RR: Are you saying it does?
ZC: I’m saying it could.
RR: So this ghost that people say they’re seeing, this Frithghast creature, you actually allude to it in one of your songs – ‘Dead Eyes’ from your Damage album – ‘A shadow from the forest of your heart, the future told, in part…’
ZC: [singing] ‘The past’s a dream, our paths are all foreseen…’
[The shrieking begins again. It’s much louder now and seems to be dotted all over the audience.]
ZC: Some people say that, yes. Some people think it’s about something else. It can be about what you want it to be.
RR: For a lot of your fans, it’s about this thing many of them claim to have seen before bad things happen.
ZC: Like I said, maybe they’re finding it’s a little easier to open their minds. If my music does that for them, that can only be a good thing.
RR: In the video, which we’re going to watch in a moment, you’re running through the forest, pursued by shadowy creatures – half skeletons. It’s all rather creepy.
[Despite the increasing noise from the audience, Zach presses on, drawing his chair closer to Ruby’s.]
ZC: Oh yes … that’s what I wanted. I wanted it to be scary. Like I say, the song can mean a great many things on a great many levels. It can be about the darkness of the past, the hope of the future, escaping from the scary things that hold you to a place.
RR: And what about you? What is that song about to you?
ZC: My songs are very personal to me – they’re like little parts of myself I give out to the fans, to the world. ‘Dead Eyes’ is all about escaping from the dark of the past into a better future. It’s very metaphorical. But it’s also about being open to things, accepting there are things we may not be able to explain out there, you know?
RR: Like this creature, this omen.
[The studio lights go off. There is a hiss from somewhere, and when the lights come back on, the camera is pointing at the audience. The majority of them are twitching and writhing in their seats.]
ZC: Right. These things – omens of ill fate – are in every culture, worldwide. You know in Korea they sell fans with timers on them.
RR: Fans as in…
ZC: Electric fans. In Korea, they say if you leave the fan on and shut the window overnight, it’s certain death, so they have a timer to stop them. In Mexico, if your bed faces the door, that’s sure to bring death too. These things have to come from somewhere, don’t they? I talk to a great many of my fans who think they’re alone in seeing strange things. I tell them they’re not. I tell them they just have to speak to the right people – each other. The fans across the globe can come together and start something beautiful, a more compassionate world.
RR: Did you see something, perhaps, before these tragedies occurred in such swift succession? Is that why you felt so much guilt?
ZC: [almost whispering] Maybe it was … maybe it was…
[The screen goes blank for a couple of seconds before returning, and then going blank again]
Programme information – technical difficulties
We are currently experiencing some technical problems with our live broadcast.
We are looking into these and hope to have the issues resolved soon.
[The screen comes back on with no sound and the image is pixelated. Some of Zach Crystal’s entourage walk onto the set and touch up his makeup. Studio techs and members of the Crystal entourage speak to Ruby Rendall, who nods.]
RR: [overly jolly, blushing] Now, are we back? Yes, sorry. This is the issue sometimes with live TV. A few technical hitches. We’re OK now though, yes. Yes. Zach Crystal, you are back. Back from another precipice, a dark place, as it were, and as we can see, your future is looking bright. The new album and, of course, the tour. Forever, you’ve called it.
ZC: That’s right. ‘Forever’ is a defiant word, don’t you think? It makes a statement. Here I am. I’m back. Forever now.
[Cheering]
RR: I’m so excited, I really am. These tickets will be gold dust when they go on sale, I’m sure. Now, as you can see, we’ve had a couple of hiccups, and while we get it all straightened out, we’ll take a very short break, during which we’ll watch the extended cut of Zach Crystal’s song ‘Dead Eyes’. Be sure to stay with us for more exclusive chat with Zach Crystal.
Episode 3: Secrets of The Whispering Wood
—It’s an old story. Couldn’t tell you how old, mind. My granny told it to me, her granny told it to her. I suppose it’s stayed the same, but you know how these things go, eh? It’s like any fairy tale, I suppose – told to stop me getting lost out there. All the best tales are the ones told to stop little ones getting lost. That’s where the real fear is, isn’t it? That’s worse than any monster.
It starts off as these stories do, with a rich laird and a poor family. The laird of Colliecrith was a mean old soul, and he wouldn’t part with a single rotten windfall from his forest floor without gold crossing his palm. His forest was his pride and joy; anyone who dared poach there was tortured to death in terrible ways. The laird’s favourite way was to dress poachers up in deerskins and make them sport for his dogs.
The laird filled the forest with vicious wild animals – boar and wild cat – but he allowed no one to hunt them, instead letting them roam free. Those woods grew wild and dark, and folk were scared to go near.
The thing is, see, the forest of Colliecrith was a thoroughfare to Inverness from Stirling. You took it, or else you had to cross the Grampians. Let me tell you, folk were more likely to take their chances on the mountains than pass through Colliecrith, or as they knew it back then, the ‘Whispering Wood’. Folk said there was something deep inside those dark woods, something ancient and evil, a living shadow that’s breath was an icy wind. They said the sight of it turned the bark of the trees pale and made the leaves whisper in terror as it passed by. If you go into the Whispering Wood, folk said, that shadow would tell you things. It’d whisper its secrets to you, things about the past and the future, things you couldn’t unhear. Things no human is supposed to know. The voice of the Whispering Wood, they said, could send you raving mad.
