Myths and tales of St. Andrews

[JM]

[s]warrengato wrote on 19:42, 28th Jan 2005:
I live in the Gatty and I have a really bad habit of getting pissed very late at night and walking along the East Sands to get home from town. I've seen some really odd things down on the sands between the pier and the Gatty. I've seen odd candle looking lights out in the waves and on the beach, and just a general feeling of being watched when there is no one around. Has anyone heard of any official ghost tales for this piece of the beach, or is it just my own intoxication? Or even worse, Neds?


Neds! - i say we go on a massive witch hunt style spree with torches and pitchforks and all...

[Rrrr]

[s]KateBush wrote on 18:32, 28th Jan 2005:
One was a guy who feel from a window on B floor on the last day of term. His mum and dad had come to pick him and his stuff up and when they arrived, he had fallen and was already dead.
Just to be the correcting carrie of the thread - or at least guessing gemma. anyway.
I was told the boy fell out of his window while waving goodbye to his parents after they dropped him off for his first year of uni.


[hr]
Splat!

[KateBush]

I got told by the then pro dean about how awful it was because everyone was excited about going home for the summer...but I suppose it could be two different people?

That's the thing about stories like this in St Andrews...hard to find out the real truth, innit...

[Prophet Tenebrae]

Neds need death on a massive scale.

[Precious]

[s]Miz Manda wrote on 16:47, 24th Jan 2005:


Uni Hall is rumoured to have all sorts of ghosts but I think that they're mainly made up just to scare the Freshers since Old Wing and Lumsden at least are purpose built Halls of Residence and so have probably not seen much in the way of carnage.


When I lived in Wardlaw I heard two different explanations as to why the very top rooms weren't used - that they were a fire hazard, or that someone had thrown themselves out of that window. I never did find out which one was true.
A lot of them are made up though - some idiot told the freshers who had W23 the year after me that my roommate and I had seen our furniture moving by itself. Neither of us knew where that one came from.
And when I had the flat near lamond Drive I heard the ice cream van a few times.

[pea]

Not an hour ago, the infamous ice cream once again stopped outside my house, as it does every Saturday and Sunday evening.

[hr]I'm a little pea... I love the sky and the trees.

[box_of_delights]

One of my lecturers apparently lived in one of the houses on St Mary Street (opposite the Gatty) near where I live now... and he reckoned that if you dig down deep enough in the gardens of St Mary St houses you come across the bones of the leppers who were buried there. As someone else rightly said, the leppers' quarter was somewhere between the cathedral and the Gatty area, and subsequently, bodies were buried here.

Our house is supposedly haunted - and we do hear very strange things during the day - like latched doors opening without anyone having come in, footsteps on the stairs etc. Very odd.

Has anyone seen Craigtoun Hosptial up on Mount Melville at the back of town? It was a mansion house built for the Younger family in the early 1900s and known as Mount Melville Mansion (I think) but was later turned into a maternity hospital (most of St Andrews' residents will have been born there) and during the last few years of its existence it was an old folks' home. I think Fife NHS closed it down in the early nineties and it's been laying empty ever since.

We drove up to see it for Halloween, but you can only see the outside of it if you go snooping around Craigtoun Holiday Complex where it's hidden behind some trees, or if you drive through Mount Melville and see it perched on the hill from behind the complex. It's a magnificent turretted building, looking very menacing on top of the hill there. I've spoken to some St Andrews citizens who visited the place as a hospital and apparently a baby was born there with webbed hands and feet. It died, and consequently its mother would haunt the building picking up people's babies when they were born. They say in the grounds of the mansion there's a statue depicting a nurse holding the baby with webbed features... but we couldn't see this in the dark.

The company that owns the Old Course Hotel have bought it now and are planning on turning into a leisure facility I think for the Duke's Golf Course.

[steerpike]

[s]Rrrr wrote on 22:23, 28th Jan 2005:
[s]KateBush wrote on 18:32, 28th Jan 2005:[i]
One was a guy who feel from a window on B floor on the last day of term. His mum and dad had come to pick him and his stuff up and when they arrived, he had fallen and was already dead.

Just to be the correcting carrie of the thread - or at least guessing gemma. anyway.
I was told the boy fell out of his window while waving goodbye to his parents after they dropped him off for his first year of uni.


[hr]
Splat!
[/i]





When i was in Mcintosh i was told that a boy fell out of his window on Raisin Weekend - and impailed himself on the railings below... is that one true, or just an exageration of the above story?

And those rooms on A floor that are away to the west of the building, the isolated ones with a different staircase, they're shut off if i remember correct. how come?

[Sabina]

[s]warrengato wrote on 19:42, 28th Jan 2005:
I live in the Gatty and I have a really bad habit of getting pissed very late at night and walking along the East Sands to get home from town. I've seen some really odd things down on the sands between the pier and the Gatty. I've seen odd candle looking lights out in the waves and on the beach, and just a general feeling of being watched when there is no one around. Has anyone heard of any official ghost tales for this piece of the beach, or is it just my own intoxication? Or even worse, Neds?




