I mentioned in an earlier blog that people I spoke with enjoyed a good ghost story and that there were possible stories that could be adapted. Charles Dickens was the one name that frequently came up and it was not just his famous ghost story "The Signal-Man " published in the 1866 Christmas edition of his magazine All The Year Round ; it is allegedly based…

With the controversy still raging over the TalkTalk cyber-attack still in the news, I remembered a short piece "False Identity" that Clare Stelling wrote for the group a while ago. It is highly relevant with the brouhaha about a person's identity and how can you prove this. I have included the extract below. It is probably based on an actual incident. This still goes on today.

Mrs. Mortimer,late fifties, writes at a table in the centre…

The proposed venue for the rehearsed reading of "Sorrow for my Sons" by the Graig Du Theatre Players is the Maes-yr-haf Hall, Trealaw, Porth. I will post further updates in the near future. Another ghost story, which might interest members, is the curious tale of the Wylfa Ghost, Anglesey

During the construction of the site in the early 1960s for the nuclear…

Josh "Ted" Edwards, currently in his last year of studying art at Cardiff University, is the concept artist for the Graig Du Theatre Players. One of his early influences was studying the work of Alan Lee, especially his illustrations for Castles and his defining images for Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Interpreting an author's words into a series of pictures is what fascinates Josh the most.

I have included an illustration he painted after reading one of H.P. Lovecraft's…

My late father worked for many years on the Rhondda Transport as a conductor in the 1960s and he never tired of telling me the ghost stories that he heard from passengers about Cardiff and the Vale. The stories included the ghostly sounds of horses' hooves heard going over the bridge to Cardiff Castle, a spectral coach vanishes as it approaches the castle…

Another psychological supernatural drama that is under consideration is "Force of Evil". In a sleepy village in Sussex, the Reverend James Barclay discovers an ancient remembrance is about to reassert itself. Stephen, his son, is missing in action as the Second World War reaches its defining stages. Barclay is dumbfounded when Prentiss appears in Hallow Glen…

C.G. Harrison, a High Church Anglican, is little remembered today. In 1893, Harrison wrote a rather curious book entitled "The Transcendental Universe." and gave a series of lectures that caused uproar in esoteric circles and the Church, for he revealed…

With the release of Guillermo del Torro's Crimson Peak in the cinemas, this reminded me of a number of conversations I had with different people about what subject matters they would like to see presented by the group. Surprisingly, the answer was supernatural and ghost stories. The majority said that they did not like anything explained. The whole point of being frightened…

 Another project that interests me would be developing a play based on the inquest that took place on the Cymmer Colliery Disaster at the Butchers Arms, Pontypridd on 27th July 1856. The explosion was the first of many that were to destroy the communities of Wales and the rest of Great Britain. I have included an article that reinforces the point that the employment of…

I thought it might be of interest to add the opening scene from Sorrow for my Sons, the one-act play I intend  to stage  to publicize the Graig Du Theatre Players.The premise of the play, about the mysterious death of W.D. Llewelyn at Penllergare in 1893, has been alluded to in my profile of the group.

Labourer:  Us five were talking by the quarry bridge the…

The Manacled Mutineer

Ambrose is in his eighties; dying in a Welsh hospital. Appalled by his treatment because he has been in hospital too long according to the doctor, Ambrose knows he is being slowly starved of his last breath by the morphine that has been injected into his stomach. He starts hallucinating and is conscious of all and remembers…