Monolith: The Rise and Fall of Craigrose Tower.

Author's note: This article was originally written for the short lived magazine Paranormal Glasgow and was due to be published in issue 9 dated September 1998. While the article was accepted and I was paid, the article was never published. The editor's explanation is given below (see appendix 1). To this day I find the explanation implausible and while I can prove nothing I have my suspicions.

I would also like to address the attitude of the larger “paranormal community” with regards to myself and my research. It is true that I am an outsider to the paranormal community, that my previous article “Witch Cult of the West Coast” (Paranormal Glasgow Issue 6 June 1998) caused much controversy and noise amongst them. I was accused of being a fantasist, a liar, a charlatan, even an upstart as well as a whole host of other names. Why?

As far as I can tell it is because for decades this community has relied on the same dozen or so historic events and sites, rehashing and retelling the same worn stories over and over again. How many articles and books have been written about The Enfield Haunting, or Borley Rectory, or more locally Glamis Castle or that uncanny stretch of the A75? The Paranormal community rarely investigate new claims of the unexplained, simply because to do so is to put one's reputation on the line, a reputation that means nothing to outsiders, but everything to that community. In order to be taken seriously within it one must go over the same ground, perhaps providing a new insight or two. The Paranormal community is too cautious, and rightly perhaps, given the ridicule from those of a more materialistic bent. However I have no interest in the community, no fear of being caught out by “fakes” nor having my reputation ruined and being excommunicated from their little ghost hunters club. Knowing this, they immediately became hostile, hoping to debunk me.

They have, as far as I am aware, yet to succeed.

Jim Weaver.

Glasgow. 31^st Oct 2017

Monolith: The Rise and Fall of Craigrose Tower.

Craigrose Tower. Circa 1966

Introduction.

Murcroft is a district of Glasgow. It's not as well known, or as infamous, as the Gorbals to the South or Grimry to the North. However like these and many other areas of Glasgow, it suffered from poverty and overcrowding and was deemed a slum by the newly formed Glasgow Corporation just after the second World War. As such it came under the purview of their urban regeneration initiatives and, like many other impoverished areas, had inflicted upon it a series of high-rise flats. Originally designed as an estate of eight tower blocks, the Craigrose development project immediately hit upon difficulty in 1956 when during the laying of the foundations, it was found that half the site was being built atop a set of mines. Thus the eight 16 storey towers were revised leaving two buildings of 28 storeys each. These were known as Craigrose A and B.

After three years of construction both towers were opened by the Lord Provost in April 1959 and shortly after the 336 flats were occupied by local families, which lead to just over 1300 people living in those two blocks. Both were connected by walkways every second floor from floor 12 upwards.

In 1961 a fire started on the eighth floor of Tower B which despite the use of asbestos in the properties, spread quickly and defeated the Glasgow Fire Brigades efforts to save the building. Luckily, due to the walkways between the buildings, which were designed specifically to mitigate loss of life in the event of such a fire taking hold, no-one was killed in the blaze. However the building was condemned and finally, in 1964, it was demolished. This left only Craigrose A, which became known simply as Craigrose Tower, the subject of this article.

Utopia on hold.

The city planners and architects had imagined the tower blocks to be places of neighbourly communities, where the poor, freed from the cramped one room and kitchen tenements would bloom into aspirational citizens now they had indoor bathrooms and central heating. They did not, however, take into account many things. First of all, people need facilities. Except for the White Feathers pub at the bottom of the hill between Grimry and Murcroft and the five or six churches amidst the tenements, the citizens of Craigrose had no local shops, no parks for the children to play in, no cinemas, no schools.

Nor did they take into account while poverty was gauged as economic, it had become ingrained, a way of life, to many of these families. Thus the petty criminality and territorial gang-culture festered in Craigrose like it did in many such skyscrapers. By the early seventies many of the original families had moved out or moved on and were replaced by more and more impoverished and criminally-minded people. This is not so say that Craigrose did not still have its fair share of decent hard-working folks just that their lives were made more difficult by the rise in crime. Again the block was not exceptional in this regard.

