It was in September 1875 that I first met dear old Captain Chester (now gone to his rest); and it was very many years before that date that he rented his fearsomely haunted old house in St Andrews.
I was a Cambridge boy when I met him—how the undergraduates scorn that term “boy.” He told me the following queer tales in the Poppledorf Avenue at Bonn when I was on holiday.
The house he rented at St Andrews, from his accounts, must have been a most unpleasant and eerie dwelling. Rappings and hammerings were heard all over the house after nightfall, trembling of the walls, quiverings. Heavy falls and ear-piercing shrieks were also part of the nightly programme.
I suggested bats, rats, owls, and smugglers as the cause, which made the old man perfectly wild with rage, and caused him to use most unparliamentary language.
I pointed out that such language would probably have scared away any respectable ghost. However, let me tell the story in his own peculiar way.
“My brother and I took the house, sir,” he said, “and we had a nephew and some nieces with us. There were also three middle-aged English servants at the time; and, gadsooth, sir, they had strange names. The cook possessed the extraordinary name of Maria Trombone, the housemaid was called Jemima Podge, and the other old cat was called Teresa Shadbolt.
“One evening I was sitting smoking in my study, when the door flew open with a bang and Maria rushed in.
“‘Zounds! Mrs Trombone,’ I said, ‘how dare you come into my room like this?’
“‘Well, sir,’ she said, ‘there are hawful things going on to-night. I’m frighted to death. I was washing hup, please sir, when something rushed passed me with a rustle, and I got a great smack on the cheek with a damp, cold hand, and then the place shook, and all the things clattered like anything.’
“‘Nonsense, Trombone,’ I said, ‘you were asleep, or have you been drinking, eh?’
“‘Lor’ bless you, sir, no! never a drop; but last night, sir, Teresa Shadbolt had all the bedclothes pulled off her bed twice, sir, and Jane said a tall old man in a queer dressing-gown came into her room and brushed his white beard over her face, and, lor’, sir, didn’t you hear her a-screamin’?’
“‘No, I’m hanged if I did. You must all be stark, staring mad, you know.’
“‘Not a bit of us, master,’ continued Mrs Trombone. ‘There is something wrong about this blessed house—locked doors and windows fly wide open, and the bells keep ringin’ at all hours of the night, and we hear steps on the stairs when everyone is in bed, and knocks, and crashes, and screams. Then the tables and things go moving about. No Christian could put up with it, please sir. We must all leave.’
“Well, I got all those women up, and they told me deuced queer things, but I squared them up at last.”
“How?” I inquired.
“I doubled their wages, sir, and I told them they might all sleep in one room upstairs together, and I promised them a real good blow-out at Christmas, and so on.
“Next my nephew and little nieces saw the old man with the long white beard at various times in the passages and on the stairs. Oddly enough, my little nieces got quite accustomed to see the aged man with the grey beard, and were not a bit timid. They said he was just like the pictures of old Father Christmas, and he looked kind.
“I never saw him,” continued Chester, “till one All Hallows Night, or Hallowe’en as they termed it in St Andrews; but I will speak of that later on.”
“Go on,” I said, “it is very interesting indeed to me.”
“The servants all saw him at times, and that old arch fiend, Trombone, was constantly getting frightened, and breaking things and fainting. I was myself annoyed by strange unearthly sounds when sitting smoking at night late. There were curious rollings and rumblings under the house, like enormous stone balls being bowled along, then a heavy thud followed by intolerable silence. Then there was a curious sound like muffled blinds being quickly drawn up and down; that and a sort of flapping and rustling seemed to pervade the air.
“This perplexed me, and I got in a detective; but he found out nothing at all. After much trouble and research I learned of the legend of the Prior of Pittenweem and his connection with the old house.
“It seems when Moray and his gang of plunderers shut up St Monance Church and the old Priory of Pittenweem, the last Prior (not Forman or Rowles), a very old man, was cut adrift, and for some months lay hidden at Newark Castle, food being brought him by some former monks. Newark Castle was burned, and this old Prior fled to Balcomie Castle. From there he went to Kinkell Cave near St Andrews.
“I know all those places well,” I said.
“After some weeks, and when winter came, he took refuge in the very old house in which I lived. He seems to have been among both friends and foes there, and brawls were quite common things within those walls.
“One night those long dead and forgotten old-world inhabitants were startled from their slumbers by shots, the clashing of arms, and wild yells. To make a long tale short, that old Prior of Pittenweem was never seen by human eyes after that fearful night.
“Many suspected foul play, but in those times it was deemed best to keep one’s mouth shut tight, and what mattered it if an old Prior disappeared?”