But there was a poor family who were travelling on foot from Stirling to Inverness to find work. They’ve got their wee girls with them, and their legs are too short to climb the mountains, but the family are too poor for horses. So they decide to take their chances in the Whispering Wood of Colliecrith. They know the story of the Whispering Wood – but they think they have no choice.
The man, so the story goes, he takes a fishing line and winds it around all their thumbs when they go to sleep so none of the family gets lost. He ties his line to the thin trunk of the first tree, and on they go, into the Whispering Wood. That way, he says, they’ll not get lost.
They stuff their ears with cloth, the man, his wife and their wee girls, so as not to hear that terrible whisper that winds through those trees. They keep walking. Day after day after day they walk, and still the fishing line doesn’t run out. It’s alright, they think, we can’t be lost, we can always find our way back out again.
The laird, though, knows that someone’s in his woods. Who’s to say how he knows, but he does, and he sends his hunters out to catch them and bring them to the sheriff at Cawdor to stand trial for poaching. He’s had his men slay four buck and skin them, horns and all. A lust for blood, for vengeance, for punishment has possessed him.
But as the days go by, the laird’s men can find no trace of the family, and the family themselves, they’re lost. They can see no bird, nor beast, nor water, nor any path out of the wood ahead of them. Their supplies are running low. Not to worry, the man says, we can always follow the fishing line back out again. One more day, he says. We’ll walk for one more day and if we still can’t find the path, we’ll go back.
What he doesn’t know is that their youngest lassie has lost the little bits of cloth that plugged her ears, and she’s been listening, she’s had the shadow of tha
t wood whispering in her ear all day, every day, all night every night. And what has she been doing when her da goes to sleep every night? She’s been taking his knife – and that fishing line that’ll save them if they get lost, that leads out of the wood, she’s been cutting through it and retying it to any old tree. Why? Something’s telling her to do it. Those shimmering leaves are whispering at her, that cold voice is burrowing into her mind.
On the last night, so the story goes, that wee one, the lassie, she waits till all her family is asleep and she cuts that fishing line once more and she ties it around their throats. Quiet as a cat she is, just the whisper of the wood in her ears.
The next morning, the laird’s hunters find them, the poor family. They ride into a clearing where they see a sight so horrible they nearly flee there and then. The whole family, so the story goes, all dead and carved open from chin to chest. And the wee one, the lassie? She’s eating them. She’s eating their flesh, raw. She has this look about her, like something evil, like the very devil’s looking out at them through her eyes.
The laird’s hunters grab her and take the road from Colliecrith north to Cawdor Castle to see the sheriff and have her executed. The laird is furious; he wants his sport with his dogs. So he comes with them, bringing the deer skins to try and convince the sheriff to let him seek his own justice. On the way, the wee girl’s like a demon, thrashing and growling. They have to tie her down to keep her quiet. The horses are terrified and the dogs won’t go near her.
In front of the sheriff, though, she’s like a lassie again, asking him where her ma and da have gone, where’s her sister? And she’s crying, just like she’s normal. Then she walks over to that sheriff and she whispers in his ear. The sheriff takes pity on her, and orders the laird and his hunters to take her in. The laird and his men don’t dare to tell him what’s happened. They don’t know what she’s said in his ear but they know it’s not her what’s said it; they know it’s the whisper of those woods in his ear, so they dare not speak up.
The laird and his men take the long road back south to Colliecrith and as soon as they get to the wood, the wee girl becomes savage again. The laird has had enough and he orders his men to hold her down and tie her into the buckskin and let her loose. That’s what they do and off she runs, into the Whispering Wood, tied up in a deerskin with its head and antlers weighing her down.
The laird, in his bloodlust, sends his dogs after her and off they run into the Whispering Wood.
They wait and they wait and they wait, but there’s no sound, no sight of the dogs. So the laird sends his men in to find her.
Hours go by and they don’t come back either. It’s just the laird left there on his own, by the Whispering Wood. Those men never come back and whether the laird hears what happens to them, or doesn’t hear anything at all, he never tells. I wonder if he heard the same voice that the sheriff heard from that lassie’s mouth…
The laird vowed never to set foot in there again, but it was too late. His life was forever tainted, cursed from that day on. Like a disease, the curse spread through his family too. Every death, every illness, every misfortune was preceded by a terrible sight in the Whispering Wood. A ragged shadow of a beast, a living skeleton that walks silently through those trees; a spectre known as a Frithghast.
Whatever it was in that forest, whatever that lassie became – all rotted away with horns and hooves, like an animal or something – well, it’s certainly helped keep people away from there.
And it’s one of the reasons I think he wanted it.
The forest I mean. It’s why Mr Crystal wanted to buy it.
Welcome to Six Stories.
I’m Scott King.
