The Hauntings and Mysteries of Lausdree Castle.
It is many years ago since I was on a walking tour in the Highlands, far to the north of Bonnie Glenshee; and when on the moorlands I was overtaken, for my sins, by a regular American snowstorm—a genuine blissard of the most pronounced type. I struggled along as well as I could for some considerable time, and then I became aware that someone was beside me. It was a young Highland lassie with a plaid over her head. I was pleased to learn from her that her name was “Jean,” that she was the niece of a neighbouring innkeeper, and that she would speedily convey me to his haven of rest. We trudged along in the blinding snow without a word, and I was more than thankful to the lassie when I at last found myself out of the snow in a nice little sanded parlour with a glorious fire of peat and logs blazing on the hospitable hearth. A glass of something hot, brought by mine host, was most welcome.
I found there was one other storm-stayed traveller in the wee house, an old family butler, whose name I discovered was Jeremiah Anklebone. He had been on a visit to relations in the North, and had been caught in the snow like myself. We were both thankful to find such a warm, cosy shanty on such an inclement evening, and, to use a Scots term, we foregathered at the ingle inside.
He asked me if I knew much about spirits, to which I replied that I had just had a glass, but he at once explained that although not averse to toddy, he alluded to spirits of another nature, viz., ghosts, banshees, boggards, and the like.
I told him I had frequently been in so-called haunted places in various countries, but had never seen or heard anything except owls, bats, rats, or mice.
He ventured the remark I had often heard before, that I could not be receptive, and I told him I was thankful that I was not.
He was a fine old fellow, an ideal family butler, and doubtless the recipient of many family secrets. He had big mutton-chop whiskers and a bald head, and looked as if he had served turtle soup all his life; but it was not soup he was soaked with—he seemed fairly saturated with spook lore. He informed me, quite calmly, that he was gifted with the remarkable faculty of seeing apparitions, demons, etc.
I could not help remarking that it seemed a very unpleasant faculty to possess, but he quite differed with me, and got as warm as his toddy on the subject. I shall not in a hurry forget that wild evening in the Highland inn before that blazing fire, or the wonderful narrations I heard from Butler Anklebone. Space precludes me from putting down here all the marvels he revealed to me.
It seemed all his life—he was 62—he had been gasping like a fish on a river’s bank to get into a really well-haunted house, but had utterly failed till he took the post of head butler at Lausdree Castle, which he informed me was but a short distance from St Andrews. He gave me a most tremendous description of the old castle, and from his account it seemed to be the asylum and gathering place of all the bogies in Britain and elsewhere. Congregated together there were the Ice Maid, the Brown Lady, a headless man, a cauld lad, a black maiden, the Flaming Ghost, the Wandering Monk, a ghost called Silky, auld Martha, a radiant bay, an iron knight, a creeping ghost, jumping Jock, old No-legs, Great Eyes, a talking dog, the Corbie Craw, a floating head, a dead hand, bleeding footprints, and many other curious creatures far too numerous to mention.
The Castle, he said, was full of uncouth and most peculiar sights and sounds, including rappings, hammerings, shrieks, groans, crashings, wailings, and the like.
“What a remarkable place,” I said to Mr Butler Anklebone, “and how do you account for so many spectres in so limited an area?”
“Oh! there is no time or space for them,” he said, “they are earth-bound spirits, and can go from one part of the globe to another in a second; but they have their favourite haunts and meeting places just as we folks have, and Lausdree seems to appeal to their varied tastes.”
He then went on to tell me some details of the Haunted Castle. “There are supposed to be,” he said, “beneath the Castle splendid old apartments, dungeons, winding passages, and cellars; but history states that any of those persons who tried to investigate these mysteries returned no more, so the entrances were walled up and are now completely lost sight of.