A lack of local facilities, combined with a faltering economy, petty crime and escalating drug use in such a condensed environment was not much different to what many people in these areas were used to. The Corporation had merely lifted the problems off the ground and into the air and so, like many of the tower-blocks by the mid seventies, they were considered areas of real social deprivation. While other blocks of flats, such as the Red Road flats became notorious for such, Craigrose was scarcely ever mentioned. It wasn't until 1976 that any serious notice was taken.

1976. Graham Ritchie.

At 2.35 am on the morning of the 26^th of September, police were called to a disturbance at Craigrose Tower. Initially the incident was reported as a man on the roof threatening to jump. According to the reports of both the police and eyewitnesses, one of the residents, 36 year old electrician and father of four Graham Ritchie had taken to the roof with his wife Agnes and his children. Ritchie stood upon the edge of the roof of the building ringing a large brass bell. He was wearing a black and red robe and was, for over an hour, seen and heard to be chanting something incoherent into the night sky.

Despite the best efforts to extract him and his family from the roof, the police found he had barricaded the doorway to the roof and ignored their pleas to talk. At exactly three o'clock on that morning, he struggled with his wife, pushing her over the edge of the building, before doing the same to all four children and then leaping to his own death.

The resultant police file showed that Ritchie had no previous criminal record, was a hard worker and had no previous signs of mental illness. His family friends and neighbours all claimed that he was a good father and were shocked by his actions, though his closest friend, one Mike Beattie, said that Ritchie had commented often that he had difficulty sleeping at nights because of weird noises coming from within the walls.

This claim was backed up by the caretaker at the time. Ronnie Wallace, who said that Ritchie had indeed made several complaints about noises coming in from the walls. Wallace said that while he was used to such complaints about neighbours noise, the flat next to Ritchie had been empty for several months. Wallace said he had investigated but could find no source of any noise, nor could he hear anything, despite Ritchie's insistance. The case was closed and declared a murder suicide due to acute insanity on behalf of Ritchie.

1980/81. The Haunting of Flat 4. Floor 15.

Sarah Green is now thirty nine years old. A large woman both in height and girth, she looks like a pragmatic, no-nonsense Glaswegian working class woman and speaking to her left me with the impression that is exactly what she is. I meet her for lunch at the Ubiquitous Chip and she tells me her story.

She moved into Craigrose Towers in late August 1980, with her fiancé, Andy Green. The couple had planned to marry the following year but rushed to the registry office after Sarah found herself pregnant that October. 

"At first we quite liked our wee flat" she tells me as she slowly stirs her coffee. "It was much nicer than either of our parents houses and we could see right out over the city. The only problem was that it was always freezing. When we moved in the weather was damp but that August was quite warm, I remember Andy complaining that he had to put the heating on. It didn't seem to make much difference, even though when we touched the radiators they nearly burnt your hands off."

"I thought it was the windows, at night I could always hear this kind of whistling draft noise coming in through them, at least that's what I thought at first. It wasn't until the December that I realised it wasn't just the wind."

I ask what it was, she looks annoyed at me for asking the question but she knows that's what she's there to talk about. After a few seconds she says "Look, I don't even believe in ghosts right? Even after everything that happened in that flat I still think it's all a pile of shite but... I don't know, there was just something really wrong with that place."

"Wrong how?" I ask.

"You ever get that weird feeling when you're about to open your front door, that someone is about to pounce on you, from out of the corner of your vision. I mean, you know there's no one but it's like an instinct or something?"

"Sure." I answer.

"That feeling was constant when we were living there. At first it was just the sense of someone or something just out of sight. We both felt it Andy and I, we talked about it, tried to make sense of it, laugh it off. That didn't work but that wasn't the worst of it, not by any means."

The waiter brings her starter, a bowl of potent smelling Cullen Skink. Sarah delves into it with a large slice of bread. "We had a Hogmanay party, family, friends, folks from work. I remember Andy's mates Basil and Henry brought round a banjo and guitar and we were having a sing-song. This was about twenty minutes after the bells."

