Gazetteer of Scottish Ghosts

by Peter Underwood

194 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

(1923/2014): Author, broadcaster, historian of the occult; investigator of the paranormal.

Born in Letchworth in Hertfordshire, Underwood wrote prolifically on ghosts and haunted places within the United Kingdom, and was a leading expert on ‘the most haunted house in England’, Borley Rectory.

An early formative experience came at the age of nine, on the day he learnt of his father’s death; that night, he awoke to see an apparition of his father at the foot of the bed.

Around the same time, he was fascinated to learn of a ghost story associated the old house at Rosehall - where his maternal grandparents lived for a time; it contained a bedroom where guests claimed to see the figure of a headless man..

It was at this young age that Underwood's interest in hauntings and psychic matters began to take root.

On January 1942, Underwood was called up for active service with the Suffolk Regiment. After collapsing at a rifle range at Bury St Edmunds, a serious chest ailment was diagnosed. He was discharged, and returned to his employment at the publishing firm J.M. Dent & Sons.

One of his early investigations was the Borley Rectory haunting, where, over a period of years, Underwood traced and personally interviewed almost every living person who had been connected with the mysterious events surrounding the place.

Underwood built upon the legacy of the work of Harry Price, who had investigated Borley before him. Together with Paul Tabori (literary executor of the Price Estate), Underwood was able to publish all his findings in The Ghosts of Borley (1973).

In his autobiography No Common Task (1983), Underwood remarked that ”98% of reported hauntings have a natural and mundane explanation, but it is the other 2% that have interested me for more than forty years”.

Having joined The Ghost Club back in 1947 - at the personal invitation of Harry Price, Underwood was to become its President for over thirty years: from 1960 to 1993.

Underwood was a long-standing member of the Society for Psychical Research and the Savage Club. In 1976, a bust of him was sculpted by Patricia Finch - winner of the Gold Medal for Sculpture in Venice.

In recognition of his more than seventy years of paranormal investigations, Underwood became the Patron of The Ghost Research Foundation (founded in Oxford), which termed him the King of Ghost Hunters.

Reviews

[Lise]

I bought that book many years ago but only started reading it. So far the ghostly encounters of the Ferguson Brothers on their way to Annan and the story of the peddler who was murdered have captivated my attention. I read along the way the ghost of William Wallace haunts a certain place where he set a property on fire and killed some English soldiers disposing of their bodies nearby and it has been labelled Wallace's larder.

Can't wait to read more. I love a good ghost story and Scotland has its share of Scottish ghosts. I visited Eilan Donan Castle in 2006 and the curator told us a Spanish ghost was haunting a room devoid of furniture. Most of my fellow travelers didn't have the experience a young Australian man and me had. We were both standing at the back of our group watching over their shoulders the pictures hanging on the wall. He was on the far left and I was on the far right so really not close enough to prank each other. He turned around suddenly and looked behind him and he had a stunned look on his face. I stayed after the group went down curious to see what would happen in that room. As I concentrated on the picture hanging on the wall which was of the most recent ancestors of the owners of Eilean Donan, I heard somebody whispering to me in my ear. I turned around and there was nobody. I'm not afraid of ghosts so I simply assumed it was Carlos' way of welcoming me at Eilean Donan Castle.

As i was heading down to join the others, I saw the young Australian man talking to the curator. He still looked stunned. I found out he had an encounter with Carlos too. Before I was joining them though I got lost as to where to go down. I saw a serving maid wearing an old fashioned costume and I was about to ask her in which direction to go when she simply walked into a wall and disappeared. Like I said I'm not afraid of ghosts. I mentioned that sighting to the curator who was impressed and admitted that there was more than Carlos haunting Eilean Donan Castle. My ghostly maid in white had worked at Eilean Donan Castle in the 19th century, died of a broken heart there. Fascinating. Now I need to go to Hampton Court and try to spot Lady Anne Boleyn who is said to walk there.

I have to say we passed Glencoe without stopping there and we came at some point to this huge mountain in Glencoe which though it was sunny that day was in the shadow with bluebells, heather and other plants growing at its foot. It had an ominous air about it and felt very eerie. I have no doubt Glencoe is haunted especially because of the massacre that took place there on February 16, 1693 when the Campbells murdered the MacDonals living there who had open their homes to them in good hospitality. That massacre was such that even the King of England was horrified by it and ordered that all Campbells should be executed. This is why most of them fled to France and to the new world. Once again it was wanting to destroy a group of people for the sins of one person who was a Campbell.

That day not only did the 38 Lairds of the MacDonald Clan did perish in their sleep but old people, children and women who had fled to the mountains to avoid also being slaughtered died of the cold and starvation. This happened in the heart of winter. The Scots feel very seriously about hospitality which to them is sacred and like the king had ordained, anybody coming upon a Campbell had the right to kill them on the spot. If the 38 lairds were buried on an island near Glencoe, the thousands who died in the mountains probably lie in massive graves in Glencoe. Doesn't it make you shiver with both horror and sadness? That mountain I saw that day gave me goosebumps. I felt sadness and pain.