“There is a built-up chamber, but no one durst open it, the penalty being total blindness or death, and such cases are on record. There is also a coffin room shaped exactly like its name; but one of the queerest places at Lausdree is a small apartment with a weird light of its own. At night this room can be seen from the old garden, showing a pale, uncanny, phosphorescent glow.
“Mr Snaggers—that’s the footman—and I unlocked the door and examined the place carefully. There is a table, a sofa, and a few old chairs therein, and an all-pervading sickly light equally diffused. The furniture throws no shadows whatever. The room seemed very chilly, and there was a feeling as if all one’s vitality was being sucked out of one’s body, and drawing one’s breath caused pain. Snaggers felt the same. No one could live long in that eerie apartment. I know we were glad to lock it up again.
“Then there is a spiral stair, called ‘Meg’s Leg.’ I don’t know the legend, but almost every night one hears her leg stumping up these steps.”
“What a creepy place it must be, to be sure,” I murmured, gravely.
“Yes!” said Anklebone, “and I tell you sir, Snaggers and I generally arranged to go up to bed together; one always felt there was something coming up the stairs behind one. When a person stopped, it stopped also, and one could hear it breathing and panting, but nothing was to be seen. Snaggers said one night when the candle went out he saw monstrous red eyes, but I saw nothing then. The creeping creature I only saw twice, it was like an enormous toad on spider’s legs. They say it has a human head and face, but I only saw its back. Some folks say it is alive and not a ghost, and that it hides somewhere in the cellars, but we never could get a trace of it. One night I was going down to the service room when my way was barred by a ghastly, tall figure, with great holes where eyes should have been, so I just shut my eyes and rushed through it downstairs. When I got down, I found all my clothes were covered with a vile, sickly-smelling sticky sort of oil, and I had to destroy them all.”
“Go on, please,” I said, “you astonish me vastly.”
“Yes,” he said slowly, “it’s all very queer. Lausdree is haunted and no mistake. Snaggers and I shared the same room. One night a great blood-stained hand and arm came round the corner of the bed curtain and tried to grab me. It was dead ice-cold too. Then a thing, an invisible thing, used to patter into the room, puffing and groaning, and get under the bed and heave it up, but we looked and there was never anything there, and the door locked too. We saw a great black corkscrew thing one night fall from the ceiling on to the floor and disappear, and then there was a mighty rush along the passage. Outside the door a great crash, a yell, and a groan dying away far below. There was a humorous spirit also, the Iron Knight. We called him ‘Uncle.’ He was up to tricks. We didn’t mind him. When the fat cook was sitting down to a meal, he’d pull back her chair, and down she would come with a rare crash. If any of the maids upset a tray of tea-things, or fell downstairs with the kettle, or knocked over the great urn, they used to say—‘Oh! That’s Uncle again!’”
I told him (Mr Anklebone) that I was delighted there was a touch of comedy in such a gruesome place, as I preferred comedians to ghosts any day. One thing I learnt from his story, and that was, that if he was head butler at Lausdree Castle, the head ghost was Sir Guy Ravelstocke, whose portrait still hung in the old picture gallery. The Castle dated back to Norman times, but about 1457 it fell into the hands of this Sir Guy Ravelstocke, who had been educated at the “Stadium Generale,” or University of Saint Andrews. He and his two friends, Geoffrey De Beaumanoir and Roger Le Courville, held high revel and carnival in the old halls of Lausdree, and were the terror of the whole countryside. Sir Guy was a dissolute fellow, a gambler, and everything else bad. The neighbours alleged that he had sold himself to Old Nick. He would spill blood as if it was water, and he and his white steed, “Nogo,” were well known all over Fife and the Lothians. He was held to be a free-booter, a wizard and a warlock, a highwayman, a pirate, and a general desperado. He had slain many men in mortal combat, and was found invulnerable.
“He must have been a sort of Michael Scott of Balwearie,” I remarked.
