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CASE VI
THE PHANTOM REGIMENT OF KILLIECRANKIE
Many are the stories that
have from time to time been circulated with regard to the haunting of
the Pass of Killiecrankie by phantom soldiers, but I do not think there
is any stranger story than that related to me, some years ago, by a lady
who declared she had actually witnessed the phenomena. Her account of it
I shall reproduce as far as possible in her own words:—
Let me commence by stating that I am not a spritualist, and that I have
the greatest possible aversion to convoking the earthbound souls of the
dead. Neither do I lay any claim to medium-istic powers (indeed I have
always regarded the term “ medium ” with the gravest suspicion). I am,
on the contrary, a plain, practical, matter-of-fact woman, and with the
exception of this one occasion, never witnessed any psychic phenomena.
The incident I am about to relate took place the autumn before last. I
was on a cycle tour in Scotland, and, making Pitlochry my temporary
headquarters, rode over one evening to view the historic Pass of
Killiecrankie. It was late when I arrived there, and the western sky was
one great splash of crimson and gold— such vivid colouring I had never
seen before and never have seen since. Indeed, I was so entranced at the
sublimity of the spectacle, that I perched myself on a rock at the foot
of one of the great cliffs that form the walls of the Pass, and,
throwing my head back, imagined myself in fairyland. Lost, thus, in a
delicious luxury, I paid no heed to the time, nor did I think of
stirring, until the dark shadows of the night fell across my face. I
then started up in a panic, and was about to pedal off in hot haste,
when a strange notion suddenly seized me: I had a latchkey, plenty of
sandwiches, a warm cape, why should I not camp out there till early
morning—I had long yearned to spend a night in the open, now was my
opportunity. The idea was no sooner conceived than put into operation.
Selecting the most comfortable-looking boulder I could see, I scrambled
on to the top of it, and, with my cloak drawn tightly over my back and
shoulders, commenced my vigil. The cold mountain air, sweet with the
perfume of gorse and heather, intoxicated me, and I gradually sank into
a heavenly torpor, from which I was abruptly aroused by a dull boom,
that I at once associated with distant musketry. All was then still,
still as the grave, and, on glancing at the watch I wore strapped on my
wrist, I saw it was two o’clock. A species of nervous dread now laid
hold of me, and a thousand and one vague fancies, all the more
distressing because of their vagueness, oppressed and disconcerted me.
Moreover, I was impressed for the first time with the extraordinary
solitude—solitude that seemed to belong to a period far other than the
present, and, as I glanced around at the solitary pines and gleaming
boulders, I more than half expected to see the wild, ferocious face of
some robber chief—some fierce yet fascinating hero of Sir Walter
Scott’s— peering at me from behind them. This feeling at length became
so acute, that, in a panic of fear—ridiculous, puerile fear, I forcibly
withdrew my gaze and concentrated it abstractedly on the ground at my
feet. I then listened, and in the rustling of a leaf, the humming of
some night insect, the whizzing of a bat, the whispering of the wind as
it moaned softly past me, I fancied — nay, I felt sure I detected
something that was not ordinary. I blew my nose, and had barely ceased
marvelling at the loudness of its reverberations, before the piercing,
ghoulish shriek of an owl sent the blood in torrents to my heart. I then
laughed, and my blood froze as I heard a chorus, of what I tried to
persuade myself could only be echoes, proceed from every crag and rock
in the valley. For some seconds after this I sat still, hardly daring to
breathe, and pretending to be extremely angry with myself for being such
a fool. With a stupendous effort I turned my attention to the most
material of things. One of the skirt buttons on my hip—they were much in
vogue then—being loose, I endeavoured to occupy myself in tightening it,
and when I could no longer derive any employment from that, I set to
work on my shoes, and tied knots in the laces, merely to enjoy the task
of untying them. But this, too, ceasing at last to attract me, I was
desperately racking my mind for some other device, when there came again
the queer, booming noise I had heard before, but which I could now no
longer doubt was the report of firearms. I looked in the direction of
the sound— and — my heart almost stopped. Racing towards me—as if not
merely for his life, but his soul—came the figure of a Highlander. The
wind rustling through his long dishevelled hair, blew it completely over
his forehead, narrowly missing his eyes, which were fixed ahead of him
in a ghastly, agonised stare. He had not a vestige of colour, and, in
the powerful glow of the moonbeams, his skin shone livid. He ran with
huge bounds, and, what added to my terror and made me double aware he
was nothing mortal, was that each time his feet struck the hard, smooth
road, upon which I could well see there was no sign of a stone, there
came the sound, the unmistakable sound of the scattering of gravel. On,
on he came, with cyclonic swiftness his bare sweating elbows pressed
into his panting sides; his great, dirty, coarse, hairy fists screwed up
in bony bunches in front of him; the foam-flakes thick on his clenched,
grinning lips; the blood-drops oozing down his sweating thighs. It was
all real, infernally, hideously real, even to the most minute details:
the
flying up and down of his kilt, sporan, and swordless scabbard; the
bursting of the seam of his coat, near the shoulder; and the absence of
one of his clumsy shoe-buckles. I tried hard to shut my eyes, but was
compelled to keep them open, and follow his every movement as, darting