I don't know about the east sands, but I do know that creepy stuff happens on the Castle sands... I personally go down there sometimes and I have heard strange singing, very haunting... in the since that it stays with you... also had a whiff of a strange perfume a few times. really sweet... does anyone know about a woman dieing around there or anything like that, or is someone just singing and spritzing perfume into the wind?

[steerpike]

[s]Unregisted User Sabina wrote on 00:34, 29th Jan 2005:

also had a whiff of a strange perfume a few times. really sweet...






...sounds like someone's discovered the joys of getting passively stoned...

[pea]

[s]steerpike wrote on 22:10, 29th Jan 2005:

When i was in Mcintosh i was told that a boy fell out of his window on Raisin Weekend - and impailed himself on the railings below... is that one true, or just an exageration of the above story?

And those rooms on A floor that are away to the west of the building, the isolated ones with a different staircase, they're shut off if i remember correct. how come?


I think it's because of the fire. And I am sure a couple of guys died in it, another reason why the rooms are shut off.

[hr]
I'm a little pea... I love the sky and the trees.

[princess]

has anyone heard of the ghost dog that is 'walking' above the floor in Deans Court (I think it is) because they changed the height of the rooms, but the gog is still 'walking'on the old floor ... or was that just a random story I was told when I visited two years ago?

[raheli]

this is a true story but little known. During world war two, the Germans heard that biological weapons were being created in the Bute Medical Building. this was not true (says the university) but the germans sent planes to bomb the building, the only bombing in Scotland during the war. They missed, but hit many surrounding houses, including the one on the corner of Nelson Street, Wallace Street, Bridge Street, and that road that runs behind Regs. Some were replaced, like that row of out-of-place brick terraced houses by the burn, and on Nelson Street, but anywhere you see a gap in a string of terraced houses, that's likely to be the cause. A nasty surprise for all the people who thought they were safe.

Also the ice cream van DEFINITELY exists and does sell ice cream. Maybe if you order a "special drumstick" you get something eles, though...

[rae]

I heard something like that when I was living in Deans court - apparently the courtyard is haunted by a big black dog who walks a few inches off the ground because it has receded. Which doesn't make much sense but there you go - that's it as I know it.

This thread should really be archived onto the Sinner guide pages!

[sejanus]

[s]raheli wrote on 19:50, 31st Jan 2005:
the only bombing in Scotland during the war.

That would be aside from the Clydebank blitz in 1941, then.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/timelines/ ... bing.shtml

[KateBush]

I think the story about the guy impaling himself on the railings of Chattan over raisin weekend is an exaggeration of the other incident.

I don't *think* anyone died in the fire in Chattan on A floor. But I could be wrong. THe oracle of chattan life is, in fact, Andrew Haynes, the mathhematical genius namedandrew after St Andrews, whose parents studied here and who had their wedding reception in Chattan itself!

[physicist]

As for the attics of these halls of residence: In Wardlaw's Tower and the Abbotsford House "A-floor" there were definately students living there in the 1970s (I happen to know an example for each). I have no idea why Wardlaw's is no longer used. The attics of Chattan are apparently only rotten floorboards and contains a water tank now - probably nothing to do with fire. Hamilton's attic could easily have been destroyed in a big fire c. 1977, completely destroying the original dome. The cause of this fire is rumoured to be due to workmen rebuilding the hall during the summer.

Rumours are that a few people have died in MacIntosh Hall, and the one who fell the last day of term was leaning out too far when trying to take a picture, hence the safety rails.

Where is this Andrew that Kate Bush is talking about now, as I think he graduated a year or two ago?

[flarewearer]

[s]raheli wrote on 19:50, 31st Jan 2005:
this is a true story but little known. During world war two, the Germans heard that biological weapons were being created in the Bute Medical Building. this was not true (says the university) but the germans sent planes to bomb the building, the only bombing in Scotland during the war.

apart from the blitz of Clydebank you mean? they got f*cking hammered. There was also bombing of Edinburgh and naval installations in the Forth at the start of the war.

They missed, but hit many surrounding houses, including the one on the corner of Nelson Street,


yes i lived next door to that house last year, it is owned by one of the guys who works in the bute, they used to have a display of photos up in the bute showing the damage. I believe in total 7 people were killed across St Andrews.

[hr]
...We sing of landscape and memory and the urgency to do it now; in the street and in the fields...

[Al]

I believe I read somewhere that the bombing was more due more to the usual practice of dropping any unused bombs before making the run for home rather than any concerted effort to bomb anywhere in town.

[hr]Life is too important to be taken seriously.

[highwave]

I was born at Craigtoun Maternity Hospital. I don't remember anything about it, and I haven't got webbed feet.