<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/cover.jpg" width-obs="500" height-obs="775" alt="Cover image" /> <p class="caption">St. Andrews Ghost Stories</p> <p class="caption">By W. T. Linskill</p> </div>
<hr />
<h1>St Andrews<br/> Ghost Stories</h1>
<p class="titlepage">BY<br/>
<span class="larger">W. T. LINSKILL</span><br/>
(Dean of Guild).</p>
<p class="titlepage"><i>FOURTH EDITION.</i></p>
<div class="poetry-container titlepage">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">There are ghosts and phantoms round us,</div>
<div class="verse indent1">On the mountains, on the sea;</div>
<div class="verse">Some are cold and some are clammy,</div>
<div class="verse indent1">Some are hot as hot can be.</div>
<div class="verse">They can creep, and crawl, and hover,</div>
<div class="verse indent1">And can howl, and shriek, and wail,</div>
<div class="verse">And those who want to hear of them</div>
<div class="verse indent1">Must read this little tale.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse right">W. T. L.</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class="titlepage"><span class="smcap">J. & G. Innes</span>, <cite>St Andrews Citizen</cite> Office.<br/>
1921.</p>
<hr />
<p class="titlepage"><span class="smcap">Dedicated to My Old Friends,<br/>
JOHN L. LOW<br/>
and<br/>
CHARLES BLAIR MACDONALD.</span><br/></p>
<hr />
<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
<table summary="Contents">
<tr>
<td></td>
<td class="tdr"><span class="smcap">Page.</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>THE BECKONING MONK,</td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#The_Beckoning_Monk">1</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>THE HAUNTINGS AND MYSTERIES OF LAUSDREE CASTLE,</td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#The_Hauntings_and_Mysteries">7</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>A HAUNTED MANOR HOUSE AND THE DUEL AT ST ANDREWS,</td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#A_Haunted_Manor_House_and">15</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>THE APPARITION OF THE PRIOR OF PITTENWEEM,</td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#The_Apparition_of_the_Prior">21</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>A TRUE TALE OF THE PHANTOM COACH,</td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#The_True_Tale_of_the">27</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>THE VEILED NUN OF ST LEONARDS,</td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#The_Veiled_Nun_of">31</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>THE MONK OF ST RULE’S TOWER,</td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#The_Monk_of_St_Rules">35</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>RELATED BY CAPTAIN CHESTER,</td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#Related_by_Captain_Chester">39</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>THE SCREAMING SKULL OF GREYFRIARS,</td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#The_Screaming_Skull_of">44</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>THE SPECTRE OF THE CASTLE,</td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#The_Spectre_of_the_Castle">49</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>THE SMOTHERED PIPER OF THE WEST CLIFFS,</td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#The_Smothered_Piper_of_the">55</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>THE BEAUTIFUL WHITE LADY OF THE HAUNTED TOWER,</td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#The_Beautiful_White_Lady">59</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>CONCERNING MORE APPEARANCES OF THE WHITE LADY,</td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#Concerning_More_Appearances">62</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>A SPIRITUALISTIC SEANCE,</td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#A_Spiritualistic_Seance">66</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>THE APPARITION OF SIR RODGER DE WANKLYN,</td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#The_Apparition_of">70</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>THE BEWITCHED ERMENTRUDE,</td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#The_Bewitched_Ermentrude">75</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>A VERY PECULIAR HOUSE.</td>
<td class="tdr"><SPAN href="#A_Very_Peculiar_House">80</SPAN></td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="The_Beckoning_Monk">The Beckoning Monk.</h2>
<p>Many years ago, about the time of the Tay Bridge gale, I
was staying at Edinburgh with a friend of mine, an actor manager.
I had just come down from the paint-room of the theatre,
and was emerging from the stage-door, when I encountered Miss
Elsie H⸺, a then well-known actress.</p>
<p>“You are just the very person I wanted to meet,” she said.
“Allow me to introduce you to my friend, Mr Spencer Ashton.
He’s not an actor, he’s an artist, and he’s got such a queer,
queer story about ghosts and things near your beloved St Andrews.”</p>
<p>I bowed to Mr Ashton, who was a quiet-looking man, pale
and thin, rather like a benevolent animated hairpin. He reminded
me somehow of Fred Vokes. We shook hands warmly.</p>
<p>“Yes,” he said, “my story sounds like fiction, but it is a
fact, as I can prove. It is rather long, but it may possibly
interest you. Where could we foregather?”</p>
<p>“Come and dine with me at the Edinburgh Hotel to-night
at eight. I’ll get a private room,” I said.</p>
<p>“Right oh!” said he, and we parted.</p>
<p>That evening at eight o’clock we met at the old Edinburgh
Hotel (now no longer in existence), and after dinner he told me
his very remarkable tale.</p>
<p>“Some years ago,” he said, “I was staying in a small coast
town in Fife, not very far from St Andrews. I was painting
some quaint houses and things of the sort that tickled my fancy
at the time, and I was very much amused and excited by some of
the bogie tales told me by the fisher folk. One story particularly
interested me.”</p>
<p>“And what was that?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Well, it was about a strange, dwarfish, old man, who, they<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</SPAN></span>
swore, was constantly wandering about among the rocks at
nightfall; a queer, uncanny creature, they said, who was ‘aye
beckoning to them,’ and who was never seen or known in the
daylight. I heard so much at various times and from various
people about this old man that I resolved to look for him and see
what his game really was. I went down to the beach times without
number, but saw nothing worse than myself, and I was almost
giving the job up as hopeless, when one night ‘I struck oil,’ as
the Yankees would say.”</p>
<p>“Good,” I said, “let me hear.”</p>
<p>“It was after dusk,” he proceeded, “very rough and windy,
but with a feeble moon peeping out at times between the racing
clouds. I was alone on the beach. Next moment I was <em>not</em>
alone.”</p>
<p>“Not alone,” I remarked. “Who was there?”</p>
<p>“Certainly not alone,” said Ashton. “About three yards
from me stood a quaint, short, shrivelled, old creature. At that
time the comic opera of ‘Pinafore’ was new to the stage-loving
world, and this strange being resembled the character of ‘Dick
Deadeye’ in that piece. But this old man was much uglier and
more repulsive. He wore a tattered monk’s robe, had a fringe
of black hair, heavy black eyebrows, very protruding teeth, and
a pale, pointed, unshaven chin. Moreover, he possessed only
one eye, which was large and telescopic looking.”</p>
<p>“What a horrid brute,” I said.</p>
<p>“Oh! he wasn’t half so bad after all,” said Ashton, “though
his appearance was certainly against him. He kept beckoning to
me with a pale, withered hand, continually muttering, ‘Come.’
I felt compelled to follow him, and follow him I did.”</p>
<p>I lit up another pipe and listened intently.</p>
<p>“He took me,” resumed Ashton, “into a natural cave, a
cleft in the rocks, and we went stumbling over the rocks and
stones, and splashing into pools. At least I did. He seemed to
get along all right. At the far end of this clammy cave, a very
narrow staircase, cut out of solid rock, ascended abruptly about
twenty or thirty steps, then turned a corner and descended again
into a large passage. Then a mighty queer thing happened.”</p>
<p>“What might that be?” I enquired.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>“Well, my guide somehow or other suddenly became possessed
of a huge great candlestick with a lighted candle in it,
about three feet high, which lit up the vaulted passage.</p>
<p>“‘We now stand in the monk’s sub-way,’ he said.</p>
<p>“‘Indeed, and who may you be? Are you a man or a
ghost?’</p>
<p>“The queer figure turned. ‘I am human,’ he said, ‘do not
fear me. I <em>was</em> a monk years ago, now I am reincarnate—time
and space are nothing whatever to me. I only arrived a short
while ago from Naples to meet you here.’”</p>
<p>“Good heavens, Ashton,” I said, “is this all true?”</p>
<p>“Absolutely true, my dear fellow,” said Ashton. “I was in
my sound senses, not hypnotised or anything of that sort, I
assure you. On and on we went, the little man with his big
candle leading the way, and I following. Two or three times the
sub-way narrowed, and we had a tight squeeze to get through, I
can tell you.”</p>
<p>“What a rum place,” I interjected.</p>
<p>“Yes, it was that,” said Ashton, “but it got still rummer
as we went up and down more stairs, and then popped through
a hole into a lower gallery, and I noticed side passages branching
off in several different directions.</p>
<p>“‘Walk carefully and look where you tread,’ said my
monkish guide. ‘There are pitfalls here; be very wary.’</p>
<p>“Then I noticed at my feet a deep, rock-hewn pit about
two feet wide right across the passage. ‘What is that for?’
I asked. ‘To trap intruders and enemies,’ said the little monk.
‘<em>Look down.</em>’ I did so, and I saw at the bottom, in a pool of
water, a whitened skull and a number of bones. We passed
four or five such shafts in our progress.”</p>
<p>“’Pon my word, this beats me altogether,” I interpolated.</p>
<p>“It would have beaten me altogether if I had fallen into
one of those traps,” said Ashton. “Suddenly the close, damp,
fungus sort of air changed and I smelt a sweet fragrant odour.
‘I smell incense,’ I said to the monk.</p>
<p>“‘It is the wraith, or ghost, of a smell,’ he said. ‘There
has been no incense hereaway since 1546. There are ghosts
of sounds and smells, just as there are ghosts of people. We are<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</SPAN></span>
here surrounded by spirits, but they are transparent, and you
cannot see them unless they are materialised, but you can feel
them.’</p>
<p>“‘Hush, hark!’ said the monk, and then I heard a muffled
sound of most beautiful chiming bells, the like I never heard
before.</p>
<p>“‘What is that?’</p>
<p>“‘The old bells of St Andrews Cathedral. That is the
ghost of sounds long ago ceased,’ and the monk muttered some
Latin. Then all of a sudden I heard very beautiful chanting for
a moment or more, then it died away.</p>
<p>“‘That is the long dead choir of monks chanting vespers,’
remarked my guide, sadly.</p>
<p>“At this period the monk and I entered a large, rock-hewn
chamber, wide and lofty. In it there were numerous huge old
iron clamped chests of different sizes and shapes.</p>
<p>“‘These,’ said the monk, ‘are packed full of treasures,
jewels, and vestments. They will be needed again some day.
Above us <em>now</em> there are ploughed fields, but long ago right over
our heads there existed a church and monastery to which these
things belonged.’ He pointed with a skinny claw of a hand to
one corner of the chamber. ‘There,’ he said, ‘is the staircase
that once led to the church above.’”</p>
<p>Ashton stopped and lit a cigar, then resumed.</p>
<p>“Well, on we went again, turning, twisting, going up steps,
round corners, through more holes, and stepping over pitfall
shafts. It was a loathsome and gruesome place.</p>
<p>“Out of a side passage I saw a female figure glide quickly
along. She was dressed as a bride for a wedding; then she
disappeared.</p>
<p>“‘Fear not,’ said the monk, ‘that is Mirren of Hepburn’s
Tower, the White Lady, she can materialise herself and appear
when she chooses, but she is not reincarnate as I am.’</p>
<p>“Well, after we had gone on it seemed for hours, as I have
described, the monk paused.</p>
<p>“‘I fear I must leave you,’ he said, suddenly. ‘I am
wanted. Before I go, take this,’ and he placed in my hand a
tiny gold cup delicately chased; ‘it is a talisman and will<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</SPAN></span>
bring you good luck always,’ he said. ‘Keep it safe, I may
never see you again here, but do not forget.’</p>
<p>“Then I was alone in black darkness. He and his candle
had vanished in a second. Quite alone in that awful prison,
heaven only knows how far below the ground, I could never
have gone back, and I feared to go forward. I was entombed
in a worse place than the Roman Catacombs, with no hope of
rescue, as it was unknown and forgotten by all.”</p>
<p>“What a fearful position to be in,” I said.</p>
<p>“I should think it was,” said Ashton. “The awful horror
of it I can never forget as long as I live. I was absolutely powerless
and helpless. I had lost my nerve, and I screamed aloud
in an agony of mind. I had some matches, and these I used
at rare intervals, crawling carefully and feeling my way along
the slimy floor of the passage. I had a terrible feeling, too, that
something intangible, but horrible, was crawling along after me
and stopping when I stopped. I heard it breathing. I struck a
match, and it was lucky, for I just missed another of those pitfalls.
By the light of the match I saw a small shrine in an alcove
which had once been handsomely ornamented. My progress
forward was suddenly stopped by a gruesome procession of skeleton
monks all in white. They crossed the main sub-way from
one side passage and entered another. Their heads were all
grinning skulls, and in their long bony fingers they bore enormous
candles, which illuminated the passage with a feeble blue glare.”</p>
<p>“It’s awful,” I remarked.</p>
<p>“On, and on, I slowly went. It seemed hours and hours.
I was exhausted and hungry and thirsty. After a time I passed
through open oak nail-studded doors that were rotting on their
hinges, and then—<em>then</em>, I saw a <em>sight so horrible</em> that I would
never mention it to anyone. I dare not, I may know its meaning
some day—I hope so—”</p>
<p>“What on earth was it?” I inquired eagerly.</p>
<p>“For heaven’s sake let me go on and do not ask about it,”
said Ashton, turning ghastly pale. “The horror of the whole
thing so upset me that my foot slipped, and I fell down what
seemed to be a steep stairway. As I struck the bottom I felt
my left wrist snap, and I fainted. When I regained my<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</SPAN></span>
senses for a brief moment, I found that the White Lady, bearing
a taper, was bending kindly over me. She had a lovely face,
but as pale as white marble. She laid an icy cold hand on my
hot brow, and then all was darkness again.</p>
<p>“Now listen! Next time I came to myself and opened my
eyes I was out of the accursed passage. I saw the sky and the
stars, and I felt a fresh breeze blowing. Oh! joy, I was back on
the earth again, that I knew. I staggered feebly to my feet, and
where on earth do you think I found I had been lying?”</p>
<p>“I cannot guess,” I said.</p>
<p>“Just inside the archway of the old Pends gateway at St
Andrews,” said Ashton.</p>
<p>“How on earth did you get there?”</p>
<p>“Heaven knows,” said Ashton, “I expect the White Lady
helped me somehow. It all seemed like a fearful nightmare,
but I had the gold cup in my pocket and my broken wrist to bear
testimony to what I had gone through. To make a long story
short, I went home to my people, where I lay for six long weeks
suffering from brain fever and shock. I always carry the cup
with me. I am not superstitious; but it brings me good luck
<em>always</em>.”</p>
<p>Ashton showed me the monk’s gold cup. It was a beautiful
little relic.</p>
<p>“Did you ever examine the place where you entered the
passage?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Oh, yes,” he replied, “I went there some years afterwards
and found the cave, but it has all fallen in now.”</p>
<p>“By Jove! It’s very late, thanks for the dinner, I must be
off. Good night.”</p>
<p>I lit a pipe and pondered over that curious story. The
entrance to the passage in the cave has fallen in; the exit from
it in St Andrews is unknown to Ashton—only the White Lady
knows.</p>
<p>On the whole, the story is wrapped in mystery, and does
not help one much to unravel the wonders that lie in underground
St Andrews. We may know some day or never.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="The_Hauntings_and_Mysteries">The Hauntings and Mysteries of Lausdree Castle.</h2>
<p>It is many years ago since I was on a walking tour in the
Highlands, far to the north of Bonnie Glenshee; and when on
the moorlands I was overtaken, for my sins, by a regular American
snowstorm—a genuine blissard of the most pronounced
type. I struggled along as well as I could for some considerable
time, and then I became aware that someone was beside me.
It was a young Highland lassie with a plaid over her head. I
was pleased to learn from her that her name was “Jean,” that
she was the niece of a neighbouring innkeeper, and that
she would speedily convey me to his haven of rest. We
trudged along in the blinding snow without a word, and I was
more than thankful to the lassie when I at last found myself
out of the snow in a nice little sanded parlour with a glorious
fire of peat and logs blazing on the hospitable hearth. A glass
of something hot, brought by mine host, was most welcome.</p>
<p>I found there was one other storm-stayed traveller in the
wee house, an old family butler, whose name I discovered was
Jeremiah Anklebone. He had been on a visit to relations
in the North, and had been caught in the snow like myself. We
were both thankful to find such a warm, cosy shanty on such an
inclement evening, and, to use a Scots term, we foregathered
at the ingle inside.</p>
<p>He asked me if I knew much about spirits, to which I replied
that I had just had a glass, but he at once explained that
although not averse to toddy, he alluded to spirits of another
nature, viz., ghosts, banshees, boggards, and the like.</p>
<p>I told him I had frequently been in so-called haunted places
in various countries, but had never seen or heard anything<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</SPAN></span>
except owls, bats, rats, or mice.</p>
<p>He ventured the remark I had often heard before, that I
could not be receptive, and I told him I was thankful that I
was not.</p>
<p>He was a fine old fellow, an ideal family butler, and doubtless
the recipient of many family secrets. He had big mutton-chop
whiskers and a bald head, and looked as if he had served
turtle soup all his life; but it was <em>not</em> soup he was soaked with—he
seemed fairly saturated with spook lore. He informed me,
quite calmly, that he was gifted with the remarkable faculty
of seeing apparitions, demons, etc.</p>
<p>I could not help remarking that it seemed a very unpleasant
faculty to possess, but he quite differed with me, and got as
warm as his toddy on the subject. I shall not in a hurry forget
that wild evening in the Highland inn before that blazing fire,
or the wonderful narrations I heard from Butler Anklebone.
Space precludes me from putting down here <em>all</em> the marvels he
revealed to me.</p>
<p>It seemed all his life—he was 62—he had been gasping like
a fish on a river’s bank to get into a really well-haunted house,
but had utterly failed till he took the post of head butler at
Lausdree Castle, which he informed me was but a short distance
from St Andrews. He gave me a most tremendous description of
the old castle, and from his account it seemed to be the asylum
and gathering place of <em>all</em> the bogies in Britain and elsewhere.
Congregated together there were the Ice Maid, the Brown Lady,
a headless man, a cauld lad, a black maiden, the Flaming Ghost,
the Wandering Monk, a ghost called Silky, auld Martha, a radiant
bay, an iron knight, a creeping ghost, jumping Jock, old No-legs,
Great Eyes, a talking dog, the Corbie Craw, a floating head, a
dead hand, bleeding footprints, and many other curious creatures
far too numerous to mention.</p>
<p>The Castle, he said, was full of uncouth and most peculiar
sights and sounds, including rappings, hammerings, shrieks,
groans, crashings, wailings, and the like.</p>
<p>“What a remarkable place,” I said to Mr Butler Anklebone,
“and how do you account for so many spectres in so
limited an area?”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>“Oh! there is no time or space for them,” he said, “they
are earth-bound spirits, and can go from one part of the globe
to another in a second; but they have their favourite haunts
and meeting places just as we folks have, and Lausdree seems to
appeal to their varied tastes.”</p>
<p>He then went on to tell me some details of the Haunted
Castle. “There are supposed to be,” he said, “beneath the
Castle splendid old apartments, dungeons, winding passages,
and cellars; but history states that any of those persons who
tried to investigate these mysteries <em>returned no more</em>, so the entrances
were walled up and are now completely lost sight of.</p>
<p>“There is a built-up chamber, but no one durst open it,
the penalty being total blindness or death, and such cases are
on record. There is also a coffin room shaped exactly like its
name; but one of the queerest places at Lausdree is a small
apartment with a weird light of its own. At night this room
can be seen from the old garden, showing a pale, uncanny,
phosphorescent glow.</p>
<p>“Mr Snaggers—that’s the footman—and I unlocked the
door and examined the place carefully. There is a table, a sofa,
and a few old chairs therein, and an all-pervading sickly light
equally diffused. The furniture throws no shadows whatever.
