Happy 77th Birthday, Jimmy Page!
Photo by Ur Cameras (copied from Flickr/Public Domain)
Greetings, Fellow 2020 Survivors,
In honor of the great and powerful Jimmy Page’s 77th birthday today, here’s a flashback to my March 2018 sojourn to the UK to conduct research for my debut novel, Searching For Jimmy Page, forthcoming fall 2021 from Livingston Press. (Oh how I miss travel!) I spent the bulk of that week bashing about London but scooted off to Inverness, Scotland, briefly to—ahem—search for the spooky digs of the infamous 20th-century occultist and darling of 1970s Rock stars, Aleister Crowley, or as Ernest Hemingway referred to him in A Moveable Feast, “the most evil man in the world.”
From Searching For Jimmy Page:
“According to legend, Boleskine House was built atop the ruins of a tenth century church that burned to the ground during a service, killing everyone inside. Jimmy Page purchased the property in 1970, or ‘71, and sold it in ‘92. . . . Boleskine Cemetery, at the foot of the hill below the house and across the narrow mountain road, is reputed to be linked to the manor by a tunnel leading from the cellar to the graveyard for the purpose of body snatching, or something else equally distasteful.”
The property is a beast to find, located about a forty-minutes’ drive from Inverness, heading toward Foyers, on a vertiginous artery overlooking Loch Ness, sheep grazing in rolling roadside fields, snow-capped mountains standing guard in the distance. I had to take a bus since I can barely drive on the “right” side of the road let alone the “wrong,” and taxi fare was too steep for my budget. The two kids working at the Inverness bus station had both been to the house and seemed chuffed I was making the journey, regaling me with tales of the place—a maid who lost her head and you can still hear it rolling around in the ruins. (Fire practically destroyed the house in 2015 and again in 2019.)
Because there is no bus stop close by, per the bus station kids’ instructions, I asked the driver to let me off at the cemetery and, on his return some twenty-odd minutes later, collect me there, which he was nice enough to do. Both trips. I made two that day because I couldn’t find the house on my first run, early that morning, sleet and fog making visibility difficult, the cold I’d caught the day before dulling my senses.
Photo by Christy Alexander Hallberg
By the time I made an afternoon jaunt, the sun had come out and I felt a little better, and I hit pay dirt. (Well, sort of, as the video below explains.) I remember the moment I finally spotted the house. A gust of haunted wind blew inland from the water and startled the trees. Then a deer crept out of a thicket near the cemetery and we locked eyes for a second, me an interloper with a runny nose and sore throat and feet covered in blisters because I’d opted for shoes that favored style over function, and an exquisite doe who lived among the legends and lore of this fabled place. My eyes followed her as she scampered blithely across the road and up the hill toward a burned-out house I hadn’t noticed before—Boleskine House. That’s how I’ll always remember it, like Brigadoon, blinking through the Scottish mist just for me, just for that one day.
I hope you enjoy the video, my invitation into the magic of that moment and a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the making of Searching For Jimmy Page. I also hope you’ll join me in wishing JP the happiest of birthdays. May his next year be filled with good health and happiness and rockin’ good music. If you’re interested in learning about how I first felt the magic of Jimmy Page, check out my essay “You Shook Me,” published in 2019 in Litro: https://www.litromagazine.com/essaysaturday/you-shook-me/.
Feel free to leave a comment below. Please visit the Contact page and join my mailing list to receive the latest news on Searching For Jimmy Page and to volunteer to write a review on your blog, website, Goodreads page in the future.
Happy New Year and rock on, y’all!
Best,
Christy
