I want to talk about the commission that made me proud the most, the first one made for a foreign country.
The Haunted History Bus hired me in the far may 2017 to create 7 illustrations in a horror-historic style to decorate their bus. This bus in fact would have had to circulate around the main folkloristic places of Edinburgh (from the square of executions in Grassmarket to the graveyard of the Greyfriars Bobby Cemetary from witch J. K. Rowling took inspiration for and some names for some of her characters such as Tom riddle and prof. McGonagall. These illustrations would have had to decorate both of the exterior sides of the bus and also for the inside a long illustration of a cemetery running all around the edge of the bus and a portrait is situated on the door on the driver’s spot.
Six of those illustrations are portraits typical characters of the folklore of edinburgh: Maggie Dickinson, the Phantom Piper, Deacon Brodie, Mary Queen of Scots, Burke and Hare and Johnny One Arm.
The character that inspired me the most is the Phantom Piper. His story is very linear without any picaresque adventure. It is rather a story of a “technician” called to help some workmen to measure how long was the tunnel that apparently was ending beneath Tha Castel running through all the Royal Mile (the road that Lords travel to reach the castle from the main city gate). Why did it fascinated me so? Simple, because it leaves you the freedom to imagine anything you want, to create different kinds of scenarios.
I’ll report here the full story from Scottish Ghosts, Lily Seafield, Lomond Books, 2002, p. 44:
“Edinburgh Castle has seen many alterations and additions since first came into being as a fortified stronghold. The oldest surviving building on Castle Rock is St Margaret’s Chapel, built in the twelfth century, but over the following centuries walls, ramparts, vaults, batteries and a cluster of building with both grand and prosaic function were added until the whole finally came to resemble the castle as people can see it today, complete with a modern visitor centre.
The story goes that in the course of some of these building works (although no one seems sure of when or for what purpose), workmen came upon the entrance to a tunnel that appeared to be leading down through Castle Rock, underneath the Royal Mile. In order to establish how long the tunnel was and where it went, a piper was dispatched to walk as far as he could, playing his pipes as he went, thereby allowing those who remained above ground to follow the sounds of his music and trace the tunnel’s route.
It seemed like a good plan at the time. The piper set off, and the people above waited and listened. The sound of playing bagpipes could be heard, albeit faintly, and the sound was moving down the Royal Mile, much as everybody had expected it would. The people above ground kept listening and following the sound. Suddenly, getting toward halfway down the Royal Mile, the piping stopped.
There seems to be no record of anybody having gone to look for the hapless piper; perhaps they were all too scared. Rather than take the investigations any further, it was decided to seal the tunnel once more and forget all about it. To this day, it is say, if you listen hard enough above the sound of the traffic on the stretch of the Royal Mile that leads from Edinburgh Castle to South Bridge, you might just hear the sound of subterranean bagpipe music, for the ghost of the piper still plays in the tunnel below the street.
The phantom piper at Edinburgh Castle is not unique. Elsewhere in Scotland, according to legend, the sound of ghostly bagpipes can be heard in more than one other place, hidden below the earth.”
The Phantom Piper (Part I)
