Peter Underwood - Gazetteer of Scottish and Irish Ghosts

Gazetteer of Scottish and Irish Ghosts

Peter Underwood

Underwood Publishing

For
PAMELA and CRISPIN
with love

Contents

ILLUSTRATIONS

ILLUSTRATIONS

[ Visit the places corresponding to each entry in the Gazetteer of Scottish and Irish Ghosts Google Map , and find out more about Underwood's life and work at peterunderwood.org . ]

IRELAND
1. St Michans Church, Dublin
2. The vaults of St Michans Church, Dublin
3. Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin
4. Lake Leane, Killarney, Co. Kerry
5. Lough Derg, Co. Tipperary (1)
6. Lough Derg near Killaloe, Co. Clare (2)
7. Remains of Aughnanure Castle, Oughterard
8. Lough Gur Castle

INTRODUCTION

T he stories of the haunted houses of Scotland and Ireland mirror the life that was once lived in these countries. Perhaps because many of the places are remote and isolated, they have retained for a little longer some remnants of their former history.

The ghost storieseven the legendsoften have a modicum of truth in them and they should be collected and preserved before they become submerged in the cold world of computers.

Such records of a former way of life, of old beliefs and traditions, are on the verge of oblivion. These relics of the past, once so firmly rooted that they were an accepted part of reality are now all but forgotten and when some inexplicable figure is glimpsed for a moment in some ruined castle, no one knows who that form once was or what crime or suffering may have caused the shade to reappear.

I hope this book will help to remedy this state of affairs and that it will add some human element to dry histories of places and people.

I do not claim that all the entries included are factual accounts in the literal sense; but I have endeavoured to present a representative selection of traditional tales of ghostly happenings and well-authenticated instances of ghosts and hauntings, famous and little-known, arranged in alphabetical order of the place at which they are alleged to have occurred.

In December, 1970, I had occasion to write to Mr Frank W. Hansell, the factor of Drummond Castle Estates in Perthshire, and he was good enough to relate a couple of experiences which well illustrate the authenticity of ghostly happenings today:

In the early summer of the year 1931, I was about twenty years of age, and was travelling to Perth with my father, mother, and young sister who was a teenager.

'While proceeding to Perth on what is known as the Gask Road at a point East 985, North 193 (O.S. Grid reference), I noticed at the side of the road at what used to be a watering place for cattle, a female in a most peculiar costume; as a matter of fact she was dressed in the manner of what I would take to be a witch.

'At the time I did not mention this to anyone in the car as I was the driver. However, after proceeding about a mile or two along the road, my sister passed the remark to us all, asking if I had seen the woman who was dressed as I have described at the water hole.

'Of course, I had to tell her that I did. I may say that this place is very near the Auld House of Gask which is famous as the home of Lady Nairne who wrote some very fine Scots poetry and songs.

'I can give you no explanation for this as I did not get out of the car to question the woman or to see if she was actually flesh and blood.

Shortly afterwards I was describing this incident to my dentist, an exceedingly level-headed gentleman with great knowledge, and he told me that the previous week he had seen two teenage boys from Morrisons Academy (sixth formers) and they had described to him a peculiar incident they had seen on the bridge over the River Pow, while they were fishing close by.

'The location of the bridge is East 93; North 25. While they were fishing, there appeared on the bridge a lady and a small child dressed in old fashioned crinoline dressesI should say of the period 1650-1745.

'I understand from my dentist friend that the boys had seen the two figures, separately, and they were not together when they saw the figures on the bridge and when they met this was their first topic of discussion, each one asking the other and explaining what they had seen.

'My friend spoke to the boys, separately, and he was quite sure that they had seen something very strange.

While in a few of the legends and tales of long ago it is difficult to find much substance and reality, I have included many authentic reports of Scottish ghosties and Irish hauntings in past and recent times, from the curious story of disturbances at the Edinburgh home of Sir Alexander Seton after his wife surreptitiously removed an ancient bone from a tomb in Egypt to the whispering ghosts among the mummified remains in the crypt of St Michans Church in Dublin.

Scotland and Ireland have charms that are all their own, not least perhaps because of the magic quality of so much of those majestic and sparsely populated countries whose kindly people accept without question the possibility of visitations from the dead.

There are such individual inhabitants as Lucy Bruce who really did see fairies at the bottom of her garden; Sir Shane Leslie who really did have a family banshee and Captain Sir Hugh Rhys Rankin, Bart., F.S.A., who tells me that he has been followed by the ghost of Oliver Cromwell, seen a Campbell who killed a Stewart of Appin, watched a Norman headless lady carry her own severed head and observed time and time again a bent old hag on the seashore near Barcaldine Home Farm, Benderlock, Argyll, who was driven out of her holding way back after the 45.

Everyone knows that Ireland has leprechauns, often described as a dwarf or gnome in the form of an old man who can be induced only by threats of violence to disclose the hiding-place of his treasure.

Should a leprechaun be caught by human beings, he will purchase his liberty by revealing the location of his crock of gold, which disappears when its hiding-place is discovered.

Not everyone knows that Scotland, too, has individual ghost-like creatures: the kelpie, a ghost-horse and the water-wraith, a young woman dressed in green scowling malignantly at anyone who sees her; while the spectre of Tarbat is an example of the age-old Scottish belief that the ghost of a murdered man is earthbound for the length of time that would have been his span of life, disappearing forever on the day that he would have died had he not been murdered.

In such places as gaunt Glamis Castle and lovely Ben Macdhui it is not difficult to believe that strange things can happen; things that cannot be explained in material or scientific terms. We may all be the better for realizing that there are some things that we cannot yet explain.

I emphasize the yet because I believe all these occurrences and experiences have normal explanations; it is simply that we have not yet discovered the why and the wherefore.