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.”
[Illustration]
The True Tale of the Phantom Coach.
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.”
The Veiled Nun of St Leonards.
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.
[Illustration]
The Monk of St Rule’s Tower.
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.
Related by Captain Chester.