Obituary: Professor Archie Roy; World-renowned scientist whose interest in the paranormal earned him the nickname ‘the Glasgow Ghostbuster’

Born: 24 June 1924, in Clydebank. Died: 27 December, 2012, in Glasgow, aged 88.

PROFESSOR Archie Roy studied heavenly bodies, hunted ghosts and poltergeists on earth, believed life after death was possible, helped put the first men on the moon and was immortalised when an asteroid, or mini-planet, was named after him. The asteroid called 5806 Archie-roy, first spotted in 1986, will be orbiting the sun for eternity.

Most of his work, including more than 20 books, was carried out at Glasgow University, where he graduated BSc in 1950, got a PhD in 1954, became a senior lecturer in 1966, a professor in 1977 and retired as Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Honorary Senior Research Fellow. He was still giving evening classes in psychical research at the university’s School of Physics and Astronomy in the Kelvin Building until two years ago, when he was 86. He wanted, he said, to be mentally and physically fit in case, as he believed, there might be life after death. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE).

Prof Roy was known internationally for his investigations of the paranormal and life after death. He was astronomy lecturer at Glasgow in the 1960s when he placed a £10 bet with his local William Hill – at odds of 120-1– that man would reach the moon by 1971. He was right by more than 18 months. The US moon-landing programme at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) noticed his work and hired him as a consultant throughout the decade, and into the 70s. By then, William Hill had paid him his £1,200 in 1969, enough for half the down-payment on a semi-detached in Glasgow’s Kelvindale district.

It was after a certain blockbuster Hollywood movie appeared in 1984, when Prof Roy was a regular on Scottish TV and radio programmes as an expert on the paranormal, that the media labelled him “the Glasgow Ghostbuster”.

He was often called in to search supposed haunted houses in Scotland and, if possible, banish ghosts or poltergeists, often with his colleague Tricia Robertson.

Speaking of one case, he said: “Most of the phenomena included classical poltergeist events such as alarming noises, fires breaking out, floods of water, psychokinetic movements of a wide variety of objects, many seemingly perpetrated by malicious intent.”

Having joined the London-based Society for Psychical Research, he founded his own branch, the Scottish Society for Psychical Research in 1987.

Archibald Edminston Roy was born in a “room and kitchen” in Clydebank in 1924 and attended Hillhead High School, a stone’s throw from the university that would shape his life. His father was a draughtsman at John Brown’s shipyard, which gave the young Archie the inclination to become an architect – but tuberculosis forced him to spend three years in a sanatorium, a time when, he said, he learned patience and how to stargaze from his window. He began reading every book he could get on astronomy.

He was still studying for his PhD at Glasgow when he started teaching science at the city’s Shawlands Academy. Once he had become a lecturer, and later professor, if not to be found in the university library, he could often be found a short walk away in the Rubaiyat pub on the corner of Byres Road and University Avenue. “I once lost my way in the old university library and found shelves of books on spiritualism and psychical research,” he said. “My first ignorant reaction was: ‘What’s this rubbish doing in a university library?’ But curiosity made me open some of the books.”

Prof Roy would go on to write more than 20 of his own books, including A Sense of Something Strange (1990, with a cover by Alasdair Gray) and The Archives of the Mind (1996), which narrate instances of human beings being possessed, obsessed, convinced by apparitions or by reincarnation.

His last book, The Eager Dead, which he saw as his most 
important work, was published in 2008. Among his other books were six novels, including Devil In The Darkness (1978).

Prof Roy was a member of the Paris-based International Astronomical Union, the body which honoured him by naming an asteroid after him. In addition to being an FRSE, he was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and the British Interplanetary Society. He was also an elected member of the European Academy of Arts, Sciences and the Humanities.

On learning of the death of his former colleague, Professor John Brown, the Astronomer Royal For Scotland, said: “Intellectually, he was one of the last great polymaths; he was interested in so many things. But his subject as an astronomer was the mechanics of orbits and he was the world authority on that. Much of the research was done before computers.”

Roy’s son Ian pointed out that his father was very much a scientist, not a self-styled mystic, nor quasi-religious. “His interest in the paranormal was as a scientist. He was trying to prove scientific concepts. He didn’t see boundaries where other people saw them. For him, scientifically, nothing was off-limits.”

Another son, David, added: “Dad was fascinated by life in general. I remember, as a small child, him telling me the greatest discovery was still the human brain.

“He was just fascinated by knowledge and by 
extending knowledge and, hopefully, education. That, I think, ultimately, was his real passion. He was a man of the Scottish Enlightenment.”