“They were awful times those,” I said. “Glad we live in these days.”
“Well, now,” said the Captain, “I must come to the night of All Hallows E’en, or Holy Even, when the spirits of the night are said to wander abroad. We dined early in those days, and after dinner I walked down to an old Clubhouse in Golf Place, of which I was an hon. member, to play cards. It was a perfect night, and a few flakes of snow had begun to fall, and the wind was keen and sharp. When I left the Club later the ground was well covered with snow, but the storm had ceased, and the moon and stars were shining bright in a clear sky. By Jove, sir, it was like fairyland, and all the church towers and house tops were glittering in the moonbeams.
“I wandered about the old place for fully an hour. It was lovely. I was reluctant to go indoors. Gad, sir, I got quite sad and poetical. I thought of my poor sister who died long ago and is buried in Stefano Rodundo at Rome, and lots of other things. Then I thought of St Andrews as it is and what it might have been. I thought of all its holy temples, erected by our pious forefathers, and its altars and statues lying desolate, ruined and profaned.
“At last I arrived at my own door, and entered—in a thoughtful mood. I went to my study and put on my slippers and dressing gown. I had just sat down and commenced reading when there came a most tremendous shivering crash. I involuntarily cowered down. I thought the roof had fallen—at least, gad, sir, I was flabbergasted. It woke everyone. The crash was followed by a roaring sound.”
“It must have been an earthquake, Captain Chester,” I said.
“Zounds, sir, I don’t know what it was. I thought I was killed. Then my nephew and I got a lamp and examined the house.
“Everything was right—nothing to account for the fearful noise. Finally, we went downstairs to the vaulted kitchens. Zounds, sir, all of a sudden my nephew gripped my arm, and with a cry of abject terror pointed to the open kitchen door. ‘Oh, look there, look there!’ he almost screamed.
“I looked, and, gad, I got a queer turn. There facing us in the open doorway was a very tall, shaven-headed old man with a long grey beard. He had a white robe or cassock on, a linen rocket, and, above all, an almuce or cloak of black hue lined with ermine—The Augustinian Habit. In one hand he held a very large rosary, and he lent on a stout cudgel.
“As I advanced he retreated backwards, always beckoning to me—and I followed lamp in hand. I had to follow—could not help myself. Do you know the way a serpent can fascinate or hypnotise its prey before it devours them?”
“Yes,” I said, “I have seen the snakes at the Zoo do that trick.”
“Well, sir, I was hypnotised like that—precisely like that. He beckoned and I followed.
“Suddenly I saw a little door in the corner of the kitchen standing open—a door I had never noticed before. The shadowy vision backed towards it. Still I followed. Then he entered its portals. As I advanced he grew more and more transparent, and finally melted away, and the heavy door shut upon him with a tremendous crash and rattle. The lamp fell from my trembling hand and was shattered to fragments on the stone floor. I was in pitch darkness—silence reigned—I don’t remember how I got out to the light again.
“Next morning early I got in some workmen and took them down to the kitchen, direct to the corner where the door was through which the apparition vanished the previous night.
“Zounds, sir, there was no door there—only the white plastered wall. I was dumbfoundered. ‘Mrs Trombone,’ I said to the cook, ‘where the devil is that door gone?’”
“‘The door, sir,’ said the cook, ‘there ain’t no door there that I ever saw.’
“‘Trombone,’ I replied, ‘don’t tell falsehoods—you’re a fool.’
“I made the men set to work and tear down the plaster and stuff, and, egad, sir, in an hour we found the door—a thick oak, nail studded, iron clamped old door. It took some time to force it open, and then down three steps we found ourselves in a chamber with mighty thick walls and with a flagged floor, about six feet square, lit by a small slit of a window.
“‘Tear up the flags,’ I said.
“They did so, and there was only earth below.
“‘Dig down,’ I said, ‘dig like thunder,’
“In about an hour we came to a huge flag with a ring in it. Up it came, and below it was a dryly-built bottle-shaped well.
“We went down with lights. What do you think we found at the bottom of it?”
“Perhaps water,” I suggested.
“Water be d—,” said Captain Chester, “we found the mouldering skeleton of a very tall man in a sitting posture. Beside him lay a large rosary and a stout oak cudgel—the rosary and cudgel I had seen in the phantom’s hands the previous night. My friend, I had solved the problem—that was the skeleton of the old Prior of Pittenweem who vanished in that house hundreds of years ago.”
