Interview: The Gorbals Vampire Playwright Johnny McKnight

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Published by Glasgowist.

Over 60 years after the notorious Gorbals vampire was said to be creeping around ‘the gravy’ in the Southern Necropolis, a new play on the dramatic real-life events by Johnny McKnight is set to hit the Citizens Theatre this weekend.

In 1954, the rumour mill churned out the tale of a monster with iron teeth who had supposedly kidnapped and eaten two young Gorbals schoolboys.

As whispers infected the playgrounds in the area, hundreds of children aged between 4-14 took to the graveyard one September night, armed with makeshift chibs, to take down the wean-eating monster.

McKnight’s new play stars a local cast portraying the children who epitomised ‘Scotland the Brave’ and took to the graveyard on a mission to slay the beast.

I caught up with playwright Johnny McKnight to find out more about the comic horror story coming to the Citizens just in time for Halloween.

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SOPHIE: How did you first hear the story of The Gorbals Vampire? And what did you think of it when you first heard about it?

JOHNNY: The story was actually brought to me by Guy Holland (Associate Director at Citizens Theatre) and he told me they were working on this project, The Gorbals Vampire, and they were looking for somebody to write it and make an outline of it. And I said I’d need to do some research because I’d never heard of the story.

So, I went away home and did a wee bit of research on it. And growing up I was a mad Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. Anything about vampires, I was into it. So, I did my research and I thought, I absolutely love this! I mean, if I had been at school and there was a rumour going around that there was a vampire on the loose, I wouldn’t have left the house. I would’ve been terrified.

I loved that these kids in the Gorbals were like, ‘Right, lets grab our chibs and go take it on!’ That was the point when I thought I totally need to write this. I just loved the idea of the story and the fun I could have with it.

At the time, a lot of people blamed things like American horror comic books and local folk stories about vampires. But what do you think caused the hysteria that encouraged kids to go out with weapons to take on this monster?

I think it was a combination of things. It could’ve also been weans that were brought up with the Bible and the idea of a monster appearing. It could’ve been the American comics. Or it literally could’ve just been Chinese whispers.

I mean, I remember being at school and as soon as there was one wee whisper, the playground would become infected with it. It starts with a whisper and builds to a shout. And I think, particularly at that time, there was nothing else to do. It was all word of mouth. Everything was word of mouth. It could’ve been the comics but I also quite like the idea that it possibly could’ve all been true.

Maybe the government were just covering it up like in Stranger Things. For me, it was all about looking at all the different variations of what it could’ve been and not getting too bogged down in making it a historical piece. I wanted it to feel like it was set in that time but that it could still happen now. It’s the exact same thing with the killer clown thing going on just now. It just takes one or two wee voices and a craze can kick off or hysteria can kick off just as easy.

The story was reported around the world. What specifically do you think captured the public’s imagination so much so that people are still talking about it now?

It was such a phenomenon at the time that it got that many kids all assembled in the one place and I think also, what I love about it anyway, is that the kids are refusing to be victims. They just decide they’re going to take it on and stand up to it. And I think that’s quite enduring.

I mean, you’d usually expect parents to put the kids at ease and help them sleep better at night, usually the parents take control. But in this story, I think that’s a phenomenal thing that the kids decide that this is something that only they can take on. And also, everybody loves a good horror story.

Do you think the story is specific to a Scottish setting? Do you think kids in another part of the world would have reacted in the same way or is this just a typical Scottish response?

I don’t know. I mean, I love the idea that it happened. I think it sounds like a really Scottish thing that they went, ‘Right we’re away to get this bam.’ They went to take it on and they weren’t scared that it was a vampire or a monster. I suppose, it’s like years ago when there was the terror attack at Glasgow Airport and someone wrestled the terrorist to the ground and just thought, ‘I’m gonny take that bam doon.’

In some ways, it makes you think maybe it just is something in the Scottish psyche. We’re no feart to stand up for ourselves. I think that’s what makes it so enduring and it’s the reason the story’s lasted. But then I think as well when people’s backs are up against the wall and there’s fear there, it just brings out another side of instinct in people which is what I love about it.

What exactly was involved in writing the play? Did you talk to people who were actually involved when they were kids?

There were quite a few interviews online with people who’d been kids involved at the time. But I decided not to go and interview people because I wanted to make it up so it was still fictional rather than getting too bogged down in making it someone’s life story. I’m also really aware that the show’s going on just before Halloween so I still wanted to keep it scary rather than it becoming a historical piece.

Although it has that historical backdrop, I really loved the idea that maybe it was true and the kids weren’t wrong after all. And if I had started making specifically about someone’s life, I was thinking the story has got 200 kids and I’m very aware the production has a cast of 60, so I really wanted to put in as many different voices across the board as possible and not get too worried about whether that person existed in real life. I wanted it to still be a drama.

This is a big community based project with a local amateur cast. Do you think it was important to keep the spirit of the story very much local to the Gorbals?