The room seemed very chilly, and there was a feeling as if all one’s
vitality was being sucked out of one’s body, and drawing one’s
breath caused pain. Snaggers felt the same. No one could
live long in that eerie apartment. I know we were glad to lock
it up again.</p>
<p>“Then there is a spiral stair, called ‘Meg’s Leg.’ I don’t
know the legend, but almost every night one hears her leg stumping
up these steps.”</p>
<p>“What a creepy place it must be, to be sure,” I murmured,
gravely.</p>
<p>“Yes!” said Anklebone, “and I tell you sir, Snaggers and
I generally arranged to go up to bed together; one always
felt there was something coming up the stairs behind one. When
a person stopped, it stopped also, and one could hear it breathing
and panting, but nothing was to be seen. Snaggers said one
night when the candle went out he saw monstrous red eyes, but<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</SPAN></span>
I saw nothing then. The creeping creature I only saw twice,
it was like an enormous toad on spider’s legs. They say it has a
human head and face, but I only saw its back. Some folks
say it is alive and not a ghost, and that it hides somewhere in
the cellars, but we never could get a trace of it. One night
I was going down to the service room when my way was barred
by a ghastly, tall figure, with great holes where eyes should have
been, so I just shut my eyes and rushed through it downstairs.
When I got down, I found all my clothes were covered with
a vile, sickly-smelling sticky sort of oil, and I had to destroy
them all.”</p>
<p>“Go on, please,” I said, “you astonish me vastly.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” he said slowly, “it’s all very queer. Lausdree
is haunted and no mistake. Snaggers and I shared the same
room. One night a great blood-stained hand and arm came
round the corner of the bed curtain and tried to grab me. It
was dead ice-cold too. Then a thing, an invisible thing, used to
patter into the room, puffing and groaning, and get under the
bed and heave it up, but we looked and there was never anything
there, and the door locked too. We saw a great black
corkscrew thing one night fall from the ceiling on to the floor
and disappear, and then there was a mighty rush along the passage.
Outside the door a great crash, a yell, and a groan dying
away far below. There was a humorous spirit also, the Iron
Knight. We called him ‘Uncle.’ He was up to tricks. We
didn’t mind him. When the fat cook was sitting down to a
meal, he’d pull back her chair, and down she would come with a
rare crash. If any of the maids upset a tray of tea-things, or
fell downstairs with the kettle, or knocked over the great urn,
they used to say—‘Oh! That’s Uncle again!’”</p>
<p>I told him (Mr Anklebone) that I was delighted there was a
touch of comedy in such a gruesome place, as I preferred comedians
to ghosts any day. One thing I learnt from his story,
and that was, that if he was head butler at Lausdree Castle,
the head ghost was Sir Guy Ravelstocke, whose portrait still
hung in the old picture gallery. The Castle dated back to
Norman times, but about 1457 it fell into the hands of this
Sir Guy Ravelstocke, who had been educated at the “Stadium<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</SPAN></span>
Generale,” or University of Saint Andrews. He and his two
friends, Geoffrey De Beaumanoir and Roger Le Courville, held
high revel and carnival in the old halls of Lausdree, and were
the terror of the whole countryside. Sir Guy was a dissolute
fellow, a gambler, and everything else bad. The neighbours
alleged that he had sold himself to Old Nick. He would spill
blood as if it was water, and he and his white steed, “Nogo,”
were well known all over Fife and the Lothians. He was held
to be a free-booter, a wizard and a warlock, a highwayman,
a pirate, and a general desperado. He had slain many men in
mortal combat, and was found invulnerable.</p>
<p>“He must have been a sort of Michael Scott of Balwearie,”
I remarked.</p>
<p>“He must have been a holy terror,” said the butler. “I’ve
seen him often, exactly like his portrait in the picture gallery.
I’ve seen him in his old-world dress with his sword hanging
at his side, sometimes on his white horse and sometimes on
foot.</p>
<p>“There were always terrible knockings, shrieks, and crashes
before he appeared, and all our dogs showed the greatest terror.
I slept in an old four-poster bed, and he used to draw aside the
curtain and glare at me constantly. He nearly always was
accompanied by the spectre of a negro carrying his head under
his arm. Sir Guy was a great traveller in foreign lands, and,
I have been told, used to bring back all sorts of curious animals
and insects with him. Perhaps that great toad thing I saw was
one of the creatures. I’ve heard toads live for ages.”</p>
<p>I said I believed that was quite true.</p>
<p>“I found a queer place one day,” said Anklebone. “I
was going up the turret staircase, and found some of the steps
moved back. I got Mr Snaggers and Darkgood, the gardener,
and we tugged them out. We called the master, and then we
found narrow steps going down to a locked door. We forced
it open, and got into a stone chamber. There were skulls and
bones all over the place. Most of them belonged to animals,
but there was a horrible thing on the floor, a sort of mummified
vampire bat, with huge teeth and enormous outstretched wings,
like thick parchment, and four legs. Perhaps it was a regular<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</SPAN></span>
vampire. They fanned folks to sleep with their great wings,
and then sucked their blood dry. We cleared out the room, and
buried all the things in a wood.</p>
<p>“Now,” said Anklebone, “I will tell you the end of Sir Guy
Ravelstocke. He brought back with him from them foreign
parts a nigger servant, and they called him the ‘Apostle.’ Well,
one night,” continued Anklebone, “he and his chums were dining,
and full of wine, and the ‘A—Postal’ offended them somehow, and
Sir Guy stabbed him. Then they chained his hands and feet
together, took him to the dungeon, and filled his mouth, nose,
and ears full of clay and left him. That is the nigger ghost
I saw always with Sir Guy—the murdered negro.</p>
<p>“About two years after, Sir Guy and his friends were in
the same room drinking when there came a great hammering at
the Castle door. Sir Guy drew his sword, flung open the door,
and plunged out into the darkness. A few moments passed
then his friends rushed out on hearing wild unearthly shrieks,
but there was no Sir Guy to be seen, he had totally disappeared,
and was never heard of or seen in life again. We found his
remains three years ago, but I will tell you of that directly.
One day Snaggers and I had gone to St Andrews to buy things.
We were just at the end of South Street when a horseman dashed
past us at full gallop. ‘Heavens,’ said Snaggers, ‘it’s Sir Guy
as I live.’ He went bang into the big iron gates at the Cathedral.
When we came up the great gates were locked, and there
was Sir Guy leaning up against the west gable scowling at us,
but the white horse had gone, and he melted away as we looked.
I saw him again with the negro at Magus Muir, and alone one
dark night in North Street.</p>
<p>“I was alone one evening in the room below the banquet
hall at Lausdree and heard a pattering on the table. On looking
up I saw a stain in the ceiling, and drops of blood were dropping
down on the table and the floor. The room above was the very
place where the negro was stabbed. Next morning we went
into the room where I saw the blood drip, and there was the
mark of a bloody hand on the table, but no stain on the roof.</p>
<p>“Now for the discovery. I had often dreamed about an
old overgrown well there was in the gardens, and felt very suspicious<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</SPAN></span>
of what might be therein. Then the gardener and the
woodman told me they had frequently seen the awful spectre
of Sir Guy and the ‘Apostle’ hovering round about the thicket
that enclosed what was known as the haunted well, and then
vanish in the brushwood without disturbing it. I felt sure that
there lay the mystery of Sir Guy Ravelstocke. This idea was
soon after confirmed by a curious occurrence. One morning
Snaggers was dusting an old oil painting over the huge mantelpiece,
and above the weeping stone in the great hall, when
somehow or other he contrived to touch a secret spring and the
painting flew back, open in its frame, and revealed a chamber
beyond.</p>
<p>“We sent for master, and got down by some steps into the
room. Such a queer place! It was octagonal in shape, and
there had been either a great fire or an explosion there. The
vaulted stone roof and floor were all blackened and cracked, and
the fireplace and wood-panelling were all burnt and charred.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps the chapel,” I remarked.</p>
<p>“That is what master said,” replied the butler, “and there
were remains of burnt tapestry, charred wood, and documents
all over the stone floor. Master got one piece of burnt paper
with faded writing on it in some foreign tongue. The odd thing
was the big picture. The eyes were sort of convex-like, and two
holes were bored in the pupil of each of its eyes, so that anyone
standing up on top of the stone stairs could see all that took place
in the great hall below, and hear also.</p>
<p>“Master took the piece of parchment and managed to make
out a few words. They were—‘I am sure that Ravelstocke lies
in the old Prior’s Well, with the dead nigger servant we placed
there. I would not go near that spot for my life. Heaven
grant it may not come for me, I must leave the place.’ That
was all he could decipher on the burnt paper.</p>
<p>“‘We must explore that Prior’s Well (evidently that is
its name) to-morrow morning,’ said our master. We were all
up at dawn, and got all the men available to cut down the shrubs,
bushes, and the undergrowth round the well, the growth of ages.
When the well was exposed it looked very like the holy well
at St Andrews, only it had been very finely carved and ornamented<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</SPAN></span>
at one time. The entrance was a Norman archway, and the
remains of an oak door still hung there. We found a shallow
bath shaped pool of muddy water inside, and a lot of broken
stones and bits of old statues and glass. At the far end was a
large square opening a few feet above the pool of water. We,
of course, made for this, and found there was a cell beyond.
The whole well on one side was riven and rent, either by lightning
or the effects of an earthquake shock. If that ancient well
could have spoken it would have told us as queer tales as St
Rule’s Tower at St Andrews. There was a most curious, overpowering,
sickening odour inside the place, like a vault or
charnel house.”</p>
<p>I remarked that I knew no smells worse than acetylene gas
or the awful smell I unearthed when digging, long ago, opposite
the St Andrews Cathedral.</p>
<p>“Well,” said Anklebone, “I can’t imagine a worse odour
than there was beside that Prior’s Well. It turned us all so
faint. We had to get some brandy. We got into the far cell,
and there were two skeleton bodies on the flagged floor. One
was a blanched skeleton as far as the neck, but the skull was well
preserved, and matted black hair still clung on it and round the
jaws. All the teeth were in their place. Some rings had fallen
from the bony fingers, and a sword, all eaten away by rust, lay
beside the skeleton. The other was like a mummified ape, of a
dark oak colour, the nails on the fingers and toes being quite
perfect. Chains, also almost worn away, hung round the feet
and hands.</p>
<p>“‘Good Heavens,’ said master, ‘it is Sir Guy Ravelstocke
and the murdered Apostle!’ There was no doubt of that whatever.
We had them removed and buried at once. The mystery
was solved after all these long years.</p>
<p>“The nigger had been placed there, but the mystery of
Sir Guy was inexplicable. <em>Who came for him</em> that night when he
rushed out of the door of Lausdree Castle, centuries ago, with
his sword, and who carried him to his doom in the Friar’s Well?
No one can answer that terrible question now. Oh! that the
old well could speak and reveal its secret.”</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="A_Haunted_Manor_House_and">A Haunted Manor House and the Duel at St Andrews;<br/> <span class="smaller">OR,</span><br/> The Old Brown Witch.</h2>
<p>This can hardly be termed a St Andrews ghost story,
but it is so remarkably strange and weird that I have been
specially requested to add it to the series, and there is an allusion
to St Andrews in it after all.</p>
<p>Several years ago we had in the Golf Club at Cambridge
a Russian Prince who took up golf, and the questions of spirits,
bogies, witches, banshees, death warnings, and the like, equally
strongly. He was a firm disbeliever in all of them, and belonged
to a Phantasmalogical Research Society to inquire into and expose
all such things. I frequently have long letters from him
from all sorts of remote parts of the world where he is investigating
tales of haunted houses, churchyards, and so on; but from
this, his last letter, he seems to have contrived to meet a <em>genuine</em>
and very unpleasant sort of spectre. Of course I suppress all
names.</p>
<p class="right">“X⸺x Manor,<br/>
Feb. ⸺, 1905.</p>
<p>Dear W. T. L.,—Well, here I am, actually in a really haunted
manor house at last, and I have had a most horribly, weird, and
uncanny experience of a most loathsome appearance. I have
been here a fortnight now—such a queer, great old house, all
turrets and towers, and damp wings covered with ivy and creepers,
and such small, narrow windows. It is on a slight elevation,
and has in bygone days had a moat around it. It is surrounded<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</SPAN></span>
by dense woods, and there is a black-looking lake at the back.
The staircases are all stone and very narrow, and there is an old
chapel and a coffin room in the house. In the garden, in a yew
avenue, is a vault and a tombstone, and thereby hangs my
curious tale.</p>
<p>It seems that centuries ago a very unpleasant old widow
lady, and a very unpleasant son, had the old house. She was a
very ugly and eccentric creature, and a miser, and was nicknamed
by the village folk “The Brown Witch.” The tales
about her ongoings told to this day are most remarkable. It
seems her son, who, according to all accounts, was a shocking
bad lot, was killed in a duel, and the old lady died shortly afterwards
a <em>raving maniac</em>.</p>
<p>She seems to have left a very curious will. I deal with
only two details in it. One was that the chamber in which she
lived and died was for ever to be left <em>untouched</em> and <em>undisturbed</em>,
but <em>unlocked</em>, or the disturber would be cursed with instant
blindness and ultimately death. The second was that she was
to be buried in the vault in the yew avenue that she had specially
made for her remains; that she was to be dressed in her
usual clothes and bonnet, and that she must be placed in a
tightly-sealed <em>glass coffin</em>, so as to be visible to any intruder.
My host told me the chamber or the vault in the grounds had
never been interfered with, but that her appearances had been
very frequent to most credible witnesses, and that such appearances
all portended some dire calamity to some one.</p>
<p>She had appeared and terrified many visitors, both in the
house and in the grounds. She had also been seen by the village
pastor and by the servants. He had never seen her himself,
but he had taken every measure he could think of to unravel
the mystery, but in vain. The outdoor servants were terrified,
and would never remain, and one lady visitor had been nearly
driven mad by seeing her peering in at the window at dusk.</p>
<p>Of course, I laughed the tale to scorn, and also the story
of the alarm bell which tolled at intervals without any apparent
or human agency. Not even the bravest would dare to walk
down the yew avenue after nightfall.</p>
<p>Well, I had been ten days in the house before anything<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</SPAN></span>
happened. I must say, the wind and the rats, and owls and bats,
and the tapping noise of the ivy on the old windows at night
were rather creepy, but nothing really out of the common happened
till the other night.</p>
<p>My room was in a long, narrow, old gallery. After cards
and billiards, and at about 12.30, I was going off to my well-earned
rest, and was getting near my door in the gallery, when I
saw a faint light coming towards me round a corner. I went into
my room and waited to see who was wandering about so late at
night. Then a figure stopped at my door, evidently carrying a
lighted old lantern. I raised my candle to have an inspection,
and then, oh! horror!—I staggered back for a moment, for
before me clearly stood the horrible figure of the old “Brown
Witch.” A cold sweat broke out all over me.</p>
<p>Far, far worse than the description. I saw her brown robe
and the poke bonnet, the horrible face, the huge black sockets
of the eyes without eyeballs, the nose gone, and, worst of all,
that fearful grin, the cruel grin of a maniac, a wicked, terrible
face.</p>
<p>I opened my drawer and seized my always loaded revolver.
I shouted loudly, and fired <em>once</em>, <em>twice</em>, <em>thrice</em>. She never moved;
only the horrible mocking smile grew wider and more devilish.
I rushed forward, slammed my door to shut out the awful sight,
and then collapsed back into a chair.</p>
<p>I must have hit it each time for certain. An offensive
charnel house smell pervaded the air. Then the door flew open,
and my host and several men and servants rushed into the room,
anxiously asking what was the matter, and why I fired? I
told them everything. We found the three bullet shots in the
wall opposite my door. They <em>must</em> have passed through that
abominable horror.</p>
<p>Need I say I spent a wretched night? In fact, I sat up
and never went to bed at all. I resolved to leave next day early,
but before doing that I determined at all hazards, to go into that
vault and see what it contained, and also to carefully investigate
the “Brown Witch’s” chamber without disturbing anything
in it. I told my host next day at breakfast what I proposed
doing, and he offered no objection whatever, but declined<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</SPAN></span>
absolutely to go near the vault or chamber himself, or to let any
of his household do so.</p>
<p>“Oh! by-the-by, did you ring the alarm bell in the tower
last night?” he asked me. “It was the sound of your shots
and the great bell ringing immediately afterwards that brought
me along so quickly to your room. We all heard it.”</p>
<p>I told him I knew nothing of it and never even heard the
bell.</p>
<p>“I thought that,” he said, “for you were nearly off in a
faint when we all came in, and hardly knew us for a bit.</p>
<p>“I can’t make out the bell,” said my host, “or what on
earth can make it ring so. It has no rope, and it cannot possibly
be the wind. I must have it removed. Last time it rung
loudly like that, my old housekeeper was found dead in her
bed in the morning.”</p>
<p>To make a long story short, the next thing I did was to get a
couple of labourers to shovel away the earth and find the lid of
the old vault in the yew avenue. This was soon done, and we
quickly descended into the place with lights. We found ourselves
in a large-built, clammy chamber, and on the floor lay a
tattered and broken old lantern. At first we thought the chamber
was empty, but all of a sudden we noticed a niche at one end
and at once went forward to it. In this singular alcove was a
large glass box, or coffin, standing on its end, and in it and
standing upright was the horrible eyeless mummy (still arrayed
in the brown robe and poke bonnet) of the terrible creature I
had seen in the gallery, and with the same mocking, grinning
mouth and the huge ugly teeth. The same smell I have told
you of before pervaded the whole place.</p>
<p>She was hermetically sealed up in this ghastly glass coffin
and preserved. We were all very glad to leave that charnel-house
and cover it up out of sight, but not out of memory.
That would be perfectly impossible to any of us. I can’t get that
smell out of my nose yet. It would sicken you.</p>
<p>Next, I went to the chamber with a friend and my bicycle
lantern to investigate. It was up a long, narrow stone stair.
The old oak door (it was unlocked, as I said before) soon yielded
to our combined efforts and creaked open, and we stood in a room<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</SPAN></span>
of the middle ages. The old shutters were tightly closed. The
ceiling, which had once been handsomely painted, was rapidly
falling away, and the tapestry was rotting off the walls. It had
evidently once been a splendid apartment, but now it was given
up to rats and moths and spiders and damp. It chilled one to the
very marrow, and it had that same horrible smell. There was a
four-poster bed in one corner with rags and shreds of curtains,
probably where the old creature had died. The tables and
chairs were covered with the dust of ages. There was no carpet
of any kind. An old spinet stood against the wall; and papers
were lying all over the place inches deep in dust. A few charred
logs of wood lay in the gaping old fireplace with its old-time
chimney corners, and there seemed to be bits of valuable old
china and bric-a-brac about the place. Many pictures had fallen
off the walls, but a few faded pencil drawings were still in their
places. Just guess my surprise and astonishment when I found
they were Scottish views—one of Edinburgh, one of Crail Church,
and three of St Andrews, including the old College and Chapel,
the Castle, and St Leonards College, with date 1676. Here was
another most curious thing I determined to ask about before
I left. However, I touched nothing in the room, as I had promised
my host, and besides—you will laugh—I had no wish to
be stricken with the “Brown Witch’s” promised curse of blindness
and ultimate death to any intruder who touched her
things. I dreaded her far too much since I had seen her in the
gallery and in her tomb, and heard of her bewitched alarm bell,
which portended death to some one.</p>
<p>Before I left, I mentioned the Scottish drawings in the
witch’s room to my host, and asked him if he could throw any
light on how they came there.</p>
<p>Briefly, it seems that she (the witch) sent her son far away
in those old days to a Scottish University, and St Andrews was
her choice. It seems he was very quarrelsome in his cups, and
frequently fought duels, and generally proved the victor. One of
the last he fought at Sauchope Stone, near Crail, with a nephew
of the Laird of Balcomie Castle, and they fought with broadsword
and buckler, and again the “Witch’s” son killed his man.