“He must have been a holy terror,” said the butler. “I’ve seen him often, exactly like his portrait in the picture gallery. I’ve seen him in his old-world dress with his sword hanging at his side, sometimes on his white horse and sometimes on foot.
“There were always terrible knockings, shrieks, and crashes before he appeared, and all our dogs showed the greatest terror. I slept in an old four-poster bed, and he used to draw aside the curtain and glare at me constantly. He nearly always was accompanied by the spectre of a negro carrying his head under his arm. Sir Guy was a great traveller in foreign lands, and, I have been told, used to bring back all sorts of curious animals and insects with him. Perhaps that great toad thing I saw was one of the creatures. I’ve heard toads live for ages.”
I said I believed that was quite true.
“I found a queer place one day,” said Anklebone. “I was going up the turret staircase, and found some of the steps moved back. I got Mr Snaggers and Darkgood, the gardener, and we tugged them out. We called the master, and then we found narrow steps going down to a locked door. We forced it open, and got into a stone chamber. There were skulls and bones all over the place. Most of them belonged to animals, but there was a horrible thing on the floor, a sort of mummified vampire bat, with huge teeth and enormous outstretched wings, like thick parchment, and four legs. Perhaps it was a regular vampire. They fanned folks to sleep with their great wings, and then sucked their blood dry. We cleared out the room, and buried all the things in a wood.
“Now,” said Anklebone, “I will tell you the end of Sir Guy Ravelstocke. He brought back with him from them foreign parts a nigger servant, and they called him the ‘Apostle.’ Well, one night,” continued Anklebone, “he and his chums were dining, and full of wine, and the ‘A—Postal’ offended them somehow, and Sir Guy stabbed him. Then they chained his hands and feet together, took him to the dungeon, and filled his mouth, nose, and ears full of clay and left him. That is the nigger ghost I saw always with Sir Guy—the murdered negro.
“About two years after, Sir Guy and his friends were in the same room drinking when there came a great hammering at the Castle door. Sir Guy drew his sword, flung open the door, and plunged out into the darkness. A few moments passed then his friends rushed out on hearing wild unearthly shrieks, but there was no Sir Guy to be seen, he had totally disappeared, and was never heard of or seen in life again. We found his remains three years ago, but I will tell you of that directly. One day Snaggers and I had gone to St Andrews to buy things. We were just at the end of South Street when a horseman dashed past us at full gallop. ‘Heavens,’ said Snaggers, ‘it’s Sir Guy as I live.’ He went bang into the big iron gates at the Cathedral. When we came up the great gates were locked, and there was Sir Guy leaning up against the west gable scowling at us, but the white horse had gone, and he melted away as we looked. I saw him again with the negro at Magus Muir, and alone one dark night in North Street.
“I was alone one evening in the room below the banquet hall at Lausdree and heard a pattering on the table. On looking up I saw a stain in the ceiling, and drops of blood were dropping down on the table and the floor. The room above was the very place where the negro was stabbed. Next morning we went into the room where I saw the blood drip, and there was the mark of a bloody hand on the table, but no stain on the roof.
“Now for the discovery. I had often dreamed about an old overgrown well there was in the gardens, and felt very suspicious of what might be therein. Then the gardener and the woodman told me they had frequently seen the awful spectre of Sir Guy and the ‘Apostle’ hovering round about the thicket that enclosed what was known as the haunted well, and then vanish in the brushwood without disturbing it. I felt sure that there lay the mystery of Sir Guy Ravelstocke. This idea was soon after confirmed by a curious occurrence. One morning Snaggers was dusting an old oil painting over the huge mantelpiece, and above the weeping stone in the great hall, when somehow or other he contrived to touch a secret spring and the painting flew back, open in its frame, and revealed a chamber beyond.
“We sent for master, and got down by some steps into the room. Such a queer place! It was octagonal in shape, and there had been either a great fire or an explosion there. The vaulted stone roof and floor were all blackened and cracked, and the fireplace and wood-panelling were all burnt and charred.”