The great curtain had fallen after the pantomime, and I was standing chatting on the stage of the theatre at Cambridge when one of the stage men came to tell me I was wanted at the stage door and I must hurry up at once. Thither I proceeded, and found a lot of golfing boys, hunting boys, dramatic boys, and all sorts of other merry ’Varsity boys, who shouted out “Come along quick to the Blue Pig” (the “Blue Pig” is a Cambridge name for the Blue Boar Hotel), “we want you to meet a fellow called Willie Carson, and there is to be supper, and he has something to tell us. The ‘Bogie Man’ has gone on there now, so come right away.”
Well, off we went to the Blue Boar Hotel, and we found Carson sitting over a blazing fire, with a capital supper set in his nice old-fashioned room, lit up with candles only, the picture of comfort—outside it was snowing hard and bitterly cold.
After a talk over the merits of the pantomime, we did full justice to a most excellent supper, and then crowded round the blazing hearth to hear a story our host wanted to tell us.
“Did you ever hear of the Phantom Coach at St Andrews?” he asked, turning to me suddenly and removing his cigar.
“Often,” I replied, “I have heard most extraordinary yarns about it from lots of people; but why do you ask?”
“Because I’ve seen it,” he replied, softly and thoughtfully. “Some five years ago, it was very, very strange, not to be forgotten and quite unexplainable; that is why I asked you here to-night. I wanted to talk to you about it.” He stooped over the fire and was silent for a few minutes.
“Tell us all about it,” we all shouted at once, “we won’t make fun of it.”
“There is nothing to make fun of; indeed, it’s a true, solemn fact,” he said. “Listen, and I will try to tell you what I saw, but I can’t half picture it properly. Five years ago I had just come home from America. I went to stay at St Andrews for some golf. I think it was the latter end of August, and I must have been in the town about a week at least, when one night—it was hot and stuffy, and about midnight—I determined to take a good long country walk, and struck out right along the road to Strathkinness.
“It was a hot, dark, and stormy night, not wet; fitful black clouds floated now and again at a rapid pace over the moon, which now and then shone out brightly; in the distance the sea made a perpetual moan, and at intervals the dark eastern sky was lit up by flashes of summer wildfire lightning over the distant Cathedral towers.
“Now and again I could hear the mutter of far-away thunder, and there were incessant gusts of wind. I must have been about two miles along the road, when I could discern some very large object approaching me rapidly. As it came nearer I noticed it resembled a coach, dark, heavy, primitive; it seemed to have four large black horses, and the driver was a muffled, shapeless figure. It approached with a low humming or buzzing sound, which was most peculiar and unpleasant to hear. The horses made a hollow kind of ticking sound with their feet, otherwise it was noiseless.
“No earthly coach of the kind could go without any ordinary sound. It was weird and eerie in the extreme. As it passed me the moon shone out brightly, and I saw for a second a ghastly white face at the coach window; but I saw those four strange, silent black horses, the more extraordinary, tall, swaddled-up shapeless driver, and the quaint black, gloomy old coach, with a coffin-shaped box on the roof, only far, far too well. One most remarkable thing was that it threw no shadow of any kind.
“Just as it passed me there was a terrific roar of thunder, and a blaze of lightning that nearly blinded me, and in the distance I saw that horrible ghastly receding coach; then clouds came over the moon and all was black—a darkness one could feel, a darkness of a shut-up smothering vault. I felt sick and dazed for a minute or two. I could not make out if I had been struck by the lightning or was paralysed. However, after a bit it passed off; it was a horrible deathly feeling while it lasted. I never experienced a similar sensation before or since, and hope I never may again. Another very curious thing was the behaviour of my favourite collie dog, usually frightened at nothing, on the approach of the phantom (for phantom it was). He crouched down, shivering and whining, and as it drew nearer fled with a bark like a screech, and cowered down in the ditch at the roadside and gave forth low growls.
“I tell you, boys, it’s all right in this room to talk about it, but none of you would have liked to be in my place that queer, uncanny night on that lonely road. That it was supernatural, I am convinced; it is a very thin veil between us and the unseen world of spirits.
“They say I possess a seventh sense, namely, second sight, and I know I shall never forget that night’s experience.
“But listen—the story is not ended yet. Next morning a telegram arrived from my brother in Kent, ‘Are you all right?’ I wondered much, and wired back that I was very well.
“The following day a letter came from my brother giving me a curious explanation.
“The following afternoon of the day I saw the coach, my brother was looking out of the old manor house windows in Kent, when he and several others noticed a large bird, having most peculiar plumage, seated on the garden wall. No one had ever seen a bird of the kind before. He was rushing off for a gun to shoot it, when our father, who looked very white and scared, stopped him. ‘Do not shoot,’ he said, ‘it would be of no use. That is the bird of ill omen to all our race, it only appears before a death. I have only once seen it before—that week your dear mother died.’
