Haunted Scotland (6 page)

‘We were closing up early,’ she said. ‘I was following my normal route, and had gone through the little gate from the Visitor Centre and onto the esplanade when I saw somebody
leaning against the door of a cell on my left-hand side. Assuming it to be a late-comer, I took my time in approaching him but when I arrived at the doorway, there was nobody there.

‘At first I thought he must have gone into the bottle dungeon but when I turned to look, it was empty. You know what it’s like when your mind is on other things? I simply took it for
granted there was somebody there and I can most certainly remember exactly what he looked like – he had long hair and wore a grey coat and trousers with long boots.

‘I also remember him holding what looked like a bunch of keys. If he was neither a tourist nor a member of staff, it must have been a ghost like James Macpherson at Ceres, although I never
actually saw him, only felt his presence. Perhaps the man I saw at the cell door was a jailer, or even a prisoner. He certainly didn’t give the impression he’d noticed me.’

I have to admit that after the saga of James Macpherson, I found Jacqueline’s revelation in St Andrews Castle a trifle lacking
in originality, but then I was
introduced to Monika Delinert, a castle guide since 2000.

Monika had been taking a friend from Austria to see the siege tunnel when she says she most definitely felt a hand grasping her shoulder and pulling her backwards.

‘I thought it must have been my friend and turned to find out what she wanted. She was at least two metres behind me, so it couldn’t have been her hand on my shoulder!’

It was hardly a life-defining moment, but it bothered Monika nonetheless. For weeks afterwards, she would find herself glancing nervously behind her whenever she took parties into the siege
tunnel. Not necessarily of a nervous disposition, she was beginning to question her own sanity when one of the leaders of a school tour mentioned in passing that his father had installed the
original lighting in the tunnel during the 1950s.

It had been a traumatic experience, she was told. The electrician had been going about his business as usual when he too had felt a cold hand on his shoulder, causing him to fall over backwards.
When he had called out in alarm, he had realised that there was nobody else there. It had terrified him to the extent that he refused ever to set foot in that passageway again.

Although I’m not particularly brave, my own reaction under such circumstances, I suspect, would have been one of curiosity rather than fear. It’s easy to say, but I don’t think
that anybody should be unsettled by signals from the past. They happen all the time.

Alison Campbell, a former producer with BBC Scotland, remembers her grandmother Janetta, known in the family as ‘Nannie Campbell’, telling her of a disconcerting incident during the
1940s. Nannie’s husband, the Rev. George Campbell, was Minister of Kinclaven Parish Church, set in the pretty Perthshire countryside beside the River Tay, and they lived in the adjacent
manse, with the kirkyard lying in between.

‘There was no electricity in those days – the manse was lit by paraffin lamps,’ explained Alison. ‘Nannie Campbell played the organ for the Sunday
services, and members of the church choir used to come to the manse on a weekday evening for choir practice. One November evening, as the choir were due to arrive, she realised she’d
forgotten to bring over their hymn books from the church. Taking a small torch – this was deep in the countryside, remember; there were no street lights – she slipped out of the manse
and into the blackness of a moonless night.’

The hinges of the War Memorial gateway into the kirkyard may have creaked as she passed under the stone arch, but otherwise all was silent. She heard no noise as she followed the yellow circle
cast by her torch and strode briskly up to the kirk and opened the door.

‘As she put it to me,’ Alison said, ‘“And then I stepped back with a start, because it seemed to her that the church was full of people! Not only that, but they all
seemed to be wearing oldfashioned clothes from another time entirely.”

‘Nannie Campbell had a moment of panic,’ continued Alison, ‘but then gave herself a shake and told herself not to be silly; that if all these people were in church, they must
be well-intentioned folk. Having reassured hereself, she walked down the aisle between the pews to the far end of the aisle, picked up an armful of hymn books from beside the organ and walked back
again to the front entrance.

‘And all of the time she felt herself being watched by this congregation. She let herself out of the door, walked back across the kirkyard and got on with the choir practice.’

