Chapter 2

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.

The Apparition of the Prior of Pittenweem.

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 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.