Scottish Ghost Stories
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Elliott O\'Donnell >> Scottish Ghost Stories
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| Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original |
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SCOTTISH
GHOST STORIES
BY
ELLIOTT O'DONNELL
AUTHOR OF
"SOME HAUNTED HOUSES OF ENGLAND AND WALES"
"HAUNTED HOUSES OF LONDON" "GHOSTLY PHENOMENA"
"TRUE GHOST STORIES" "DREAMS AND THEIR MEANINGS"
ETC. ETC.
LONDON:
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUeBNER & CO. LTD.
1911
CONTENTS
CASE PAGE
I. THE DEATH BOGLE OF THE CROSS ROADS, AND THE
INEXTINGUISHABLE CANDLE OF THE OLD WHITE HOUSE,
PITLOCHRY 1
II. THE TOP ATTIC IN PRINGLE'S MANSION, EDINBURGH 25
III. THE BOUNDING FIGURE OF "---- HOUSE," NEAR BUCKINGHAM
TERRACE, EDINBURGH 41
IV. JANE OF GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH 55
V. THE SALLOW-FACED WOMAN OF NO. -- FORREST ROAD,
EDINBURGH 69
VI. THE PHANTOM REGIMENT OF KILLIECRANKIE 91
VII. "PEARLIN' JEAN" OF ALLANBANK 105
VIII. THE DRUMMER OF CORTACHY 117
IX. THE ROOM BEYOND. AN ACCOUNT OF THE HAUNTINGS OF
HENNERSLEY, NEAR AYR 135
X. "---- HOUSE," NEAR BLYTHSWOOD SQUARE, GLASGOW. THE
HAUNTED BATH 159
XI. THE CHOKING GHOST OF "---- HOUSE," NEAR SANDYFORD
PLACE, GLASGOW 173
XII. THE GREY PIPER AND THE HEAVY COACH OF DONALDGOWERIE
HOUSE, PERTH 189
XIII. THE FLOATING HEAD OF THE BENRACHETT INN, NEAR THE
PERTH ROAD, DUNDEE 211
XIV. THE HAUNTINGS OF "---- HOUSE," IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
OF THE GREAT WESTERN ROAD, ABERDEEN 225
XV. THE WHITE LADY OF ROWNAM AVENUE, NEAR STIRLING 237
XVI. THE GHOST OF THE HINDOO CHILD, OR THE HAUNTINGS OF
THE WHITE DOVE HOTEL, NEAR ST. SWITHIN'S STREET,
ABERDEEN 251
XVII. GLAMIS CASTLE 263
CASE I
THE DEATH BOGLE OF THE CROSS ROADS, AND THE
INEXTINGUISHABLE CANDLE OF THE OLD WHITE
HOUSE, PITLOCHRY
Several years ago, bent on revisiting Perthshire, a locality which had
great attractions for me as a boy, I answered an advertisement in a
popular ladies' weekly. As far as I can recollect, it was somewhat to
this effect: "Comfortable home offered to a gentleman (a bachelor) at
moderate terms in an elderly Highland lady's house at Pitlochry. Must
be a strict teetotaller and non-smoker. F.M., Box so-and-so."
The naivete and originality of the advertisement pleased me. The idea
of obtaining as a boarder a young man combining such virtues as
abstinence from alcohol and tobacco amused me vastly. And then a
bachelor, too! Did she mean to make love to him herself? The sly old
thing! She took care to insert the epithet "elderly," in order to
avoid suspicion; and there was no doubt about it--she thirsted for
matrimony. Being "tabooed" by all the men who had even as much as
caught a passing glimpse of her, this was her last resource--she would
entrap some unwary stranger, a man with money of course, and inveigle
him into marrying her. And there rose up before me visions of a tall,
angular, forty-year-old Scottish spinster, with high cheek-bones,
virulent, sandy hair, and brawny arms--the sort of woman that ought
not to have been a woman at all--the sort that sets all my teeth on
edge. Yet it was Pitlochry, heavenly Pitlochry, and there was no one
else advertising in that town. That I should suit her in every respect
but the matrimonial, I did not doubt. I can pass muster in any company
as a teetotaller; I abominate tobacco (leastways it abominates me,
which amounts to much about the same thing), and I am, or rather I can
be, tolerably amenable, if my surroundings are not positively
infernal, and there are no County Council children within shooting
distance.
