St. Andrews Ghost Stories

Many years ago, about the time of the Tay Bridge gale, I was staying at Edinburgh with a friend of mine, an actor manager. I had just come down from the paint-room of the theatre, and was emerging from the stage-door, when I encountered Miss Elsie H⸺, a then well-known actress.

“You are just the very person I wanted to meet,” she said. “Allow me to introduce you to my friend, Mr Spencer Ashton. He’s not an actor, he’s an artist, and he’s got such a queer, queer story about ghosts and things near your beloved St Andrews.”

I bowed to Mr Ashton, who was a quiet-looking man, pale and thin, rather like a benevolent animated hairpin. He reminded me somehow of Fred Vokes. We shook hands warmly.

“Yes,” he said, “my story sounds like fiction, but it is a fact, as I can prove. It is rather long, but it may possibly interest you. Where could we foregather?”

“Come and dine with me at the Edinburgh Hotel to-night at eight. I’ll get a private room,” I said.

“Right oh!” said he, and we parted.

That evening at eight o’clock we met at the old Edinburgh Hotel (now no longer in existence), and after dinner he told me his very remarkable tale.

“Some years ago,” he said, “I was staying in a small coast town in Fife, not very far from St Andrews. I was painting some quaint houses and things of the sort that tickled my fancy at the time, and I was very much amused and excited by some of the bogie tales told me by the fisher folk. One story particularly interested me.”

“And what was that?” I asked.

“Well, it was about a strange, dwarfish, old man, who, they swore, was constantly wandering about among the rocks at nightfall; a queer, uncanny creature, they said, who was ‘aye beckoning to them,’ and who was never seen or known in the daylight. I heard so much at various times and from various people about this old man that I resolved to look for him and see what his game really was. I went down to the beach times without number, but saw nothing worse than myself, and I was almost giving the job up as hopeless, when one night ‘I struck oil,’ as the Yankees would say.”

“Good,” I said, “let me hear.”

“It was after dusk,” he proceeded, “very rough and windy, but with a feeble moon peeping out at times between the racing clouds. I was alone on the beach. Next moment I was not alone.”

“Not alone,” I remarked. “Who was there?”

“Certainly not alone,” said Ashton. “About three yards from me stood a quaint, short, shrivelled, old creature. At that time the comic opera of ‘Pinafore’ was new to the stage-loving world, and this strange being resembled the character of ‘Dick Deadeye’ in that piece. But this old man was much uglier and more repulsive. He wore a tattered monk’s robe, had a fringe of black hair, heavy black eyebrows, very protruding teeth, and a pale, pointed, unshaven chin. Moreover, he possessed only one eye, which was large and telescopic looking.”

“What a horrid brute,” I said.

“Oh! he wasn’t half so bad after all,” said Ashton, “though his appearance was certainly against him. He kept beckoning to me with a pale, withered hand, continually muttering, ‘Come.’ I felt compelled to follow him, and follow him I did.”

I lit up another pipe and listened intently.

“He took me,” resumed Ashton, “into a natural cave, a cleft in the rocks, and we went stumbling over the rocks and stones, and splashing into pools. At least I did. He seemed to get along all right. At the far end of this clammy cave, a very narrow staircase, cut out of solid rock, ascended abruptly about twenty or thirty steps, then turned a corner and descended again into a large passage. Then a mighty queer thing happened.”