Nannie Campbell was unable to explain it, except that perhaps she had been sensitive enough to ‘tune in’ to a service from bygone days. ‘She was very definite that it was a
real experience,’ said Alison.

Whatever touches us, whatever appears to us, does so because whatever it is, or whatever it was, was once physically there. Think of it in terms of a hologram; everyday
incidents caught in time and in general not in the least way threatening. Instead, we should count ourselves lucky to be chosen. And especially if there is more than one of you involved. Despite
the popularity of ghost tours, the odds of manifestations being experienced at the same time by more than one person are, I am assured, rare.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and the German cabaret producer Lutz Deisinger and I were returning to Edinburgh by car, having had lunch with a friend in the small village of Dull,
west of and above Aberfeldy. It was the first time Lutz had been to central Scotland and, as we were navigating the twisty road towards Weem, he caught sight of the bulk of Castle Menzies rising
against its backdrop of wooded hills.

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘Castle Menzies,’ I replied. ‘It belonged to a Highland clan for 400 years. Bonnie Prince Charlie stayed there for two nights on his way north to fight at the Battle of
Culloden in 1746.’

By this stage we had pulled up in front of the entrance driveway and could see that it was open to the public. ‘Let’s have a look,’ he suggested.

The car park was completely empty and when we arrived in the front hall, the lady seated at a small kiosk table covered with souvenirs looked flustered. ‘We’re closing in twenty
minutes,’ she told us, glancing at her watch. ‘Opening hours are between two and five o’clock, but you can have a quick look around if you wish.’

Despite her distracted welcome, she seemed pleased to see us. ‘It’s been very quiet today,’ she confided.

The interiors of Castle Menzies could never be described as opulent, but the rugged thickness of the walls is impressive, and
there is a dusty, lived in long ago atmosphere
about the rooms. Restored and managed by the Clan Menzies Society, it survives as a typical example of a Highland stronghold that has seen better times.

After inspecting the old kitchen, we made a quick tour of the upper rooms. In one of them was a four-poster bed covered with a beautiful antique blanket. On the first floor we found a long
drawing room hung with portraits of various Menzies chiefs. As we were inspecting the paintings, two women and a small child joined us. As they passed, one of the women turned and smiled, but said
nothing. The child ran ahead excitedly. All three of them appeared to be relaxed and happy.

Time rushed past and since it was almost five o’clock, Lutz and I descended the stairway to the front hall, where the lady behind the table was preoccupied with tidying up. After selling
us a couple of postcards, she said, ‘That’s good, I can close up now.’

‘Don’t forget the people upstairs,’ said Lutz.

‘What people upstairs?’ She seemed surprised.

I explained that we had passed two women and a child in the drawing room, and she looked worried. ‘But there’s been nobody else here today,’ she protested.

‘Yes there are,’ I said. ‘They were on the floor above when we last saw them.’

Lutz nodded in confirmation, and she left the desk to go upstairs and see for herself. We could hear her footsteps clattering around on the floorboards above, and shortly afterwards she
reappeared. ‘There’s definitely nobody else here,’ she announced crossly, adding, ‘You had me worried for a moment.’

Lutz and I looked at each other in amazement. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘It’s not our problem.’

Outside, our car was the only vehicle in the car park. It had started to drizzle, so we headed towards the A9 at speed.

7

It is now over twenty years since the writer and sportsman Maxwell Macleod purchased a seventeenth-century mill conversion on the banks of the River Almond in Midlothian. At the
time he was employed as a freelance journalist, writing articles for a string of newspapers, and had become perfectly accustomed to working late into the night. ‘I was concentrating on a news
story,’ he recalled. ‘I had drunk no alcohol, and the only “flaky” thing going on was that I was nearing a deadline and working at full pitch, so therefore slightly jumpy.
I’d also been drinking copious cups of coffee and needed to answer the call of nature.’