past me, he left the roadway, and, leaping several of the smaller
obstacles that barred his way, finally disappeared behind some of the
bigger boulders. I then heard the loud rat-tat of drums, accompanied by
the shrill voices of fifes and flutes, and at the farther end of the
Pass, their arms glittering brightly in the silvery moonbeams, appeared
a regiment of scarlet-clad soldiers. At the head rode a mounted officer,
after him came the band, and then, four abreast, a long line of
warriors; in their centre two ensigns, and on their flanks, officers and
non-commissioned officers with swords and pikes; more mounted men
bringing up the rear. On they came; the fifes and flutes ringing out
with a weird clearness in the hushed mountain air. I could hear the
ground vibrate, the gravel crunch and scatter, as they steadily and
mechanically advanced—tall men, enormously tall men, with set, white
faces and livid eyes. Every instant I expected they would see me, and I
became sick with terror at the thought of meeting all those pale,
flashing eyes. But from this I was happily saved; no one appeared to
notice me, and they all passed me by without as much as a twist or turn
of the head, their feet keeping time to one everlasting and monotonous
tramp, tramp, tramp. I got up and watched until the last of them had
turned the bend of the Pass, and the sheen of his weapons and trappings
could no longer be seen; then I remounted my boulder and wondered if
anything further would happen. It was now half-past two, and blended
with the moonbeams was a peculiar whiteness, which rendered the whole
aspect of my surroundings indescribably dreary and ghostly. Feeling cold
and hungry, I set to work on my beef sandwiches, and was religiously
separating the fat from the lean, for I am one of those foolish'people
who detest fat, when a loud rustling made me look up. Confronting me, on
the opposite side of the road, was a tree, an ash, and to my surprise,
despite the fact that the breeze had fallen and there was scarcely a
breath of wind, the tree swayed violently to and fro, whilst there
proceeded from it the most dreadful moanings and groanings. I was so
terrified that I caught hold of my bicycle and tried to mount, but I was
obliged to desist as I had not a particle of strength in my limbs. Then
to assure myself the moving of the tree was not an illusion, I rubbed my
eyes, pinched myself, called aloud; but it made no difference—the
rustling, bending, and tossing still continued. Summing up courage, I
stepped into the road to get a closer view, when to my horror my feet
kicked against something, and, on looking down, I perceived the body of
an English soldier, with a ghastly wound in his chest. I gazed around,
and there, on all sides of me, from one end of the valley to the other,
lay dozens of bodies,—bodies of men and horses,—Highlanders and English,
whitecheeked, lurid eyes, and bloody-browed, —a hotch-potch of livid,
gory awfulness. Here was the writhing, wriggling figure of an officer
with half his face shot away; and there, a horse with no head; and
there—but I cannot dwell on such horrors, the very memory of which makes
me feel sick and faint. The air, that beautiful, fresh mountain air,
resounded with their moanings and groanings, and reeked with the smell
of their blood. As I stood rooted to the ground with horror, not knowing
which way to look or turn, I suddenly saw drop from the ash, the form of
a woman, a Highland girl, with bold, handsome features, raven black
hair, and the whitest of arms and feet. In one hand she carried a wicker
basket, in the other a knife, a broad-bladed, sharp-edged, horn-handled
knife. A gleam of avarice and cruelty came into her large dark eyes, as,
wandering around her, they rested on the rich facings of the English
officers' uniforms. I knew what was in her mind, and—forgetting she was
but a ghost—that they were all ghosts—I moved heaven and earth to stop
her. I could not. Making straight for a wounded officer that lay moaning
piteously on the ground, some ten feet away from me, she spurned with
her slender, graceful feet, the bodies of the dead and dying English
that came in her way. Then, snatching the officer's sword and pistol
from him, she knelt down, and, with a look of devilish glee in her
glorious eyes, calmly plunged her knife into his heart, working the
blade backwards and forwards to assure herself she had made a thorough
job of it. Anything more hellish I could not have imagined, and yet it
fascinated me—the girl was so fair, so wickedly fair and shapely. Her
act of cruelty over, she spoiled her victim of his rings, epaulets,
buttons and gold lacing, and, having placed r* them in her basket,
proceeded elsewhere. In some cases, unable to remove the rings easily,
she chopped off the fingers, and popped them, just as they were, into
her basket. Neither was her mode of dispatch always the same, for while
she put some men out of their misery in the manner I have described, she
cut the throats of others with as great a nonchalance as if she had been
killing fowls, whilst others again she settled with the butt-ends of
their guns or pistols. In all she murdered a full half-score, and was
decamping with her booty when her gloating eyes suddenly encountered
mine, and with a shrill scream of rage she rushed towards me. I was an
easy victim, for strain and pray how I would, I could not move an inch.
Raising her flashing blade high over her head, an expression of fiendish
glee in her staring eyes, she made ready to strike me. This was the
climax, my overstrained nerves could stand no more, and ere the blow had
time to descend, I pitched heavily forward and fell at her feet. When I
recovered, every phantom had vanished, and the Pass glowed with all the
cheerful freshness of the early morning sun. Not a whit the worse for my
venture, I cycled swiftly home, and ate as only one can eat who has
spent the night amid the banks and braes of bonnie Scotland. |
