Haunted Scotland Read online

  ‘Good to do business with you,’ said Angus hesitantly, as the old man took his leave.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ came the response.

  For no particular reason, Angus found himself unable to discard the image of the old man in the heavy tweed coat. Having closed the shutters, he made himself a cup of coffee and settled himself down in the Orkney chair. It was the first time he had actually made use of it, and, as he lowered himself into its womb-like enclosure, everything around him began to shift and change.

  Gone were the papered shop walls hung with prints and brica-brac. The front counter and random pieces of Chippendale, the Georgian sideboards, tables and brass fenders were no more. Instead, Angus now found himself in a spartan room, its stone walls dimly lit by the flickering of an open peat fire. The floor upon which his feet rested was flagstone and cold, and crudely inserted into the walls on either side of the fireplace were two bunk beds.

  Angus blinked. He must be hallucinating, he concluded. He blamed it on the strength of the black South American coffee in his mug. Then he noticed that the old man had returned, but no longer wore the heavy coat. Instead, he was warming himself in front of the fire in a linen shirt, his baggy tweed trousers supported by string braces.

  And the old man was not alone. Seated in a high-backed Orkney chair identical to the one Angus was occupying himself was a woman with a heavy shawl draped over her shoulders. Her coarse brown hair was tied back in a bun, and she seemed pre-occupied with her knitting.

  Gone was the outside noise of traffic heading into the centre of Glasgow and west towards Dumbarton. Instead, Angus heard only the strength of the wind, a vast, ceaseless roar that pounded the senses as the peat in the fireplace flared and smoked.

  The man seemed younger, he thought, although still rough and unkempt. The woman, whose face had a shiny pink surface, must presumably be of a similar vintage. There was a dusty, otherworldly look about the two of them. It was all far too peculiar for Angus to get his head around.

  Then, as quickly as the vision had emerged, everything returned to normal. In a state of disbelief, Angus hastily pulled himself out of the high-backed chair and strode into the back shop to pour the remains of his coffee into the sink. Having locked the doors and switched on the alarm system, he headed home.

  Never an early riser, it was around 11.15 the next morning when Angus opened up the shop, and it was only then that it crossed his mind that his visitor of the night before might have already been and gone. This was exactly the thought he was turning over when he closed the shop door behind him and realised something was wrong.

  Everything else was in its place, but he saw, to his horror, that the high-backed Orkney chair had gone. Appalled, he looked about, wildly checking the windows and locks for signs of a break-in. No, everything with the exception of the chair was exactly as it had been left the previous day.

  It defied explanation. It was absurd. What on earth was he to say to the old man when he returned to collect his chair? That it had vanished overnight? He would think him crazy, and there was the small matter of the payment. Angus would have no alternative but to give it back.

  Momentarily, he contemplated calling in the police, but there was no evidence of a break-in. The shop door had definitely been locked; the windows shuttered. Angus was utterly baffled. The chair had definitely been in its place when he had last seen it.

  All of that day and over the weeks and months that followed, Angus anxiously awaited the return of the old man. Every second day he rehearsed what he would say to him and speculated as to how he might react. A year passed and the lease of the shop in Great Western Road came to an end. Angus moved premises. He never saw the old man or the high-backed Orkney chair ever again.

  Time-slips manifest themselves in a great many ways. Sometimes you see something; sometimes you do not. The past and the present and the future overlap seamlessly, but every now and then something goes wrong.

  ‘Nae man can tether time or tide’, is a favourite quote from Robert Burns’s Tam o’ Shanter, and it is therefore perhaps all the more appropriate that one of the more contrary examples of chronology I have come across should have occurred within a few miles of the bard’s birthplace.

  Molly Peaston is the locations editor for a well-known London-based homes and interiors magazine, and comes regularly to Scotland to seek out stylish country houses to write about and photograph. Having made several visits to the west coast, she made contact with the late James Hunter Blair, owner of Blairquhan, an imposing William Burn neo-Greek masterpiece near Maybole. Ever the generous host, Hunter Blair enthusiastically invited her to lunch and she set off from Glasgow in her hire car.

