Mysterious Perthshire: Author's Talk

Each book is a comprehensive guide to everything strange, Fortean, paranormal, Gothic and grotesque in a given area. They tell you where to find stone circles, carved stones, gargoyles, graveyards and other mysterious or atmospheric sites.

Weirdness

There’s also witchcraft, folk magic, ceremonial magic, ghosts, loch monsters, demons, folklore, cryptozoology, holy wells, miracles, religious mania, UFOs and general weirdness. So, something for everyone.

The books are an authoritative mix of extensive historical and documentary study combined with diligent field research, the latter of which usually means spending far more time wading through nettle-shrouded ruins or lurking around graveyards than is probably healthy. Much of this field research takes place on foot or via pedal power on a trusty trike. He reckons that, as well as being an outdoor job with no heavy lifting, it is tremendous fun, and takes him to some of the most wonderful parts of Scotland.

Biography

A Welshman, Geoff was born and brought up in Cardiff. He had a vaguely adventurous youth and young manhood "involving dozens of crap jobs and extensive travelling, highlights of which included being chased by a crocodile, getting sunburn from red-hot lava and hitchhiking around the UK following The Ramones." He studied with the Open University (“a life-changing experience”) and then went to Stirling University as a mature student.

Since 1993 he has been a producer and scriptwriter with Speakeasy Productions, based in Perthshire. He has made hundreds of videos for large companies and Government departments. A number of them have even won awards.

He wrote and produced the six-part STV documentary series Mysterious Scotland (2003) and also made a few documentaries for Channel 4. He used to write the weekly “Mysterious Perthshire” column for the Perthshire Advertiser and regularly gives talks to various groups on everything from Aleister Crowley to St Columba to historical witchcraft.

Geoff lives in Luncarty. When walking the dog there recently, he came across a ‘nail tree’, probably a toothache tree. "The strange is still out there," he says.

Official website www.geoffholder.co.uk