“My brother was so alarmed at this that he sent the wire I have mentioned to me at St Andrews. By the next mail from Australia we learned that our eldest brother had died there the very day I saw the coach at St Andrews and my brother saw the bird at our old home in Kent. Very odd, is it not; but what do you know about that coach?”
“Only tales,” I said. “Many people swear they have heard it, or seen it, on stormy nights. I know a girl who swears to it, and also a doctor who passed it on the road, and it nearly frightened his horse to death and him too.
“The tale of the two tramps is funny. They were trudging into St Andrews one wild stormy night when this uncanny coach overtook them. It stopped; the door opened, and a white hand beckoned towards them. One tramp rushed up and got in, then suddenly the door noiselessly shut and the coach moved off, leaving the other tramp alone in the pitiless wind and rain. ‘I never saw my old mate again,’ said the tramp, when he told the tale, ‘and I never shall—that there old coach was nothing of this here world of ours, it took my old mate off to Davy Jones’s locker mighty smart, poor fellow.’
“They say his body was found in the sea some months afterwards, and the tale goes that the phantom coach finishes its nocturnal journey in the waves of St Andrews Bay.”
“Whose coach is it?” asked all that were in the room.
“I cannot say; some say Bethune, others Sharpe, and others Hackston; I do not know who is supposed to be the figure inside, unless it is his Satanic Majesty himself. At all events, it seems a certain fact that a phantom coach has been seen from time to time on the roads round St Andrews. I have never seen any of these things myself.”
“Well,” said Carson, “that awful coach does appear; it appeared to me, and, doubtless, in the course of time will appear to many others. It bodes no one any good, and I pity with all my heart anyone who meets it. Beware of those roads late at night, or, like me, you may some day to your injury meet that ghastly, uncanny, old phantom coach. If so, you will remember it to your dying day.”
“Curious thing that about seeing the coach and the bird at the same time, and in two places so far apart,” murmured the golfing Johnny, “and then Carson’s brother dying too.”
“I’d sooner see the bird than the coach,” said one.
“Guess I’d rather not see either of them,” said an American present, “glad we have no phantom coaches in Yankeeland.”
Curiously enough, although I have been in many old haunted castles and churches (at the exactly correct hour, viz., midnight) in Scotland, England, Wales, and the Rhine country, yet I have never been able to either see or hear a ghost of any sort. The only thing of the kind I ever saw was an accidental meeting with the far-famed “Spring-heeled Jack” in a dark lane at Helensburgh. It was many years ago, and as I was then very small and he was of immense proportions, the meeting was distinctly unpleasant for me.
Now, from legends we learn that St Andrews is possessed of a prodigious number of supernatural appearances of different kinds, sizes, and shapes—most of them of an awe-inspiring and blood curdling type. In fact, so numerous are they—80 in number they seem to be—that there is really no room for any modern aspirants who may want a quiet place to appear and turn people’s hair white. It might be well to mention a few of them before telling the tale of “The Veiled Nun of St Leonards Church Avenue.”
We will put aside ordinary banshees and things that can only be heard. Well, there is the celebrated Phantom Coach that Willie Carson told us of. It has been heard and seen by many. There is also a white lady that used to haunt the Abbey Road, the ghost of St Rule’s Tower, the Haunted Tower ghost, the Blackfriars ghost, the wraith of Hackston of Rathillet, the spectre of the old Castle, the Dancing Skeletons, the smothered Piper Lad, the Phantom Bloodhound, the Priory Ghost, and many, many more. The Nun of St Leonards is as curious and interesting as any of them, though a bit weird and gruesome. In the time of charming Mary Stuart, our white Queen, there lived in the old South Street a very lovely lady belonging to a very old Scottish family, and her beauty and wit brought many admirers to claim her hand, but with little or no success. She waved them all away. At last she became affianced to a fine and brave young fellow who came from the East Lothian country, and for some months all went merrily as a marriage bell, but at last clouds overspread the rosy horizon. She resolved that she would never become an earthly bride, but would take the veil and become a bride of Holy Church—a nun, in point of fact. When her lover heard that she had left home and entered a house of Holy Sisters, he at once announced his intention of hastening to St Andrews, seizing her, and marrying her at once. In this project it would seem the young lady’s parents were in perfect agreement with the devoted youth. He did hasten to St Andrews almost immediately, and there received a terrible shock. On meeting this once lovely and loved maiden, he discovered that she had actually done what she had written and threatened to do. Sooner than be an earthly bride she had mutilated her face by slitting her nostrils; she had cut off her eyelids and both her top and bottom lips, and had branded her fair cheeks with cruel hot irons.
