How to use the archive
Just keep scrolling down to see the most recent posts, and click previous at the bottom of the page to see more – be warned there are over 130 stories here! If you’re looking for something specific, use the search bar (there’s one in the footer on every page if you keep scrolling down, you’ll find it!) or click on any category (like crime and death, or wars and battles – the ones with the coloured backgrounds below each post) or one of the words in the tag cloud below to see all posts in a specific theme.
We hope you enjoy reading all the stories about Dundee’s dark history we’ve put together for you, but if you’re looking for things to do in Dundee why not take one of our walking tours!
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Now, you might be thinking, what has Mary Slessor got to do with Dark Dundee? Sure, she’s from Dundee, but as a missionary, she is hailed as somewhat of a heroine. Of course she is, and we’re not denying that…but what’s truly dark about Mary Slessor are the things she witnessed during her lifetime. Her father, […]
Booksworld.com recently reported the release of “The Common Book of Witchcraft and Wicca. What’s all the fuss about, you ask? Isn’t it just someone trying to sell a book? No, apparently it’s not – the book is available completely free, under a creative commons license, which allows anyone to freely share and republish its contents […]
 Welcome to our section on real-life tales of the unexpected, where things go bump in the night, and all sorts of creepy and weird things come crawling out from the darkness.  Here, we have taken a selection of stories as given to us by our fans, based on their own personal experiences of the […]
In the mid-19th Century, help and support for the poor people of Scotland was, by today’s standards, pretty horrendous. The people demanded a change in the current law (the Poor Law of Scotland), and it was amended in August 1845 in an attempt to abolish the suffering caused by such a lack of care. Prior […]
Claypotts Castle is a late medieval castle in the West Ferry area of Dundee, Scotland. It is one of the best-preserved examples of a 16th-century ‘Z-plan’ tower house in Scotland. The castle is now maintained as an Ancient Monument by Historic Scotland and is open to the public for only a few days a year. […]
Many tales have never come so close to legend as the tale of the Nine Maidens. Whether it be fact, faked, or some half-baked version of the truth, we will never really know.
Completed around 1495, the site had been earlier fortified in 1454 when George Douglas, 4th Earl of Angus received permission to build on the site. His son Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Angus was coerced into ceding the castle to the crown.
The 16th century was a time of religious upheaval caused, in part, by the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. As the shockwave of religious division extended across Europe, fear spread that the Day of Judgement had arrived.
The Malleus Maleficarum (“The Hammer of Witches”) is the classic Catholic text on witchcraft and was first published in 1487. The book was notorious for its use in the Witch-hunts which were started on a national scale across Europe.
Grissell Jaffray is famous in Dundee history for the crime of being a witch. She was choked and burned at the stake in a public execution and is the last person to have been burned in Dundee for the crime of witchcraft.