  Never particularly good at following directions, Molly decided she had travelled the requisite distance when she arrived at a lodge and some imposing gates which, according to her calculations, must have been those of Blairquhan.

  The driveway was typical: narrow, pitted with pot holes and flanked on either side by ditches and a tangle of bushes and trees. It seemed to go on forever until, turning a bend, she could see ahead of her a fine Palladian house. ‘Wow,’ she thought to herself.

  Excited at her find, she stopped the car immediately below the front steps, and, having climbed them, eagerly tugged the bell-pull on the right of the front door. In the distance, she could hear a hollow clanging sound, but there was no response. She tried again, once more without success. Noticing that the door stood slightly ajar, she gave it a gentle push and stepped inside. ‘It was amazingly palatial, with a wonderful high ceiling,’ she recalled afterwards. ‘On the walls on either side of the vestibule were stags’ antlers and sporting trophies.’

  Molly called out to announce her presence, and, after a short wait, a middle-aged woman appeared. ‘I’m here to take photographs,’ Molly informed her, at which the woman nodded and showed her into a spacious drawing room furnished with chintz-covered sofas and lavishly hung ancestral portraits. When Molly turned to ask what she should do next, the woman was no longer there.

  ‘Ah well, I thought to myself, I might as well get on with it,’ Molly told me later.

  Exploring the rooms, Molly snapped away with her Instamatic camera to record everything she thought would interest her editor who, if she liked what she saw, would almost certainly commission a professional set of pictures from one of the magazine’s freelance contributors.

  ‘I was starting to feel hungry so I went to see if I could find the woman I’d met in the hall,’ said Molly. ‘I called out, hoping she’d hear me, but there was just nobody around. Finally, I thought I’d have a go at telephoning Jamie on my mobile. After all, he had invited me to lunch, and although I wasn’t expecting him to come up with a full-blown luncheon, it seemed a bit odd he hadn’t put in an appearance to welcome me. A bowl of soup would have done just fine.’

  When Jamie answered her call he sounded puzzled. ‘I was loyally expecting you at least an hour ago,’ he told her. ‘I thought you’d probably got lost.’

  ‘No, I’m here already,’ she replied. ‘I’ve been going around the house taking photographs. I hope that’s OK?’

  There was a silence on the other end of the phone.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Jamie at last. ‘I’ve been here all morning. I would have seen you.’

  A feeling of apprehension began to dawn on Molly.

  ‘Does your house have large pillars at the door, and a large marble hallway?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Jamie.

  ‘Do you have a housekeeper who wears a calf-length patterned skirt? And is there a wide staircase with a full-length portrait of a woman on the landing?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of,’ said Jamie.

  ‘Oh my God, I think I’m in the wrong house,’ said Molly.

  ‘Describe it to me,’ continued Jamie, falling silent as she did so.

  As best she could, Molly filled in the details. When she had finished, she thought Jamie sounded strangely distant.

  ‘I think y
ou should go back down the drive you arrived on and follow the road signs south towards Maybole,’ he told her calmly. ‘Keep your mobile phone on so I can talk you in.’

  Molly followed his instructions and much to her relief arrived at Blairquhan some twenty minutes later. Sitting down to enjoy a bowl of soup and a glass of wine, Jamie asked her to slowly go over again where she had been and what she had seen.

  ‘It can’t be more than twenty miles from here,’ she told him and he nodded thoughtfully. When she had finished, he seemed to be confused.

  ‘I think the place you’ve been describing to me is probably Montgomerie House, which is next to Tarbolton,’ he told her.

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ she said. ‘I thought I was going mad.’

  ‘There’s only one problem,’ continued Jamie. ‘Montgomerie House, which used to belong to the Arthur family, loyal friends of mine, was sold in the 1960s. Shortly after that it was burned to the ground in a fire. There is nothing left of it. You can just make out where it was by the markings in the field, but everything else has gone.’