The poor youth, on seeing her famous beauty thus destroyed, fled to Edinburgh, where he committed suicide, and she, after becoming a nun, died from grief and remorse. That all happened nearly 400 years ago; but her spirit with the terribly marred and mutilated face still wanders o’ nights in the peaceful little avenue to old St Leonards iron kirk gate down the Pends Road. She is all dressed in black, with a long black veil over the once lovely face, and carries a lantern in her hand. Should any bold visitor to that avenue meet her, she slowly sweeps her face veil aside, raises the lantern to her scarred face, and discloses those awful features to his horrified gaze. Here is a curious thing that I know happened there a few years ago.
I knew a young fellow here who was reading up theology and Church canon law. I also knew a great friend of his, an old Cambridge man. The former I will call Wilson, and the latter Talbot, as I do not want to give the exact names. Well, Wilson had invited Talbot up to St Andrews for a month of golf, and he arrived here on a Christmas day. He came to my rooms for about ten minutes, and I never saw any one merrier and brighter and full of old days at Cambridge. Then he hurried off to see the Links and the Club. Late that evening Wilson rushed in. “Come along quick and see Talbot; he’s awfully ill, and I don’t know what’s up a bit.” I went off and found Talbot in his lodgings with a doctor in attendance, and he certainly looked dangerously ill, and seemed perfectly dazed. Wilson told me that he had to go to see some people on business that evening down by the harbour, and that he took Talbot with him down the Pends Road. It was a fine night, and Talbot said he would walk about the road and enjoy a cigar till his friend’s return. In about half-an-hour Wilson returned up the Pends Road, but could see Talbot nowhere in sight. After hunting about for a long time, he found him leaning against the third or fourth tree up the little avenue to St Leonards kirk gate.
He went up to him, when Talbot turned a horrified face towards him, saying, “Oh, my God, have you come to me again?” and fell down in a fit or a swoon. He got some passers-by to help to take poor Talbot to his rooms. Then he came round for me. We sat up with him in wonder and amazement; and, briefly, this is what he told us. After walking up and down the Pends Road, he thought he would take a survey of the little avenue, when at the end he saw a light approaching him, and he turned back to meet it. Thinking it was a policeman, he wished him “Good evening,” but got no reply. On approaching nearer he saw it to be a veiled female with a lantern. Getting quite close, she stopped in front of him, drew aside her long veil, and held up the lantern towards him. “My God,” said Talbot, “I can never forget or describe that terrible, fearful face. I felt choked, and I fell like a log at her feet. I remember no more till I found myself in these rooms, and you two fellows sitting beside me. I leave this place to-morrow”—and he did by the first train. His state of panic was terrible to see. Neither Wilson nor Talbot had ever heard the tale of the awful apparition of the St Leonards nun, and I had almost forgotten the existence of the strange story till so curiously reminded of it. I never saw Talbot again, but I had a letter from him a year after written from Rhienfells, telling me that on Christmas day he had had another vision, dream, or whatever it was, of the same awful spectre. About a year later I read in a paper that poor old Talbot had died on Christmas night at Rosario of heart failure. I often wonder if the dear old chap had had another visit from the terrible Veiled Nun of St Leonards Avenue.
Some years ago I was perfectly surrounded with crowds of bonny children in the St Albans Holborn district of London. I fancy they belonged to some guild or other, and they enacted the part of imps, fairies, statues, &c., in various pantomimes in neighbouring theatres.
I had been invited there to amuse the kiddies with songs and imitations, and now they were all shrieking and yelling at the top of their voices for a ghost story. “It’s getting near Christmas,” they all shouted, “and we all want to hear about ghosts, real creepy ghosts.” I pointed out the fact that most ghost stories were bunkum, and that such tales were very apt to keep wee laddies and lassies awake at night; but, bless you, they wouldn’t listen to that one bit. They wanted ghosts, and ghosts they would have.
Well, in about an hour I had yarned off most of my best bogey stories. I had used up most of my tales regarding Scottish, English, and Continental Castles, and the banshees, water kelpies, wraiths, &c., connected therewith; but still those children, like Oliver Twist, demanded more. I really was fairly stumped, when, all of a sudden, my mind flew back to 1875, when a strange story was told me by Captain Chester in the Coursal grounds at beautiful Baden-Baden. I first fell in with this dear old warrior in Rome, and we became firm friends, and travelled together for many cheery weeks. He told me his queer tale in the very strongest of military language, which I must omit. The language would be suitable to use in bunkers, but not on paper. It was a sultry day. So were his remarks.