“Perhaps the chapel,” I remarked.
“That is what master said,” replied the butler, “and there were remains of burnt tapestry, charred wood, and documents all over the stone floor. Master got one piece of burnt paper with faded writing on it in some foreign tongue. The odd thing was the big picture. The eyes were sort of convex-like, and two holes were bored in the pupil of each of its eyes, so that anyone standing up on top of the stone stairs could see all that took place in the great hall below, and hear also.
“Master took the piece of parchment and managed to make out a few words. They were—‘I am sure that Ravelstocke lies in the old Prior’s Well, with the dead nigger servant we placed there. I would not go near that spot for my life. Heaven grant it may not come for me, I must leave the place.’ That was all he could decipher on the burnt paper.
“‘We must explore that Prior’s Well (evidently that is its name) to-morrow morning,’ said our master. We were all up at dawn, and got all the men available to cut down the shrubs, bushes, and the undergrowth round the well, the growth of ages. When the well was exposed it looked very like the holy well at St Andrews, only it had been very finely carved and ornamented at one time. The entrance was a Norman archway, and the remains of an oak door still hung there. We found a shallow bath shaped pool of muddy water inside, and a lot of broken stones and bits of old statues and glass. At the far end was a large square opening a few feet above the pool of water. We, of course, made for this, and found there was a cell beyond. The whole well on one side was riven and rent, either by lightning or the effects of an earthquake shock. If that ancient well could have spoken it would have told us as queer tales as St Rule’s Tower at St Andrews. There was a most curious, overpowering, sickening odour inside the place, like a vault or charnel house.”
I remarked that I knew no smells worse than acetylene gas or the awful smell I unearthed when digging, long ago, opposite the St Andrews Cathedral.
“Well,” said Anklebone, “I can’t imagine a worse odour than there was beside that Prior’s Well. It turned us all so faint. We had to get some brandy. We got into the far cell, and there were two skeleton bodies on the flagged floor. One was a blanched skeleton as far as the neck, but the skull was well preserved, and matted black hair still clung on it and round the jaws. All the teeth were in their place. Some rings had fallen from the bony fingers, and a sword, all eaten away by rust, lay beside the skeleton. The other was like a mummified ape, of a dark oak colour, the nails on the fingers and toes being quite perfect. Chains, also almost worn away, hung round the feet and hands.
“‘Good Heavens,’ said master, ‘it is Sir Guy Ravelstocke and the murdered Apostle!’ There was no doubt of that whatever. We had them removed and buried at once. The mystery was solved after all these long years.
“The nigger had been placed there, but the mystery of Sir Guy was inexplicable. Who came for him that night when he rushed out of the door of Lausdree Castle, centuries ago, with his sword, and who carried him to his doom in the Friar’s Well? No one can answer that terrible question now. Oh! that the old well could speak and reveal its secret.”
A Haunted Manor House and the Duel at St Andrews;
OR,
The Old Brown Witch.
This can hardly be termed a St Andrews ghost story, but it is so remarkably strange and weird that I have been specially requested to add it to the series, and there is an allusion to St Andrews in it after all.
Several years ago we had in the Golf Club at Cambridge a Russian Prince who took up golf, and the questions of spirits, bogies, witches, banshees, death warnings, and the like, equally strongly. He was a firm disbeliever in all of them, and belonged to a Phantasmalogical Research Society to inquire into and expose all such things. I frequently have long letters from him from all sorts of remote parts of the world where he is investigating tales of haunted houses, churchyards, and so on; but from this, his last letter, he seems to have contrived to meet a genuine and very unpleasant sort of spectre. Of course I suppress all names.
“X⸺x Manor,
Feb. ⸺, 1905.