She pauses to eat more of her soup before continuing. "So as all of this is going on we're all merry, pretty noisy but this racket suddenly comes from the hall. It's like, you ever heard cats screeching late at night, that long noise that sounds almost like a bairn crying? It was like that, only a lot louder, like something was being tortured. We all stopped, it was a right shock I can tell you. Some of the men ran from the living room into the hall but there was nothing there. It was always the worst in the hall."

I let her continue both her soup and her story. The memories are distressing her, I can see that on her face but I can also tell she's grateful to have the opportunity to tell someone, especially after I explained who I was and my intent. 

"People got creeped out after that, made their excuses, y'know? After that I couldn't even get my mum to come to see us. I don't blame them. There was just something deeply wrong with the place. I bought a mirror, we stuck it up on the hall wall and went to work one morning. I only worked part-time and finished about twelve. I came home the day after we put the mirror up and the thing was smashed into pieces. It hadn't fallen mind. Somebody... well... whatever, there was a nail hammered right through the middle of the glass. Andy lost the rag at that, went down to see the caretaker asking if he had keys or if anyone could have gotten in. It wasn't until the February that we realised the place was..."

She stops, I get the feeling she is just refusing to say the word, as if saying it makes her sound like a silly little girl. I suggest it for her. "Haunted?"

"Aye. Andy wakes up one night and he's heard something right? Being the brave soul he is he wakes me too. "Sarah" he whispers. "Listen." I'm about to give him what for when I hear it, someone is running up and down the hall, up and down, up and down, great heavy clumping footsteps too. Can't mistake it. He gets up, unplugs the table lamp and grabs it like a kosh and then opens the bedroom door. Instantly the noise stops. I'm not ashamed to admit I was shiteing myself. We peek our heads round the door frame, Andy slaps on the lights, but there was nothing."

"I had had enough at that point, the stress was getting to me, my blood-pressure was through the roof and the doctor said I needed to be careful if I wanted to keep the baby. So I said to Andy I was going back to my parents until he got it sorted."

She looks sad when she tells me this but continues. "It was the last thing I wanted to do, despite all the weirdness I loved my wee flat. Anyway, Andy's living in the place for about six weeks when one night about four in the morning he's banging on my parents door. "That's it." He says. "We're finding somewhere else to live." He wouldn't tell me exactly why just that the place was no good, there was something evil in it. I have to admit I was relieved. Our parents helped us buy a semi-detached  in Mosspark and I never thought about the place again, well not until what happened a few years back. I remember contacting the papers after it but I never thought I'd ever hear anything about it again. I was glad when the pulled the place down."

Photograph by Andy Green. His Hallway, April 1981.

We have lunch, she shares pictures of her and Andy and their daughter Kate but the conversation moves on to more mundane, everyday things. It is not until we are leaving the restaurant that she mentions one last thing.

"So, I knew that people wouldn't believe me, Christ I hardly believe it, y'know? I told Andy that you wanted to see me and he said I should just let it lie, we argued about it a bit and if the truth be told I got a bit snarky. He stormed out the room, I thought in a huff, but then he turns back up five minutes later with an old shoe-box. It was full of stuff, mostly keepsakes from his schooldays, jotters, scout badges, football trophies that sort of stuff. He pulls out this brown envelope and fishes out some photos he took of the flat when I was staying round at my parents. Tells me he wanted evidence, just to prove we weren't imagining it. He places them all out on the table, a dozen photos or so, all of them of the hallway. They just looked like photos of the hallway to me. Then he points at one and says "remember I came runnning down to your parents that night, after I had enough?" I says aye and he goes, "that's why, that fucking thing. It was just staring and laughing."

She hands me the photograph. "Keep it." she says. "I want nothing more to do with any of it. It's just too fucking scary and anyway place is gone, thank Christ. I'm done with it." 


1985. Out of Bounds.

It started with the death of Jimmy Seymour. The Police were called to Craigrose Tower on the 23rd of March 1985 after the nineteen year old's body was discovered on the stairwell between floors six and seven. Seymour was a local heroin addict, who like many in the area, used the stairs to shoot up. Seymour had overdosed and died of lack of oxygen according to the pathologist's report which a copy of was in the police records. Also in the police record is a witness statement from a friend of Jimmy's, another addict called Scott Stevenson. The police would not allow me to photocopy the statement but I was given permission to transcribe it, as long as I left out Stevenson's personal details.