His last duel was fought on St Andrews sands with rapiers, and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</SPAN></span>
he was run through the heart—a good job.</p>
<p>Now I must conclude. I am determined to investigate
further the whole most mysterious affair. If you ever visit
this place, my host, Mr ⸺, says he will let you explore the
vault in the yew avenue, and see the coffin and the old witch, and
you may also go and look at the chamber. If you ever do,
take the advice of an old friend and do not <em>dare</em> to touch
anything therein.</p>
<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Your Friend to Command.</span></p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/deco1.jpg" width-obs="150" height-obs="150" alt="Decorative image" /></div>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="The_Apparition_of_the_Prior">The Apparition of the Prior of Pittenweem.</h2>
<p>It was in September 1875 that I first met dear old Captain
Chester (now gone to his rest); and it was very many years
before that date that he rented his fearsomely haunted old house
in St Andrews.</p>
<p>I was a Cambridge boy when I met him—how the undergraduates
scorn that term “boy.” He told me the following
queer tales in the Poppledorf Avenue at Bonn when I was on
holiday.</p>
<p>The house he rented at St Andrews, from his accounts, must
have been a most unpleasant and eerie dwelling. Rappings
and hammerings were heard all over the house after nightfall,
trembling of the walls, quiverings. Heavy falls and ear-piercing
shrieks were also part of the nightly programme.</p>
<p>I suggested bats, rats, owls, and smugglers as the cause,
which made the old man perfectly wild with rage, and caused
him to use most unparliamentary language.</p>
<p>I pointed out that such language would probably have
scared away any respectable ghost. However, let me tell the
story in his own peculiar way.</p>
<p>“My brother and I took the house, sir,” he said, “and we
had a nephew and some nieces with us. There were also three
middle-aged English servants at the time; and, gadsooth, sir,
they had strange names. The cook possessed the extraordinary
name of Maria Trombone, the housemaid was called Jemima
Podge, and the other old cat was called Teresa Shadbolt.</p>
<p>“One evening I was sitting smoking in my study, when
the door flew open with a bang and Maria rushed in.</p>
<p>“‘Zounds! Mrs Trombone,’ I said, ‘how dare you come<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</SPAN></span>
into my room like this?’</p>
<p>“‘Well, sir,’ she said, ‘there are <em>hawful</em> things going on
to-night. I’m <em>frighted</em> to death. I was washing hup, please sir,
when something rushed passed me with a rustle, and I got a great
smack on the cheek with a damp, cold hand, and then the place
shook, and all the things clattered like anything.’</p>
<p>“‘Nonsense, Trombone,’ I said, ‘you were asleep, or have
you been drinking, eh?’</p>
<p>“‘Lor’ bless you, sir, no! never a drop; but last night,
sir, Teresa Shadbolt had all the bedclothes pulled off her bed
twice, sir, and Jane said a tall old man in a queer dressing-gown
came into her room and brushed his white beard over her face,
and, lor’, sir, didn’t you hear her a-screamin’?’</p>
<p>“‘No, I’m hanged if I did. You must all be stark, staring
mad, you know.’</p>
<p>“‘Not a bit of us, master,’ continued Mrs Trombone.
‘There is something wrong about this blessed house—locked
doors and windows fly wide open, and the bells keep ringin’ at
all hours of the night, and we hear steps on the stairs when
everyone is in bed, and knocks, and crashes, and screams.
Then the tables and things go moving about. No Christian
could put up with it, please sir. <em>We must all leave</em>.’</p>
<p>“Well, I got all those women up, and they told me deuced
queer things, but I squared them up at last.”</p>
<p>“How?” I inquired.</p>
<p>“I doubled their wages, sir, and I told them they might
all sleep in one room upstairs together, and I promised them a
real good blow-out at Christmas, and so on.</p>
<p>“Next my nephew and little nieces saw the old man with
the long white beard at various times in the passages and on
the stairs. Oddly enough, my little nieces got quite accustomed
to see the aged man with the grey beard, and were not a bit
timid. They said he was just like the pictures of old Father
Christmas, and he looked kind.</p>
<p>“I never saw him,” continued Chester, “till one All Hallows
Night, or Hallowe’en as they termed it in St Andrews;
but I will speak of that later on.”</p>
<p>“Go on,” I said, “it is very interesting indeed to me.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>“The servants all saw him at times, and that old arch fiend,
Trombone, was constantly getting frightened, and breaking
things and fainting. I was myself annoyed by strange unearthly
sounds when sitting smoking at night late. There were
curious rollings and rumblings under the house, like enormous
stone balls being bowled along, then a heavy thud followed by
intolerable silence. Then there was a curious sound like muffled
blinds being quickly drawn up and down; that and a sort of
flapping and rustling seemed to pervade the air.</p>
<p>“This perplexed me, and I got in a detective; but he
found out nothing at all. After much trouble and research I
learned of the legend of the Prior of Pittenweem and his connection
with the old house.</p>
<p>“It seems when Moray and his gang of plunderers shut up
St Monance Church and the old Priory of Pittenweem, the last
Prior (not Forman or Rowles), a very old man, was cut adrift,
and for some months lay hidden at Newark Castle, food being
brought him by some former monks. Newark Castle was
burned, and this old Prior fled to Balcomie Castle. From
there he went to Kinkell Cave near St Andrews.</p>
<p>“I know all those places well,” I said.</p>
<p>“After some weeks, and when winter came, he took refuge
in the very old house in which I lived. He seems to have been
among both friends and foes there, and brawls were quite common
things within those walls.</p>
<p>“One night those long dead and forgotten old-world inhabitants
were startled from their slumbers by shots, the clashing
of arms, and wild yells. To make a long tale short, that old
Prior of Pittenweem was never seen by human eyes after that
fearful night.</p>
<p>“Many suspected foul play, but in those times it was
deemed best to keep one’s mouth shut tight, and what mattered
it if an old Prior disappeared?”</p>
<p>“They were awful times those,” I said. “Glad we live in
these days.”</p>
<p>“Well, now,” said the Captain, “I must come to the night
of All Hallows E’en, or Holy Even, when the spirits of the night
are said to wander abroad. We dined early in those days, and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</SPAN></span>
after dinner I walked down to an old Clubhouse in Golf Place,
of which I was an hon. member, to play cards. It was a perfect
night, and a few flakes of snow had begun to fall, and the wind
was keen and sharp. When I left the Club later the ground was
well covered with snow, but the storm had ceased, and the moon
and stars were shining bright in a clear sky. By Jove, sir, it
was like fairyland, and all the church towers and house tops
were glittering in the moonbeams.</p>
<p>“I wandered about the old place for fully an hour. It
was lovely. I was reluctant to go indoors. Gad, sir, I got quite
sad and poetical. I thought of my poor sister who died long
ago and is buried in Stefano Rodundo at Rome, and lots of other
things. Then I thought of St Andrews as it is and what it might
have been. I thought of all its holy temples, erected by our
pious forefathers, and its altars and statues lying desolate, ruined
and profaned.</p>
<p>“At last I arrived at my own door, and entered—in a
thoughtful mood. I went to my study and put on my slippers
and dressing gown. I had just sat down and commenced reading
when there came a most tremendous shivering crash. I
involuntarily cowered down. I thought the roof had fallen—at
least, gad, sir, I was flabbergasted. It woke everyone.
The crash was followed by a roaring sound.”</p>
<p>“It must have been an earthquake, Captain Chester,”
I said.</p>
<p>“Zounds, sir, I don’t know what it was. I thought I
was killed. Then my nephew and I got a lamp and examined
the house.</p>
<p>“Everything was right—nothing to account for the fearful
noise. Finally, we went downstairs to the vaulted kitchens.
Zounds, sir, all of a sudden my nephew gripped my arm, and
with a cry of abject terror pointed to the open kitchen door.
‘Oh, look there, look there!’ he almost screamed.</p>
<p>“I looked, and, gad, I got a queer turn. There facing
us in the open doorway was a very tall, shaven-headed old man
with a long grey beard. He had a white robe or cassock on,
a linen rocket, and, above all, an almuce or cloak of black hue
lined with ermine—<em>The Augustinian Habit</em>. In one hand he<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</SPAN></span>
held a very large rosary, and he lent on a stout cudgel.</p>
<p>“As I advanced he retreated backwards, always beckoning
to me—and I followed lamp in hand. I <em>had</em> to follow—could
not help myself. Do you know the way a serpent can fascinate
or hypnotise its prey before it devours them?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” I said, “I have seen the snakes at the Zoo do that
trick.”</p>
<p>“Well, sir, I was hypnotised like that—precisely like that.
He beckoned and I followed.</p>
<p>“Suddenly I saw a little door in the corner of the kitchen
standing open—a door I had never noticed before. The shadowy
vision backed towards it. Still I followed. Then he entered
its portals. As I advanced he grew more and more transparent,
and finally melted away, and the heavy door shut upon him with
a tremendous crash and rattle. The lamp fell from my trembling
hand and was shattered to fragments on the stone floor.
I was in pitch darkness—silence reigned—I don’t remember
how I got out to the light again.</p>
<p>“Next morning early I got in some workmen and took
them down to the kitchen, direct to the corner where the door
was through which the apparition vanished the previous night.</p>
<p>“Zounds, sir, there was <em>no door there</em>—only the white plastered
wall. I was dumbfoundered. ‘Mrs Trombone,’ I said
to the cook, ‘where the devil is that door gone?’”</p>
<p>“‘The door, sir,’ said the cook, ‘there ain’t no door there
that I ever saw.’</p>
<p>“‘Trombone,’ I replied, ‘don’t tell falsehoods—you’re a
fool.’</p>
<p>“I made the men set to work and tear down the plaster
and stuff, and, egad, sir, in an hour we found the door—a thick
oak, nail studded, iron clamped old door. It took some time
to force it open, and then down three steps we found ourselves
in a chamber with mighty thick walls and with a flagged floor,
about six feet square, lit by a small slit of a window.</p>
<p>“‘Tear up the flags,’ I said.</p>
<p>“They did so, and there was only earth below.</p>
<p>“‘Dig down,’ I said, ‘dig like thunder,’</p>
<p>“In about an hour we came to a huge flag with a ring in<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</SPAN></span>
it. Up it came, and below it was a dryly-built bottle-shaped
well.</p>
<p>“We went down with lights. What do you think we
found at the bottom of it?”</p>
<p>“Perhaps water,” I suggested.</p>
<p>“Water be d⸺,” said Captain Chester, “we found the
mouldering skeleton of a very tall man in a sitting posture.
Beside him lay a large rosary and a stout oak cudgel—the
rosary and cudgel I had seen in the phantom’s hands the previous
night. My friend, I <em>had solved the problem</em>—that was the
skeleton of the old Prior of Pittenweem who vanished in that
house hundreds of years ago.”</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/deco2.jpg" width-obs="265" height-obs="100" alt="Decorative image" /></div>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="The_True_Tale_of_the">The True Tale of the Phantom Coach.</h2>
<p>The great curtain had fallen after the pantomime, and I
was standing chatting on the stage of the theatre at Cambridge
when one of the stage men came to tell me I was wanted at the
stage door and I must hurry up at once. Thither I proceeded,
and found a lot of golfing boys, hunting boys, dramatic boys,
and all sorts of other merry ’Varsity boys, who shouted out
“Come along quick to the Blue Pig” (the “Blue Pig” is a
Cambridge name for the Blue Boar Hotel), “we want you to
meet a fellow called Willie Carson, and there is to be supper, and
he has something to tell us. The ‘Bogie Man’ has gone on
there now, so come right away.”</p>
<p>Well, off we went to the Blue Boar Hotel, and we found
Carson sitting over a blazing fire, with a capital supper set in
his nice old-fashioned room, lit up with candles only, the picture
of comfort—outside it was snowing hard and bitterly cold.</p>
<p>After a talk over the merits of the pantomime, we did full
justice to a most excellent supper, and then crowded round the
blazing hearth to hear a story our host wanted to tell us.</p>
<p>“Did you ever hear of the Phantom Coach at St Andrews?”
he asked, turning to me suddenly and removing his cigar.</p>
<p>“Often,” I replied, “I have heard most extraordinary
yarns about it from lots of people; but why do you ask?”</p>
<p>“Because <em>I’ve seen it</em>,” he replied, softly and thoughtfully.
“Some five years ago, it was very, very strange, not to be forgotten
and quite unexplainable; that is why I asked you here
to-night. I wanted to talk to you about it.” He stooped over
the fire and was silent for a few minutes.</p>
<p>“Tell us all about it,” we all shouted at once, “we won’t
make fun of it.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>“There is nothing to make fun of; indeed, it’s a true,
solemn fact,” he said. “Listen, and I will try to tell you what I
saw, but I can’t half picture it properly. Five years ago I had
just come home from America. I went to stay at St Andrews
for some golf. I think it was the latter end of August, and I
must have been in the town about a week at least, when one
night—it was hot and stuffy, and about midnight—I determined
to take a good long country walk, and struck out right
along the road to Strathkinness.</p>
<p>“It was a hot, dark, and stormy night, not wet; fitful black
clouds floated now and again at a rapid pace over the moon,
which now and then shone out brightly; in the distance the
sea made a perpetual moan, and at intervals the dark eastern
sky was lit up by flashes of summer wildfire lightning over the
distant Cathedral towers.</p>
<p>“Now and again I could hear the mutter of far-away
thunder, and there were incessant gusts of wind. I must have
been about two miles along the road, when I could discern some
very large object approaching me rapidly. As it came nearer
I noticed it resembled a coach, dark, heavy, primitive; it
seemed to have four large black horses, and the driver was a
muffled, shapeless figure. It approached with a low humming
or buzzing sound, which was most peculiar and unpleasant to
hear. The horses made a hollow kind of ticking sound with
their feet, otherwise it was noiseless.</p>
<p>“No earthly coach of the kind could go without any ordinary
sound. It was weird and eerie in the extreme. As it
passed me the moon shone out brightly, and I saw for a
second a ghastly white face at the coach window; but I saw
those four strange, silent black horses, the more extraordinary,
tall, swaddled-up shapeless driver, and the quaint black, gloomy
old coach, with a coffin-shaped box on the roof, only far, far too
well. One most remarkable thing was that it <em>threw no shadow</em>
of any kind.</p>
<p>“Just as it passed me there was a terrific roar of thunder,
and a blaze of lightning that nearly blinded me, and in the
distance I saw that horrible ghastly receding coach; then
clouds came over the moon and all was black—a darkness one<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</SPAN></span>
could feel, a darkness of a shut-up smothering vault. I felt
sick and dazed for a minute or two. I could not make out if I
had been struck by the lightning or was paralysed. However,
after a bit it passed off; it was a horrible deathly feeling while
it lasted. I never experienced a similar sensation before or
since, and hope I never may again. Another very curious
thing was the behaviour of my favourite collie dog, usually
frightened at nothing, on the approach of the phantom (for
phantom it was). He crouched down, shivering and whining,
and as it drew nearer fled with a bark like a screech, and cowered
down in the ditch at the roadside and gave forth low growls.</p>
<p>“I tell you, boys, it’s all right in this room to talk about
it, but none of you would have liked to be in my place that queer,
uncanny night on that lonely road. That it was supernatural,
I am convinced; it is a very thin veil between us and the unseen
world of spirits.</p>
<p>“They say I possess a seventh sense, namely, second sight,
and I know I shall never forget that night’s experience.</p>
<p>“But listen—the story is not ended yet. Next morning
a telegram arrived from my brother in Kent, ‘Are you all right?’
I wondered much, and wired back that I was very well.</p>
<p>“The following day a letter came from my brother giving
me a curious explanation.</p>
<p>“The following afternoon of the day I saw the coach, my
brother was looking out of the old manor house windows in
Kent, when he and several others noticed a large bird, having
most peculiar plumage, seated on the garden wall. No one had
ever seen a bird of the kind before. He was rushing off for a gun
to shoot it, when our father, who looked very white and scared,
stopped him. ‘Do not shoot,’ he said, ‘it would be of no use.
That is the bird of ill omen to all our race, it only appears before
a death. I have only once seen it before—that week your dear
mother died.’</p>
<p>“My brother was so alarmed at this that he sent the wire
I have mentioned to me at St Andrews. By the next mail
from Australia we learned that our eldest brother had died there
the very day I saw the coach at St Andrews and my brother saw
the bird at our old home in Kent. Very odd, is it not; but what<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</SPAN></span>
do you know about that coach?”</p>
<p>“Only tales,” I said. “Many people swear they have
heard it, or seen it, on stormy nights. I know a girl who swears
to it, and also a doctor who passed it on the road, and it nearly
frightened his horse to death and him too.</p>
<p>“The tale of the two tramps is funny. They were trudging
into St Andrews one wild stormy night when this uncanny
coach overtook them. It stopped; the door opened, and a
white hand beckoned towards them. One tramp rushed up
and got in, then suddenly the door noiselessly shut and the
coach moved off, leaving the other tramp alone in the pitiless
wind and rain. ‘I never saw my old mate again,’ said the
tramp, when he told the tale, ‘and I never shall—that there
old coach was nothing of this here world of ours, it took my old
mate off to Davy Jones’s locker mighty smart, poor fellow.’</p>
<p>“They say his body was found in the sea some months
afterwards, and the tale goes that the phantom coach finishes
its nocturnal journey in the waves of St Andrews Bay.”</p>
<p>“Whose coach is it?” asked all that were in the room.</p>
<p>“I cannot say; some say Bethune, others Sharpe, and
others Hackston; I do not know who is supposed to be the
figure inside, unless it is his Satanic Majesty himself. At all
events, it seems a certain fact that a phantom coach has been
seen from time to time on the roads round St Andrews. I have
never seen any of these things myself.”</p>
<p>“Well,” said Carson, “that awful coach <em>does appear</em>; it
appeared to me, and, doubtless, in the course of time will appear
to many others. It bodes no one any good, and I pity with all
my heart anyone who meets it. Beware of those roads late at
night, or, like me, you may some day to your injury meet that
ghastly, uncanny, old phantom coach. If so, you will remember
it to your dying day.”</p>
<p>“Curious thing that about seeing the coach and the bird
at the same time, and in two places so far apart,” murmured
the golfing Johnny, “and then Carson’s brother dying too.”</p>
<p>“I’d sooner see the bird than the coach,” said one.</p>
<p>“Guess I’d rather not see either of them,” said an American
present, “glad we have no phantom coaches in Yankeeland.”</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="The_Veiled_Nun_of">The Veiled Nun of St Leonards.</h2>
<p>Curiously enough, although I have been in many old
haunted castles and churches (at the exactly correct hour, viz.,
midnight) in Scotland, England, Wales, and the Rhine country,
yet I have never been able to either see or hear a ghost of any
sort. The only thing of the kind I ever saw was an accidental
meeting with the far-famed “Spring-heeled Jack” in a dark
lane at Helensburgh. It was many years ago, and as I was
then very small and he was of immense proportions, the meeting
was distinctly unpleasant for me.</p>
<p>Now, from legends we learn that St Andrews is possessed
of a prodigious number of supernatural appearances of different
kinds, sizes, and shapes—most of them of an awe-inspiring
and blood curdling type. In fact, so numerous are they—80
in number they seem to be—that there is really no room for any
modern aspirants who may want a quiet place to appear and
turn people’s hair white. It might be well to mention a few
of them before telling the tale of “The Veiled Nun of St Leonards
Church Avenue.”</p>
<p>We will put aside ordinary banshees and things that can
only be heard. Well, there is the celebrated Phantom Coach
that Willie Carson told us of. It has been heard and
seen by many. There is also a white lady that used
to haunt the Abbey Road, the ghost of St Rule’s Tower,
the Haunted Tower ghost, the Blackfriars ghost, the wraith
of Hackston of Rathillet, the spectre of the old Castle, the Dancing
Skeletons, the smothered Piper Lad, the Phantom Bloodhound,
the Priory Ghost, and many, many more. The Nun of
St Leonards is as curious and interesting as any of them, though<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</SPAN></span>
a bit weird and gruesome. In the time of charming Mary
Stuart, our white Queen, there lived in the old South Street a
very lovely lady belonging to a very old Scottish family, and
her beauty and wit brought many admirers to claim her hand,
but with little or no success. She waved them all away. At
last she became affianced to a fine and brave young fellow
who came from the East Lothian country, and for some months
all went merrily as a marriage bell, but at last clouds overspread
the rosy horizon. She resolved that she would never
become an earthly bride, but would take the veil and become
a bride of Holy Church—a nun, in point of fact. When her
lover heard that she had left home and entered a house of Holy
Sisters, he at once announced his intention of hastening to St
Andrews, seizing her, and marrying her at once. In this project
it would seem the young lady’s parents were in perfect agreement
with the devoted youth. He did hasten to St Andrews almost
immediately, and there received a terrible shock. On meeting
this once lovely and loved maiden, he discovered that she had
actually done what she had written and threatened to do.