It would seem that many years before, he had visited Scotland and England to try and see a ghost or two. He had been to Cumnor Hurst in order to investigate the appearances of ill-fated Amy Robsart. He went to Rainham Hall to interview the famous Brown Lady, and he journeyed to Hampton Court to hear the Shrieking Ghost, and also went to Church Strelton to see if he could fix the ghost at the Copper Hole. In Scotland he followed the scent of various ghosts, and finally landed in St Andrews.
“By Jove, sir,” he said, “that’s the place for ghosts. Every blessed corner is full of them—bang full. Look at those fellows in the Castle dungeons, and Beaton and Sharpe and the men that got hanged and burned, and the old dev— I mean witches. I saw my ghost there. Years and years ago I took an old house in St Andrews, which was a small place then. Very little golf was played, and there was very little to do. But, gad, sir, the ghosts were thick, and the quaint old bodies in the town were full of them. They could spin yarns for hours about phantom coaches, death knells, corpse candles, people going about in winding sheets, phantom hearses, and Lord knows what else. I loved it, it took me quite back to the middle ages.”
So I told these children Captain Chester’s tale, as nearly as possible in his own words, minus the forcible epithets. I managed to hit off his voice and manner, and this in particular seemed to amuse the bairns. “Egad, sir,” he said, “it was a curious time. Of all the tales I heard, the one that pleased and fascinated me most was the legend of the monk that looks over St Regulus’s Tower on moonlight nights. I went thither every night, and constantly fancied I saw a figure peering over the edge, but was not certain. Then I got hold of a very old man, who related to me the old legend. It seems that years ago there was a good Prior of St Andrews named Robert de Montrose. He ruled well, gently, and wisely, but among the monks there was one who was always in hot water, and whom Prior Robert had often to haul over the coals. He played practical jokes, often absented himself from the daily and nightly offices of Holy Kirk, and otherwise upset the rules and discipline. Finally, when Earl Douglas and his retinue came to St Andrews to present to the Cathedral a costly statue, long known as the Douglas Lady, this monk made desperate love to one of the waiting women of Lady Douglas. For this he was imprisoned in the Priory Dungeon for some days. It was the custom of Robert de Montrose almost every fine night to ascend the tower of St Rule and admire the view. The summit was reached in those days by means of ladders and wooden landings—not, as it is now, by a stair. In those days, too, the apse and part of the nave were still standing, and the summit of the solemn old tower was crowned by a small spire. One evening just before Yuletide, when the Prior, as usual, was on the top of the tower, the contumacious monk slyly followed him up the ladders, stabbed him in the back with a small dagger, and flung him over the north side of the old tower.”
“I thought, Captain Chester,” I said, “that the murder took place on the Dormitory stairs.”
“Gad, Zooks, and Oddbodkins, sir, I am telling you what I was told, and what I can prove, sir.”
“All right,” I replied, “please fire away.”
“Well,” continued Chester, “they told me the Prior had often been seen since peeping over the tower, and at times he was seen to fall, as he did years ago, from the summit. By the bye, his assassin was starved to death and buried in some old midden. One moonlight night as my brother and I were standing on the Kirkhill, to our horror and amazement we saw a figure appear suddenly on the top of the tower, leap on to the parapet, and deliberately jump over. Zounds, sir, my blood ran cold.”
“We did not hesitate long, but jumped the low wall of the Cathedral. It was easily done in those days, and we were young and active, and hurried to the grim old tower. Just as we neared it, a monk passed us in the Augustinian habit, his cowl was thrown back, and for just one second we had a view of his pallid, handsome face and keen penetrating eyes. Then he disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared. We were alone in the moonlight, nothing stirring.”
“That is very odd,” I said.
“Zooks! sir, I have odder things still to tell you. We went home to the old house, had supper, and retired to bed thoughtfully. I woke about 2 a.m. The blinds were up and it was as clear as day with the moonlight. Imagine my blank astonishment when I clearly perceived, leaning up against the mantelpiece, the pallid monk I had seen a few hours before near the Square Tower. He leaned on his elbow and was gazing intently at me, while in his hand he held some object that had a blue glitter in the moonbeams.
