This Town is Cursed

In a town as steeped in history as it is in isolation, St Andrews offers both the beauty of the coast and the unmistakable ennui of a place cut off from big-city life. Undoubtedly, It is easy to become restless. During the second semester of last year, second-year Amy Taylor and I were defeated by our academics and our growing hatred for the smell of Aikmans’ toilet. There were only so many times you could go to the pub without going into your overdraft. Something had to give — and economically so. In the spirit of making our own fun, we found ourselves chasing ghosts.

I created a Reddit account so that I could see the full thread of a ‘St Andrews Secrets’ post. Armed with exceptionally reliable information from twenty years ago, we began our hunt at night, on the Scores by Wardlaw Museum, where it was rumoured that a ghost occasionally peered out the top window. We didn’t see anything. There were reports of ghosts on the cathedral grounds, but the doors locked at 4pm. Solemn monk ghosts going about their religious duties, eerie phantom processions near the cathedral ruins, and the White Lady, a woman beneath the crypt — I’d like to see someone sneak into the cathedral and find them. It might not be as easy as sneaking into the castle at night, but it would be worth the wait. As we wandered along the Scores, we passed Edgecliffe, the Philosophy building, whose library is said to contain passageways to Castle Sands. Someone on Reddit claimed they had accidentally been shut in the library at the building’s closing time and could only make it out through the tunnel. Since then, the tunnel has been closed off — but it does make you wonder about its purpose.

Passing a flock of men in suits — likely belonging to one of St Andrews’ secret societies due to their lack of clear sports affiliation — we headed to Castle Sands to look for caves. We wanted to see the beginnings of a tunnel. Unfortunately, we quickly realised that what we had thought were caves, were, in fact, crevices in the rock from centuries of erosion. Perhaps the suits knew where the caves were, and used them to secretly conduct whatever it was they were secretly conducting. I would have to Rory Gilmore myself into their lives to figure it out, though not out of journalistic integrity — a secret cave would be useful for revision, considering the library is always full.

Our real discoveries were in the halls. It was said that there were vaults in John Burnett Hall, hiding behind the pictures. All of the pictures on the ground floor are bolted to the walls now, but if you knock around them, you’ll be able to hear how some are hollow. There probably aren’t any Coraline-esque tunnels, but hidden vaults are plausible. When we snuck into St Regulus Hall, we found something even more startling: signs of others making their own fun. The chairs and tables in the common room were upside-down. Horrifically, our pursuit of fun wasn’t very original.

That is the St Andrews curse. We are all bound by the same drive to make our own fun. Why else would you choose to go to the coast of Scotland, without a train station, an airport or big-city nightlife? I would praise our knack for independence, but it’s our dependence on each other that fosters the university scene. The ghosts aren’t what is most cursed about St Andrews — it’s how we turn the notion of ‘There’s nothing to do here and I hate it’ into ‘Let’s get a free drink on Forgans for a fake (academic) proposal.’ 

Illustration by Calum Mayor