Private Project

Banshee

Inspired by true events, A tour guide must confront her buried trauma when a stag group she leads into Edinburgh's vaults encounters the vengeful ghost of the South Bridge Banshee, leading to a series of mysterious deaths.

  • Rachel Flynn
    Writer
    BBC River City, 16, A European Christmas
  • Project Type:
    Screenplay
  • Number of Pages:
    93
  • Language:
    English
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Writer Biography - Rachel Flynn

After performing on stages, screens and cruise ships for the last 10 years, Rachel made a lockdown pivot and blagged her way onto the MLitt Playwrighting & Screenwriting Course at St Andrews. She went on to spend 10 months as a Storyliner at BBC River City and is currently completing her 2nd episode commission as a writer for the show. Her debut feature, ‘A European Christmas’ has been distributed by ReelOne Entertainment and she has just wrapped on her second feature - a TV movie thriller shot in the Scotland Highlands. Her debut short film as writer/director, ’16’, won the Best Debut award at BIFA-qualifying Sunderland Short Film Festival. She is currently in development for 2 features shooting late 2025/early 2026 and part of The Glasgow Telly Fest with TV pilot ‘Cabin Pressure’, inspired her dad’s experience as an air steward running scams in the 1970s.

As a theatre writer, her debut play ‘Being Liza’ garnered 5 star reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019 and her first Play, Pie & A Pint, ‘Keepin The Heid’, was hailed as “completely original…silly, funny, rude and unexpectedly moving” in a 4 star review by the Scotsman. Her second play, ‘The Magdalene’ was commissioned by Maltese theatre company ‘Theatre Chameleon’ and played at the historic Couvre Porte in Birgu last summer. She has also written for Short Attention Span Theatre, At The Root Theatre and Renfrewshire Leisure.

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Writer Statement

BANSHEE is horror at its most primal. It’s an alternative to the rape-revenge genre - no cathartic bloodbath, no easy retribution. Instead, it explores the true, messy, isolating echoes of trauma. The dissonance between how victims experience violence and how the world reacts.

Think Saint Maud meets Smile with a flicker of the campiness of Final Destination with the creeping psychological horror of The Invisible Man.

And I need to tell this story. Because I’ve lived it.

When I was seventeen, I worked as a tour guide in the Edinburgh Vaults. I locked myself underground, alone, telling ghost stories to ten half-cut stags. And I remember the sudden, pin point fear that if anything happened to me, no one would hear me scream.
The stag group was completely lovely but at 19 years old, I survived a sexual assault and like so many women, I doubted myself. I felt alone, confused, ashamed. Was it the way I remembered it? And would anyone even believe me?

Much like how someone might feel having seen a ghost. It’s an interesting parallel - how people feel and are treated after a supernatural experience compared to one of abuse. And that’s what I’ve set out to explore with this film.

BANSHEE is a horror story, yes. But more than that, it’s about the ghosts that haunt us. The ones that live inside us.

And the terrifying question - what happens when we let them out?