Over this series we are attempting to pick apart a story unlike any other I’ve covered. The life and death of Zach Crystal is one that has no tangible beginning, middle or end. With every revelation about one of the world’s biggest superstars comes more nuance. With every claim and counter-claim, comes a myriad of questions, conjecture and associated stories.
We have six of these stories on hand as we rake over this old grave.
We have charges about to be filed by at least five alleged victims of Crystal – five women who claim the late superstar assaulted them in the 1990s and are finally feeling brave enough to make their voices heard.
We have the disappearance and then re-emergence of the star and the claims that he was trawling the internet for underage girls.
And from the last episode, we have balance from someone who has spent time with Crystal and assured us his conduct was faultless. We’ve also heard about the charity work for the homeless and for vulnerable young people Crystal carried out.
Yet there’s more to it than simply two opposing views, so much more. In these six episodes, we are probably only beginning to frame some of the fundamental questions we must start asking ourselves about fame and its influence.
But why here and why now?
The death of Zach Crystal has begged a plethora of questions. One of the most prominent is about what was going on behind the high fences and walls at Crystal Forest.
I think I need to mention again that in no way am I minimising the plight of those who are making allegations of abuse against Zach Crystal, nor am I an advocate for the star. But neither am I aiming to admonish Zach Crystal in some way, or decide on his guilt or innocence. I am looking for a different kind of conclusion. Or is it conclusions? I think I need to resolve how I feel about Crystal myself, and perhaps that will help many others who are conflicted about this figure.
I want answers for the side of me that, like many of you, revered Zach Crystal, for those of us who put his posters on our walls, let his lyrics seep into our awkward souls and gave them a voice. I want answers for those of us who now feel confused and betrayed.
The five victims of Crystal who have been prominent in the news recently have all given me their blessing, of sorts. I have been candid with them about my focus on this podcast and that I would deviate from my current course, should any of them have an issue with it.
So far we have talked to two people who claim to have had personal experiences with Zach Crystal himself. Ian Julius thought he’d caught Crystal in an online snare, accusing the star of trying to meet a teenage girl at Inverness airport. Julius is now regarded with scepticism by the public, and with ire by the community of Crystal fans.
Next we spoke to Sasha Stewart, a pro-Zach Crystal podcaster who has a counter-argument for any claim against her hero and believes that Ian Julius and the media are entirely responsible for Zach Crystal’s death.
So where do we go next? We’ve heard from the two extremes of the Crystal conundrum, but, as always, there are more paths to take, crossroads to make decisions at. I think we need to get closer in, to try and push through the conjecture and find the heart of this mystery. So far, as I see it, there are three distinct paths: the fire at Crystal Forest, the claims of abuse and a mysterious entity known as a Frithghast.
Before we move on I want to add to my normal disclaimer: I’m no expert, not a forensic analyst, police or criminal profiler. I’m also not an expert on Zach Crystal. I know there’s already correspondence pouring in, arguing many of the finer details that have been reported in this series. If you’re looking for facts about Zach Crystal, his history and life, Sasha Stewart’s podcast, the Crystal-Cast, is the one for you.
However, I think this particular episode of Six Stories may be very interesting for fans of Zach Crystal and anyone interested in the man.
—Summer and autumn, they was the busiest times. People still come to Colliecrith for sports: grouse shooting and deer stalking. That’s not for me, any of that, I’m afraid. Killing things for fun? Some people say that’s the behaviour of a psycho. No, I just kill when it’s needed – the vermin. Sometimes control the deer. My jobs round here used to be breeding the birds for rich people to shoot, plus road maintenance, checking angler permits, that sort of thing.
Craig Kerr had been a groundskeeper in
Colliecrith National Park all his working life, like his father and his father’s father. A hulking, ruddy-faced man, over six feet tall with thick, blond hair and beard, hands like spades and a booming laugh, Craig looks like he was born to be outdoors. We meet in the small town of Aviemore, in a cafe on the main street. The green mountains of the Highlands rise all around us, against the backdrop of pale skies and iron-coloured clouds. Aviemore has a huge tourist population, with many Oriental, American and English voices. Craig now works at one of Aviemore’s many holiday parks. It’s not far from Colliecrith, and Craig tells me he couldn’t imagine living in any other part of the world. The country and the forests are in his blood.
—I could never get on with the killing though. My da used to call me soft, but, hey, what can you do? That’s why, when Mr Crystal bought the property, I offered up my services immediately. I thought, he’s not going to want to go round shooting things.
In the late nineties, Zach Crystal purchased five hundred acres of Colliecrith, in the midst of the aspen forest known colloquially as the Whispering Wood. The Kerr family maintained a large part of this vast forest for the Shaw family, who’d owned their land for hundreds of years. Craig tells me that, if he’s being honest, he saw pound signs when the biggest pop superstar in the world came calling.
—I’m not gonna lie. There’s this rich guy from England who’s just bought up a load of the woods for daft money – I thought, he’s gonna need me. That’s basically what I told them when I wrote. It was totally selfish.
Craig actually spoke to one of Crystal’s people when they came to look at the property. He handed them a CV and covering letter. Amazingly, he got a phone call the very next day from Crystal’s top aide, James Cryer.
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