Statement Given. 25th March 1985

To. D.C. Bryant of Murcroft Station.

"It's his own fault. Everyone told him to stay away from that place, that there was something wrong with it. Wrong as in spooky. Straight up, anyone'll tell you, stay away from the Craigrose Flats, especially the stairs and especially the sixth to eight floors. Jimmy wouldn't listen, thought he was a hard-man.

It's the vibe of the place, it's eerie, you can hear all sorts of weird noises. Big Mickey Jessop said he even saw a ghost, but he talks a lot of pish at the best of times. Thing is all the smackheads know Craigrose Flats are out of bounds. As I said, the place is as spooky as f**k (sic). He's no the first junkie to drop down dead there either, not by any means. I mean I know it's a risky business but that place, that place is just waiting for the right moment to kill you."

Stevenson also died of an overdose, in 1987, so I could not contact him and had no other leads except to discuss the matter with D.C. Bryant. Bryant retired in 1997. He agreed to a short interview and the following was his recollection of the events.

"I couldn't have told you his name, but aye Seymour, that was it. I had heard other lads on the force tell me similar stories, there had been several junkies had died on those stairs over the years. It became one of those urban legends I suppose, maybe a superstition between them. "Stay away from Craigrose, it's haunted." that sort of thing. I don't put much stock in the works of a smackhead to be sure but, well I knew what they meant after we pulled another one out a few weeks later. My partner and I got the call so we were there at the scene to find her. A lassie no more than seventeen. I wish I could remember her name. Sadie something I think. Just another overdose. She was known locally as a junkie, we'd lifted her a few times for petty theft and there she was, grey, vacant opened eyes, sprawled out on the stairs with her works beside her and horrible blue lips. Sad really. Waste of a life, I never understood why they kept putting that shit into their veins but, there but for the grace of god and all that."

At this point he pauses the conversation and there is a deep sigh. "Thing is and I know how weird this is going to sound, while we're waiting for the ambulance my partner and I have to cordon off the place, it's a crime scene right? So we rope the janitor in to put police tape over the doors to the stairs while we cordon off the immediate area. Everything is fine but then I get this feeling of being watched. It was a bit odd but for some reason I decide to look up the stairwell. As I do I see the stairs are mobbed with people, people I can't make out, all the way up, shadows really, all of them are just staring directly down the stairwell, like they're rubbernecking the whole thing. I shout "Clear the stairs folks." and my partner looks at me, looks up and looks back at me and says "Who are you talking to?" 

I looked back up and there was no one, not a soul on any of the stairs or landing. Gave me the right creeps that did. I never really thought much about it until well, you know. They pulled that place down the week I retired did you know that? Best retirement present I ever got. I never really slept well for years after that night, kept getting nightmares about all the dead junkies I'd found. They stopped after the place was demolished. That's all I have to say about Craigrose Tower."

1991. The Death of Emily Birt.

Alex Henderson lived in flat number 2 on the 19th floor of Craigrose Tower. By this time many of the flats lay empty, the council couldn't even get students, criminals or refugees to stay in the place for very long. Henderson had lived there for just less than eighteen months when he began to notice a large brown stain on the ceiling. Since he also had large brown and moldy stains on several of the exterior walls he put it down to dampness, that was until the stain began to smell. At first he suspected a sewage pipe from the flat above was leaking, a suspicion shared by the housing officers who ordered a plumber to go to the flat above and fix the leaking pipe.

After recieving no reply on several visits and pressured by Henderson's insistance that something was done or he was going to the papers to report them for negligence, the city council sent a locksmith, the door to flat number 2 on the 20th floor was opened and both the locksmith and plumber were horrified. Every wall, the floors, the ceiling, every inch of the flat that could be written on was badly vandalised with line upon line, row upon row of small scribbled handwriting. As bad as this was, what waited for them in the living room of the apartment was worse. The badly decomposed body of 79 year old Emily Birt. 