But for once my instincts were all wrong. The advertiser--a Miss Flora
Macdonald of "Donald Murray House"--did _not_ resemble my
preconception of her in any respect. She was of medium height, and
dainty build--a fairy-like creature clad in rustling silks, with wavy,
white hair, bright, blue eyes, straight, delicate features, and hands,
the shape and slenderness of which at once pronounced her a psychic.
She greeted me with all the stately courtesy of the Old School; my
portmanteau was taken upstairs by a solemn-eyed lad in the Macdonald
tartan; and the tea bell rang me down to a most appetising repast of
strawberries and cream, scones, and delicious buttered toast. I fell
in love with my hostess--it would be sheer sacrilege to designate such
a divine creature by the vulgar term of "landlady"--at once. When
one's impressions of a place are at first exalted, they are often,
later on, apt to become equally abased. In this case, however, it was
otherwise. My appreciation both of Miss Flora Macdonald and of her
house daily increased. The food was all that could be desired, and my
bedroom, sweet with the perfume of jasmine and roses, presented such
a picture of dainty cleanliness, as awakened in me feelings of shame,
that it should be defiled by all my dusty, travel-worn accoutrements.
I flatter myself that Miss Macdonald liked me also. That she did not
regard me altogether as one of the common herd was doubtless, in some
degree, due to the fact that she was a Jacobite; and in a discussion
on the associations of her romantic namesake, "Flora Macdonald," with
Perthshire, it leaked out that our respective ancestors had commanded
battalions in Louis XIV.'s far-famed Scottish and Irish Brigades. That
discovery bridged gulfs. We were no longer payer and paid--we were
friends--friends for life.
A lump comes into my throat as I pen these words, for it is only a
short time since I heard of her death.
A week or so after I had settled in her home, I took, at her
suggestion, a rest (and, I quite agree with her, it was a very
necessary rest) from my writing, and spent the day on Loch Tay,
leaving again for "Donald Murray House" at seven o'clock in the
evening. It was a brilliant, moonlight night. Not a cloud in the sky,
and the landscape stood out almost as clearly as in the daytime. I
cycled, and after a hard but thoroughly enjoyable spell of pedalling,
eventually came to a standstill on the high road, a mile or two from
the first lights of Pitlochry. I halted, not through fatigue, for I
was almost as fresh as when I started, but because I was entranced
with the delightful atmosphere, and wanted to draw in a few really
deep draughts of it before turning into bed. My halting-place was on a
triangular plot of grass at the junction of four roads. I propped my
machine against a hedge, and stood with my back leaning against a
sign-post, and my face in the direction whence I had come. I remained
in this attitude for some minutes, probably ten, and was about to
remount my bicycle, when I suddenly became icy cold, and a frightful,
hideous terror seized and gripped me so hard, that the machine,
slipping from my palsied hands, fell to the ground with a crash. The
next instant something--for the life of me I knew not what, its
outline was so blurred and indefinite--alighted on the open space in
front of me with a soft thud, and remained standing as bolt upright
as a cylindrical pillar. From afar off, there then came the low rumble
of wheels, which momentarily grew in intensity, until there thundered
into view a waggon, weighed down beneath a monstrous stack of hay, on
the top of which sat a man in a wide-brimmed straw hat, engaged in a
deep confabulation with a boy in corduroys who sprawled beside him.
The horse, catching sight of the motionless "thing" opposite me, at
once stood still and snorted violently. The man cried out, "Hey! hey!
What's the matter with ye, beast?" And then in an hysterical kind of
screech, "Great God! What's yon figure that I see? What's yon figure,
Tammas?"
The boy immediately raised himself into a kneeling position, and,
clutching hold of the man's arm, screamed, "I dinna ken, I dinna ken,
Matthew; but take heed, mon, it does na touch me. It's me it's come
after, na ye."
The moonlight was so strong that the faces of the speakers were
revealed to me with extraordinary vividness, and their horrified
expressions were even more startling than was the silent, ghastly
figure of the Unknown. The scene comes back to me, here, in my little
room in Norwood, with its every detail as clearly marked as on the
night it was first enacted. The long range of cone-shaped mountains,
darkly silhouetted against the silvery sky, and seemingly hushed in
gaping expectancy; the shining, scaly surface of some far-off tarn or
river, perceptible only at intervals, owing to the thick clusters of
gently nodding pines; the white-washed walls of cottages, glistening
amid the dark green denseness of the thickly leaved box trees, and the
light, feathery foliage of the golden laburnum; the undulating
meadows, besprinkled with gorse and grotesquely moulded crags of
granite; the white, the dazzling white roads, saturated with
moonbeams; all--all were overwhelmed with stillness--the stillness
that belongs, and belongs only, to the mountains, and trees, and
plains--the stillness of shadowland. I even counted the buttons, the
horn buttons, on the rustics' coats--one was missing from the man's,
two from the boy's; and I even noted the sweat-stains under the
armpits of Matthew's shirt, and the dents and tears in Tammas's soft
wideawake. I observed all these trivialities and more besides. I saw
the abrupt rising and falling of the man's chest as his breath came in
sharp jerks; the stream of dirty saliva that oozed from between his
blackberry-stained lips and dribbled down his chin; I saw their
hands--the man's, square-fingered, black-nailed, big-veined, shining
with perspiration and clutching grimly at the reins; the boy's,
smaller, and if anything rather more grimy--the one pressed flat down
on the hay, the other extended in front of him, the palm stretched
outwards and all the fingers widely apart.