Sooner than be an earthly bride she had mutilated her face
by slitting her nostrils; she had cut off her eyelids and both
her top and bottom lips, and had branded her fair cheeks with
cruel hot irons.</p>
<p>The poor youth, on seeing her famous beauty thus destroyed,
fled to Edinburgh, where he committed suicide, and
she, after becoming a nun, died from grief and remorse. That
all happened nearly 400 years ago; but her spirit with the terribly
marred and mutilated face still wanders o’ nights in the
peaceful little avenue to old St Leonards iron kirk gate down
the Pends Road. She is all dressed in black, with a long black
veil over the once lovely face, and carries a lantern in her hand.
Should any bold visitor to that avenue meet her, she slowly
sweeps her face veil aside, raises the lantern to her scarred face,
and discloses those awful features to his horrified gaze. Here
is a curious thing that I know happened there a few years ago.</p>
<p>I knew a young fellow here who was reading up theology
and Church canon law. I also knew a great friend of his, an old
Cambridge man. The former I will call Wilson, and the latter<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</SPAN></span>
Talbot, as I do not want to give the exact names. Well, Wilson
had invited Talbot up to St Andrews for a month of golf, and he
arrived here on a Christmas day. He came to my rooms for
about ten minutes, and I never saw any one merrier and brighter
and full of old days at Cambridge. Then he hurried off to see
the Links and the Club. Late that evening Wilson rushed in.
“Come along quick and see Talbot; he’s awfully ill, and I
don’t know what’s up a bit.” I went off and found Talbot
in his lodgings with a doctor in attendance, and he certainly
looked dangerously ill, and seemed perfectly dazed. Wilson
told me that he had to go to see some people on business that
evening down by the harbour, and that he took Talbot with
him down the Pends Road. It was a fine night, and Talbot
said he would walk about the road and enjoy a cigar till his
friend’s return. In about half-an-hour Wilson returned up the
Pends Road, but could see Talbot nowhere in sight. After
hunting about for a long time, he found him leaning against
the third or fourth tree up the little avenue to St Leonards kirk
gate.</p>
<p>He went up to him, when Talbot turned a horrified face
towards him, saying, “Oh, my God, have you come to me
again?” and fell down in a fit or a swoon. He got some passers-by
to help to take poor Talbot to his rooms. Then he came
round for me. We sat up with him in wonder and amazement;
and, briefly, this is what he told us. After walking up and down
the Pends Road, he thought he would take a survey of the
little avenue, when at the end he saw a light approaching him,
and he turned back to meet it. Thinking it was a policeman,
he wished him “Good evening,” but got no reply. On approaching
nearer he saw it to be a veiled female with a lantern.
Getting quite close, she stopped in front of him, drew aside
her long veil, and held up the lantern towards him. “My
God,” said Talbot, “I can never forget or describe that terrible,
fearful face. I felt choked, and I fell like a log at her feet. I
remember no more till I found myself in these rooms, and you
two fellows sitting beside me. I leave this place to-morrow”—and
he did by the first train. His state of panic was terrible
to see. Neither Wilson nor Talbot had ever heard the tale of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</SPAN></span>
the awful apparition of the St Leonards nun, and I had almost
forgotten the existence of the strange story till so curiously
reminded of it. I never saw Talbot again, but I had a letter
from him a year after written from Rhienfells, telling me that
on Christmas day he had had another vision, dream, or whatever
it was, of the same awful spectre. About a year later
I read in a paper that poor old Talbot had died on Christmas
night at Rosario of heart failure. I often wonder if the dear old
chap had had another visit from the terrible Veiled Nun of St
Leonards Avenue.</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/deco1.jpg" width-obs="150" height-obs="150" alt="Decorative image" /></div>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="The_Monk_of_St_Rules">The Monk of St Rule’s Tower.</h2>
<p>Some years ago I was perfectly surrounded with crowds
of bonny children in the St Albans Holborn district of London.
I fancy they belonged to some guild or other, and they enacted
the part of imps, fairies, statues, &c., in various pantomimes in
neighbouring theatres.</p>
<p>I had been invited there to amuse the kiddies with songs
and imitations, and now they were all shrieking and yelling at
the top of their voices for a ghost story. “It’s getting near
Christmas,” they all shouted, “and we all want to hear about
ghosts, real creepy ghosts.” I pointed out the fact that most
ghost stories were bunkum, and that such tales were very apt to
keep wee laddies and lassies awake at night; but, bless you,
they wouldn’t listen to that one bit. They wanted ghosts,
and ghosts they would have.</p>
<p>Well, in about an hour I had yarned off most of my best
bogey stories. I had used up most of my tales regarding Scottish,
English, and Continental Castles, and the banshees, water
kelpies, wraiths, &c., connected therewith; but still those
children, like Oliver Twist, demanded more. I really was
fairly stumped, when, all of a sudden, my mind flew back to
1875, when a strange story was told me by Captain Chester
in the Coursal grounds at beautiful Baden-Baden. I first fell
in with this dear old warrior in Rome, and we became firm friends,
and travelled together for many cheery weeks. He told me his
queer tale in the very strongest of military language, which I
must omit. The language would be suitable to use in bunkers,
but not on paper. It was a sultry day. So were his remarks.</p>
<p>It would seem that many years before, he had visited Scotland<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</SPAN></span>
and England to try and see a ghost or two. He had been
to Cumnor Hurst in order to investigate the appearances of ill-fated
Amy Robsart. He went to Rainham Hall to interview the
famous Brown Lady, and he journeyed to Hampton Court to hear
the Shrieking Ghost, and also went to Church Strelton to see if
he could fix the ghost at the Copper Hole. In Scotland he followed
the scent of various ghosts, and finally landed in St
Andrews.</p>
<p>“By Jove, sir,” he said, “that’s the place for ghosts. Every
blessed corner is full of them—bang full. Look at those fellows
in the Castle dungeons, and Beaton and Sharpe and the men
that got hanged and burned, and the old dev⸺ I mean witches.
<em>I saw my ghost there.</em> Years and years ago I took an old house
in St Andrews, which was a small place then. Very little golf
was played, and there was very little to do. But, gad, sir, the
ghosts were thick, and the quaint old bodies in the town were full
of them. They could spin yarns for hours about phantom
coaches, death knells, corpse candles, people going about in
winding sheets, phantom hearses, and Lord knows what else.
I loved it, it took me quite back to the middle ages.”</p>
<p>So I told these children Captain Chester’s tale, as nearly
as possible in his own words, minus the forcible epithets. I
managed to hit off his voice and manner, and this in particular
seemed to amuse the bairns. “Egad, sir,” he said, “it was a
curious time. Of all the tales I heard, the one that pleased and
fascinated me most was the legend of the monk that looks over
St Regulus’s Tower on moonlight nights. I went thither every
night, and constantly fancied I saw a figure peering over the
edge, but was not certain. Then I got hold of a very old man,
who related to me the old legend. It seems that years ago
there was a good Prior of St Andrews named Robert de Montrose.
He ruled well, gently, and wisely, but among the monks
there was one who was always in hot water, and whom Prior
Robert had often to haul over the coals. He played practical
jokes, often absented himself from the daily and nightly offices
of Holy Kirk, and otherwise upset the rules and discipline.
Finally, when Earl Douglas and his retinue came to St Andrews
to present to the Cathedral a costly statue, long known as the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</SPAN></span>
Douglas Lady, this monk made desperate love to one of the
waiting women of Lady Douglas. For this he was imprisoned
in the Priory Dungeon for some days. It was the custom of
Robert de Montrose almost every fine night to ascend the tower
of St Rule and admire the view. The summit was reached in
those days by means of ladders and wooden landings—not,
as it is now, by a stair. In those days, too, the apse and part of
the nave were still standing, and the summit of the solemn old
tower was crowned by a small spire. One evening just before
Yuletide, when the Prior, as usual, was on the top of the tower,
the contumacious monk slyly followed him up the ladders, stabbed
him in the back with a small dagger, and flung him over the
north side of the old tower.”</p>
<p>“I thought, Captain Chester,” I said, “that the murder
took place on the Dormitory stairs.”</p>
<p>“Gad, Zooks, and Oddbodkins, sir, I am telling you what
I was told, and what I can prove, sir.”</p>
<p>“All right,” I replied, “please fire away.”</p>
<p>“Well,” continued Chester, “they told me the Prior had
often been seen since peeping over the tower, and at times he
was seen to fall, as he did years ago, from the summit. By the
bye, his assassin was starved to death and buried in some old
midden. One moonlight night as my brother and I were standing
on the Kirkhill, to our horror and amazement we saw a
figure appear suddenly on the top of the tower, leap on to the
parapet, and deliberately jump over. Zounds, sir, my blood
ran cold.”</p>
<p>“We did not hesitate long, but jumped the low wall of the
Cathedral. It was easily done in those days, and we were young
and active, and hurried to the grim old tower. Just as we
neared it, a monk passed us in the Augustinian habit, his cowl
was thrown back, and for just one second we had a view of his
pallid, handsome face and keen penetrating eyes. Then he
disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared. We were alone
in the moonlight, nothing stirring.”</p>
<p>“That is very odd,” I said.</p>
<p>“Zooks! sir, I have odder things still to tell you. We
went home to the old house, had supper, and retired to bed<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</SPAN></span>
thoughtfully. I woke about 2 a.m. The blinds were up
and it was as clear as day with the moonlight. Imagine my
blank astonishment when I clearly perceived, leaning up against
the mantelpiece, the pallid monk I had seen a few hours before
near the Square Tower. He leaned on his elbow and was
gazing intently at me, while in his hand he held some object
that had a blue glitter in the moonbeams.</p>
<p>“He smiled. ‘Fear not, brother,’ he said, ‘I am Prior
Robert of Montrose who quitted this earth many years syne,
and of whom you have been talking and thinking so much of
late days. I saw you to-night in our cruelly ruined Abbey
Kirk. Alas! alas! but I come from ayont the distant hills
and have far to go to-night.’</p>
<p>“‘What do you want, Holy Father?’ I said, ‘and what
of your murder?’</p>
<p>“‘That is forgiven and forgotten long syne,’ he said, ‘and
I love to revisit, <em>at times</em>, my old haunts, and so does he. You
have in your regiment, methinks, one named Montrose, a scion
of our family.’</p>
<p>“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I know Bob Montrose well.’</p>
<p>“‘See you this dagger I hold,’ said Prior Robert, ‘it was
with this I lost my life on this earth many years syne on the
tower of blessed St Rule. They buried it with me in my stone
kist; I will leave it here with you to give to my kinsman, for
it will prove of use to him e’er he pass hence—mark my words.’</p>
<p>“He raised his hand as in act of blessing, and melted away.
I fell back in a sleep or in a faint. When I woke the morning
sun was streaming into my bedroom. At first I thought I had
eaten too much supper and had a nightmare, but there on the
table by my bed lay an old dagger of curious workmanship—the
dagger that slew the Prior years and years ago. I faithfully
fulfilled my vow, and my friend, Major Bob Montrose,
has now got his monkish ancestor’s dagger.”</p>
<p>“That’s all Captain Chester told me, dear children. Goodbye,
don’t forget me, and do not forget old St Andrews Ghosts,
the Tower of St Rule, and the Spectre of Prior Robert of
Montrose.”</p>
<p>Then a modern hansom whirled me away to King’s Cross.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="Related_by_Captain_Chester">Related by Captain Chester.</h2>
<p>In my travels I have met many very extraordinary and remarkable
people with hobbies and fads of various kinds, but I
never met a man of such curious personality as this old friend
of mine, Captain Chester. All his methods and ideas were purely
original. Everyone has some hobby; his hobby was ghost
and spook-hunting.</p>
<p>We were sitting one lovely September evening in the gardens
of one of the hotels at Bonn, which stretched down to the
river Rhine, listening to the band and watching the great rafts
coming down the river from the Black Forest.</p>
<p>“By Jove, sir,” said the old man, “I have shot big game
in the Rockies, and hunted tigers and all that sort of thing;
but, zooks! sir, I prefer hunting ghosts any day. That Robert
de Montrose was the first I saw. There are shoals of these
shades about, a perfect army of them everywhere, especially
in St Andrews. Gad, sir, you should hear the banshees shrieking
at night in the Irish bogs. I don’t believe in your infernal sea
serpents, but I’ve seen water kelpies in the Scottish and American
lakes.”</p>
<p>I told him I had never heard a banshee or seen a water
kelpie.</p>
<p>“Very likely, sir, very probable. Everyone can’t see and
hear these things. <em>I can.</em>”</p>
<p>I told him I had never seen a disembodied spirit, and didn’t
want to.</p>
<p>“Gad, zooks! sir, I consider disinspirited bodies far
worse. They are quite common. I allude to human bodies
that have lost their spirits or souls, and yet go about among
us. Zounds! sir, my cousin is one of them.</p>
<p>“Ah,” he continued, “detached personality is a curious<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</SPAN></span>
thing. I can detach my personality, can you?”</p>
<p>“Most certainly not,” I said, “what the deuce do you
mean?”</p>
<p>“Mean,” he said, “I mean my spirit can float out of
my body at will. My spirit becomes a sort of mental balloon.
I can then defy destiny.”</p>
<p>“How in thunder do you manage to do it anyway?”</p>
<p>“By practice, sir, of course. When my spirit floats out
of my body, I can see my own old body sitting in my armchair
and an ugly old wreck of a body it is. It is bad for one, I admit;
it is very weakening. Another thing may happen; another
wandering spirit may suddenly take possession of one’s body,
and then one’s own spirit can’t get back again, and it becomes
a wandering spirit, and is always trying to force itself into other
people’s bodies. Then one’s spirit gets into a mental bunker,
you see.”</p>
<p>“I don’t see a bit. It is most unpleasant. Tell me about
ghosts you have seen, and about that dagger you gave Major
Montrose.”</p>
<p>“Oh! so then you are not interested in eliminated personality?”</p>
<p>“Not a bit,” I said, “I don’t know what it is. Tell me about
that dagger for a change.”</p>
<p>“Oh! ah! Well, the dagger Robert of Montrose gave
me proved of great use to my old friend, Bob Montrose, on <em>many</em>
occasions. It had a wonderful power of its own. Once he got
into a broil with a lot of Spanish fellows one night, and as he
was unarmed at the time he was in a remarkably tight corner.
Suddenly something slipped into his hand, and, by Jove, sir,
it was the dagger, and that dagger saved his life. Another time
he found himself in an American train with a raving lunatic,
and if it had not been for the protecting dagger he’d have been
torn limb from limb. After that he took it everywhere with
him.”</p>
<p>“Where is it now?”</p>
<p>“Well, there’s an odd thing if you like. Bob died in the
Isle of France, where Paul and Virginia used to be. He was
killed by a fall, and is buried there. He left the dagger to me in<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</SPAN></span>
his will, but no human eyes have ever seen that dagger since
his death. It may have been stolen, or it may have gone back
to where it came from into Robert of Montrose’s stone kist in
the old Chapter-House at St Andrews Cathedral. Probably
its usefulness was at an end, and it was needed no more. Bob
told me one queer thing about that dagger. <em>Once a year</em> near
Christmastide (the dagger hung on the wall of his bedroom) it
used to exude a thick reddish fluid like blood, which used to
cover the blade in large drops, and it remained so for several
hours—and, again, sometimes at night it used to shine with a
bright light of its own.”</p>
<p>“That is indeed wonderful,” I said, lighting another cheroot,
“but tell me more about the St Andrews bogles. Astral bodies,
dual personality, and things of that kind depress me a bit.”</p>
<p>“Well, that is odd,” said old Chester, “I love them. When
I was in St Andrews I rented a fine old house, with huge thick
walls, big fireplaces, funny corkscrew stairs, such rum holes and
corners, and big vaulted kitchens. It’s all pulled down now, I
believe, and a bran new house built; but I hear the vaulted
rooms below are left exactly as they were. People didn’t take
to the old house; they heard noises and rappings, and saw
things in the night, and so on. <em>We all saw things.</em> My brother
met the ghost of a horrible looking old witch, quite in the orthodox
dress, on the Witch Hill above the Witch Lake. It upset
him terribly at the time—made him quite ill—nerves went all to
pot—would not sleep in a room by himself after that. He made
me devilish angry, sir, I can tell you.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps it was Mother Alison Craik, a well-known witch,
who was burnt there.”</p>
<p>“Likely enough, sir, it may have been the old cat you mention,
an old hag. Then my nephew and I saw that phantom coach
in the Abbey Walk one windy moonlight night. It passed us
very quickly, but made a deuced row, like a lifeboat carriage.”</p>
<p>“What was it like?”</p>
<p>“Like a huge black box with windows in it, and a queer
light inside. It reminded me of a great coffin. Ugly looking
affair; very uncanny thing to meet at that time of night and in
such a lonely spot. It was soon gone, but we heard its rumbling<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</SPAN></span>
noise for a long time.”</p>
<p>“What were the horses like, eh?”</p>
<p>“Shadowy looking black things, like great black beetles
with long thin legs.”</p>
<p>“And what was the driver like?” I asked.</p>
<p>“He was a tall thin, black object also, like a big, black,
lank lobster, with a cocked hat on the top. That’s all I could
see. On the top of the coach was an object that looked like a
gigantic tarantula spider, with a head like a moving gargoyle.
