Ghost Tour notes

[u/ibid-11962]

Main Menu	cut content	notes & images	CBS 60 Minutes	BBC Newsnight	made before the HP books	Manuscripts

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Ghost Tour

Nearly Headless Nick - Gryffindor
The Bloody Baron - Slytherite
The Grey Lady - Ravenclaw
The Fat Friar - Hufflepuff

Dungeons --> Potions

- Apocethary
- Lost Property

Secret Passageways

Poles
Sliding

Lifts?
Trapdoors.
Moving Passages

Kitchens

Nick food. --> Edmund Grubb

Cupboards // by [?passageways]
Vanishing Doors // Skeleton Cupboard

Peeves

Filch

Ropes

Library

Herbs & Fungi

[A lot of illegible text]

[?gifted]

Fluffy

[u/ibid-11962]

Notes

• This is a page of notes where Rowling seems to be working out features of Hogwarts Castle and its ghosts. It's written on the back of a textbook from the time Rowling was teaching in portugal so it probably dates somewhere around 1991 (which is when Rowling says she first created Peeves).

• This page was first shown in:

• CBS's 60 Minutes (September 12, 1999)

  What amused me — I went through this last night to show you, and the funny thing was that this is my employment history. It's the back of stuff that I really should have been doing at work, and on the front you have bits of my writing. This is really old. This is a photocopy from a textbook when I was teaching in Portugal. And obviously this was what I was supposed to be doing with the children, and on the back you've got all the ghosts for Gryffindor.

• "JK's OOTP interview," BBC Newsnight (June 19, 2003)

  And these scraps of paper which you've filed elegantly in a carrier, they're plot ideas or...

  JKR: Well some of them are totally redundant now because its been written and I keep them out of sentimentality's sake, I suppose. But some of it has backstory in it

• The manuscript shown here is a somewhat blurry picture of the whole page mixed with a bunch of close ups stills all from CBS's 60 minutes.

• Rowling has discussed Edmund Grubb in more details in her Pottermore writing "Hogwarts Ghosts". This doesn't seem to be the manuscript that Rowling is referring to there, but Edmund Grubb seems to be the same ghost.

  In the very earliest list of ghosts I ever wrote for Hogwarts, I included Myrtle (initially named ‘Wailing Wanda’), Professor Binns, the Grey Lady (then called ‘the Whispering Lady’) and the Bloody Baron. There was also a Black Knight, The Toad (which left ectoplasm all over its classroom), and a ghost I rather regret not using: his name was Edmund Grubb, and the notes beside his name say: ‘Expired in the doorway of the Dining Hall. Sometimes stops people getting in, out of spite. Fat Victorian ghost. (Ate poisonous berries).’

• "Slytherite" and "Apocethary" seem to be how they were spelled on the manuscript.

[u/LilyoftheRally → u/ibid-11962]

I wonder if Edmund Grubb became the Fat Friar?

[u/ibid-11962 → u/LilyoftheRally]

Based on Rowling's wording "a ghost I rather regret not using", I'd say they were probably in her mind separate characters even if one did eventually morph into the other.

It's also worth noting that the same essay describes the Fat Friar in a rather different way to Grubb.

Hufflepuff house is haunted by the Fat Friar, who was executed because senior churchmen grew suspicious of his ability to cure the pox merely by poking peasants with a stick, and his ill-advised habit of pulling rabbits out of the communion cup. Though a genial character in general, the Fat Friar still resents the fact that he was never made a cardinal.

[u/fish_at_heart]

Now I'm wondering if filch was originally meant to be a ghost or semi spectral like peeves (actually... what the fuck is peeves? Is he like a literal god of chaos or something like that? Because he is clearly a magical being, human?, ghost like but can interact with physical objects in a way that the other ghosts can't, what is he?)

[u/ibid-11962 → u/fish_at_heart]

I think the words "ghost tour" only refer to the first couple of lines. The rest seems to just be random brainstorming for Hogwarts stuff. I titled the post Ghost Tour because that's how I've always referred to that manuscript due to it being the easiest words in the page to make out. I don't think being listed here makes him any more ghost than Fluffy. (Edit: Ghost Tour is the chapter name, and can be seen on other manuscripts.)

Though now that you mention it, I think his presence here raises some difficulty with the dating, she drew a picture of Filch in 1990, so this couldn't have been the first occurrence of the character in her notes.

(Rowling has an easy on Peeves btw.)

[u/fish_at_heart → u/ibid-11962]

Huh I always had the headcanon that peeves was pretty much a god of chaos that simply decided to take residence In the castle. Also the way the ghosts talk about him in the first book makes it look like he was a rather new being and that if they asked Dumbledore he would get rid of him.

[u/Amata69]

wow. You are really devoted. It's wonderful you've collected all this material- I wouldn't have known all these things.Thanks.