And while these minute particulars were being driven into my soul, the
cause of it all--the indefinable, esoteric column--stood silent and
motionless over-against the hedge, a baleful glow emanating from it.
The horse suddenly broke the spell. Dashing its head forward, it broke
off at a gallop, and, tearing frantically past the phantasm, went
helter-skelter down the road to my left. I then saw Tammas turning a
somersault, miraculously saved from falling head first on to the
road, by rebounding from the pitchfork which had been wedged upright
in the hay, whilst the figure, which followed in their wake with
prodigious bounds, was apparently trying to get at him with its
spidery arms. But whether it succeeded or not I cannot say, for I was
so uncontrollably fearful lest it should return to me, that I mounted
my bicycle and rode as I had never ridden before and have never ridden
since.
I described the incident to Miss Macdonald on my return. She looked
very serious.
"It was stupid of me not to have warned you," she said. "That that
particular spot in the road has always--at least ever since I can
remember--borne the reputation of being haunted. None of the peasants
round here will venture within a mile of it after twilight, so the
carters you saw must have been strangers. No one has ever seen the
ghost except in the misty form in which it appeared to you. It does
not frequent the place every night; it only appears periodically; and
its method never varies. It leaps over a wall or hedge, remains
stationary till some one approaches, and then pursues them with
monstrous springs. The person it touches invariably dies within a
year. I well recollect when I was in my teens, on just such a night as
this, driving home with my father from Lady Colin Ferner's croquet
party at Blair Atholl. When we got to the spot you name, the horse
shied, and before I could realise what had happened, we were racing
home at a terrific pace. My father and I sat in front, and the groom,
a Highland boy from the valley of Ben-y-gloe, behind. Never having
seen my father frightened, his agitation now alarmed me horribly, and
the more so as my instinct told me it was caused by something other
than the mere bolting of the horse. I was soon enlightened. A gigantic
figure, with leaps and bounds, suddenly overtook us, and, thrusting
out its long, thin arms, touched my father lightly on the hand, and
then with a harsh cry, more like that of some strange animal than that
of a human being, disappeared. Neither of us spoke till we reached
home,--I did not live here then, but in a house on the other side of
Pitlochry,--when my father, who was still as white as a sheet, took me
aside and whispered, 'Whatever you do, Flora, don't breathe a word of
what has happened to your mother, and never let her go along that road
at night. It was the death bogle. I shall die within twelve months.'
And he did."
Miss Macdonald paused. A brief silence ensued, and she then went on
with all her customary briskness: "I cannot describe the thing any
more than you can, except that it gave me the impression it had no
eyes. But what it was, whether the ghost of a man, woman, or some
peculiar beast, I could not, for the life of me, tell. Now, Mr.
O'Donnell, have you had enough horrors for one evening, or would you
like to hear just one more?"