The forensics report stated that the body had lain undisturbed for several months. This story in and of itself is not that uncommon, lonely old people with no family or friends are left neglected and die without anyone ever knowing, until their foetid corpses are discovered long after, all across the globe. What makes this incident different is the following. Emily Birt was not a neglected lonely old woman. Her family insisted she had been visited several times in previous weeks, both her daughter and son, claimed this. Her OAP dancing club were all shocked to here of this, repudiating the claim she had lay rotting for months, they even supplied the police with photographs of Mrs Birt, on stage, nine days before her body was discovered. There is no further explanation or investigation into this matter and Mrs Birt was cremated on July the 19th 1991. The only other matter to note was the scribbled words all over the walls. According to the police report, they said the same thing over and over and over again. "They're watching all the time." One final note on this. After denials by her family that Mrs Birt had scrawled all over her flat, insisting it was not her handwriting an expert was called to analyse the evidence. His conclusion was that the writing did not come from the hand of Emily Birt.

1995. The Disappeared. 

We now come to the final incident, one that was once well known across the city but has in the last few years, especially since the demolition of Craigrose Tower, faded from the collective memory, becoming little more than an urban legend passed around playgrounds and pubs.

  

By this time the block was in a state of such disrepair that the council had already put in an order to have the place demolished. 73 of the 168 flats lay empty and those who were left had already been told their tenancies would be ended within the year and they would be rehoused. No-one put up a fight or demanded to stay. There were no articles in the broadsheets about how the Craigrose Tower was part of Glasgow's history, no re-evaluations of it's brutalist architecture. Most people it seemed were glad to be rid of the place.

On the morning of July the 8th the milk delivery for several dozen flats arrived. Before the delivery was half finished the milkman Liam Munro spoke to the caretaker Robert McGraw telling him he was concerned because every single pint or two of milk he had left the previous day remained outside each flat. As unusual as that was, McGraw had had his own concerns, namely that all the cars were still parked in the same places at they had been when he finished his shift, which, considering many of them were used as commuting vehicles by several of the tenants left him with an uneasy feeling. Convincing Munro to stay, the both of them went round the flats, one after another, ringing door bells, knocking on them and rattling letterboxes, they got no reply from any flat.

McGraw was the one who called the police, and the council. Less than an hour later the police arrived. It took the police forty minutes to establish that every single living soul in Craigrose Tower had simply vanished. Flats had T.V.'s left on, baths had been ran and overflowed, a few had set tables for dinner, another had toast, stale and cool still in the toaster, kettles had steamed to nothing, gas fires and electric cookers were roasting away. Another had an iron, still hot, burnt through a shirt and ironing board cover. Everyone had disappeared, everyone, all 253 souls who had lived in the building. 

The police had no explanation for this, not for the press nor the angry families who wanted to know what happened to their loved ones, who still to this day, want to know where they went. The press got wind of it but a DMSA notice was swiftly dispatched. While vague questions and concerns were raised in Parliament, the issue disappeared as quickly and as quiety as the tenants of Craigrose Tower, families were paid off subject to non-disclosure agreements and then, sixth months later, Craigrose tower was demolished.

Final Thoughts. 

I, like the police and everyone else, have no conclusions to draw from the above incidents, no smoking gun, no desecrated ancient burial grounds on which to lay the foundations of a narrative. I report here the events that I discovered almost by accident after I like many others watched the demolition of Craigrose Tower. It was a casual remark that lead me to this, a "thank fuck they've torn that evil place doon" from a stranger standing next to me as the explosions still rang in my ears. I was curious and asked him what he'd meant but he could give me nothing but vague suggestions of weird events. It was his father, who he introduced to me later, in the pub, that first set me on my investigation. His father, one time caretaker, Ronnie Wallace, who had witnessed the death of Graham Ritchie and his family first hand and who, like Officer Bryant and several others I spoke to, had been haunted, night after night, by bad dreams about Craigrose. Like them, he has been able to sleep peacefully since the block came down.

I wish I could say the same.