“He smiled. ‘Fear not, brother,’ he said, ‘I am Prior Robert of Montrose who quitted this earth many years syne, and of whom you have been talking and thinking so much of late days. I saw you to-night in our cruelly ruined Abbey Kirk. Alas! alas! but I come from ayont the distant hills and have far to go to-night.’
“‘What do you want, Holy Father?’ I said, ‘and what of your murder?’
“‘That is forgiven and forgotten long syne,’ he said, ‘and I love to revisit, at times, my old haunts, and so does he. You have in your regiment, methinks, one named Montrose, a scion of our family.’
“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I know Bob Montrose well.’
“‘See you this dagger I hold,’ said Prior Robert, ‘it was with this I lost my life on this earth many years syne on the tower of blessed St Rule. They buried it with me in my stone kist; I will leave it here with you to give to my kinsman, for it will prove of use to him e’er he pass hence—mark my words.’
“He raised his hand as in act of blessing, and melted away. I fell back in a sleep or in a faint. When I woke the morning sun was streaming into my bedroom. At first I thought I had eaten too much supper and had a nightmare, but there on the table by my bed lay an old dagger of curious workmanship—the dagger that slew the Prior years and years ago. I faithfully fulfilled my vow, and my friend, Major Bob Montrose, has now got his monkish ancestor’s dagger.”
“That’s all Captain Chester told me, dear children. Goodbye, don’t forget me, and do not forget old St Andrews Ghosts, the Tower of St Rule, and the Spectre of Prior Robert of Montrose.”
Then a modern hansom whirled me away to King’s Cross.
In my travels I have met many very extraordinary and remarkable people with hobbies and fads of various kinds, but I never met a man of such curious personality as this old friend of mine, Captain Chester. All his methods and ideas were purely original. Everyone has some hobby; his hobby was ghost and spook-hunting.
We were sitting one lovely September evening in the gardens of one of the hotels at Bonn, which stretched down to the river Rhine, listening to the band and watching the great rafts coming down the river from the Black Forest.
“By Jove, sir,” said the old man, “I have shot big game in the Rockies, and hunted tigers and all that sort of thing; but, zooks! sir, I prefer hunting ghosts any day. That Robert de Montrose was the first I saw. There are shoals of these shades about, a perfect army of them everywhere, especially in St Andrews. Gad, sir, you should hear the banshees shrieking at night in the Irish bogs. I don’t believe in your infernal sea serpents, but I’ve seen water kelpies in the Scottish and American lakes.”
I told him I had never heard a banshee or seen a water kelpie.
“Very likely, sir, very probable. Everyone can’t see and hear these things. I can.”
I told him I had never seen a disembodied spirit, and didn’t want to.
“Gad, zooks! sir, I consider disinspirited bodies far worse. They are quite common. I allude to human bodies that have lost their spirits or souls, and yet go about among us. Zounds! sir, my cousin is one of them.
“Ah,” he continued, “detached personality is a curious thing. I can detach my personality, can you?”
“Most certainly not,” I said, “what the deuce do you mean?”
“Mean,” he said, “I mean my spirit can float out of my body at will. My spirit becomes a sort of mental balloon. I can then defy destiny.”
“How in thunder do you manage to do it anyway?”
“By practice, sir, of course. When my spirit floats out of my body, I can see my own old body sitting in my armchair and an ugly old wreck of a body it is. It is bad for one, I admit; it is very weakening. Another thing may happen; another wandering spirit may suddenly take possession of one’s body, and then one’s own spirit can’t get back again, and it becomes a wandering spirit, and is always trying to force itself into other people’s bodies. Then one’s spirit gets into a mental bunker, you see.”
“I don’t see a bit. It is most unpleasant. Tell me about ghosts you have seen, and about that dagger you gave Major Montrose.”
“Oh! so then you are not interested in eliminated personality?”
“Not a bit,” I said, “I don’t know what it is. Tell me about that dagger for a change.”
“Oh! ah! Well, the dagger Robert of Montrose gave me proved of great use to my old friend, Bob Montrose, on many occasions. It had a wonderful power of its own. Once he got into a broil with a lot of Spanish fellows one night, and as he was unarmed at the time he was in a remarkably tight corner. Suddenly something slipped into his hand, and, by Jove, sir, it was the dagger, and that dagger saved his life. Another time he found himself in an American train with a raving lunatic, and if it had not been for the protecting dagger he’d have been torn limb from limb. After that he took it everywhere with him.”
“Where is it now?”