Knowing that sleep was utterly out of the question, and that one or
two more thrills would make very little difference to my already
shattered nerves, I replied that I would listen eagerly to anything
she could tell me, however horrible. My permission thus gained--and
gained so readily--Miss Macdonald, not without, I noticed, one or two
apprehensive glances at the slightly rustling curtains, began her
narrative, which ran, as nearly as I can remember, as follows:--
"After my father's death, I told my mother about our adventure the
night we drove home from Lady Colin Ferner's party, and asked her if
she remembered ever having heard anything that could possibly account
for the phenomenon. After a few moments' reflection, this is the story
she told me:--
THE INEXTINGUISHABLE CANDLE OF THE OLD WHITE HOUSE
There was once a house, known as "The Old White House," that used to
stand by the side of the road, close to where you say the horse first
took fright. Some people of the name of Holkitt, relations of dear old
Sir Arthur Holkitt, and great friends of ours, used to live there. The
house, it was popularly believed, had been built on the site of an
ancient burial-ground. Every one used to say it was haunted, and the
Holkitts had great trouble in getting servants. The appearance of the
haunted house did not belie its reputation, for its grey walls, sombre
garden, gloomy hall, dark passages and staircase, and sinister-looking
attics could not have been more thoroughly suggestive of all kinds of
ghostly phenomena. Moreover, the whole atmosphere of the place, no
matter how hot and bright the sun, was cold and dreary, and it was a
constant source of wonder to every one how Lady Holkitt could live
there. She was, however, always cheerful, and used to tell me that
nothing would induce her to leave a spot dear to so many generations
of her family, and associated with the happiest recollections in her
life. She was very fond of company, and there was scarcely a week in
the year in which she had not some one staying with her. I can only
remember her as widow, her husband, a major in the Gordon Highlanders,
having died in India before I was born. She had two daughters,
Margaret and Alice, both considered very handsome, but some years
older than I. This difference in age, however, did not prevent our
being on very friendly terms, and I was constantly invited to their
house--in the summer to croquet and archery, in the winter to balls.
Like most elderly ladies of that period, Lady Holkitt was very fond of
cards, and she and my mother used frequently to play bezique and
cribbage, whilst the girls and I indulged in something rather more
frivolous. On those occasions the carriage always came for us at ten,
since my mother, for some reason or other--I had a shrewd suspicion it
was on account of the alleged haunting--would never return home after
that time. When she accepted an invitation to a ball, it was always
conditionally that Lady Holkitt would put us both up for the night,
and the carriage used, then, to come for us the following day, after
one o'clock luncheon. I shall never forget the last time I went to a
dance at "The Old White House," though it is now rather more than
fifty years ago. My mother had not been very well for some weeks,
having, so she thought, taken cold internally. She had not had a
doctor, partly because she did not feel ill enough, and partly because
the only medical man near us was an apothecary, of whose skill she had
a very poor opinion. My mother had quite made up her mind to accompany
me to the ball, but at the last moment, the weather being appalling,
she yielded to advice, and my aunt Norah, who happened to be staying
with us at the time, chaperoned me instead. It was snowing when we
set out, and as it snowed all through the night and most of the next
day, the roads were completely blocked, and we had to remain at "The
Old White House" from Monday evening till the following Thursday. Aunt
Norah and I occupied separate bedrooms, and mine was at the end of a
long passage away from everybody else's. Prior to this my mother and I
had always shared a room--the only really pleasant one, so I thought,
in the house--overlooking the front lawn. But on this occasion there
being a number of visitors, belated like ourselves, we had to squeeze
in wherever we could; and as my aunt and I were to have separate rooms
(my aunt liking a room to herself), it was natural that she should be
allotted the largest and most comfortable. Consequently, she was
domiciled in the wing where all the other visitors slept, whilst I was
forced to retreat to a passage on the other side of the house, where,
with the exception of my apartment, there were none other but
lumber-rooms. All went smoothly and happily, and nothing interrupted
the harmony of our visit, till the night before we returned home. We
had had supper--our meals were differently arranged in those days--and
Margaret and I were ascending the staircase on our way to bed, when
Alice, who had run upstairs ahead of us, met us with a scared face.
"Oh, do come to my room!" she cried. "Something has happened to Mary."
(Mary was one of the housemaids.)
We both accompanied her, and, on entering her room, found Mary seated
on a chair, sobbing hysterically. One only had to glance at the girl
to see that she was suffering from some very severe shock. Though
normally red-cheeked and placid, in short, a very healthy, stolid
creature, and the last person to be easily perturbed, she was now
without a vestige of colour, whilst the pupils of her eyes were
dilated with terror, and her entire body, from the crown of her head
to the soles of her feet, shook as if with ague. I was immeasurably
shocked to see her.
"Why, Mary," Margaret exclaimed, "whatever is the matter? What has
happened?"
"It's the candle, miss," the girl gasped, "the candle in Miss Trevor's
room. I can't put it out."
"You can't put it out, why, what nonsense!" Margaret said. "Are you
mad?"
"It is as true as I sit here, miss," Mary panted. "I put the candle on
the mantelpiece while I set the room to rights, and when I had
finished and came to blow it out, I couldn't. I blew, and blew, and
blew, but it hadn't any effect, and then I grew afraid, miss, horribly
afraid," and here she buried her face in her hands, and shuddered.
"I've never been frightened like this before, miss," she returned
slowly, "and I've come away and left the candle burning."
