Glasgow is a wonderful city - full of stories and colourful characters - you can’t spend an evening in a pub without hearing a tall tale about the city.
We wanted to celebrate some of those tall-tales - by charting some of the most enduring, longest standing myths about Glasgow - many of which Glaswegians will stand by as true to this very day.
Whether they be nefarious and dark like gangsters buried in the Kingston Bridge or weird and funny like the story of the bottomless pothole in Ibrox.
As with all oral histories, different accounts vary depending on who’s telling the story - so you might have heard a very different version of the story from what we heard! Do let us know in our Facebook comments about any different versions you’ve heard - or if you’ve got any urban myths we might have missed!
Here’s our list of the 15 biggest urban myths still told in Glasgow today.
1. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum was built back-to-front
Rumour has it that Kelvingrove was built back-to-front - and that one of the architect’s threw himself from one of the towers upon realising this. This is far from the truth, the main entrance faces away from Argyle Street and into Kelvingrove Park as it was always meant to be a space for the people.
2. Gangsters are buried in the Kingston Bridge
A story no doubt told to you by a mad uncle or a scary looking guy in the pub. There’s a very very slim chance of this even being possible, given that most of the Kingston Bridge is hollow. Die-hard supports of the myth would proclaim that if not the Kingston Bridge, then other parts of the M8 or M74 should be littered with bodies - although this seems unlikely as even gangsters should know how often there’s roadworks going on. Photo: Glasgow Motorway Archive
3. The secret underground Argyll Arcade
A popular urban legend is that there’s an exact replica of Argyll Arcade deep below the surface - or perhaps the above-ground shopping centre is the replica. Rumours vary from odd council schemes to forgotten Victorian city planning. Photo: Contributed
4. The Gorbals Vampire
Also known as ‘Jenny wi’ the Iron Teeth’ - the Gorbals Vampire was a Stephen King-esqe escapade when all the youth of Glasgow were convinced there was a vampire roaming the Southern Necropolis at night. Rather than avoiding the graveyard however, in typical Glasgow fashion, they got tooled up and set about searching for the fictional frightener. Nothing turned up, but rumours about the vampire peristed for years after.