“Well, there’s an odd thing if you like. Bob died in the Isle of France, where Paul and Virginia used to be. He was killed by a fall, and is buried there. He left the dagger to me in his will, but no human eyes have ever seen that dagger since his death. It may have been stolen, or it may have gone back to where it came from into Robert of Montrose’s stone kist in the old Chapter-House at St Andrews Cathedral. Probably its usefulness was at an end, and it was needed no more. Bob told me one queer thing about that dagger. Once a year near Christmastide (the dagger hung on the wall of his bedroom) it used to exude a thick reddish fluid like blood, which used to cover the blade in large drops, and it remained so for several hours—and, again, sometimes at night it used to shine with a bright light of its own.”
“That is indeed wonderful,” I said, lighting another cheroot, “but tell me more about the St Andrews bogles. Astral bodies, dual personality, and things of that kind depress me a bit.”
“Well, that is odd,” said old Chester, “I love them. When I was in St Andrews I rented a fine old house, with huge thick walls, big fireplaces, funny corkscrew stairs, such rum holes and corners, and big vaulted kitchens. It’s all pulled down now, I believe, and a bran new house built; but I hear the vaulted rooms below are left exactly as they were. People didn’t take to the old house; they heard noises and rappings, and saw things in the night, and so on. We all saw things. My brother met the ghost of a horrible looking old witch, quite in the orthodox dress, on the Witch Hill above the Witch Lake. It upset him terribly at the time—made him quite ill—nerves went all to pot—would not sleep in a room by himself after that. He made me devilish angry, sir, I can tell you.”
“Perhaps it was Mother Alison Craik, a well-known witch, who was burnt there.”
“Likely enough, sir, it may have been the old cat you mention, an old hag. Then my nephew and I saw that phantom coach in the Abbey Walk one windy moonlight night. It passed us very quickly, but made a deuced row, like a lifeboat carriage.”
“What was it like?”
“Like a huge black box with windows in it, and a queer light inside. It reminded me of a great coffin. Ugly looking affair; very uncanny thing to meet at that time of night and in such a lonely spot. It was soon gone, but we heard its rumbling noise for a long time.”
“What were the horses like, eh?”
“Shadowy looking black things, like great black beetles with long thin legs.”
“And what was the driver like?” I asked.
“He was a tall thin, black object also, like a big, black, lank lobster, with a cocked hat on the top. That’s all I could see. On the top of the coach was an object that looked like a gigantic tarantula spider, with a head like a moving gargoyle. I can’t get at the real history of that mysterious old coach yet. I don’t believe it has anything whatever to do with the murdered prelates, Beaton or Sharpe. However, the coach does go about. Another wraith I saw at the Castle of St Andrews was that of James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, third husband of Mary Queen of Scots. He lies buried in the crypt of Faarveile Church, close to the cattegut. Before his death he was a prisoner at Malmo; then he was sent to Denmark, and died in the dungeon of the State prison at Drachsholm.”
“I am awfully interested,” I said, “about those times, and in Bothwell and Mary in particular.”
“Odd’s fish, sir,” said Chester, “so am I. I went to Faarveile to see Bothwell’s well-preserved body. The verger took me down a trap-door near the altar, and there it lies in a lidless box, a very fine face, with a cynical and mocking mouth. He murdered Darnley, and he was treated and buried as a murderer in those bygone days. At Malmo folks say he was tormented by the ghosts of his mad wife, Jane Huntly, and by Darnley. He ended his days in misery, and serve him devilish well right, say I. I love and revere lovely Mary Stuart. Damn it, sir, he deserted her when she was in a fix at Carberry Hill, the curmudgeon.”
“But what of the appearances of the Earl you saw?”
“Met him twice at the Castle—no mistaking him—a big, knightly, handsome fellow. Spirits can easily at times assume their earthly form and dress. I recognised him at once—the sneering lips and all, just like his pictures, too. When he glided past me his teeth were chattering like a dice-box, and the wind was whistling through his neck bones. I addressed him boldly by name, but he melted away. One sees these apparitions with one’s mental eyes. I saw him again leaning against the door that leads to that oubliette in the Sea Tower of the Castle. Egad, sir, he exactly resembled the body I saw in the old crypt at Faarveile. He often appears there, and at Hermitage Castle also. No mistake, sir, that was Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell. I must tell you some other time—(it’s getting very late now)—of the ghosts I saw in my house at St Andrews, and of the Prior or Monk of Pittenweem. I must turn into bed now. I go to the service at the Cathedral here early to-morrow.”
Then the tall figure of Captain Chester strode away and left me alone to my meditations.
Well! I suppose if I had been Captain Chester, left alone there in those gardens, I’d have seen a ghost or two with my mental eyes; but, instead, I saw a fat waiter approaching, who told me my supper awaited me.