  Molly looked askance. ‘But I have photographs of the rooms!’ she protested.

  To be certain, the two of them later that day retraced Molly’s journey back to Tarbolton and, sure enough, as soon as they turned into the drive, she saw that the mansion had vanished. Thankfully Jamie was highly amused at her predicament.

  ‘Make sure you send me the photographs when you get them developed,’ he reminded her as she set off in her car again towards Glasgow. ‘Now those will be interesting!’

  Remember that this was in the early days of digital photography and before the science was improved, most glossy magazines still preferred to use film. As soon as she was back in her office, therefore, Molly handed over her spools to be processed, but to her bitter disappointment, and eternal bewilderment, when her pictures were returned they were found to be over-exposed. Virtually nothing in the images was identifiable, only the faint outline of a large exterior building, a washed-out interior staircase and a series of seemingly empty spaces. All of the pictures were two-tone, with a yellowish milky substance seeping over the surfaces. It was as if they had been dropped in acid.

  ‘Nothing like that has ever happened to me before,’ Molly informed Jamie over the telephone. ‘You must think I’m completely off my trolley. But I was there. I really was. I know I was. I couldn’t have made it up.’

  Jamie was sympathetic. ‘That sort of thing happens a lot in Ayrshire,’ he said kindly.

  12

  A STATE OF GRACE

  But let me breathe my heart’s warm flame,

  Aneath yon auld tree’s aged frame,

  Where friendship past may justly claim

  A silent tear,

  To trace ilk rudely-sculptured name

  O’ comrades dear.

  Richard Gall, Address to Haddington (1819)

  The village of Sauchie in Clackmannanshire consists of a quiet, close-knit community, and it was into this safe environment that the eleven-year-old Virginia Campbell arrived with her mother in 1960. They had come to live with her elder brother and his family, whilst their father remained in Ireland to sell the family farm in Donegal.

  It proved a major upheaval for a young girl. Moreover, Virginia desperately missed her only friend, Annie, and her dog, Toby. The situation was further exacerbated when her mother took employment at a boarding house in Dollar. Virginia not only found herself obliged to share a bed with her younger niece Margaret, but having to attend a new school.

  All of this led to an escalating sense of unhappiness and frustration, and on a November night, both of the girls came racing downstairs from their bedroom to inform their startled parents that they had heard a strange noise in the room above. Their arrival at the foot of the stairs coincided with what sounded like a bouncing ball following them.

  Over the week that followed, loud knocking sounds were heard after the girls had gone to bed and the local minister, the Reverend TW Lund, was approached for his advice. On visiting the house after the girls had been sent to bed, he too heard the loud knockings and suggested that perhaps they came from the head board. When a heavy linen chest began to rock from side to side before rising from the floor and moving in the direction of the bed, it became obvious that something needed to be done about it fast. The following night there were further knocking sounds. A china vase moved. An apple rose from out of a bowl and a sewing machine started to whir all on its own.

  Such bizarre occurrences were not restricted to the family’s home. In Virginia’s schoolroom, her teacher, Margaret Stewart, witnessed a desk rise off the ground, and when Virginia approached it, a blackboard pointer started to vibrate before falling onto the floor. Virginia was becoming increasingly dazed and hysterical. Anyone could see that medical help was urgently required.

  Neither Dr WH Nisbet nor Dr William Logan, the local practitioners, had encountered anything like this before, and they decided to install a tape recorder and movie camera in the girls’ bedroom to capture sound and movement, including Virginia becoming hysterical. Meanwhile, the Reverend Lund and three of his colleagues prayed for divine intervention.

  The turmoil lasted several weeks. Investigators were baffled until, as soon as Virginia was reunited with her dog Toby, the noises stopped.

  Shortly before he emigrated to Canada in 1970 to become director of the Toronto-based New Horizons Research Foundation, the well-known geneticist and university lecturer Dr George Owen was asked for his opinion and attributed the entire episode to prepubescent energy brought on by Virginia’s homesickness and shyness. There was no trickery involved. The Campbell family appeared to be loving and stable.