I can’t get at the real history of that mysterious old coach yet.
I don’t believe it has anything whatever to do with the murdered
prelates, Beaton or Sharpe. However, the coach does go
about. Another wraith I saw at the Castle of St Andrews was
that of James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, third husband of Mary
Queen of Scots. He lies buried in the crypt of Faarveile Church,
close to the cattegut. Before his death he was a prisoner at
Malmo; then he was sent to Denmark, and died in the dungeon
of the State prison at Drachsholm.”</p>
<p>“I am awfully interested,” I said, “about those times,
and in Bothwell and Mary in particular.”</p>
<p>“Odd’s fish, sir,” said Chester, “so am I. I went to Faarveile
to see Bothwell’s well-preserved body. The verger took me
down a trap-door near the altar, and there it lies in a lidless box, a
very fine face, with a cynical and mocking mouth. He murdered
Darnley, and he was treated and buried as a murderer in those
bygone days. At Malmo folks say he was tormented by the
ghosts of his mad wife, Jane Huntly, and by Darnley. He
ended his days in misery, and serve him devilish well right,
say I. I love and revere lovely Mary Stuart. Damn it,
sir, he deserted her when she was in a fix at Carberry Hill, the
curmudgeon.”</p>
<p>“But what of the appearances of the Earl you saw?”</p>
<p>“Met him twice at the Castle—no mistaking him—a big,
knightly, handsome fellow. Spirits can easily at times assume
their earthly form and dress. I recognised him at once—the
sneering lips and all, just like his pictures, too. When he glided
past me his teeth were chattering like a dice-box, and the wind
was whistling through his neck bones. I addressed him boldly<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</SPAN></span>
by name, but he melted away. One sees these apparitions with
one’s mental eyes. I saw him again leaning against the door
that leads to that oubliette in the Sea Tower of the Castle.
Egad, sir, he <em>exactly</em> resembled the body I saw in the old crypt
at Faarveile. He often appears there, and at Hermitage Castle
also. No mistake, sir, that was Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell.
I must tell you <em>some other time</em>—(it’s getting very late now)—of
the ghosts I saw in my house at St Andrews, and of the Prior
or Monk of Pittenweem. I must turn into bed now. I go to the
service at the Cathedral here early to-morrow.”</p>
<p>Then the tall figure of Captain Chester strode away and
left me alone to my meditations.</p>
<p>Well! I suppose if <em>I had been</em> Captain Chester, left alone
there in those gardens, I’d have seen a ghost or two with my
mental eyes; but, instead, I saw a fat waiter approaching,
who told me my supper awaited me.</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/deco3.jpg" width-obs="110" height-obs="150" alt="Decorative image" /></div>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="The_Screaming_Skull_of">The Screaming Skull of Greyfriars.</h2>
<p>I never met a better fellow in the world than my old friend,
Allan Beauchamp. He had been educated at Eton, and Magdalen
at Oxford, after which he joined a crack regiment, and later
on took it into his head to turn doctor. He was a great traveller
and a magnificent athlete. There was no game in which he did
not excel. Curiously enough, he hated music; he had no ear
for it, and he did not know the difference between the airs of
“Tommy, make room for your uncle” and “The Lost Chord.”
He was tremendously proud of his pedigree; he had descended
from the de Beauchamps, and one of his ancestors, he gravely
informed people, had helped Noah to get the wasps and elephants
into the Ark. Another of them seems to have been not
very far away in the Garden of Eden. In fact, they seem to
have been quite prehistoric. He was quite cracked on the
subject of brain transference, telepathy, spiritualism, ghosts,
warnings, and the like, and on these points he was most uncanny
and fearsome. The literature he had about them was blood
curdling. He believed in dual personality, and in visions,
horoscopes, and dreams. He showed me a pamphlet he had
written, entitled “The Toad-faced Demon of Lone Devil’s Dyke.”
He was always flitting about Britain exploring haunted houses
and castles, and sleeping in haunted rooms when it was possible.
Some years ago Beauchamp and myself, accompanied by his
faithful valet, rejoicing in the name of Pellingham Truffles,
went to the Highlands for a bit of quiet and rest, and it was
there I heard his curious story of the skull.</p>
<p>We were sitting over a cosy fire after dinner. It was
snowing hard outside, and very cold. Our pipes were alight<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</SPAN></span>
and our grog on the table, when Allan Beauchamp suddenly
remarked—“It’s a deuced curious thing for a man to be always
followed about the place by a confounded grinning skull.”</p>
<p>“Eh, what,” I said, “who the deuce is being followed
about by a skull? It’s rubbish, and quite impossible.”</p>
<p>“Not a bit,” said my friend, “I’ve had a skull after me
more or less for several years.”</p>
<p>“It sounds like a remark a lunatic would make,” I rejoined
rather crossly. “Do not talk bunkum. You’ll go dotty if you
believe such infernal rot.”</p>
<p>“It is not bunkum or rot a bit,” said Allan, “It’s gospel
truth. Ask Truffles, ask Jack Weston, or Jimmy Darkgood,
or any of my south country pals.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know Jack Weston or Jimmy Darkgood,” I said,
“but tell me the whole story, and some day, <em>if it’s good</em>, I’ll
put it in the <cite>St Andrews Citizen</cite>.”</p>
<p>“It’s mostly about St Andrews,” said Beauchamp, “so
here goes, but shove on some coals first.”</p>
<p>I did so, and then requested him to fire away.</p>
<p>“It was long, long ago, I think about the year 1513, that
one of my ancestors, a man called Neville de Beauchamp, resided
in Scotland. It seems he was an uncommonly wild dog,
went in for racing and cards, and could take his wine and ale
with any of them even in those hard-drinking days. He was
known as Flash Neville. Later on he married a pretty girl, the
daughter of a silk mercer in Perth, who, it seems, died (they
said of a broken heart) two years after. Neville de Beauchamp
was seized with awful remorse, and became shortly after a monk
in Greyfriars Monastery at St Andrews. After Neville’s wife’s
death, her relations seem to have been on the hunt after him,
burning for revenge, and the girl’s brother, a rough, wild dog
in those stormy days, at last managed to track his quarry down
in the monastery at St Andrews.”</p>
<p>“Very interesting,” I said, “that monastery stood very
nearly on the site of the present infant school, and we found
the well in 1880. Well, what did this brother do, eh?”</p>
<p>“It seems that one afternoon after vespers he forced his
way into the Monastery Chapel, sought out Neville de Beauchamp,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</SPAN></span>
and slashed off his head with a sword in the aisle of the
Kirk. Now a queer thing happened—his body fell on the floor,
but the severed head, with a wild scream, flew up to the chapel
ceiling and vanished through its roof.”</p>
<p>“Mighty queer that,” I said.</p>
<p>“The body was reverently buried,” went on Allan, “but
the head never was recovered, and, whirling through the air over
the monastery, screaming and groaning most pitifully, it used to
cause great terror to the monks and others o’ nights. It was a
well-known story, and few cared to venture in that locality
after nightfall. The head soon became a skull, and since that
time has always haunted some member of the house of Beauchamp.
Now comes a strange thing. I went a few years ago
and lived in rooms at St Andrews for a change, and while there
I heard of my uncle’s death somewhere abroad. I had never
seen him, but I had frequently heard that he was very much
perplexed and worried by the tender attentions paid him by the
skull of Neville de Beauchamp, which was always turning up
at odd times and in unexpected places.”</p>
<p>“This is a grand tale,” I said.</p>
<p>“Now I come on the job,” said Allan, ruefully. “That
uncle was the very last of our family, and I wondered if that
skull would come my way. I felt very ill and nervous after I got
the news of my uncle’s death. A strange sense of depression
and oppression overcame me, and I got very restless. One
stormy evening I felt impelled by some strange influence to go
out. I wandered about the place for several hours and got
drenched. I felt as if I was walking in my sleep, or as if I had
taken some drug or other. Then I had a sort of vision—I had
just rounded the corner of North Bell Street.”</p>
<p>“Now called Greyfriars Garden,” I remarked.</p>
<p>“Yes! Well, when I got around that corner I saw a large,
strange building before me. I opened a wicket gate and entered
what I found to be the chapel; service was over, the lights
were being extinguished, and the air was laden with incense.
As I knelt in a corner of the chapel I saw the whole scene, the
tragedy of which I had heard, enacted all over again. I saw
that monk in the aisle, I saw a man rush in and cut off his head.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</SPAN></span>
I saw the body fall and the head fly up with a shriek to the roof.
When I came to myself I found I was sitting on the low wall
of the school. I was very cold and wet, and I got up to go home.
As I rose I saw lying on the pavement at my feet what appeared
to be a small football. I gave it a vicious kick, when to my
horror it turned over and I saw it was a skull. It was gnashing
its teeth and moaning. Then with a shriek it flew up in the air
and vanished. A horrible thing. Then I knew the worst.
The skull of the monk Neville de Beauchamp had attached
itself to me for life, I being the last of the race. Since then it
is almost always with me.”</p>
<p>“Where is it now?” I said, shuddering.</p>
<p>“Not very far away, you bet,” he said.</p>
<p>“It’s a most unpleasant tale,” I said. “Good night, I’m
off to bed after that.”</p>
<p>I was in my first sleep about an hour afterwards, when a
knock came at my door, and the valet came in.</p>
<p>“Sorry to disturb you, sir,” he said, “but the skull has
<em>just come back</em>. It’s in the next room. Would you like to
see it?”</p>
<p>“Certainly not,” I roared. “Get away and let me go to
sleep.”</p>
<p>Then and there I firmly resolved to leave next morning.
I hated skulls, and I fancied that probably it might take a
fancy to me, and I had no desire to be followed about the country
by a skull as if it was a fox terrier.</p>
<p>Next morning I went in to breakfast. “Where is that
beastly skull?” I said to Allan.</p>
<p>“Oh, it’s off again somewhere. Heaven knows where;
but I have had another vision, a waking vision.”</p>
<p>“What was it?”</p>
<p>“Well,” said Allan, “I saw the skull and a white hand
which seemed to beckon to me beside it. Then they slowly
receded and in their place was what looked like a big sheet
of paper. On it in large letters were the words—<em>Your friend,
Jack Weston, is dead</em>. This morning I got this wire telling me
of his sudden death. Read it.”</p>
<p>That afternoon I left the Highlands and Allan Beauchamp.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Since then I have constant letters from him from his home
in England. He has tried every means possible to get rid of that
monk’s skull; but they are of no avail, it always returns. So
he has made the best he can of it, and keeps it in a locked casket
in an empty room at the end of a wing of the old house. He
says it keeps fairly quiet, but on stormy nights wails and gruesome
shrieks are heard from the casket in that closed apartment.</p>
<p>I heard from him last week. He said:—</p>
<p>“<span class="smcap">Dear W. T. L.</span>,—I don’t think I mentioned that twice
a year the skull of Neville de Beauchamp vanishes from its
casket for a period of about two days. It is never away longer.</p>
<p>“I wonder if it still haunts its old monastery at St Andrews
where its owner was slain. Do write and tell me if anyone now
in that vicinity hears or sees the screaming skull of my ancestor,
Neville de Beauchamp.”</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/deco2.jpg" width-obs="265" height-obs="100" alt="Decorative image" /></div>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="The_Spectre_of_the_Castle">The Spectre of the Castle.</h2>
<p>Several years had elapsed since I met the butler of Lausdree
Castle in the Highland Inn. I had just come up from the
south of England for some golf and fresh air, and was looking
over my letters one morning at breakfast when I opened the
following missive:—</p>
<div class="blockquote">
<p class="right">Lausdree Castle,<br/>
......</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—Yours to command. Sir, I have not forgot
our pleasant talk on that snowy night up in
the far north, when you were pleased to be interested
in my experiences of Lausdree. Could
you very kindly meet me any day and time you
choose to fix at Leuchars? And oblige,</p>
<p class="center">Your obedient servant,</p>
<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Jeremiah Anklebone</span>.</p>
<p><i>P.S.</i>—I have something to divulge to you connected
with St Andrews that may absorb your
mind.</p>
</div>
<p>Accordingly, I fixed up arrangements and met Mr Anklebone
at Leuchars, where we went to the nearest hostelry and
ordered the best lunch they had there. Jeremiah looked
thinner, older, and whiter than when I last saw him, doubtless
owing to his frequent communing with spirits.</p>
<p>“How is Lausdree getting on?” I meekly inquired, “and
what of the ghosts?”</p>
<p>“It is getting on fine, sir. I have had a number of new
experiences since I had the pleasure of seeing you last. You
must understand, sir, that my family for generations have been
favoured with occult powers. My father was a great seer, and
my great-grandfather, Mr Concrikketty Anklebone, of the Isle<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</SPAN></span>
of Skye, was a wonderful visionary.”</p>
<p>Now, Anklebone was an interesting old fellow, but he had a
tiresome habit of wandering away from his theme, and, as it
were, getting off the main road into a labyrinth of bye-ways,
and one had, metaphorically, to push him out of these side lanes
and place him on his feet again in the main road.</p>
<p>“Before I come to St Andrews Castle,” he said, “I must
tell you about a queer episode of an astral body at Lausdree,
a disentangled personality, as it were.”</p>
<p>“Push along,” I said, “and tell me.”</p>
<p>“Well, one afternoon after luncheon the master and I were
in the dining hall, when we saw a gentleman crossing the lawn
towards the castle. He was a tall man in a riding dress, with
curly hair and a large flowing moustache. He came up to the
window and looked in earnestly at us, and then walked along
the gravel-walk round to the castle door. ‘Hullo!’ said the
master, ‘that is my old friend, Jack Herbert, to whom I have let
Lausdree for this summer. What on earth can bring him here?
I’ll go to the door myself and let him in. He never said he was
coming.’</p>
<p>“In a minute or two the master came back looking bewildered.
‘Anklebone,’ he said, ‘that’s a <em>very</em> queer thing;
there is nobody there!’ ‘Perhaps,’ I suggested, ‘the gentleman
has gone round to the stables’; so we both hurried off
to look, but not a sign of anyone could be seen, and we stared
blankly at each other. We could not make it out. Two days
after, the master got a letter from Mr Jack Herbert telling him
he had had a bad fall off his horse, had injured his spine, and was
confined to bed.</p>
<p>“Mr Herbert went on to say that two days before, while
he was asleep, he dreamt vividly that he was at Lausdree;
that he crossed the lawn to the window of the dining hall, and,
looking in, saw my master and the butler (that’s me) in the room.
He was going round to the front door when he awoke. Now
that was his <em>astral body</em> that Master and I saw. He loved Lausdree,
and during sleep he came and paid us that visit. Queer,
isn’t it? Ten days after, he died. He wanted to see the old
castle before he died, and his force of will power brought his<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</SPAN></span>
double self, or astral body, to visit us. <em>It is not so uncommon</em>
as people think.</p>
<p>“Numbers of people are seen in two places at once far
apart. Look at Archbishop Sharpe of St Andrews. He was in
Edinburgh, at Holyrood I think, and sent his servant over post
haste to St Andrews to bring back some papers he had forgotten
there. When his trusty servant went up to his study in the
Novum Hospitium to get the papers from the desk, lo! there
was the Archbishop sitting in his usual chair and scowling at
him. He told the Archbishop this when he returned with the
papers to Edinburgh, but his Grace sternly bade him be silent
and mention the matter to no one on pain of death.</p>
<p>“Now, sir, it seems that my master is able to see astral
bodies, for he saw Mr Jack Herbert, but I doubt if he could see a
<em>real spirit</em>. Perhaps, sir,” suggested Anklebone, politely, “you
might be able to see astral bodies?”</p>
<p>“Thank you very much indeed,” I replied, “but I’m ⸺ if
I want to see anything of the sort; but I have heard a tale
of an eminent man in London who took a nap in his armchair
every afternoon, and while asleep appeared to his friends in
different parts of the country, but I doubt the fact very much.”</p>
<p>“Ah!” said the butler, very solemnly, “only about one
in a thousand has the power of visualising real spirits. Many
ordinary persons have <em>long</em> sight, and some have <em>short</em> sight, but
most people are short-sighted when ghosts are visible. The
ghosts are really there all the time. Some people cannot see
them, but can feel their presence or touch only. Most animals
can see spirits; sometimes they are killed with terror when
they see the spirits.”</p>
<p>I pulled the bell rope and ordered some spirits for the butler.
“I don’t think that will kill you with terror,” I said when it
arrived.</p>
<p>He looked grateful, and remarked that talking was dry
work, however interesting the subject might be.</p>
<p>“Now, look here, Mr Anklebone,” I said, “you know, I
daresay, the stories about the Cathedral, the Haunted Tower,
and all that. Please tell me what your experiences have been
there.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Anklebone’s whole appearance suddenly changed; he
gripped my arm violently, shivered and shuddered, and turned
ghastly pale. I thought he was going to have a fit.</p>
<p>“For pity’s sake, sir,” he said, trembling, “ask me nothing
about that. There is something <em>too terrible</em> there, but I dare not
reveal what I know and have seen to anyone. Do not allude
to it again or it will drive me mad.”</p>
<p>He lay back in his chair for a few moments with his eyes
closed and shaking all over, but he gradually recovered his usual
appearance.</p>
<p>“I wish to tell you about the Castle Spectre,” he said,
weakly.</p>
<p>I must confess that I felt nonplussed and disappointed at
the turn the conversation had taken, as whatever my private
opinion was regarding the worthy Jeremiah’s curious statements,
still I felt anxious to find out his experiences at the Cathedral
particularly. However, I swallowed my disappointment like a
Trojan, and begged him to proceed.</p>
<p>He gulped down his spirits and informed me he felt better
again, but he did not seem quite himself for some time.</p>
<p>“Well, sir,” he said, “I often used to climb over the Castle
wall after dusk, and smoke my pipe and meditate on all the
grand folk that must have been there in bygone days before the
smash-up. I thought of lovely young Queen Mary, of Mary
Hamilton, and her other Maries, of Lord Darnley, of the poet
Castelar, of Lord Arran, and the Duke of Rothesay, and all the
Stuart Kings that used to be there. Then I thought of Prior
Hepburn and poor murdered Cardinal Beaton, and of monks,
knights, and lovely wenches that used to frequent the old place.
I loved it, for I have read history a lot. One could not help
thinking of the feasting, revelry, and pageants of those interesting
old times, and the grand services in the churches, and what
fine dresses everybody wore.”</p>
<p>I saw he was going bang off the subject again, and when
he began to tell me there were lots of Anklebones in Norman
times about Fifeshire, I had to pull him back with a jerk to his
ghost at the Castle.</p>
<p>“Very well, sir, I was in the Castle one evening, and I was sitting<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</SPAN></span>
on the parapet of the old wall when I saw a head appearing
up the old broken steps on the east side of the Castle that once
led down to the great dining hall. I knew no one could <em>now</em>
come up that way without a ladder from the sea beach, and when
the figure got to the level ground it came right through the iron
railing just as if no obstruction were there. I stared hard and
watched the advancing figure. It looked like a woman. I had
heard of the Cardinal’s ghost, and wondered if it could be his
Eminence himself. Nearer and nearer it came, and although
it was a gusty evening, I noticed the flowing garments of the
approaching figure were quite still and unruffled by the wind.
