Free Haunted Scotland by Roddy Martine

swollen jowls and mouth of the notorious Turnbull of Barnhill, who never passed up a
chance to kiss a pretty girl. Standing three storeys high and towering above the surrounding countryside, this formidable stronghold occupies a spectacular vantage point. From its clifftop
platform, known as Barnhill’s Bed, approachingtrouble was easily spotted and, in the relentless days of reiving and English invasion, this proved invaluable.
    The crunch for the Turnbulls came in the early sixteenth century, when King James IV, despairing of the lawlessness of his Border subjects, held a mass hanging beside the Rule Water, two miles
from Denholm. Fatlips Castle passed to their neighbours and rivals, the Elliotts, who were elevated to the Scottish peerage as earls of Minto.
    From then on, the fortified tower on the hill became little more than a garden folly for the Elliotts until 1897, when it was restored as a sporting lodge. It then became a museum, but after a
spate of vandalism which culminated in a fire, it was abandoned.
    That was back in the 1970s, and since then those who live nearby in the area have looked on in dismay as the building has deteriorated. ‘I often go for a wee walk up there on a
weekend,’ Sandy Lochie informed me, ‘But never at night.’
    Although he and his friends played as children in and around the tower, he claims to be baffled as to why it was abandoned by its owners. ‘It’s perfectly habitable,’ he
insists, and, to some extent, this is what prompted him to stop one night as he was driving past and noticed lights flickering in the windows.
    ‘There was only just a dull glow, but I knew there shouldn’t have been anybody up there,’ he recalled.
    Besides, he knew that access from ground level had been bricked up. ‘I had three options,’ he went on. ‘I could have gone home and forgotten about it, or I could have reported
it to the police, or, instead, I could go and have a look for myself – which is what I did.’
    Pulling his car into the side of the road, Sandy extracted a torch from the car’s glove compartment and cautiously made his way up the overgrown track. ‘I must have been daft,’
he said. ‘But it was a warmish night and I didn’t really think much of it at the time.’
    As he came closer to the castle walls, he says he clearly heard the sounds of a harp or clarsach being played. ‘There was a great roar of shouting, joviality and
laughter, as if the occupants were throwing a party.’
    By then he was within twenty feet of the castle walls. Increasingly breathless from the ascent, he had momentarily paused when a loud explosion rocked the ground and everything became quiet.
Looking up, he saw the lights in the tower windows had been turned off.
    ‘There was a pungent smell of damp smoke, even though it hadn’t rained all week,’ he recalled with a shudder. ‘Everything was eerily still. I said to myself
“you’re a daft laddie”, and turned on my heels to go home.’
    Sandy returned the following morning to have another look at the castle by daylight. As he might have expected, he found the entrance was sealed up and there were no apparent signs of a
break-in.
    ‘I took the dog along with me this time,’ he said. ‘Poor old chap, he started off by running away ahead of me, but as we got closer he stopped dead in his tracks and started to
whimper.
    ‘From there on, he wouldn’t go any further. I reckon he knew something was going on there. If only animals could speak.’

9
HELL AND PURGATORY
    Strange things, the neighbours say, have happen’d here;
    Wild shrieks have issued from the hollow tombs;
    Dead men have come again, and walk’d about;
    And the great bell has toll’d, unrung, untouch’d.
    The Reverend Robert Blair, ‘The Grave’ (1743)
    Nowhere is the past more pervasive than on the Orkney Islands, where everyday survival is governed by 100-mile-per-hour winds off the Atlantic Ocean. In one of his more
memorable essays published in