  Which all goes to prove that the power of the subconscious is a formidable opponent when aroused.

  Exorcism is far more regularly practised than is generally thought. In Chapter Two, I mentioned Gordon McNeill-Wilkie and the cleansing of Ashintully Castle. Similarly, Bill Caffrey’s involvement with Dunans Castle in Chapter One. More commonly, however, it is the Church that is called upon to expel demons. The New Testament refers to exorcisms in the context of the miracles of Jesus Christ, but while Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Islamic and Protestant faiths all acknowledge the skills employed, I have generally found most members of the priesthood extremely reluctant to commit themselves on the subject.

  And if anything, the release of the 1973 Hollywood film The Exorcist, based on the novel by William Peter Blatty, made matters worse. In Germany, two priests were given suspended jail sentences for performing the exorcism ritual sixty-seven times on a mentally ill sixteen-year-old girl. The scandal surrounding this was in 2005 the basis for yet another Hollywood blockbuster, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and it was this that allegedly prompted the Catholic Church to introduce training procedures. As recently as 2007, Pope Benedict XVI issued instructions for exorcism squads of trained priests to be set up to tackle a rise in Satanism.

  While not prepared to be either named or cross-examined on the subject, a senior figure in the Church of Scotland reassures me that although he has certainly encountered some bizarre situations, most of the invocation work he has been called upon to perform is pretty mundane.

  ‘When it comes to disturbed human beings, psychiatrists and doctors usually know what they are doing,’ he said. ‘Only now and then do we come up against something genuinely ugly. Mostly it’s folk in their own homes who feel threatened by poltergeists, or an oppressive atmosphere. A blessing usually does the trick. I’m not prepared to go into detail, but so far I have never had to go back and repeat the ritual.’

  A typical story is that of the Lumley family, who were filled with excitement at the prospect of moving into a converted farm steading. At least, that was the impression given by Mike and Poppy to their friends, but their daughters, Mandy and Jennifer, were less enthused at the prospect.

  Previously, they had occupied a three-bedroom tenement flat in the west end of Glasgow and now they were the proud occupants
of a period conversion close to the Falls of Clyde in Lanarkshire. It was what Mike and Poppy had always dreamed of, a step up the property ladder, but from fourteen-year-old Mandy, and Jennifer, aged sixteen, came mixed reactions.

  While both girls warmed to the idea of a bigger house providing more space for them to escape from their parents, neither was exactly overwhelmed by the prospect of living out of town. Both were enrolled at the same fee-paying school and the greater majority of their schoolfriends lived near it. No longer would they be able to casually meet up to go to the cinema after school hours, or chill out at a favourite café at weekends. Added to which, there was the extra effort of a daily commute, although it only involved a half-hour car run. Fortunately, both father and mother worked in close proximity to the school, and both drove.

  So for them, at least, it was not considered a big issue. But for Mandy and Jennifer, the move involved a huge compromise in their accustomed lifestyle.

  ‘You’re taking us to Siberia,’ complained Jennifer once she had thought it through. The truth was that while she liked the idea of living in a posh house, she disliked the idea of the country: endless fields full of smelly animals like cows and horses and, above all, the absence of human beings. Where were the shops and the fun places to hang out?

  So to start off with, the Lumley family’s move to the Lanarkshire countryside was not without disharmony, commencing with Mandy and Jennifer quarrelling over the size of their bedrooms. As the eldest, Jennifer demanded the one on the first level overlooking the driveway, the one her parents had designated as a guest room. Mandy wanted it too, but eventually accepted one with an en-suite shower to the rear of the house, overlooking the river. Eventually, Mike and Poppy gave in to Jennifer, and she was allowed the room she wanted. Their own bedroom, with a small balcony overlooking open fields, was on the far side of the steading, which meant both daughters could make as much noise as they wanted, within reason.