialising in the darker side of history. It was various discussions with Leonard that inspired me to finally focus my attention on writing about the paranormal. His advice on where to locate information, along with a number of leads he provided, have, without a doubt, assisted in bringing this book together.

To Cheryl: no amount of reading books, articles and accounts of hauntings can be a substitute for real-life experiences. Thank you for sharing your story and I wish you continued happiness and peace.

To the Kirkcaldy Old Kirk Trust, who provided invaluable information relating to the Old Kirks past.

To Ryan from Haunted Scotland, who was good enough to allow me to use evidence his organisation has obtained during their investigations. This allowed me to bring some of the stories up to date with information recently gained to add to the older accounts. I hope to work with you again in the future.

And, of course, thank you to my family. To my parents for never discouraging my interest in the supernatural and to my wife and children for their continuous support, even when Im dragging them around old ruined castles in the rain!

And to all of the other friends and family members who offered their help and encouragement, thank you all.

S OME S AY T HE D EIL S D EAD

Some say the deils dead,

The deils dead, the deils dead,

Some say the deils dead,

And buried in Kirkcaldy.

Some say hes risen again,

Risen again, risen again,

Some say hes risen again,

And danced the Highland Laddie.

A Jacobite rhyme

W ITH the above Jacobean poem (published in the book Popular Rhymes, Fireside Tales and Amusements of Scotland by William and Robert Chambers ( 1842 )) citing that the Devil is dead and lies in Kirkcaldy, it would be fair to assume that the town has a long and dark past, which would inevitably lead to numerous reports of hauntings. However, while the town certainly does have a long past, it rarely features in tales of ghostly goings-on. That is not to say there are no haunted locations: you just have to dig a bit deeper to find them.

The town of Kirkcaldy, which sits on the east coast of Scotland in the county of Fife, approximately miles south from the more famous town of St Andrews and miles north of Edinburgh (which sits on the opposite side of the Firth of Forth), dates back to the eleventh century when the lands were gifted by King Malcolm III of Scotland to the monks of Dunfermline Abbey. The area was rich in coal, so it did not take long for the monks to establish a settlement and, by the mid-thirteenth century, a parish church had been constructed. The coal mining caused Kirkcaldy to start growing as a community, and this was accelerated by the establishment of a harbour in a natural cove that provided shelter for ships and boats from the harsh North Sea. By the sixteenth century, up to ships were based in the port, making it one of the major import and export centres in Scotland.

Rather than expand inland, the town grew along the coast, slowly incorporating smaller communities such as Dysart, Pathhead and Linktown. It is likely the town grew in this way for a number of reasons. Unlike most towns in Scotland at the time, Kirkcaldy was not surrounded by a protective wall, which meant there were no restrictions on the development of the town. The sea offered protection from attack to one side of the town and also offered the potential to develop the salt pans for the production of salt which, along with the ports of Kirkcaldy and Dysart, offered the main source of income and would have meant workers were keen to live along the coast rather than inland.

Kirkcaldy also became a major producer of linen and, in the nineteenth century, linoleum began to be produced as a floor cloth. The popularity of linoleum soon grew worldwide and Kirkcaldy was ideally placed to take advantage of this with the jute mills at nearby Dundee and an already established port that was exporting goods as far away as the Mediterranean. A local textile manufacturer, Michael Nairn, saw the potential in linoleum, but was unable to start production straight away as the method to manufacture it had been protected under a patent. Unperturbed, and knowing that the patent only offered protection for a fixed number of years, he expanded his business considerably in 1847 , constructing a large, new factory to produce painted floor cloths that was designed to be ready to produce linoleum as soon as the patent expired in the late nineteenth century. Kirkcaldy soon established itself as the main centre worldwide for the production of linoleum with Nairns being the largest single producer.

While the production of linoleum brought employment and wealth to the town, it also brought something else which many people still associate with Kirkcaldy: a stench! It is said that, at the height of production, the unpleasant smell that was produced during the process could be smelled for miles around. This aspect of Kirkcaldy is also incorporated into poetry, with The Boy in the Train by M.C. Smith telling the tale of a young boy who, increasingly excited about a trip to visit his grandmother in Kirkcaldy, anxiously asks when they will arrive. It finishes with the following lines:

Ill soon be ringin ma Granmas bell,

Shell cry, Come ben, my laddie,

For I ken mysel by the queer-like smell

That the next stops Kirkcaddy!

Unfortunately, the popularity of linoleum started to decline in the mid-twentieth century and, as a result of the reduced demand, along with the increasing prices of raw materials, most of the factories closed and have since been demolished. The main economy of Kirkcaldy is now based on the service industry and the town has in more recent years expanded considerably, inland this time, to become the largest town in Fife.

A linoleum factory.

Landscape of Kirkcaldy

Being sandwiched between St Andrews and Edinburgh, both of which have an abundance of documented tales of the supernatural, it would be reasonable to expect Kirkcaldy and the surrounding area to also have its fair share of stories and locations. An Internet search, or a search through bookstores and libraries, however, soon reveals a total lack of written information and it would seem that the ghost stories for this area have not been previously compiled. While that made the research for this book challenging, I also saw it as an excellent opportunity to bring the stories together and to start to make some connections between them, possibly for the first time. I have provided details of the sources for the information used wherever possible, however, some of the stories have been passed down through word of mouth from generation to generation with no written accounts, and I considered them too good to miss out.