The same happened at Culloden Moor. We were 2 women to have felt that while visiting Culloden, Valerie, a Welsh woman and me. I could almost hear the pain and fear of those who died there. Each grave marker is not for one man but for thousands of his clan. The cairn monument to the Dead of Culloden was built with the stones the illiterates Highlanders left behind to sign up to fight the Lowlanders during the Jacobite wars. All those stones used for the building of the cairn are all the stones that were never claimed back, the stones of all those men who died there.

Scotland is a beautiful country but it has a very bloody and sad story and yet your heart skip beats gazing at the Munroes, the lochs, the glens, breathing the air which is fresher than anywhere else and seeing the sky change colors whatever time of the day you pass through the same glen.

More about those interesting Scottish ghosts later on.

Up to now some very scary ghosts. One woman with half a body giving hot kisses. It seems her jealous husband cut her to pieces. One woman in green being taken away by the Devil and coming back to haunt her employees only revealing to an old nurse why she had been taken away, it was a tale of murder and greed. Mysterious scary apparitions in certain areas, one even happening in Glencoe but it wasn't some 17th century Highlander but rather a modern enough ghost trying to catch a train which didn't pass anymore.

So far it makes me want to go back to Scotland and take a tour of haunted places.

One haunting even inspired Sir William Scott when he wrote the Bride of Lammermoor. Poor unfortunate Janet Dalrymple was forced to marry Lord Dunbar while she loved somebody else. On their wedding night, the bride shrieked, when some people broke through the door, the bridegroom had been stabbed but he survived. She became insane and died as did the man she had loved. The bridegroom refused to say what had happened and who stabbed him. He fell off his horse eventually after remarrying and died.

The saddest so far is the lady in green. She is harmless but so sad nobody will go near her. She is rumored to be a bride who borrowed green from kelpies and forgot to pay them and so they took her away.

I wonder if anybody happening to be in Glencoe at dusk would encounter ghosts there. I had the impression it was haunted. More later on.

The scariest I read about so far was a castle where people suffered from the plague and their neighbors wouldn't let them escape. So everybody died in the castle. There was a room where on a table there were skulls.

Inveray Castle also has an interesting story of haunting. The Laird Black Jack Campbell when he died asked to be buried in the old graveyard but they buried him in a vault elsewhere. 3 times his coffing rose out of the ground when somebody remembered his wishes and floated his coffin all the way to Inverey where he was finally buried there. Many years later, some men came upon his rotting coffin and each took a tooth as a keepsake. They were visited in a dream by Black Jack himself who demanded they should return his teeth. Which they did and his ghost was never seen again after that.

There is an interesting story about somebody called James Carnegy who had make a pack with the Devil who was a teacher at a university (seriously! I'm not making this up). The Devil would take the soul of the last student to leave the classroom. Carnegie struck a bargain with the Devil that only his shadow should be taken by the Devil. Of course the legend goes to say that in the end Carnegie's soul went to the Devil.

Some of the other ghost stories so far are about weird creatures appearing out of nowhere scaring the person who made the mistake to go anywhere near where the creature is known to haunt. The latest one was something that changed from a very tall man to mishapen horse.

One interesting sorry is that of Lord and Lady Seton when they went to Egypt. Lady Seton became fascinated by a heart shaped bone and basically took it home with her. From that moment, they knew no peace. The bone would move in its case, a servant even saw a figure dressed in ancient Egyptian garment. Eventually Lord Seton burned the bone much to Lady Seton's displeasure and their marriage fell apart. She remarried but died young.

Now I'm reading about Pleatin Jean, a tragic ghost seduced by a scoundrel lor Robert who abandoned her and as she ran after him, she fell and his carriage crushed her skull and to this day she is known to appear where Lord Robert lived though the property was destroyed. The inhabitants of that area of Scotland are found of her so I guess she is not a threatening or dangerous ghost.

I read something so sad this morning. In a castle, in a part that had been unoccupied for years, a new governess had her room there and started hearing the sobs of a child with the sound of a toy. They investigated and when they tried to access the room where they came from which was above that of the governess, they found it had been condemned and some bricks put there to hide the entrance of the room. They broke down in there and found the skeleton of a child with the remains of his toys. The poor child had been walled in, and starved to death.

Then there is the story of an evil lord who tried to seduce the beloved of a trumpeteer. Her name was Agnes. To get rid of his rival, the evil lord had him sent to the colonies from which the trumpeteer came back to find out that his beloved Agnes had died and he soon died too of a broken heart (how romantic and tragic!) and started haunting the castle of the evil lord.

There is also the tale of an evil lord who would slaughter convenenters. He found out 2 men who had stayed and came to talk to him were part of that group, old Geordie and his son. He locked them up in the dungeon, went to drink and as he grew drunker, he grew angrier. He went to kill them impaling them on hooks. When old Geordie's wife, Isobel, came asking about her husband and son, he told her they were locked up in the dungeon. She asked to see them. When she saw them impaled on the hooks, she cursed the evil man claiming he would never find a moment of rest till the end of his life and he died soon haunted by the ghosts of his victims.

