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Ghosties (The)

Meikle Corseford, Renfrewshire.

Old quarry marked on OS Map. Now flooded in wooded hollow. Other flooded quarries were located to the west but these are now filled and no sign can be seen in the ploughed fields west of Swinetrees Burn.

Google Earth Pin - The Ghosties

During the 19th century, the Ghosties was part of the Laird of Johnstone's Corseford Coal and Lime Works.

One of the scariest places in the Paisley and Johnstone area is a deep water-filled quarry eerily encircled by towering trees and shrub-shrouded rocky cliffs. Even in the summer gloaming, the petrifying pool is fearsome, when owls hoot mournfully in woodland bowers and black-backed bats flutter phantom-like above the weed-wreathed water. But, on dark winter nights, the flooded quarry is positively terrifying when grey wisps of mist spiral from the murky depths of the lugubrious lagoon. They twist into writhing human shapes which send shudders down the spine and make your blood run cold. Dead trees, with leafless branches, loom from the water like the bony fingers of sylvan skeletons protruding from a greenwood graveyard. In these melancholic moments, you know why the derelict quarry, with its foggy, phantom figures gliding gloomily across the pond, is known as the Ghosties. As the spectral sentinels drift drearily into the funereal darkness, feelings of foreboding intensify when you recall the mining disaster at nearby Benston coalfield nearly 150 years ago. On that dark day, five doomed colliers, including a boy aged 14, perished horrifically in an underground flood which battered down the pit-props and caved-in the mine. Tragically, the crushed corpses of the ill-fated miners were never recovered. Their bleached bones still moulder 250 feet below the ground in a gallery linking the Benston pit to several coalholes near the Ghosties. [Eddie McRorie/Derek Parker]

Top place if you like old flooded mines and fossils - was last there in 1988. [EffingCamper, 2020]

As a man in my thirties I have many fond memories of this enchanting little spot. I am glad to see young people still use it as an area to relax, imbibe cider and wine and grope each other. I would recommend this area highly to anyone. [Gerard Kurth, 2018]

Spent my boyhood there, every weekend camping just up from here to the lightning tree in my teens, wonderful memories and I'm surprised how much it has stayed the same as it's been over 35 yrs since I last visited. [Eddie Duncan, 2022]

Other reviews however suggest it might be a bit of a howff with drinking and dubious behaviour.

Alternative Names: Meikle Corseford (old quarry)

Hydrographic Feeds: None

Hydrographic Resurgences: Swinetrees Burn