"How absurd of you," Margaret scolded. "We must go and put it out at
once. I have a good mind to make you come with us, Mary--but there!
Stay where you are, and for goodness' sake stop crying, or every one
in the house will hear you."
So saying, Margaret hurried off,--Alice and I accompanying her,--and
on arriving outside my room, the door of which was wide open, we
perceived the lighted candle standing in the position Mary had
described. I looked at the girls, and perceived, in spite of my
endeavours not to perceive it, the unmistakable signs of a great
fear--fear of something they suspected but dared not name--lurking in
the corners of their eyes.
"Who will go first?" Margaret demanded. No one spoke.
"Well then," she continued, "I will," and, suiting the action to the
word, she stepped over the threshold. The moment she did so, the door
began to close. "This is curious!" she cried. "Push!"
We did; we all three pushed; but, despite our efforts, the door came
resolutely to, and we were shut out. Then before we had time to
recover from our astonishment, it flew open; but before we could cross
the threshold, it came violently to in the same manner as before. Some
unseen force held it against us.
"Let us make one more effort," Margaret said, "and if we don't
succeed, we will call for help."
Obeying her instructions, we once again pushed. I was nearest the
handle, and in some manner,--how, none of us could ever explain,--just
as the door opened of its own accord, I slipped and fell inside. The
door then closed immediately with a bang, and, to my unmitigated
horror, I found myself alone in the room. For some seconds I was
spellbound, and could not even collect my thoughts sufficiently to
frame a reply to the piteous entreaties of the Holkitts, who kept
banging on the door, and imploring me to tell them what was happening.
Never in the hideous excitement of nightmare had I experienced such a
terror as the terror that room conveyed to my mind. Though nothing was
to be seen, nothing but the candle, the light of which was peculiarly
white and vibrating, I felt the presence of something inexpressibly
menacing and horrible. It was in the light, the atmosphere, the
furniture, everywhere. On all sides it surrounded me, on all sides I
was threatened--threatened in a manner that was strange and deadly.
Something suggesting to me that the source of evil originated in the
candle, and that if I could succeed in extinguishing the light I
should free myself from the ghostly presence, I advanced towards the
mantelpiece, and, drawing in a deep breath, blew--blew with the
energy born of desperation. It had no effect. I repeated my efforts; I
blew frantically, madly, but all to no purpose; the candle still
burned--burned softly and mockingly. Then a fearful terror seized me,
and, flying to the opposite side of the room, I buried my face against
the wall, and waited for what the sickly beatings of my heart warned
me was coming. Constrained to look, I slightly, only very, very
slightly, moved round, and there, there, floating stealthily towards
me through the air, came the candle, the vibrating, glowing, baleful
candle. I hid my face again, and prayed God to let me faint. Nearer
and nearer drew the light; wilder and wilder the wrenches at the door.
Closer and closer I pressed myself to the wall. And then, then when
the final throes of agony were more than human heart and brain could
stand, there came the suspicion, the suggestion of a touch--of a touch
so horrid that my prayers were at last answered, and I fainted. When I
recovered, I was in Margaret's room, and half a dozen well-known forms
were gathered round me. It appears that with the collapse of my body
on the floor, the door, that had so effectually resisted every effort
to turn the handle, immediately flew open, and I was discovered lying
on the ground with the candle--still alight--on the ground beside me.
My aunt experienced no difficulty in blowing out the refractory
candle, and I was carried with the greatest tenderness into the other
wing of the house, where I slept that night. Little was said about the
incident next day, but all who knew of it expressed in their faces the
utmost anxiety--an anxiety which, now that I had recovered, greatly
puzzled me. On our return home, another shock awaited me; we found to
our dismay that my mother was seriously ill, and that the doctor, who
had been sent for from Perth the previous evening, just about the time
of my adventure with the candle, had stated that she might not survive
the day. His warning was fulfilled--she died at sunset. Her death, of
course, may have had nothing at all to do with the candle episode, yet
it struck me then as an odd coincidence, and seems all the more
strange to me after hearing your account of the bogle that touched
your dear father in the road, so near the spot where the Holkitts'
house once stood. I could never discover whether Lady Holkitt or her
daughters ever saw anything of a superphysical nature in their house;
after my experience they were always very reticent on that subject,
and naturally I did not like to press it. On Lady Holkitt's death,
Margaret and Alice sold the house, which was eventually pulled down,
as no one would live in it, and I believe the ground on which it stood
is now a turnip field. That, my dear, is all I can tell you.
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