G is for… Ghosts at the University of Glasgow [ABC Sundae]

I’ve been wondering for ages if there are any ghosts living at the University of Glasgow, or ghost stories associated with it, so I’ve been doing some digging online. Surprisingly, I couldn’t really find that much. Some sources claimed that Glasgow was “the most haunted place in Scotland”, but the number of easily discoverable ghost stories or examples of paranormal activity was very low. This might be partially because the University’s Old College campus was demolished in the late 1800s when the University moved to Gilmorehill. That been said, I did find a few interesting bits.

There is a story from the Western Infirmary, built by the University in the late 1800s:

One night in 1975, Mary McLellan was working as a ward sister at the Western Infirmary in Glasgow. She was setting up a piece of equipment in a room facing a well-lit corridor when she became aware of a “tall, silver-haired man wearing a blue dressing gown and standing near the doorway of the ward opposite”.

He stood still and silent for a moment and then vanished. But she thought nothing of it, assuming he was a patient who had just gone back to bed. “Almost immediately, the ward nurse came over to me,” McLellan recalls. “She was very upset at seeing the apparition. She recognised him as a patient who had died two days previously.” [Source]

The Australian Paranormal Investigators have a short report online of their trip to the University to search for paranormal activity. Their findings were, and I quote, “Frequent EMF fluctuations”, especially in the Memorial Chapel, the Sir Charles Wilson Building (a converted church), and the University Archives.

As a final note, allegedly the horror writer Mary Shelley (of Frankenstein-fame) was influenced by stories of doctors at the University of Glasgow experimenting with bodies that had been hanged at the Tollbooth, just up the road from the Old College. Allegedly.

Whether you believe in ghosts or not, I thought it was something completely different to post here. That, and I had the photo above where we were playing around on campus one evening last May and with some simple camera tricks made my girlfriend appear somewhat see-through in the Cloisters.

Do you know of any ghost stories or reports of sightings at the University of Glasgow?

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November 28, 2010 | Categories: ABC Sundae, Cloisters, Night, Themes | Tags: ABC Sundae, Cloisters, Ghost, Ghost Stories, Ghosts, Glasgow University, Monochrome, Paranormal Activity, Theme, University of Glasgow | Leave A Comment »