Dear W. T. L.,—Well, here I am, actually in a really haunted manor house at last, and I have had a most horribly, weird, and uncanny experience of a most loathsome appearance. I have been here a fortnight now—such a queer, great old house, all turrets and towers, and damp wings covered with ivy and creepers, and such small, narrow windows. It is on a slight elevation, and has in bygone days had a moat around it. It is surrounded by dense woods, and there is a black-looking lake at the back. The staircases are all stone and very narrow, and there is an old chapel and a coffin room in the house. In the garden, in a yew avenue, is a vault and a tombstone, and thereby hangs my curious tale.
It seems that centuries ago a very unpleasant old widow lady, and a very unpleasant son, had the old house. She was a very ugly and eccentric creature, and a miser, and was nicknamed by the village folk “The Brown Witch.” The tales about her ongoings told to this day are most remarkable. It seems her son, who, according to all accounts, was a shocking bad lot, was killed in a duel, and the old lady died shortly afterwards a raving maniac.
She seems to have left a very curious will. I deal with only two details in it. One was that the chamber in which she lived and died was for ever to be left untouched and undisturbed, but unlocked, or the disturber would be cursed with instant blindness and ultimately death. The second was that she was to be buried in the vault in the yew avenue that she had specially made for her remains; that she was to be dressed in her usual clothes and bonnet, and that she must be placed in a tightly-sealed glass coffin, so as to be visible to any intruder. My host told me the chamber or the vault in the grounds had never been interfered with, but that her appearances had been very frequent to most credible witnesses, and that such appearances all portended some dire calamity to some one.
She had appeared and terrified many visitors, both in the house and in the grounds. She had also been seen by the village pastor and by the servants. He had never seen her himself, but he had taken every measure he could think of to unravel the mystery, but in vain. The outdoor servants were terrified, and would never remain, and one lady visitor had been nearly driven mad by seeing her peering in at the window at dusk.
Of course, I laughed the tale to scorn, and also the story of the alarm bell which tolled at intervals without any apparent or human agency. Not even the bravest would dare to walk down the yew avenue after nightfall.
Well, I had been ten days in the house before anything happened. I must say, the wind and the rats, and owls and bats, and the tapping noise of the ivy on the old windows at night were rather creepy, but nothing really out of the common happened till the other night.
My room was in a long, narrow, old gallery. After cards and billiards, and at about 12.30, I was going off to my well-earned rest, and was getting near my door in the gallery, when I saw a faint light coming towards me round a corner. I went into my room and waited to see who was wandering about so late at night. Then a figure stopped at my door, evidently carrying a lighted old lantern. I raised my candle to have an inspection, and then, oh! horror!—I staggered back for a moment, for before me clearly stood the horrible figure of the old “Brown Witch.” A cold sweat broke out all over me.
Far, far worse than the description. I saw her brown robe and the poke bonnet, the horrible face, the huge black sockets of the eyes without eyeballs, the nose gone, and, worst of all, that fearful grin, the cruel grin of a maniac, a wicked, terrible face.
I opened my drawer and seized my always loaded revolver. I shouted loudly, and fired once, twice, thrice. She never moved; only the horrible mocking smile grew wider and more devilish. I rushed forward, slammed my door to shut out the awful sight, and then collapsed back into a chair.
I must have hit it each time for certain. An offensive charnel house smell pervaded the air. Then the door flew open, and my host and several men and servants rushed into the room, anxiously asking what was the matter, and why I fired? I told them everything. We found the three bullet shots in the wall opposite my door. They must have passed through that abominable horror.
Need I say I spent a wretched night? In fact, I sat up and never went to bed at all. I resolved to leave next day early, but before doing that I determined at all hazards, to go into that vault and see what it contained, and also to carefully investigate the “Brown Witch’s” chamber without disturbing anything in it. I told my host next day at breakfast what I proposed doing, and he offered no objection whatever, but declined absolutely to go near the vault or chamber himself, or to let any of his household do so.
“Oh! by-the-by, did you ring the alarm bell in the tower last night?” he asked me. “It was the sound of your shots and the great bell ringing immediately afterwards that brought me along so quickly to your room. We all heard it.”