Now there is the tale of a farmer, a sour man in his 50ies who kept to his own. His neighbors were surprised to see him come home after a trip with a young bride. At first he seemed happier but then his bad character came back and all the servants left except for a newly hired young Irish man. One day the farmer said his wife had left him with the Irish young man and they had stolen money from him. Like if he was cursed, his animals started dying and he needed help burying them. When they came to part of his land to bury some of them, he tried to stop the men but too late as they unhearted the bones of a man and woman: his wife's and the Young Irishman's. He was arrested for their murder, put to death and soon after his farmhouse fell in ruins as nobody wanted to live there.

I'm presently reading about ghosts on the Isle of Iona. A man saw a viking ship emerge from nowhere and attack monks long dead centuries ago. He also stopped a man from drowning and the man told him he had seen the abbey like it was centuries ago and there was a causeway and he was trying to reach the abbey using the causeway which no longer exists.

There is also the tale of an Italian woman who went there and was found naked with a knife in her hand and the chain around her neck had turned black. It seems there is a place on Iona where ghosts can call you to your doom.

Now in Canada there is a weather site which claims ghosts to not exist and I guess they've never been to Glencoe, Eilean Donan and other places. I believe that if something horrible happened somewhere or if somebody was so happy living somewhere their ghosts might haunt the place.

I just read in Angus about an evil lord who once told his wife that he'd be better off with a she-devil from Hell as she would be hotter in bed. Like they say, be careful what you wish for. As he was strolling, he met a beautiful woman who was busy spinning thread (because of women spinning, lol) and he started having an affair with her. One day he was caught be his wife and tried to argue that nothing was going on. Later on when he was alone, a hare attacked him and wounded him and he cut off the hare's paw. He was very distraught and finally admitted to his wife what he had tried to hide to her. He wanted to show her the hare's paw but to his horror, it was now a woman's hand. He went to visit his lover and she was nursing a bloody stump as his lover was actually an old wicked hag. He did everything to rid himself of the stump but it kept reappearing and when he tried to burn it, he was found dead the next day with traces of strangulation around his neck probably caused the hand. What happened to the wicked hag, it seems she disappeared. Like I said don't you like a good ghost story and Scotland seems to have many.

I'm almost done. I just read about Castle Banogowan (not sure of the name) where you have the ghosts of Black Andrew, a leech of the worst kind who would force the women to work in the fields naked. He was infamous for murders and rapes. He was finally executed by a man from the Clan of Ross, a rope was tied around his neck and he was pushed out of a window where he struggled till he finally expired. To this day he still haunts the place. Also there is the ghost of a murdered Scottish princess who could be also known as the lady in grey. She is said to be a gentle ghost. Several skeletons were found at that castle.

Scotland being an old country which existed even in the time of Jesus Christ under another name when it was occupied by the Picts who left traces of their ruling over there ( the prefix "Mac" comes from the Picts meaning "son of", their jewellery, those big brooches they used to tie together the folds of their mantles, their monuments and even the name of some old towns in Scottish Gaelic) prior to being defeated by the Scotties, Irish outlaws who then gave their name to what must have been Pictland, it is not surprising that it should be so haunted. As bonnie as the Scots themselves call it, it is a land full of blood and horrifying stories.

It is a land also full of passion so no surprises if some of those ghosts could be haunted tragic lovers murdered by a jealous man who had hoped to marry the maiden. There are stories of ghosts appearing only to warn somebody of their future demise and not all of those ghosts were dangerous.

Just going to Eilean Donan Castle and seeing the mist rising around it giving to the castle and air of magic, of something just appearing out of thin air tells you how mysterious and haunted it can be. Just walking through Glencoe which is so painfully beautiful may make you want to hurry on your way because of the eeriness of the place. Is it any surprise when you learn the history of the place and find out that over thousands of people died during the massacre of February 1693. No, just the 38 chieftains were slain but you had thousands, old people, women and children who sought refuge away from the massacre in the mountains and died of hypothermia and starvation. As bloody as is the history of Scotland, that massacre shocked all of Scotland and even the King of England himself who decreed that anybody coming across a Campbell had the right to kill them on the spot. Because of the hatred and envy of one man from that clan, many of his clan, innocents, perished and some had to flee to France and even to the new world to survive. Hospitality is sacred in Scotland.

And yes, Culloden Moor is haunted. How can it not be haunted when the souls of thousands lie there under one marker by clans, having perished in the bloodiest fraticide war Scotland has known, that of the Jacobites, where lowlanders fought highlanders, brothers against brothers? If you need to see just what a bloody war it was, just count the stones they used to build the cairn to the dead: all those stones were the stones men who couldn't read or write used to enroll into the Jacobite army. All those stones were all those men who never came back. All of them are buried under single markers representing their own clan.

So whether or not you believe in ghosts, this book is a fascinating read. It gives you chills in some of the chapters because of the haunting taking place.