Definitely! Definitely. It’s written in a really Scottish dialect and as well I think it’s a really Scottish piece. And I think the whole point of a project like this, well the point of theatre, is to tell stories that haven’t been told. Specifically, there’s not many stories from the Gorbals that get told that don’t involve gangs or gang warfare or extreme poverty. The bigger thing here is you’ve got this horror story right at your backdoor. You had this group of weans who are now grandparents or great-grandparents who genuinely believed there was a vampire stomping around their backdoor at night.

With the show starting this Friday, what specifically are you hoping to achieve with this production?

I think with any kind of production, you want the same thing. You want people to laugh. You want them to feel something. You want them to be transported for an hour into a different time, a different place and a different story. Theatre works brilliantly is when the audience and the cast on the stage all decide to transport each other away from the worries and anxieties or boredom and humdrum of their own lives, to be somewhere different for an hour.

As well, particularly because it’s Halloween, I hope they laugh and are thrilled. As scared as they are, I hope they’re laughing as well. I mean, I’m not going to lie, I was channelling Buffy the entire time. I wanted it to be funny and witty and thrilling and scary, and all that mixed up together.

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The Gorbals Vampire opens at Citizens Theatre at 7.30pm on Friday 28th October.

Featured image courtesy of Mark Rowe via Flickr.

What do you think about The Gorbals Vampire? Let me know in the comment section below.

Uncanny Valley and the Creepy Clown Craze

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Published by Huffington Post and Strathclyde Telegraph.

Clown sightings, the world’s current epidemic of excitable rumour and panic – which seems to be gaining more and more momentum just in time for Halloween – began when a young boy, the son of Donna Arnold, and a small group of children, spotted two clowns in the woods in Greenville, South Carolina. According to Arnold, the clowns dressed in bright colours and frightful makeup tried to lure her son into a house hidden away behind woodland.

Since this bizarre incident of the first clown sighting in August this year, many have adopted the white-faced red-nosed persona to chase and terrorise unsuspecting civilians across America and beyond. So far, around 48 states in America have reported clown sightings and several arrests have been made. The craze has even spread to the UK where the authorities are condemning the pranksters for wasting police resources and have even issued a teenager with a fine of £90, the first person in the UK to be fined for scaring children.

There seems to be a common thread of unease with almost everyone: we just don’t like clowns. But why are we so scared of them? Why is it so terrifying to see someone who we know is just a person playing a hoax in oversized multi-coloured clothes and silly makeup? How does something we know is irrational, absurd and, most importantly, not real, become so unsettling?

The fear of clowns, coulrophobia, was epitomised in public consciousness by Tim Curry’s iconic portrayal of Pennywise the Clown in the 1990 film Stephen King’s It. Since then, the standard image of clowns has transformed from a comic performer associated with laughter, tricks, slapstick, mime and children’s parties into a terrifying, almost otherworldly entity who stares mindlessly with dead eyes and a wide devilish grin.

Although there could be many possible explanations behind our collective dislike of Pennywise lookalikes, the crippling fear caused by this creepy craze could be due to uncanny valley, a term first coined by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. The uncanny can be defined as the psychological concept, thought to be first established by Sigmund Freud in his journal Das Unheimliche, whereby something is strangely familiar rather than just mysterious. Uncanny valley, however, is a hypothesis which is widely disputed among scientists and refers to a dip of negative emotional response caused by the anthropomorphism of robots, 3D computer animated characters, lifelike dolls and, in this particular case, clowns.

Mori hypothesised that these forms of human duplicates which appear to be almost exactly but not quite identical to humans evoke a feeling of unease, eeriness and even disgust among viewers, particularly when the creations begin to move in an unnatural or mechanical way.

During his research, Mori found that as a robot or humanlike creation appeared more human, some observers had an empathetic and positive emotional response. This was the case until the point where the creation began to look too similar to a human and then a response of revulsion and unease was recorded. On the flip side, Mori also found that as a robot’s appearance became less similar to that of a human being, the viewer’s response became positive again.

Cited causes of this hypothesised phenomenon include: artist Kevin Kirkpatrick’s real life models of Beavis and Butthead, AIST robotics, engineer Hiroshi Ishiguro’s identical twin ‘humanoid’, I, Robot (2004), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), and children’s films Night of the Headless Horseman (1999), The Polar Express (2004) and The Adventures of Tintin (2011).

Part of the reason it is thought that uncanny valley causes a sense of revulsion is because we are unsettled by the notion of ‘the other’. The other is a concept very prominent in today’s mainstream and social media with the uncertainty and otherness associated with terrorism and even Donald Trump (is he really human?). And it is this mix of something that appears both human and not human simultaneously that seems to worry us the most. Guardian writer Matthew Teague recently summarised Charles Dickens thoughts on clowns by saying that ‘what fascinates us is not the exaggerated painted face, or the dull face of a man underneath. It’s the tension between the two. The dissonance between what is and what appears to be.’