It was like a moving statue. As it passed me slowly a few yards
away, I saw they were not the robes of a Cardinal, but those
of an Archbishop. I am a Churchman, and know the garments
quite well. I saw all his vestments clearly, and I shall never
forget the pale, ashen set face, and the thin determined mouth.
Then I noticed one <em>very very</em> strange thing—the statuesque
tall figure had a thick rope round the neck, and the end of the
rope was trailing along the grass behind it, but there was no
sound whatever. On it went and began to climb the stairs to
the upper apartments. I tried to follow, but could not move for
a bit. I felt as if I was mesmerised or paralysed. I was all in a
cold sweat, too, and I was glad to get away from the Castle
at last and hurry home. I haven’t gone so fast for many years.
When I went next day to Lausdree I made a clean breast of the
whole affair to Master.</p>
<p>“‘Would you know him again?’ he asked me.</p>
<p>“‘Aye,’ I replied, ‘I would know that face and figure
among a thousand.’</p>
<p>“‘Come to the study,’ said the master, ‘and I will show
you some pictures.’</p>
<p>“We went, and I looked over a number of them. At last
I came to one that fairly transfixed me. There was no mistaking
the face. Before me was the picture of the spectre I
had seen the previous night in the ruined Castle of Saint Andrews.</p>
<p>“‘Well, Anklebone,’ said the master, ‘this is <em>really wonderful</em>,
and you actually saw the rope round the neck?’</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>“‘I did,’ I said, ‘as I am a living man, but who is it?
It is not the Cardinal?’</p>
<p>“‘No,’ said the master very gravely, ‘<em>this man</em> was publicly
hanged by his enemies on a gibbet at the Market Cross of
Stirling on April 1st, 1571.’</p>
<p>“‘But who was he?’ I asked, imploringly.</p>
<p>“‘The man, or ghost, you saw,’ said master, ‘was Archbishop
John Hamilton of St Andrews—in his own Castle grounds
where he once reigned supreme.’”</p>
<p>I said farewell to Mr Anklebone, and as I thought over his
extraordinary story journeying home in the train, I could not
help repeating over and over again to myself that very curious
name that seemed to rhyme with the motion of the train—Concrikketty
Anklebone.</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/deco2.jpg" width-obs="265" height-obs="100" alt="Decorative image" /></div>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="The_Smothered_Piper_of_the">The Smothered Piper of the West Cliffs.</h2>
<p class="indent3">“<i>Hush! hush! hush! Here comes the Bogie Man.</i>”</p>
<p>This was shouted out to me very loudly by a cheery golfing
“Johnny,” as I entered the merry smoking-room of the old
’Varsity Golf Club at Coldham Common, Cambridge, some
years ago. “Draw in your armchair, light a cigar or a pipe,
and tell us all [many celebrated actors were present] some of
those wonderful bogie stories about dear St Andrews. It is
the bogie time of the year, and you must remember I played
the ‘Bogie Man’ for you in one of your big burlesques at St
Andrews and Cupar some years ago, so fire away with the bogies,
please, and be quick.”</p>
<p>Then I reeled off a big lot of yarns: of the ghost, Thomas
Plater, who murdered Prior Robert of Montrose on the dormitory
staircase before vespers; of the nigger in a Fifeshire
house, who is invisible himself, but maps out his bare footmarks
on the floor of the painted gallery; of Sharpe’s coach, which,
being heard, betokens a death; of haunted old Balcomie ruined
castle; of the murdered pedlar in our own South Street, who
sweeps down with a chilly hand the cheeks of invaders to his
haunted cellar; of the ghost that appeared in the house of
Archbishop Ross, mentioned in Lyon’s History; and of the
terrible ghost in the Novum Hospitium, which so alarmed people
that its dwelling had to be pulled down, and only a fragment
of the building now remains. But they wanted to hear the tale
of the “Ghostly Piper of the West Cliffs”; so I told them the
legend as I had heard it years ago.</p>
<p>It seems that in the old days no houses existed on the Cliffs<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</SPAN></span>
from the old Castle of Hamilton to the modern monument
near the Witch Hill. It was all meadow land, much used for
the grazing of cattle and sheep, and also much frequented as a
playground for bygone children. On and over the face of the
cliffs, slightly to the westward of Butts Wynd, existed then
the entrance to a fearsome cave, or old ecclesiastical passage,
which was a terror to many, and most people shunned it. It
had many names, among them the “Jingling Cove,” “The
Jingling Man’s Hole,” “John’s Coal Hole,” and later “The
Piper’s Cave, or Grave.” A few of the oldest inhabitants still
remember it. A few knew a portion of it; none dared venture
beyond this well-known portion. Like the interior of an old
ice-house, it was dark, chilly, and clammy; its walls ran with
cold sweat. It was partly natural, but mostly artificial—a
most dark, creepy, and fearsome place.</p>
<p>In a description which I got of it many years ago, and
which appeared in the <cite>St Andrews Citizen</cite>, I learn that “the
opening of this cliff passage was small and triangular; it was
situated on a projecting ledge of rock, and it was high enough,
after entering, to enable a full-sized man to stand upright.
From the opening it was a steep incline down for a distance
of 49 feet, thereafter it proceeded in a level direction for over
70 feet, when it descended into a chamber. At the further
end of this chamber were two, if not more, passages branching
off from it. Between the passages was cut out in the rock a
Latin cross.” This would seem to point to an ecclesiastical
connection, and had nothing whatever to do with the more
modern smugglers’ cave near the ladies’ bathing place.</p>
<p>But enough of description. In bygone days, in a small
cottage, little better than a hovel, situated in Argyle, lived an
old dame named Goodman. She occupied one room, and her son
and his young wife tenanted the other little chamber. He was a
merry, dare-devil, happy-go-lucky lad, and he was famed as one
of the best players on the bagpipes in all Fife; he would have
pleased even Maggie Lauder. Of nights at all hours he would
make the old grass-grown streets lively with his music. “Jock
the Piper,” was a favourite among both young and old. He was
much interested in the tale of the old West Cliff cave, and took a<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</SPAN></span>
bet on with some cronies that on a New Year’s night he would
investigate the mysteries of the place, and play his pipes up it as
far as he could go. His old mother, his wife, and many of his
friends tried hard to dissuade him from doing so foolish and so
foolhardy a thing; but he remained obdurate, and firmly stuck
to his bet. On a dark New Year’s night he started up the
mysterious cavern with his pipes playing merrily; and they
were heard, it is said, passing beneath Market Street, then they
died away. They suddenly ceased, and were never more heard.
He and his well-known pipes were never seen again.</p>
<p>Somewhere beneath St Andrews lies the whitened bones
of that bygone piper lad, with his famous pipes beside him.
Attempts were made to find him, but without avail; no one,
not even the bravest, dared to venture into that passage full
of damp foul air. His mother and wife were distracted, and the
young wife used to sit for hours at the mouth of that death-trap
cave. Finally, her mind gave way, and she used to wander
at all hours down to the mouth of the cave where her husband
had vanished. The following New Year’s night she left the
little cottage in Argyle, and putting a shawl over her wasted
shoulders, turned to the old woman and said, “I’m going to
my Jock.” Morning came, but she never returned home. She
had, indeed, gone to her lost “Jock.” For years after, the
small crouching figure of a woman could be seen on moonlight
nights perched on the rock balcony of the fatal cave, dim,
shadowy, and transparent. Wild shrieks and sounds of weird
pipe music were constantly heard coming from out of that
entrance.</p>
<p>In after years, when the houses were built, the mouth of
this place was either built or covered up, and its memory only
remains to us.</p>
<p>But what of “Piper Jock?” He, it is said, still walks the
edge of the old cliffs; and his presence is heralded by an icy
breath of cold air, and ill be it for anyone who meets or sees his
phantom form or hears his pipe music. He seems to have the
same effect as the ghost of “Nell Cook” in the dark entry at
Canterbury, mentioned in the “Ingoldsby Legends,” from which
I must quote a few verses—</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</SPAN></span></p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">“And tho’ two hundred years have flown,</div>
<div class="verse indent2">Nell Cook doth still pursue</div>
<div class="verse">Her weary walk, and they who cross her path</div>
<div class="verse indent2">The deed may rue.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Her fatal breath is fell as death!</div>
<div class="verse indent2">The simoon’s blast is not</div>
<div class="verse">More dire (a wind in Africa</div>
<div class="verse indent2">That blows uncommon hot).</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">But all unlike the simoon’s blast,</div>
<div class="verse indent2">Her breath is deadly cold,</div>
<div class="verse">Delivering quivering, shivering shocks</div>
<div class="verse indent2">Upon both young and old.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">And whoso in the entry dark</div>
<div class="verse indent2">Doth feel that fatal breath,</div>
<div class="verse">He ever dies within the year</div>
<div class="verse indent2">Some dire untimely death.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>So it is with him who meets “Piper Jock.”</p>
<p>“By Jove,” interrupted the golfing “Johnny,” “has anyone
seen him lately?”</p>
<p>“I only know of one man,” I said, “who told me that one
awful night in a heavy thunderstorm he had heard wild pipe
music, and seen the figure of a curiously dressed piper walking
along the cliff edge, <em>where no mortal could walk</em>, at a furious
speed.”</p>
<p>“What do you think of it all?” asked my golfing friend.</p>
<p>“I don’t know, I’m sure; I am not receptive and don’t
see ghosts, but if I could only find <em>now</em> the mouth of that place,
I bet another ‘Jock’ and I would get along it and find out the
whereabouts of ‘Jock the Piper’ and his poor little wife. Here
is my hansom. Good night, don’t forget the Piper.”</p>
<p>And they haven’t.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="The_Beautiful_White_Lady">The Beautiful White Lady of the Haunted Tower.</h2>
<p>“How very, very lovely she was to be sure!”</p>
<p>“Of whom are you speaking?” I asked. “Of some of the
Orchid or Veronique people, or of some of your own company?
I did not know you were hard hit old chap.” I was sitting in the
smoking-room of the Great Northern Hotel, King’s Cross,
talking to an old friend, an Oxford man, but now the manager
of a big theatrical company, when he suddenly made the above
remark.</p>
<p>“No, no! Of none of those people,” he replied; “but
our talking of St Andrews reminded me of a ghost, a phantom,
or a spectre—call it what you choose—I saw in that ancient
city several years ago—no horrid bogie, but a very lovely girl,
indeed.”</p>
<p>“By Jove,” I said, “tell me about it; I want a new ghost
tale very badly indeed. I know a lot of them, but perhaps
this is something new and spicy.”</p>
<p>“I am sure I do not know if it be new,” he replied. “I
have never seen anything spectral before or since, but I saw that
lovely woman three different times. It must be fully ten years
ago. I saw her twice on the Scores and once in an old house.”</p>
<p>“Well, I must really hear all about it,” I said. “Please
fire away.”</p>
<p>“All right, all right!” he said. “Now for her <em>first</em> appearance.
I was living in St Andrews at the time. It must
have been the end of January or beginning of February, and I
was strolling along to the Kirkhill after dinner and enjoying
the fine evening and the keen sea breeze, and thinking about
the old, old days of the Castle and Cathedral, of Beaton’s ghost,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</SPAN></span>
and many other queer tales, when a female figure glided past
me. She was in a long, flowing white dress, and had her beautiful
dark hair hanging down past her waist. I was very much
astonished to see a girl dressed in such a manner wandering
about alone at such an hour, and I followed her along for several
yards, when lo! just after she had passed the turret light she
completely vanished near the square tower, which I was afterwards
informed was known as the ‘Haunted Tower.’ I hunted
all round the place carefully, but saw nothing more that night.
Queer, wasn’t it?”</p>
<p>“Certainly it was,” I remarked; “but I know dozens of
weird stories connected with that old tower. But what more
have you to tell me?”</p>
<p>“Well,” he continued, “as you may imagine, the whole
affair worried and puzzled me considerably, but it was gradually
vanishing from my mind when near the same place I saw her
again. I had my sister with me this time, and we both can swear
to it. It was a lovely night with a faint moon, and as the white
lady swept past quite silently we saw the soft trailing dress and
the long, black wavy hair. There was something like a rosary
hanging from her waist, and a cross or a locket hanging
round her throat. As she passed she turned her head towards
us, and we both noticed her beautiful features, especially
her brilliant eyes. She vanished, as before, near that old tower.
My sister was so awfully frightened that I had to hurry her off
home. We were both absolutely convinced we had seen a being
not of this world—a face never to be forgotten.”</p>
<p>“How strange,” I said. “You know, several people saw
a girl in that built-up old turret lying in her coffin. A former
priest of the Episcopal Church here saw some masons repairing
the wall of that tower, and their chisel fell into the turret through
a chink. On removing a stone, they came upon a chamber within,
and they saw a girl dressed in white, with long hair, lying in a
coffin, wanting the lid. The hole was built up again at once.
I know, and have often talked to persons who saw her there.
One of them was a mason employed at the work. The doorway
of the tower is opened up now, and a grill put in, but there
is no sign of the girl. Queer stories arose. Some said it was the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</SPAN></span>
remains of Princess Muren, daughter of Constantine. Others
said it was the embalmed body of some sweet girl Saint concealed
there in times of trouble, and so on; but finish your
story.”</p>
<p>“I have little more to tell,” he answered. “Some months
afterwards I was a guest in an old house in Fifeshire, and was
given the turret room. On the second night I went to bed
early, as I had been at golf all day and felt awfully dead beat.
I must have fallen asleep suddenly, as I left my candle burning
on the table. All of a sudden I woke up with a start to find the
now familiar figure of the ‘White Lady’ at the foot of my bed.
She was gazing at me intently. When I sat up she glided away
behind the screen at the door. I jumped up, put on my dressing-gown,
seized the candle, and made for the door. The lady was
gone, and the door was as I left it when I went to bed—<em>locked</em>.
I unlocked it, flung it open, and looked into the passage. There
she was, I saw the white dress, the splendid hair, the rosary,
and the gold locket quite plainly. She turned her lovely face
to me and smiled a sweet, pathetic smile; gently raised her
hand, and floated away towards the picture gallery. Now for
the end. Next day my kind hostess took me through the old
gallery. I saw pictures of all ages, sorts, and sizes; but imagine
my amazement when I saw ‘<em>The White Lady</em>’—the same white
dress, the lovely sweet face and splendid eyes, the rosary, and a
locket, which I now saw had on it the arms of Queen Mary and
Lord Darnley. ‘Who on earth is that?’ I asked.</p>
<p>“‘You seem interested in that painting,’ said Mrs ⸺.
‘Well, that is a portrait of one of the lovely Mary Stuart’s
Maries. She was madly in love with Castelar, the French minstrel,
and after he was beheaded at St Andrews she became a
nun, and it is said died of grief in her nunnery.’</p>
<p>“That is all, old boy,” he said, “and it is late. I think
it seems right; <em>that</em> girl I and my sister saw <em>must</em> have been the
spirit of Marie ⸺; and perhaps it was she who was the
occupant of that haunted tower—who knows? but I shall
never, never see such a divinely beautiful face on this earth
again.”</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="Concerning_More_Appearances">Concerning More Appearances of the White Lady.</h2>
<p>I had been invited, and was sitting at tea with a very dear
old lady friend of mine not long ago. It may seem strange,
but tea is, I consider, an extra and an unnecessary meal. It does
not appeal to me in the least, and only spoils one’s dinner and
digestion. The reason I went to tea was because in her note
to me the lady mentioned that she had read my book of ghost
tales, and that she was interested in ghosts in general
and St Andrews ghosts in particular, and that she knew lots of
such stories in the days of her girlhood in St Andrews, now about
85 years ago. That is why I went to eat cakes with sugar, hot
buttered toast, and drink tea as black as senna or a black
draught. She had also informed me in the note that she could
tell me a lot about the Haunted Tower and the Beautiful
White Lady.</p>
<p>It took some time to get her to that point. She would
talk about Archbishop Sharpe and his haunted house in the
Pends Road, of the ghost seen by Archbishop Ross, of my friend
the Veiled Nun, of the Cathedral and Mr John Knox, of Hungus,
King of the Picts, of Constantine, Thomas Plater, and various
others. She told me a long tale of the Rainham Ghost in Norfolk,
known as “The Brown Lady of Rainham,” whom her
father and Captain Marryat both saw, and so on.</p>
<p>At last we got near the subject I wished information on.</p>
<p>“In my young days,” she said, “St Andrews was quite
a wee bit place with grass-grown streets, red-tiled houses, outside
stairs, queer narrow wynds, not over clean, only a few lights
at night—here and there, an old bowet or oil lamp hanging at
street corners. Every one believed in Sharpe’s Phantom<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</SPAN></span>
Coach in those good old days.”</p>
<p>“Did you ever see it?” I queried.</p>
<p>“No,” she said, “but I have heard it rumble past, and I
know those who have seen it, and many other things too.”</p>
<p>“But tell me about the White Lady, please,” I said.</p>
<p>“I will. Few people in those days cared to pass that
haunted tower after nightfall. If they did they ran past it and
also the Castle. Those new-fangled incandescent gas lamps
have spoiled it all now. The White Lady was one of the <em>Maries</em>,
one of the maids of honour to poor martyred Mary of Scotland,
they said then. She was madly in love with the French poet
and minstrel, ‘Castelar,’ and he was hopelessly in love, like many
others, with Marie’s lovely mistress, ‘the Queen of Scots.’”</p>
<p>“Was she supposed to be the girl seen in the built-up
haunted tower?” I asked.</p>
<p>“That I really can’t say,” she said. “There was a story
often told in the old days that a beautiful embalmed girl in white
lay in that tower, and it was there and near the Castle that she
used to appear to the people. You know poor Castelar, the
handsome minstrel, said and did some stupid things, and was
beheaded at the Castle, and was probably buried near there.
Get me from that shelf Whyte Melville’s novel, ‘The Queen’s
Maries.’”</p>
<p>I did as she bade me.</p>
<p>“Well, you will see there that the night before Castelar
was to be beheaded kind Queen Mary sent one of her Maries,
the one who loved Castelar, at her own special request to
the Castle with her ring to offer him a pardon if he left this
country for ever. This Marie did see Castelar, showed him the
Queen’s ring, and pleaded with him to comply, but he refused—he
preferred death to banishment from his beloved Queen’s
Court, and the fair messenger left him <em>obstinate</em> in his dungeon.
This faithful Marie paced up and down all that night before the
Castle; then at dawn came the sound of a gun or culverin, a
wreath of smoke floated out to sea, and Castelar was gone.
Whyte Melville says she did not start, she did not shriek, nor
faint, nor quiver, but she threw her hood back and looked
wildly upward, gasping for air. Then as the rising sun shone on<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</SPAN></span>
her bare head, Marie’s raven hair was all streaked and patched
with grey. When Mary Stuart fled to England, this faithful
Marie, now no more needed, became a nun in St Andrews. Look
at page 371 of Whyte Melville’s book,” she said. So I read—“It
was an early harvest that year in Scotland, but e’er the barley
was white, Marie had done with nuns and nunneries, vows
and ceremonies, withered hopes and mortal sorrows, and had
gone to that place where the weary heart can alone find the rest
it had so longed for at last.”</p>
<p>The pathetic and the comic often go together. Just at
this interesting point a cat sprang suddenly up and upset a
cup of tea in the lap of my genial hostess. This created a diversion.
