PARANORMAL TALES SILVER MAN BATHGATE

Silver Man
Location: Bathgate Hills - Area known as Knock Forest
Type: Cryptozoology
Date / Time: 1990’s

Everyone enjoys going for a driver in the country. What better than on a sunny evening you decide to take your kids and wife for a drive to the local country park. The Bathgate Hills has been a country park for years, surround by open land and part forest. The roads intertwine with trees and open farm land. There is great views over not only Bathgate and on to the Pentland Hills. In the distance you can almost see all the way to Goat Fell on Arron.
Over the other way you can see the towers of the Forth Road Bridge and on in to Edinburgh. The kids are busy taking in the country side around them waiting on getting to the climbing ropes and slides in the parks main play area.
You set off down one of the narrow roads that lead deep into the trees and the play park beyond. As you make your way down the narrow country lane your wife looks out the window of the car. She wants to take in the sights of the road ahead and looks out over a small loch. You take the sharp bend and head down the steep road. Your wife gasps a little you think it must be something she has seen out the window and you look the way she is.
It that moment you see it just to the side of the road just behind the hedge row, a silver object. That is just sitting there waiting. The cars headlights picks up more of the silver object you can now see that it looks like a man, but no normal man it is about 7 feet tall. It is silver from head to foot. It stands up and looks across the road towards you. The car is moving towards it you are not sure if you should stop or go faster past it. You look around you then go faster, as you get near to it the man stats to run. You pick up speed and it shoots off into the distance it must be travelling at over 70 miles an hour.
You look at your wife and she looks at you both of you are not sure what you have seen. The kids in the back then speak “Did you see that?” “What was it?” “Look you can still see it run” It is at that point you know you have seen something very strange running through the Bathgate Hills.

We are not sure what this silver man could be. He has been seen s few times running through the trees and a cross fields. Normally he is seen just as it starts to get dark just as the sun sets. He has been seen near the top road that leads down towards the park.
Could he be from another world? Could he be from another time? We shall never really know until we catch he and ask. Loads of people that drive these roads at night now look out for this strange man running at 70mph.    

ST ANDREWS HOUSE EDINBURGH.

St Andrews House,

You are sitting in your office look out the window and see the sun is shinning for once. You think to yourself why not for lunch I sit outside today in the little seat just over from my window. You go upstairs too the canteen and pick up your lunch and take it outside. As you cross the car park too the little seat your mind is on the sunshine and the warmth of the gentle breeze blowing across Edinburgh. Your eyes are drawn too the sights around you. Edinburgh looks amazing from where you sit you can see right across to Arthur Seat and Holyrood House.
As you sit there thinking what a nice day it has turned out to be you look back at St Andrews House and across the west car park, you may not know you have walked over one of Edinburgh’s first jails. In 1791 Robert Adam designed the Bridewell prison. Bridewell prisons were so called after King Henry 8th palace in 1553 was made into a prison too deal with vagrants. The palace took on the name Bridewell as it was near too Holy well of St Bride in London. After that all prisons took on the name of Bridewell.
Bridewell prison in Edinburgh was too be built at the top of Waterloo place on the side of Calton Hill. The prison was started in 1791 and finished around 1795. When finished it had room for 134 sleeping closets and each room had a bed and bible in it. On site there was a chapel where they had 52 working parlours or cages where prisoners worked. This was mostly for rehabilitation rather than punishment.
Hardened prisoners were sent to work on the treadmill often for up to 6 hours a day. This was more monotonous than for any other reason. In fact some of the judges at the time thought the prison was to soft with the offenders, due to the fact the prison was more open and the openness of the cells, this let the prisoners talk not only between each other and the outside world. The prisoners could even talk to people that walked past on Calton Hill through their cell window.
In 1814 an Act of Parliament meant that Bridewell was now to be enlarged into a castellated prison. The new Calton Hill jail was built between 1815 and finished around 1817 as part of the work on Waterloo Place by Archibald Elliot, This was at the same time as Regent Bridge was being built and now connecting the wilds of Calton Hill to the newly built Princes Street. The new prison included a school for illiterate prisoners and also there was accommodation for the turnkeys. To make sure the prisoners had something to do, the public would bring their dirty laundry for them to wash. To the East of the prison was the debtors part in 1859 a person named William Brown spent a week there for not paying the Annuity Tax. The design of the prison included a large gatehouse leading onto Regent Road. In his novel Backwards to Britain Jules Verne in 1859 described the prison as small scale version of a medieval town presented perfectly as if it had been polished.
To the South of the jail it was guarded by a curtain wall and drum towers with the design completed by the imposing Governors house. The first was John Young who lived there in 1823 Then John Smith who stayed there for 30 years with his wife and mother in law (ok may not have been the best idea having his mother in law stay with him). A census was taken in 1841 which showed there was 500 prisoners inside these were made up of both men and women in fact even children were in the jail. The different jobs they had when they were not in prison shows you the way Edinburgh was in the 19th Century. The jobs were listed as fleshers, booksellers, masons, blacksmiths, watchmakers, shoemakers, even hatters in shows you everyone could end up in jail no matter your job or life style. In the census in even had the ages of the children these were two girls aged 9 years old which made up part of only 11 women held there at that time. The jail had 8 wardens, 2 watchmen and 4 matrons living within the jail. The Calton Hill jail was also the site used for executions after the last public hanging took place in 1864 (please see Paranormal Tales Murder blog for this) which went wrong in so many ways. The black flag would be flown from the Governors house on the day it was to take place.
In fact as you sit on your seat over looking the West car park you may not think but some of those that were hanged at the jail never left. The first person to be hanged at the jail was Eugene Marie Chantrelle on the 31st May 1878 for poison (see Murder Blog) he along with 9 others still today rest below the grounds of St Andrews House West car park. The bodies are
Robert Flockhart Vickers, William Innes executed March 1884 for murder,
Jess King executed 1889 for murder,
John Herdman executed 1898 for murder,
Patrick Higgins executed 1913 for murder,
John Henry Savage executed 1923 for murder,
Philip Murray executed 1923 for murder and the last to be hung at the jail.

In 1925 the new jail at Saughton just outside Edinburgh was being built by the end of 1925 all prisoners were now moved to the new prison. Calton Hill jail was now to be demolished the stones were used to build the Hope dam some 25 miles away in the Lammermuir Hills. The door to the death cell was taken to the Beehive Inn in the Grassmarket. Some of the cells were left in place when the built the new St Andrews House on the site.

As you take your lunch in the car park sitting on your seat you may not think of what was here before the 1930’s building before you. You maybe thinking about work, you maybe thinking about getting home and putting your feet up. What you will not think about is the bodies under the cark park and what they did to end up there, or even the fact of the harsh conditions the prisoners had to put up with in the prison. Your mind not even go to the fact the two of the worst kind of killers (child killers) are under your feet as you walk back to work on the sunny afternoon. Today St Andrews house has been made over and most of the cells still left were made ore open plan but you can still see the marks on the ground and floors where they once stood. Some even say that today some of the prisoners are still there, not the ones in the car park but wondering the corridors of the building. Security and staff have reported doors opening and closing. Feeling of being watched even though they know they are alone. Some have heard the sound of cell doors being slammed shut. Plus voices calling out in the darkness. Some of the staff hate to go down to the basement part which is left over from the jail. So what is under St Andrews house well it history, it is pain and suffering, it is life taken away from the most horrible people alive at that time. It is memories of the past. Plus 10 people who committed murder and paid the price for it with there own life.