I told him I knew nothing of it and never even heard the bell.
“I thought that,” he said, “for you were nearly off in a faint when we all came in, and hardly knew us for a bit.
“I can’t make out the bell,” said my host, “or what on earth can make it ring so. It has no rope, and it cannot possibly be the wind. I must have it removed. Last time it rung loudly like that, my old housekeeper was found dead in her bed in the morning.”
To make a long story short, the next thing I did was to get a couple of labourers to shovel away the earth and find the lid of the old vault in the yew avenue. This was soon done, and we quickly descended into the place with lights. We found ourselves in a large-built, clammy chamber, and on the floor lay a tattered and broken old lantern. At first we thought the chamber was empty, but all of a sudden we noticed a niche at one end and at once went forward to it. In this singular alcove was a large glass box, or coffin, standing on its end, and in it and standing upright was the horrible eyeless mummy (still arrayed in the brown robe and poke bonnet) of the terrible creature I had seen in the gallery, and with the same mocking, grinning mouth and the huge ugly teeth. The same smell I have told you of before pervaded the whole place.
She was hermetically sealed up in this ghastly glass coffin and preserved. We were all very glad to leave that charnel-house and cover it up out of sight, but not out of memory. That would be perfectly impossible to any of us. I can’t get that smell out of my nose yet. It would sicken you.
Next, I went to the chamber with a friend and my bicycle lantern to investigate. It was up a long, narrow stone stair. The old oak door (it was unlocked, as I said before) soon yielded to our combined efforts and creaked open, and we stood in a room of the middle ages. The old shutters were tightly closed. The ceiling, which had once been handsomely painted, was rapidly falling away, and the tapestry was rotting off the walls. It had evidently once been a splendid apartment, but now it was given up to rats and moths and spiders and damp. It chilled one to the very marrow, and it had that same horrible smell. There was a four-poster bed in one corner with rags and shreds of curtains, probably where the old creature had died. The tables and chairs were covered with the dust of ages. There was no carpet of any kind. An old spinet stood against the wall; and papers were lying all over the place inches deep in dust. A few charred logs of wood lay in the gaping old fireplace with its old-time chimney corners, and there seemed to be bits of valuable old china and bric-a-brac about the place. Many pictures had fallen off the walls, but a few faded pencil drawings were still in their places. Just guess my surprise and astonishment when I found they were Scottish views—one of Edinburgh, one of Crail Church, and three of St Andrews, including the old College and Chapel, the Castle, and St Leonards College, with date 1676. Here was another most curious thing I determined to ask about before I left. However, I touched nothing in the room, as I had promised my host, and besides—you will laugh—I had no wish to be stricken with the “Brown Witch’s” promised curse of blindness and ultimate death to any intruder who touched her things. I dreaded her far too much since I had seen her in the gallery and in her tomb, and heard of her bewitched alarm bell, which portended death to some one.
Before I left, I mentioned the Scottish drawings in the witch’s room to my host, and asked him if he could throw any light on how they came there.
Briefly, it seems that she (the witch) sent her son far away in those old days to a Scottish University, and St Andrews was her choice. It seems he was very quarrelsome in his cups, and frequently fought duels, and generally proved the victor. One of the last he fought at Sauchope Stone, near Crail, with a nephew of the Laird of Balcomie Castle, and they fought with broadsword and buckler, and again the “Witch’s” son killed his man. His last duel was fought on St Andrews sands with rapiers, and he was run through the heart—a good job.
Now I must conclude. I am determined to investigate further the whole most mysterious affair. If you ever visit this place, my host, Mr ⸺, says he will let you explore the vault in the yew avenue, and see the coffin and the old witch, and you may also go and look at the chamber. If you ever do, take the advice of an old friend and do not dare to touch anything therein.
Your Friend to Command.