Old ladies are apt to wander, which is annoying. She
got clean away from her subject for a bit. She asked me if I
knew Captain Robert Marshall, who wrote plays and “The
Haunted Mayor.” I said I knew Bob well, and that he was an
old Madras College boy.</p>
<p>She then wanted to know if I knew how to pronounce the
name of Mr Travis’s American putter, and if Mr Low or I had
ever tried it. She also wanted to know if I knew anything of
the new patent clock worked on gramophone principles which
shouted the hours instead of striking them.</p>
<p>Having answered all these queries to her satisfaction, and
taken another cup of senna—I mean tea—I got her back to the
White Lady.</p>
<p>“Oh, yes, my dear,” she said, “I saw her, I and some
friends. <em>A lot of us</em> had been out at Kinkell Braes one afternoon
and stayed there long past the time allowed us. It was
almost dark, and we scuttled up the brae from the Harbour
rather frightened. Just near the turret light we saw the lady
gliding along the top of the old Abbey wall. She was robed
in a grey white dress with a veil over her head. She had raven
black hair, and a string of beads hanging from her waist. We all
huddled together, with our eyes and mouths wide open, and
watched the figure. ‘It’s a girl sleep-walking,’ I murmured.
‘It’s a bride,’ whispered another. ‘Oh! she’ll fall,’ said a little
boy, grasping my arm. But she did not. She went inside the
parapet wall at the Haunted Tower and vanished completely.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</SPAN></span>
‘It’s a ghost; it’s the White Lady,’ we all shrieked, and ran
off trembling home. My sister also saw her on one of the turrets
in the Abbey wall, where she was seen by several people. Some
months after, as I was doing my hair before my looking-glass,
the same face looked over my shoulder, and I fainted. I have
always felt an <em>eerie</em> feeling about a looking-glass ever since,
even now, old woman as I am. Her lovely face is one never,
never to be forgotten, having once seen it, but your new fashioned
lamps have altered everything.”</p>
<p>“And what do you think about it now?” I asked her.</p>
<p>“I have told you all I know. The Lady used to be seen
oftenest between the Castle and that old turret. Perhaps she
came to look at the last resting-place of her much loved and
wayward minstrel, Castelar. Maybe she came to revisit the
favourite haunts of her beloved girl Queen—truly called the
Queen of the Roses; but to my dying day I shall never forget
that face, that lovely, pathetic face I saw years ago, and which
may still be seen by some. What! must you really go now;
won’t you have another cup of tea? Very well, good bye.”</p>
<p>As I wended my way Clubwards I could not but think
of the strange tale I had just heard and of Castelar’s sad end,
and I could not help wondering if I should ever be favoured
with a sight of this beautiful White Lady.</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/deco3.jpg" width-obs="110" height-obs="150" alt="Decorative image" /></div>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="A_Spiritualistic_Seance">A Spiritualistic Seance.</h2>
<p>The M’Whiskers, whom I met at Oban, were very jolly old
people. Papa M’Whisker had made a big fortune teaplanting
in Ceylon, and had bought, and added to Dramdotty Castle in
the far, far north. They were perfectly full of ghosts and spiritualism,
and at Dramdotty they seemed to have a ghost for every
day in the week. On Monday there was the “Spotted Nun,”
on Tuesday the “Floating Infant,” on Wednesday the “Headless
Dwarf,” on Thursday the “Vanishing Nigger,” on Friday
the “Burnt Lady,” and on Saturday the “Human Balloon,”
and on Sunday the whole lot attended on them, and, I daresay,
went to the kirk with them.</p>
<p>M’Whisker himself was a jovial soul, fond of his toddy,
and very much resembled the Dougal Cratur in “Rob Roy.”
My friend, John Clyde, should have seen him. He had a furious
red head of hair and beard of the same colour, and the street
boys used to call after him the song, “The folks all call me,
Carroty, What, what, what, oh! Carroty,” etc. Mrs M’Whisker
was a stout lady with eyes like small tomatoes and a gimlet
nose. They had a son, a boy of ten, called Fernando M’Whisker,
because he was born in Spain. When they came to St Andrews
they had purchased a number of my “Ghost Books.” (These
ghosts at present chiefly haunt the <cite>Citizen</cite> Warehouse, booksellers’
shops, and the railway bookstall.) That is the reason
perhaps that the M’Whiskers invited me to a spiritualistic seance
at their house in South Street. They generally came to St
Andrews for the winter, partly to get away from the cold of their
northern home, and partly because they thought the history
and atmosphere of St Andrews lent itself to an all-pervading
presence of ghosts, spooks, and spirits. I had only been to two
such shows before—one at Helensburgh and one at Cambridge—and
was, and still am, very doubtful of the genuineness of spiritualism.
On the day appointed I went to the M’Whiskers’ house<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</SPAN></span>
in South Street, and was shown in by a Highlander in the M’Whisker
tartan. It was early in the afternoon, but I found the
shutters in the large room all shut, and a few dim lights only
were burning. On a sideboard in the corner stood plenty of
refreshments and everything else to comfort the inner man.
In the centre of the room there was a round table covered with a
M’Whisker tartan tablecloth, which touched the floor all round:
this in itself was suspicious to my mind. I was introduced to
the chief medium, one Mr Peter Fancourt, who looked as if he
had been buried and dug up again. He was in tight, sleek black
clothes, and resembled in every way “Uriah Heep” in “David
Copperfield.” The other medium was a Mrs Flyflap Corncockle.
They were supposed not to know each other, but I am
as certain that they were accomplices as that the Bell Rock is
near St Andrews Bay. A number of chairs encircled the table.
We had all to seat ourselves on these chairs, with our thumbs
and little fingers touching round the edge of the table. The first
thing that happened was a kind of “squish,” and then a huge
bouquet of flowers descended on the table from somewhere.
It was a clever trick, but the flowers were of the commonest
sort, and what I had seen in all the greengrocers’ shops that
morning. The lights were now turned very low, and a spirit
arm and hand appeared floating about, which shone a good deal.
It hovered about from the ceiling to above our heads, and when I
got a chance I jumped on a chair and seized it with both hands.
It seemed to shrink up, and was torn through my hands very
forcibly, and in such a material manner that I was forced to let
go. I don’t know where the hand and arm went to, but it was
simply a juggling trick. After this “Mr Heep” (I beg his pardon,
Mr Fancourt) said that there was an unbeliever present, and as I
was that unbeliever I was relegated to an armchair by the fireplace
with one of M’Whisker’s muckle cigars. From that point
of vantage I watched the whole affair, and they assured me they
would tell me all that was going on. The next very curious
thing was that they suddenly all took their hands off the table,
and their eyes slowly followed something ceilingwards. It was
funny to see them all lying back staring up at the roof. Then
very slowly their heads and eyes resumed their normal position.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</SPAN></span>
“Did you see that?” said the M’Whisker triumphantly.
“I saw nothing whatever,” I remarked. “What! did
you not see the table float up to the ceiling? It
remained there quite half a second, and then came down as
lightly as a feather.” “I was watching the table the whole
time,” I said, “and it never moved an inch from its place.”
“Oh! you are an unbeliever,” said Mrs M’Whisker sadly,
“but later on when it is darker you will see Mr Fancourt float
out of one of the windows and come in at the other.” I fervently
hoped if he did anything of the kind he would come a
cropper on the pavement below and break some of his ribs.
The table then started to dance about and move along, but this,
I am certain, was simply engineered by those two mediums.</p>
<p>After some tomfoolery of this kind they all agreed that
“Ouija” should be brought out. A large oblong yellow board was
then produced and laid on the table. On it were the letters of the
alphabet and a number of figures, also the sun, moon, and stars,
and some other fantastic symbols. On this board was placed
a small table with a round body and round head, it had three
hind legs and a front, which was the pointer. These legs had
little red velvet boots on. The two mediums then placed their
hands on each side of this curious table, which immediately
began to run about to the letters and figures, spelling out things
and fixing dates in answer to questions asked. It was not the
least like a planchette, which is on wheels. The first thing they
informed me it had said was that a spirit called Clarissa was
present, and for many years she had lain a-dying in that room.
She maintained that she was some distant relation of the White
Lady of the Haunted Tower. It then rushed into poetry. Its
first effort was the “Legend of Purple James and his Girl,”
a comic thing which reminded me of the “Bab Ballads.” They
afterwards gave me a copy of this poem, which I still possess.
Next the spirit gave us a Scotch poem about a haggis, and then
one called “Edward and the Hard-Boiled Egg.” It then devoted
its attention to me, whom it characterised as the “Unbeliever.”
It stated that if the Antiquarian Society would
dig a pit four feet square by six feet deep between the two
dungeons in the Kitchen Tower of the Castle, and if the rock<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</SPAN></span>
were cut through, a cave would be found full of casks of good red
wine. On no condition whatever would I, on such evidence,
recommend the Society to strike a pick in there. The next
spirit that turned up was one Jaspar Codlever. He alluded to
me as “the Cambridge man in the chair with the cigar.” He
said that if excavations were made between the two last trees
in Lawpark Wood a stone cist would be found full of Pictish
ornaments. Again he told us that within a cave on the cliffs
there was a chalice of great value placed there by Isabella the
Nun, who still guarded it by night and day, and was very dangerous
to approach. This spirit then went away, and his place
was taken by a monk named Rudolph, who informed us that the
entrance to the Crypt or sub-Chapel was between two of the
pillars in the Priory. As there are a lot of pillars there, it is
impossible to know which he meant. He said this entrance
was near Roger’s tomb. Who Roger may be I know not. He
then told us about this Crypt. He said there was something
so horrible in it that it turned him sick. Curiously enough,
some thought-reading people told us the same story in the Town
Hall some years ago, but they said the underground Chapel
was at the east end of the Cathedral. The monk then went on to
tell us of this place in the Priory. He said it had Purbeck
marble pillars, a well of clear water, and three small costly altars,
and a number of books of the Vincentian Canons. There was
a short interval now, and the lights were turned up. I was
anxious to get away, but they implored me to stay and see the
cabinet and the spirits therein. I told them in my most dramatic
fashion that I was late already, and I had a meeting on. M’Whisker
then begged me, if I would not stay to see the spirits, to
taste some, and he mixed me an excellent whisky-and-soda,
which he called a “Blairgowrie.” I then made my adieu, and
was very glad to get once more into the street and also into a
world of sense. The M’Whiskers informed me some days afterwards
that they were very sorry at my leaving, as, after I had
gone, Fancourt had floated out of the window, and numerous
wonderful spirits had appeared in the cabinet. I am glad I
went when I did, as I should certainly have taken a poker to
that cabinet.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="The_Apparition_of">The Apparition of Sir Rodger de Wanklyn.</h2>
<p>I am very fond indeed of Christmas time. There has been
little snow this season. I think it has forgotten how to snow in
these days. Still, I always feel Christmassy. I think of the
good old coaching days, when there was really snow, of Washington,
Irving, and good old Dickens and Scott, of the yule log and
the family gatherings and re-unions, of the wassail bowl, of
frumenty and plum porridge, and mince pies, plum puddings,
and holly and mistletoe and big dances in the servants’ hall,
of good old ancestral ghosts and hearty good cheer.</p>
<p>I am sitting to-day in a cosy armchair (of the old school, no
modern fake) talking to my old friend, Theophilus Greenbracket.
Filus, as I call him, is a clever man of many parts; he is a great
traveller and sportsman, and takes a deep interest in every
mortal thing. There is nothing of the kill joy or fossil about
Greenbracket; he is up-to-date and true blue.</p>
<p>He is sitting opposite me smoking a gigantic cigar and imbibing
rum punch, and talking hard; he always talks hard,
but is never a bore, and never palls on one in the slightest degree.
He has an enormous dog at his feet, with a fierce, vindictive
expression, which belies its real nature, as it is gentle
with everything and everybody, except cats and rats. Greenbracket
is, among many other things, a great spiritualist and
visionary, and possesses all kinds of mediumistic appliances,
such as pythos, planchettes and ouijas, which he works with
his old butler, Amos Bradleigh, who is another spirit hunter.</p>
<p>“By the bye,” said Greenbracket, “I am at present taking
lessons in music with Mr Easeboy.” He says this so suddenly
that he makes me jump, as we were talking about sea serpents<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</SPAN></span>
and the probability of their existence.</p>
<p>“Are you indeed, old chap,” I said.</p>
<p>“Yes, thorough bass, and consecutive fifths and harmony
and all that sort of thing, you know. He has a pupil, Macbeth
Churchtimber, who has just written a thundering pretty waltz
called ‘Eleanor Wynne.’”</p>
<p>“I thought Churchtimber,” I mildly suggested, “only
played severe classical stuff.”</p>
<p>“Oh, yes,” replied my friend, “but he occasionally
touches on a lighter theme, and has even written a comic song,
called, ‘I lay beside a milestone with a sunflower on my brow.’”</p>
<p>“I must try it someday,” I said, “but how about your
ghosts? Have you seen any lately?”</p>
<p>“There was one here a few minutes ago,” said Greenbracket,
“a tall man in armour sitting in that corner over there.”</p>
<p>“What rubbish,” I said, quite crossly, “you dream things,
or drink, or eat too much.”</p>
<p>“No I don’t,” said Greenbracket, “do you really mean
to tell that you felt no sensation just now, no pricking or tingling
feeling, or a chilly sensation down your back?”</p>
<p>“Certainly not, nothing of the kind,” I replied.</p>
<p>“Well, that is queer,” he said, “I know you don’t see
these things, but I fancied you would have felt a strange presence
in some way. I don’t know who the man in armour was.
I have not seen him before, but my butler has, at all events.
It was not Sir Roger de Wanklyn.”</p>
<p>“Who the ⸺ is he?” I queried.</p>
<p>“Oh,” said my host, “he is the earth-bound spirit of an
architect who lived in St Andrews at the time that James the
Fifth married Mary of Lorraine in the Cathedral; he says he
was present at the ceremony and can describe it all. A gay
pageant it was and much revelry.”</p>
<p>“If you can get all this sort of curious information, which I
don’t exactly credit, why on earth can’t you find out something
practical and useful, for instance, where the secret underground
hiding place is, and where all the tons of valuable ornaments,
papers, and vestments are concealed?”</p>
<p>“My dear friend,” said Greenbracket solemnly, “these<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</SPAN></span>
people won’t be pumped; they only tell you what they choose
to, or are permitted to reveal.”</p>
<p>“If they really do turn up and talk to you as you say they
do, why on earth can’t you get them to talk some useful sense?”</p>
<p>“I really can’t force their confidence,” said Greenbracket,
“all they do tell me voluntarily is most interesting and
absorbing. This Sir Rodger planned numerous very important
structural alterations in the Cathedral and elsewhere.”</p>
<p>“It is all very odd to me,” I said, “one meets people
with strange ideas. I met a man years ago at Aberystwith who
was a firm believer in the transmigration of souls. He said he
quite remembered being a cab horse in Glasgow, and was certain
when he left this planet he would become a parrot in Mars.”</p>
<p>“I don’t understand that sort of thing a bit,” said my
extraordinary friend, Greenbracket, “but Sir Rodger de Wanklyn
has sometimes to visit the Valley of Fire and Frost, where there
are mighty furnaces on one side of him and ice and snow on the
other and it is very painful.”</p>
<p>“I had that sort of experience the other day,” I remarked,
“at a meeting. On one side was a furnace of a fire and on the
other a window wide open with a biting frost wind blowing in.”</p>
<p>“Tuts,” said Greenbracket “that’s here; I am talking of
the spirit world.”</p>
<p>“Hang! your spirit stuff. Has your butler, Amos Bradleigh,
seen any spookey things lately?”</p>
<p>“Yes, he is much annoyed by the spirit of an evil old
housekeeper here who lost her life by falling downstairs, and she
is continually pushing him down my cellar stairs. He is furious.”</p>
<p>“Is this butler of yours any connection of Jeremiah Anklebone?”
I asked.</p>
<p>“Yes, he is a cousin,” said Greenbracket; “all that family
have second sight, and see and dream strange things.”</p>
<p>“And who,” I asked, “may this housekeeper be who
pitched your butler down stairs?”</p>
<p>“Oh,” said Greenbracket, “she’s a badly constituted wraith,
and her name is Annibal Strongthorn. She was housekeeper ages
ago to this Sir Roger de Wanklyn in this very old house we are
in.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>“What happened to this Sir Roger? Has he told you?”</p>
<p>“Oh! yes he fell over the cliffs.”</p>
<p>“Bless me, and did this old housekeeper woman push him
over. Was she a murderess?”</p>
<p>“Oh, how can I tell,” said Greenbracket peevishly, “he
has told me nothing of the kind.”</p>
<p>“Well, old fellow,” I said, “you really do not get much
interesting information out of your ghostly friends, but what I
like about you is that all your numerous ghosts come straight
to you, straight to head-quarters at once—you don’t go fooling
about with chairs and tables and sideboards and other pieces
of timber in an idiotic way. If, as some people say, they can get
chairs and tables and other articles of furniture to follow them
about, why don’t they go in for cheap furniture removals at
night when the streets are empty?”</p>
<p>“Don’t make a joke of everything,” said Greenbracket,
“I do see and converse with departed spirits. I do not ask
them to come; they come to me, and half of them I have never
heard of before or thought of either.”</p>
<p>“May I ask, my good friend Greenbracket, what sort of
clothes they wear when they pay you these visits; for instance,
what does your latest apparition, Sir Rodger, clothe himself in?”</p>
<p>“Bless me!” said Theophilus, “why in the dress of his
times, of course—a jerken, doublet, and hose, a rapier, and all
that sort of thing; sometimes he wears a sort of coarse fustian
cassock with a double breast.”</p>
<p>“I can’t make out,” I said to my spiritualistic friend,
“where these clothes come from. Have they got a sort of
theatrical wardrobe wherever they are existing? If so, why
can’t the ghosts of old world clothes come alone? In such a
case you might see a modern suit of evening togs, or armour,
or boots and spurs, or military dress walk into your room
without anything inside them; or you might, with a stretch
of imagination, see a suit of pyjamas, or a pair of slippers going
about the place.”</p>
<p>“Shut up talking like that,” said Theophilus, “you don’t
possess the sense—I mean the extra sense to see these beings;
but read this document I have written out. Surely it will convince<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</SPAN></span>
you that I really do get valuable inspirations from other
worlds, but, mind, keep it a strict secret at present.”</p>
<p>“All right, I promise you,” I murmured placidly. Then
I perused carefully the more than extraordinary document he
had handed me.</p>
<p>“It is very curious,” I said, “if it be one bit true; and if
genuine, might be extremely useful. Mind my lips are sealed.
But from whom did you obtain this remarkable story?”</p>
<p>“From Sir Rodger de Wanklyn, the Cathedral architect,”
he replied, and off I went quite full of my queer friend, Greenbracket,
and of Annabel Strongthorn, Amos Bradleigh, and his
cousin Anklebone, and particularly Rodger de Wanklyn.</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/deco1.jpg" width-obs="150" height-obs="150" alt="Decorative image" /></div>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="The_Bewitched_Ermentrude">The Bewitched Ermentrude.</h2>
<p>Very many years ago now I was sauntering down historic old
South Street one November afternoon, my object being to lunch
in one of the quaint houses with my old time friend, Harold Slitherwick.