Answering the call required Maxwell to go upstairs to a bathroom where, as he was about to step through the door, he found a strange woman standing beside the radiator, no more than a pace away
from him. ‘She was at right-angles to me and wearing a grey dress of a cheap kind, with a grey lace apron and white shawl,’ he
said. ‘The shawl seemed to be
integrated into her bonnet, which she was holding in place with her left hand. Her right hand was at her side.

‘She had a long nose,’ he added. ‘I couldn’t see her eyes, but I got the impression she was agitated by my company. This was no misty might-have-been hallucination. She
was standing under a bare light bulb as clear as day.

‘Height? No more than five foot one, and she seemed to be standing on something a little below floor level. There was a certain shakiness about her. Her age? She was perhaps in her early
sixties, not much older.’

Unperturbed, Maxwell stood his ground and called out softly to his resident housekeeper, who was in her room downstairs. ‘Anna, come here now!’

There was no response from below, so he shouted out more loudly, ‘Anna, come here NOW!’

Anna shouted back that she had gone to bed, but Maxwell persisted. ‘ANNA!’ At this point, the apparition vanished into thin air.

‘As you know, I’m not the sort of person who sees ghosts,’ asserted Maxwell indignantly. ‘I was working full time as a newspaper reporter at the time. I knew about
writing what I saw, no more, no less. I don’t make things up.’

But as anyone in journalism will tell you, professional newspaper reporters always check out their stories before going into print. On further investigation, therefore, Maxwell discovered that
he was far from being alone in having encountered the lady in the cap and apron. It soon emerged that she was something of a local celebrity.

‘Long before the mill was transformed into a dwelling house, it incorporated a shop,’ he explained. ‘The lady I’d seen was the shopkeeper. Dozens of people around here
have run into her.’

That may well be true, but Maxwell admits he has not had the privilege of seeing her since that first encounter. Perhaps he gave her too much of a shock.

Hauntings, whether we believe in them or not, are rarely life-threatening and it never fails to puzzle me when people speak of being terrified by a ghost. Why should they be?
With the exception of poltergeists and perhaps a handful of comic-strip demons, lost souls are rarely out to get us. We have nothing to be afraid of unless our conscience tells us otherwise.

Nor should we expect the spirits of the past to perform to order. It exasperates me when I hear of friends who have deliberately set out on a ghost hunt and been disappointed when nothing
occurred. It just does not work like that.

Admittedly, there are places and situations where the likelihood of the past overlapping with the present is more probable – period homes filled with the passing of generations; settings
of cruelty, violence and despair. The love and the hate generated within such walls can be overwhelming. But you cannot expect to buy tickets. At least not for the unexpected.

The Citizens Theatre in the Gorbals of Glasgow is a location resonating in end-of-an-era charm, and you can actually feel it: the anxiety behind stage; the excitement of the curtain rising; the
applause of an opening night, and the murmur of the audience as it disperses when the curtain falls. But this is show business and what would you expect otherwise?

Dating from 1878 but renamed the Citizens Theatre with an egalitarian flourish in 1945, the theatre’s commitment to low-priced tickets has made it one of the most innovative stages in
Europe. As a regular supporter during the 1980s, I marvelled at the intimate arena with its sloped seating levels, thinking it hard to find anywhere more compelling for the ghosts
of the stage to linger. But then again, it does not work like that.

Working first with Philip Prowse, then the equally brilliant Robert David MacDonald, Giles Havergal was director of the Citizens Theatre from 1969 until 2003, and is adamant that he never
encountered anything of a supernatural nature over that period. ‘I always found the interiors far too benign and welcoming to be haunted,’ he says, which coming from such a
perspicacious individual was not what I had expected to hear.

However, it does confirm that not everybody is susceptible to the twilight world. Irrespective of creativity, there are those who are infinitely more receptive to shadows than others and in
theatrical circles, the Citizens is famous for its rarely glimpsed occupants.

A typical anecdote, for example, concerned a long-serving member of staff who, finding herself trapped in the Upper Circle during a power cut, was led to safety below by a silent figure wearing
a monk’s habit. At first she had assumed he was a member of the cast, but afterwards found that no such character existed in the play being performed that night.