The Old Hall of Ecclefechan (Kirkconnel Hall) is also supposed to be haunted. Little is known about it, but the opinion has been expressed that “the mysterious apparition of the ‘Ha’ Ghost’ seems to have haunted the place from the distant past, and its mysterious and noisy demonstrations have from time to time disturbed the residents. It is said to make its appearance before and at the time of the death of any member of the family.”[(92)]
In the parish of Eskdalemuir there is a farm-house called Todshawhill. It is on the Black Esk, about three miles in a south-westerly direction from the Parish Church. With the name of this farm there is associated the memory of something uncanny, known far and wide as the “Bogle of Todshawhill.” It seems rather to have been a “brownie” than a “ghost,” but some account of it is here given as described by Dr Brown and embodied in an antiquarian account of the parish. According to Dr Brown, one of the bogle’s biographers, this creature made a stay of a week, less or more, at Todshawhill farmhouse, disappearing for the most part during the day, only to reappear towards evening. Its freaks and eccentricities very naturally attracted a number of people to the neighbourhood, and among the number, Thomas Bell from Westside, the neighbouring farmer, who, in order to assure himself that it had flesh and blood like other folks, took it up in his arms and fully satisfied himself that it had its ample share of both. In appearance it resembled an old woman above the middle, with very short legs and thighs, and it affected a style of walk at once so comical and undignified that the Rev. Dr aforesaid was compelled to pronounce it “waddling.” The first intimation or indication of its presence in these parts was given, I understand, at the head of Todshawhill Bog, where some young callants who were engaged in fastening up the horses of the farm heard a cry at some little distance off—“Tint, Tint, Tint”—to which one of the lads, William Nichol by name, at once replied, “You shall not tine and me here,” and then the lads made off, helter-skelter, with the misshapen little creature at their heels. In his terror one of the lads fell head foremost into a hole or moss hag, and the creature, “waddling” past him to get at the rest, came into violent contact with a cow, which, naturally resenting such unceremonious treatment, pushed at it with its horns, whereupon the creature replied, “God help me, what means the cow?” This expression soothed, if it did not wholly allay, the fears of all concerned, for they at once concluded that if the creature had been a spirit it would not have mentioned the name of Deity in the way it did.[(93)]
The last account to be quoted of supernatural visitation in the south-western district of Scotland is a particularly striking one, and is taken from an interesting contribution to a recent number of Chambers’s Journal dealing with apparitions:—
“In the Lowlands of Scotland stood an old manor house, where the owner’s wife was on her death-bed. The ancient furniture still remained in the room, so the invalid lay in a four-post bed, with curtains all round it, wherein many generations of the family had been born and died. The curtains were drawn at its foot and on the side nearest the wall, but they were open on the other to a blazing fire, before which sat an attendant nurse. A tall screen on her left hand shielded her from the draught from a door, whose top was visible above it; and as the nurse sat there she became conscious that the door was opening and that a hand seemed to rest for a moment on the top of the screen. Presently, as she watched, half-paralysed with fear, a figure appeared from behind the screen—the figure of a young woman clothed in a sacque of rich brocade, over a pink silk petticoat, and wearing a head-dress of the time of Queen Anne. This figure advanced with a gentle undulating movement to the bed and bent down over it. Then the nurse jumped up and stretched out her hand to the bell-pull; and, lo! when she looked again the figure had vanished, and her patient lay there dead, with an expression of rapturous content on her sunken face.[(94)]
Later, when the last sad rites had been accomplished, this nurse wandered into the picture gallery in company with the housekeeper, and pausing before a certain portrait, exclaimed that there was the original of the unknown lady.
‘Ah,’ came the answer, ‘that lady lived here when Queen Anne was on the throne. They say she had a sad life with her lord, and died young. Ever since she is believed, when the mistress of the manor dies, to appear beside the bed, and—and’——
‘You need not tell me more,’ said the nurse, ‘for I also have seen her.’”[(94)]
No account of superstitious belief in Galloway would be complete without reference to three remarkable tracts, giving quaint and circumstantial accounts of alleged supernatural visitations from the spirit-world beyond. In their order of publication these are—(a) “The Surprising Story of the Devil of Glenluce”; (b) “A True Account of an Apparition which infested the house of Andrew Mackie, in Ringcroft, Parish of Rerwick, and Stewartry of Kirkcudbright in 1695, ... Mr Alexander Telfair”; and (c) “The Laird o’ Coul’s Ghost.”
The “Devil of Glenluce” first appeared in an old work on Hydrostaticks by George Sinclair, Professor of Philosophy and afterwards of Mathematics in the University of Glasgow. This work was published in 1672. It was again printed in his more important work, Satan’s Invisible World, in 1685. The theme is concerned with the persecution of one Gilbert Campbell, a weaver, and his family, in the village of Glenluce, by an evil and tormenting spirit. As a chapbook this curious work had a very wide circulation.
The “True Account of the Rerwick Apparition” when first published called for two editions within the first year, and with many alterations it was also published in London under the title of “New Confutation of Sadducism, being a narrative of a Spirit which infested the house of Andrew Mackie of Ringcroft, Galloway, in 1695.” Only the site of Ringcroft of Stoking, marked by some old fir trees, remains, near the village of Auchencairn.