Lunch was not, however, the main object of my visit,
but to meet a man called Reginald Sædeger, an ex-Indian judge,
who had <em>actually</em> seen a genuine spirit or ghost.</p>
<p>It is a sad, nay, a melancholy fact (for I have been told
this by the very best authorities) that <em>I am not Psychic</em>, despite
the fact that I have spent days and nights in gloomy, grimly-haunted
chambers and ruins, and even a lonesome Hallowe’en
night on the summit of St Rule’s ancient Tower (my only companions
being sandwiches, matches, some cigars, and the necessary
and indispensable flask), yet, alas! I have <em>never</em> heard
or seen anything the least abnormal, or felt the necessary, or
much-talked-of mystic presence.</p>
<p>Arrived at the old mansion, I was duly ushered in by Slitherwick’s
butler, one Joe Bingworthy, a man with the manner
and appearance of an archbishop, and from whom one always
seemed to expect a sort of pontifical blessing.</p>
<p>There were several fellows there, and I was speedily made
known to Sædeger, a very cheery, pleasant little person, with
dark hair and big eyebrows.</p>
<p>There was a very heated discussion going on when I entered
as to what was really a properly constituted Cathedral. Darkwood
was shouting, “No Bishop’s Chair, <em>no</em> Cathedral.” “If,”
he said, “a Bishop had his chair in a tiny chapel, it was a Cathedral,
but if a religious building was as big as the Crystal Palace,
and there was no Bishop’s Chair there, it was not one bit a Cathedral.”</p>
<p>I stopped this discussion suddenly by asking <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</SPAN></span>Sædeger
about his ghost, and was told I would hear the whole story
after lunch.</p>
<p>Before we adjourned to the smoke room Sædeger was
telling us he felt a bit knocked up with his long journey. He had
a thirty-six hours’ journey after he left good old Tony-Pandy.
Visions of “Tony Lumpkin,” and “Tony Faust,” in “My
Sweetheart,” flitted through my brain, then I suddenly remembered,
luckily, that “Tony-pandy” was a town in Wales.</p>
<p>Once comfortably seated in the smoke-room with pipes,
cigars, and whisky, Reginald Sædeger became at once the centre
of all the interest.</p>
<p>“Lots of years ago,” he said, in a quiet legal voice, “I
came to visit some friends in St Andrews, and I had a most unaccountable
experience. I will tell you all about it. I never
saw anything supernatural before, and have never seen anything
the least remarkable since; but one night, my first night in
that house, I undoubtedly saw the wraith of the ‘Blue Girl.’”</p>
<p>“What had you for supper that evening?” I mildly asked.</p>
<p>“Only chicken and salad,” was the reply. “I was not
thinking of anything ghostly. If you fix your mind <em>intently</em>
on one thing, some folk can, you can self-hypnotise yourself.
I had no idea but golf in my mind when I went off to roost.”</p>
<p>“Well, drive ahead,” said I.</p>
<p>“I had a charming, comfortable, big old-world room given
me, nice fire, and all that sort of thing,” continued Sædeger,
“and as I was deuced tired I soon went to bed and to sleep.</p>
<p>“I woke suddenly, later, with the firm conviction that a
pair of eyes were fixed on me. I suppose everyone knows that
if you stare fixedly at any sleeping person, they will soon awake.
I got a start when I half-opened my eyes, for leaning on the
mantelpiece staring hard at me in the mirror was a most beautiful
girl in a light blue gauzy dress, her back, of course, was to the
bed, and I saw she had masses of wavy, golden-brown hair
hanging down long past her waist.</p>
<p>“I was utterly astonished, and watched the movements
of this beautiful creature with my eyes almost closed. I felt
sure it was someone in the house having a lark at my expense,
so pretended to be asleep. As I watched, the girl turned round<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</SPAN></span>
and faced me, and I marvelled at the extraordinary loveliness
of her figure and features. I wondered if she was a guest in the
house, and what she was doing wandering about at that time
of night, and if she was sleep-walking? She then glided—it
certainly <em>was not walking</em>—to a corner of the room, and then I
noticed that her feet were bare. She seemed to move along
above the carpet—not on it—a curious motion. She drifted,
and stood beneath a big picture, took out a key and opened
a small aumbrey, or cupboard, in the wall quite noiselessly.
And from this receptacle she took out some small things that
glittered in her pretty fingers, long taper fingers.”</p>
<p>“How on earth did you contrive to see all that in a dark
bedroom?” I sarcastically inquired.</p>
<p>“The room wasn’t dark,” said Sædeger. “I always keep
the light burning in a strange house and in a strange room.”</p>
<p>“Oh, I see,” I replied. “Go on.”</p>
<p>“Well,” continued Reginald Sædeger, “she then turned
and came towards the bed, and I got a more distinct view of
her. I had never seen anyone a bit like her before; it was an
utterly unforgettable face. I have certainly never before, or
since, seen anyone as pretty as she was—yet it was a strange,
<em>unearthly</em> beauty, and her huge forget-me-not blue eyes were a
perfection of pathos. Nearer, and yet nearer, she came,
and when quite close to the bed, she bent over me and raised her
hand with the glittering thing in it high over my head. Then
I made a tremendous spring out of bed, crying loudly, ‘Now
I’ll see who is trying to frighten me.’ I flung out my arms to
grasp her, but they closed on nothing, and to my utter astonishment
I saw her standing smiling at me on the opposite side of
the room.</p>
<p>“That was odd and uncanny enough, but then she gradually
began to disappear, dissolving into a thin blue-grey mist, until
nothing whatever remained—I was absolutely alone in the room
and dumfoundered.”</p>
<p>“What next?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Well! what could I do or think?” said Sædeger. “I
was fairly flabbergasted at the unexpected turn of events. I
admit I felt shaky, so I took a stiff whisky and soda, smoked a<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</SPAN></span>
pipe, and went back to bed to reflect on the matter, and fell
asleep. I was wakened in the morning by my host, Harold
Slitherwick, walking into the room carrying a pony brandy for
me.”</p>
<p>“‘Well, old blighter, how have you slept?’ he asked.</p>
<p>“Then I told him about the blue girl.</p>
<p>“‘Bless my heart! Have you seen her too? Lots of people,
my wife among the number, declare they have seen her; but
as you have seen her now, I really begin to believe there is some
truth in the tale.’</p>
<p>“I then told my host there was no dubiety about the matter,
and pointed out the place under the picture where there was a
cupboard. We both went and looked. There was no cupboard
to be seen.</p>
<p>“‘Very rum thing,’ said my host; ‘there was a murder
once took place in this room ages ago. Perhaps the blue lady
had something to do with it; but let us hunt for your cupboard.’</p>
<p>“On rapping with our knuckles on the wall we found a
hollow spot, scraped off the paper, and there sure enough was the
little door I had seen. We soon forced it open, and discovered
a receptacle, about a foot square, going very deep into the thick
stone wall. There were a lot of things in that place, scissors,
a thimble, a dagger, a work-box, and a lot of old musty, dusty
papers. And then we found a long tress of ruddy-gold hair in an
envelope and a beautiful miniature magnificently painted on
ivory of the blue girl I had seen—every detail, the face, the dress,
the hair, and the bare feet, were perfectly exact. On both the
envelope and the miniature were written the names ‘Ermentrude
Ermengarde Annibal Beaurepaire,’ with the date 1559.</p>
<p>“We then examined the old documents which gave us some
clue to the mystery. It was a very long story that we had to
read over, but I will tell it to you briefly. Long ages ago this
ancient house was the property of a Frenchman, Monsieur
Louis Beaurepaire. He had an only and lovely daughter of
twenty, named Ermentrude Ermengarde Annibal Beaurepaire,
who was intended to be a bride of the Church, otherwise a nun.
This idea, apparently, did not appeal to her views. She passionately<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</SPAN></span>
loved a young student, and was equally beloved by
him, whose name was Eugene Malvoisine.</p>
<p>“All went well it seems, for two years, and they were to be
married in the Cathedral at Easter. All the arrangements were
complete for the nuptials; but fortune is a fickle jade, and willed
it otherwise. A rival turned up on the scene in the person of
Marie de Mailross, a cousin of the Beaurepaires, and a frequent
guest at their house. Ermentrude found that her beloved
Eugene had proved faithless, and transferred his youthful
affections to the lovely Marie, and that a speedy elopement
was pending.</p>
<p>“Ermentrude went and consulted a wise woman, otherwise
a witch, who resided in Argyll, outwith the Shoegate Port. This
witch, by name ‘Alistoun Brathwaite,’ used her evil powers on
the fair Ermentrude, and enraged her jealousy to fury and a desire
for revenge, and presented her with a potion, and a cunning,
well-wrought dagger.</p>
<p>“The witch threw a spell over Ermentrude, and took all
the good within her away, and implanted evil passions within
her breast. It seems that Marie of Mailross slept in this old
room, and one night Ermentrude, willed by the witch, went to
Marie’s bedside, and planted the dagger in her heart, and she
died. It seems Ermentrude disappeared, and was never seen
or heard of again, and was supposed to have drowned herself
at the Maiden Rock—hence the name it bears.</p>
<p>“That,” said Sædeger, “is my quaint tale. The room I
slept in was the very room in which in ages past, Marie was done
to death by Ermentrude, and it seems to have been my lot to see
Ermentrude and discover the secret that lay in that old cupboard.”</p>
<p>We all thanked Sædeger, and after thoughtfully consuming
a few more whiskies and sodas, and a few more cigars, went off
to the Links pondering deeply.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="A_Very_Peculiar_House">A Very Peculiar House.</h2>
<p>Last time I visited Cambridge I was invited by a friend to
meet a party of merry undergraduates. They had all nicknames,
and what their real names were I cannot remember.
There was Mike, and Whiffle, Toddie, Bulger, the Infant, Eddie
Smith from Ramsgate, and the Coal Scuttle. We had a most
sumptuous repast, as only can be supplied by first-class Cambridge
kitchens, and to which we did ample justice. We were
smoking after lunch when they informed me that they had
taken the liberty of making an engagement for me to go to tea
with such a dear old lady called Sister Elfreda at a house in
Bridge Street, opposite St Clement’s Church, on the following
day at 4.30, as she wished to tell me some ghostly experiences
she had had at St Andrews. Of course I said I would very gladly
go. They asked me before I went if I could take them behind
the scenes that night at the Cambridge Theatre. This I had to
flatly refuse, as no undergraduates are allowed within the sacred
precincts of the stage door. Next day was a damp, raw, typical
Cambridge day. I wended my way to Bridge Street, and easily
found the house I was going to, as I had once lodged there.
The rooms were kept by two old women who might be called
decayed gentlewomen. Their name was Monkswood, and they
had been nicknamed “The Cruets,” namely, “Pepper” and
“Vinegar.” Very different from them was their niece, a lovely
young actress, who was known on the stage as Patricia Glencluse,
who was quite the rage in musical comedy, and who,
it was rumoured abroad, would soon become a Duchess. The
door was opened by Patricia herself, who said, “Oh, I thought
it might be you. Sister Elfreda told me you were coming to
tea. You will like her, she is such a darling—just like the
“Belle of New York,” only grown older. If you write anything<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</SPAN></span>
about what she tells you, mind you send it to me, to the
Whittington Company, ⸺ Theatre, Birmingham.” “Of
course I will,” I said, “and I will put you in it.” “Now come
along upstairs and I will introduce you to her,” she said. She
tapped at a door and then opened it, and ushered me into the
presence of the Sister. “Look here, Sister,” said Patricia,
“I have brought the ghost man from St Andrews to see you.
Here he is.” “Very good of you,” said the Sister as she shook
hands with me warmly. “You know,” she said, “I have read
all your ghost tales.” She then told Patricia to run downstairs
and send the servant up with tea. Then we seated ourselves
down to tea and muffins, and the old lady related her story.
She said:—“I wanted very much to tell you of a little experience
I had some months ago. I was asked to come up for a short
time to look after an invalid lady who lived at St Andrews.
Well, I arrived safely there, and went from the station to the
house in a ’bus. It was an old house, and when I entered I
felt a queer sort of creepy sensation come over me such as I had
never experienced before. I was ushered into the presence of
my host and hostess and the invalid lady. He was a splendid
example of an old British soldier, and his wife was a pretty,
fragile-looking old piece of china. The invalid lady I found
only suffered from nerves, and very little wonder, I thought,
in such a peculiar house. I had always a fancy that some other
human being resided in the house; but if so, it only remained
a feeling. The name of the cook was Timbletoss, the butler
was Corncockle, and oddly enough they both came from Cambridge.”
“What curious names there are here,” I said to the
Sister; “when I first went to Cambridge I thought the names
over the shops must be some gigantic joke—a man once suggested
to me that someone must have been specially engaged
to come to Cambridge and invent those wonderful names.”
“Well,” continued the Sister, “it really was a most extraordinary
house. I had never seen anything out of the common
before, and I have never seen anything like that house since.
The servants told me most remarkable tales—how the bedclothes
were twitched off the bed in the night by unseen hands,
and how the tables and chairs rattled about over the floor, and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</SPAN></span>
the knives and forks flew off the table. Curious little coloured
flames known there as “Burbilangs” used to float about in the
air at night, and Corncockle, the butler, said the beer taps in
the cellar were constantly turned on and the gas turned off.
The servants had to have their wages considerably raised to
keep them in the house. At luncheon on several occasions
the lady used to jump up and run out of the room in great haste,
and did not reappear till dinner, when she looked very white and
shaky. On two occasions I was ordered to go at once to my room
and lock the door and remain there until the old Squire sounded
the hall gong. They seemed very much perturbed when I got
down again. I will only mention one or two curious things I
saw. One was a quaint creature called the ‘Mutilated Football,’
which stotted downstairs in front of me, and when it
reached the lobby a head and a pair of arms and legs appeared,
and it pattered off down the cellar stairs at a breakneck speed.
The story goes that this creature was once a great athlete and
football player, and when he got old and fat would insist on still
playing, though warned not to do so. He got such a severe
kick that his ribs were broken, and he died on the field. I
never heard the true story of the ‘Animated Hairpin,’ but I saw
it once seated in an armchair in the dining-room. It looked
as if it had on black tights and close-fitting black jersey. It had
a very long white face, with great round eyes like an owl’s and
black hair standing on end to a great height. When it saw me
it got up quickly from the chair, bowed very low till its head
nearly touched the ground, and then walked in a most stately
manner out of the room. Then I saw ‘The Green Lady’—a
tall, beautiful girl with very long hair and a rustling green
brocaded dress. She glided along as if on wheels. That this
was no imagination of mine may be drawn from the fact that
one day when I had a little girl to tea she suddenly clutched
my arm and asked me who that beautiful lady in green with
the long hair was, who had gone past the door on roller skates.
I will not enlarge now on the bangings, crashes, thumpings,
and tappings that resounded through the rooms at all times
of day and night, sometimes on the ceilings, sometimes on the
walls, and sometimes on the floors. The doors and windows,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</SPAN></span>
too, had a nasty habit of suddenly opening without any visible
cause; and another very curious thing was that one might
be sitting by a very bright fire when, without any apparent
cause, it would suddenly go out, and leave nothing but inky
blackness. The first night I slept in my room in this peculiar
house I examined it most thoroughly, but there was nothing
out of the common to be seen. My door, which I most carefully
locked, flew open with a bang, though the bolt still remained
out. I again closed and re-locked the door, and put a chair
against it, but to my astonishment the door once more flew
open and hurled the chair across the room. After that I decided
to leave the door wide open and see what would happen
next. I got quite accustomed to the ‘Burbilangs’ or flying
lights—they were like pretty fireworks. Nothing more happened
to me for several days, till one morning I awoke about
two o’clock to find a youngish-looking monk seated in an armchair.
‘Fear not,’ he said, ‘Sister Elfreda, I left this earth
many years ago. In life my name was Walter Desmond, but
when I became a monk at St Anthony I was known as Brother
Stanilaus. As a rule I am invisible, but can assume my bodily
shape if necessary. In life I was at St Andrews, Durham, and
Cambridge.’ ‘When in Cambridge,’ I asked, ‘did you know the
writer of St Andrews ghost stories?’ ‘No, I only knew him
by sight. I was very young then, and was somewhat afraid of
him, as I heard when getting on the Links he used to become
very violent if he missed a putt, topped a drive, foozled an iron
shot, or got into any of the numerous ditches which intersect
the Cambridge links. But I came specially to see you to-night
to tell you how to rid this house of the evil influence there is
over it. I have here a manuscript regarding it which I took
from a foreign library, and which I wish you to read and act
upon, and so purify this house and render it habitable, but I
must impose the strictest secrecy on you in regard to what you
read; reveal it to no one.’ ‘But how will you get that paper
back?’ I asked the brother. ‘Oh, time and space are nothing to
us—I got this paper from that distant library only a few seconds
ago, and when you have digested it, it will be immediately replaced
from whence it came; only follow all the directions<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</SPAN></span>
carefully, or my visit will have been of no avail.’ We read the
paper over together most carefully, but of that I may say no
more. ‘Having told you what to do,’ said the monk, ‘I fear I
must hie hence. I have much to do to-night after replacing the
paper.’ ‘I will fulfill all that you have asked me brother,’ I
said, ‘and hope that it will make this house less fearsome.
But before you go, brother,’ I said, ‘as you are a Cambridge man,
why do you not pay a visit to the author of St Andrews Ghost
Stories?’ ‘He would not see me because I would not materialise
myself there, I could only appear as a puff of smoke, or, as it
were, a light fog.’ (‘Thanks, Sister,’ I said, ‘do not ask any
nasty damp fogs to come and call on me.’ She laughed.) The
monk, in vanishing, said, ‘Remember, Sister, no bolts, locks, or
bars can keep us from going where we choose.’”</p>
<p>I got up and thanked her, and proceeded to put on a greatcoat.
“I never wear greatcoats,” I said, “in Scotland, but I am
afraid of the Cambridge damp, so I borrowed this topcoat from
Colonel Churchtimber.”</p>
<p>“You have dropped something out of the pocket,” said the
Sister.</p>
<p>“Hullo,” I said, “this is a piece of classical music which
must belong to Macbeth Churchtimber, the Colonel’s son. Now,
good-night, and many thanks, Sister Elfreda.”</p>
<p>I descended the stairs and said good-night to the Cruets
and Patricia. As I wandered down the street to the theatre in
the damp foggy evening I pondered over what Sister Elfreda
had told me, and as I lit my pipe I kept thinking of those people—“The
Mutilated Football,” “The Animated Hairpin,” and
the “Monk Brother Stanilaus,” to whom locks, bolts and bars
were as nothing, and who had the nasty habit of appearing to
his friends as a damp cloud—a habit, I think, not to be
encouraged.</p>
<p class="tb">Sister Elfreda now informs me that the peculiar house is
now quite “normal,” and that all the “bogies” have vanished
into thin air.</p>
<hr />
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/golf-ad.jpg" width-obs="440" height-obs="700" alt="Advert for Charles Donaldson’s Golf and General Outfitting shop" /> <p class="caption">St Andrews—<i>the home of Golf!</i> Charles Donaldson’s—<i>the home of correct</i> Golf Clothes!</p>
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<p class="caption"><i>Phone No. 112.—Established 1886</i></p>
<p class="caption"><i>TWENTY-ONE BELL STREET</i></p>
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</div>
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