Thinking along the same lines as the Jekyll and Hyde ideology of the duality of human nature, clown expert David Kiser recently theorised that: ‘…clowns hold up a mirror on society, so we can see the absurd in ourselves. So to be afraid of them is ultimately to be afraid of yourself.’

Like Kiser suggests, maybe our fear doesn’t come from the mask of frightful makeup, big clown shoes, red nose and the colourful wig. Perhaps the image of a clown mirrors a strange, hidden, socially unacceptable part of ourselves. It could be that that the clown face is not a mask at all but it is what we reveal when we take the mask off.

What do you think of uncanny valley and the killer clown craze? Let me know in the comment section below.

Short Story: ‘Little Lies’

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Published by the Strathclyde Telegraph.

Banoffee muffins with cream cheese and cinnamon icing, spiced pumpkin lattes, strawberry cheesecake, banana bread, pumpkin pies, carrot cake, ginger bread, and chocolate brownies were just a few of the baked goods stacked onto the towering shelves in Bella’s Coffee House in Lochwinnoch that morning. With my jacket drenched, and my hair damp and starting to curl already, I was relieved to be hit by wave of heat and the rich smell of freshly ground coffee and cakes as I stepped inside.

I joined the queue to the coffee bar, shuffled on the spot and rubbed my cold bright red hands together to heat up as I ordered my usual: ‘A latte and a piece of carrot cake please, Julie.’

I watched as Julie poured steaming hot milk into the gloopy dark expresso and swirled her hand to etch the shape of a fern on top, before dusting the latte with a sprinkling of chocolate powder.

‘Are you excited for your road trip then, Allie?’ Julie asked.

‘Yeah, it should be great! We’re all packed up now. Just waiting on Joe coming back from the mechanics with the camper and then, fingers crossed, we’ll be all set,’ I told her.

I sat at my usual table by the window and waited for Joe. Just as I sat down, ready to people-watch and stare mindlessly at the raindrops wiggling down the pane, I noticed a man waving to Julie as he left. I only caught a glimpse of the back of his head but his balding crown and wavy silver hair seemed familiar.

I had just finished the last crumb of carrot cake when our battered old Fiat Ducato McLouis campervan came trudging around the corner and bumped to a stop outside Bella’s. I quickly scooped up my bag and ran outside, thanking Julie and giving her a wave as I went.

Joe was sitting in the driver’s seat with a beaming smile. ‘You’ll never guess. Somehow, it’s still actually roadworthy!’

Thankful that the mechanic had given it the all clear, I put my rucksack into the back of the camper with our other bags, jumped into the passenger seat, and we set off. I dug out the map and old cassette tapes from the glovebox.

‘So it’s Balloch we’re heading to first?’ I asked as I stuck on an old Fleetwood Mac greatest hits album.

‘Yep. You’re wanting to see Loch Lomond, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah, I haven’t been since I was about three or four when my grandpa took me there.’

The last thing I could remember was hearing Joe singing along to Go Your Own Way when I woke up to the smell of a new piña colada scented air freshener, rocky road, and a fresh coffee in a travel mug.

‘Wake up, sleepy head. We’re here,’ I heard Joe say from somewhere nearby.

I yawned, rubbed my eyes and fixed my beanie hat which had fallen down my forehead. We parked up in the campsite, ate two ham sandwiches each, then grabbed our rucksacks and headed to Loch Lomond.

I kicked the piles of little crinkled orange and brown leaves from under my boots and sipped my coffee as we reached the shore. Even on such a grey and damp day, the loch was still glistening. I had forgotten how vast it was, how it ate up the landscape. The water was a dark navy blue and so shiny it looked like glass that would shatter into pieces if I stepped on it. I craned my neck back to look up in awe at the hills and mountains tearing through the sky in waves of emerald and moss green that reached to touch the clouds.

I took out my camera and started to take some pictures when I noticed a shape floating in the water in the mist. As my eyes came into focus, I saw a small green fishing boat. Walking around on the deck, looking for something in the water, was that same old silver haired man. His back was arched as he leaned over the edge looking for something and his blue shirt filled with air like a ship’s sail. He had the same balding crown and soft silver waves at the back of his head but I still couldn’t see his face. I could have sworn it was him.

‘Look, there’s someone out there on a boat,’ I said to Joe as I pointed in the man’s direction.

‘What? Where?’

‘Right there!’ I pointed again.

As I blinked a few more times, the silver haired man and the boat blurred out of focus and dissipated into the mist.

‘I could’ve sworn…’

‘I think you’re imagining things. You must be going daft!’ Joe laughed as he walked further down the shore taking pictures.

I stood at the edge of the loch with autumn leaves clinging to my boots like milk-soaked cornflakes and I squinted my eyes to try to find the man on the boat. The surface of the water was as still as a sheet of ice, silent and solid, no ripples or signs of movement.

I asked Julie about the old man but she couldn’t remember. I went to Bella’s for coffee and breakfast for weeks after we came home but I didn’t see him again.

What do you think of ‘Little Lies’? Let me know in the coment section below.