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                         SCOTTISH
                      GHOST STORIES

                            BY

                    ELLIOTT O'DONNELL

                        AUTHOR OF
        "SOME HAUNTED HOUSES OF ENGLAND AND WALES"
      "HAUNTED HOUSES OF LONDON" "GHOSTLY PHENOMENA"
     "TRUE GHOST STORIES" "DREAMS AND THEIR MEANINGS"
                        ETC. ETC. LONDON:
          KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO. LTD.
                           1911




CONTENTS


CASE                                                         PAGE
   I. THE DEATH BOGLE OF THE CROSS ROADS, AND THE
        INEXTINGUISHABLE CANDLE OF THE OLD WHITE HOUSE,
        PITLOCHRY                                               1

  II. THE TOP ATTIC IN PRINGLE'S MANSION, EDINBURGH            25

 III. THE BOUNDING FIGURE OF "---- HOUSE," NEAR BUCKINGHAM
        TERRACE, EDINBURGH                                     41

  IV. JANE OF GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH                         55

   V. THE SALLOW-FACED WOMAN OF NO. -- FORREST ROAD,
        EDINBURGH                                              69

  VI. THE PHANTOM REGIMENT OF KILLIECRANKIE                    91

 VII. "PEARLIN' JEAN" OF ALLANBANK                            105

VIII. THE DRUMMER OF CORTACHY                                 117

  IX. THE ROOM BEYOND. AN ACCOUNT OF THE HAUNTINGS OF
        HENNERSLEY, NEAR AYR                                  135

   X. " ---- HOUSE," NEAR BLYTHSWOOD SQUARE, GLASGOW. THE
        HAUNTED BATH                                          159

  XI. THE CHOKING GHOST OF "---- HOUSE," NEAR SANDYFORD
        PLACE, GLASGOW                                        173

 XII. THE GREY PIPER AND THE HEAVY COACH OF DONALDGOWERIE
        HOUSE, PERTH                                          189

XIII. THE FLOATING HEAD OF THE BENRACHETT INN, NEAR THE
        PERTH ROAD, DUNDEE                                    211

 XIV. THE HAUNTINGS OF "---- HOUSE," IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
        OF THE GREAT WESTERN ROAD, ABERDEEN                   225

  XV. THE WHITE LADY OF ROWNAM AVENUE, NEAR STIRLING          237

 XVI. THE GHOST OF THE HINDOO CHILD, OR THE HAUNTINGS OF
        THE WHITE DOVE HOTEL, NEAR ST. SWITHIN'S STREET,
        ABERDEEN                                              251

XVII. GLAMIS CASTLE                                           263




                          CASE I

    THE DEATH BOGLE OF THE CROSS ROADS, AND THE
      INEXTINGUISHABLE CANDLE OF THE OLD WHITE
      HOUSE, PITLOCHRY


Several years ago, bent on revisiting Perthshire, a locality which had
great attractions for me as a boy, I answered an advertisement in a
popular ladies' weekly. As far as I can recollect, it was somewhat to
this effect: "Comfortable home offered to a gentleman (a bachelor) at
moderate terms in an elderly Highland lady's house at Pitlochry. Must
be a strict teetotaller and non-smoker. F.M., Box so-and-so." The naïveté and originality of the advertisement pleased me. The idea
of obtaining as a boarder a young man combining such virtues as
abstinence from alcohol and tobacco amused me vastly. And then a
bachelor, too! Did she mean to make love to him herself? The sly old
thing! She took care to insert the epithet "elderly," in order to
avoid suspicion; and there was no doubt about it--she thirsted for
matrimony. Being "tabooed" by all the men who had even as much as
caught a passing glimpse of her, this was her last resource--she would
entrap some unwary stranger, a man with money of course, and inveigle
him into marrying her. And there rose up before me visions of a tall,
angular, forty-year-old Scottish spinster, with high cheek-bones,
virulent, sandy hair, and brawny arms--the sort of woman that ought
not to have been a woman at all--the sort that sets all my teeth on
edge. Yet it was Pitlochry, heavenly Pitlochry, and there was no one
else advertising in that town. That I should suit her in every respect
but the matrimonial, I did not doubt. I can pass muster in any company
as a teetotaller; I abominate tobacco (leastways it abominates me,
which amounts to much about the same thing), and I am, or rather I can
be, tolerably amenable, if my surroundings are not positively
infernal, and there are no County Council children within shooting
distance. But for once my instincts were all wrong. The advertiser--a Miss Flora
Macdonald of "Donald Murray House"--did _not_ resemble my
preconception of her in any respect. She was of medium height, and
dainty build--a fairy-like creature clad in rustling silks, with wavy,
white hair, bright, blue eyes, straight, delicate features, and hands,
the shape and slenderness of which at once pronounced her a psychic. She greeted me with all the stately courtesy of the Old School; my
portmanteau was taken upstairs by a solemn-eyed lad in the Macdonald
tartan; and the tea bell rang me down to a most appetising repast of
strawberries and cream, scones, and delicious buttered toast. I fell
in love with my hostess--it would be sheer sacrilege to designate such
a divine creature by the vulgar term of "landlady"--at once. When
one's impressions of a place are at first exalted, they are often,
later on, apt to become equally abased. In this case, however, it was
otherwise. My appreciation both of Miss Flora Macdonald and of her
house daily increased. The food was all that could be desired, and my
bedroom, sweet with the perfume of jasmine and roses, presented such
a picture of dainty cleanliness, as awakened in me feelings of shame,
that it should be defiled by all my dusty, travel-worn accoutrements. I flatter myself that Miss Macdonald liked me also. That she did not
regard me altogether as one of the common herd was doubtless, in some
degree, due to the fact that she was a Jacobite; and in a discussion
on the associations of her romantic namesake, "Flora Macdonald," with
Perthshire, it leaked out that our respective ancestors had commanded
battalions in Louis XIV. 's far-famed Scottish and Irish Brigades. That
discovery bridged gulfs. We were no longer payer and paid--we were
friends--friends for life.