A Witch and Her Ghost

The following story appeared in "Echoes of the Mountain Muse". About forty-six years ago I was employed as gardener to a gentleman in the Highlands of Perthshire, where the incidents occurred which I am about to relate.
Being a single man, I occupied a small room, distant fully a quarter of a mile from my work, and where, I might say, I acted as "guide, philosopher, and friend" to myself.
A woman, to all appearance very old, was my next-door neighbour. She had a wild and weird-like look, and the expression of her eyes was simply appalling. A thin partition separated her apartment from mine, and I could hear her spinning-wheel going every Sunday, herself at the same time humming a mournful Gaelic air, as an accompaniment to the birr of her wheel.
By the natives all round she was regarded with superstitious dread and the boldest would not venture to incur her displeasure. So great was the awe she inspired that she could enter houses, and, unchallenged, take from the press or cupboard bread, butter, or cheese, whilst none of the cowed inmates would dare to interfere.
It seemed to be an understood thing among the natives that should anyone be unfortunate enough, by any means whatever, to incur her displeasure, a terrible calamity would soon overtake them.
The reader will perhaps be surprised when I state that I was rash enough to somewhat rudely dispute her right to pillage my press, seeing I am alive, and unscathed by devilry or witchcraft of any kind. I am impelled, however to confess, that had I not been a man of more than ordinary nerve, I would most assuredly have been frightened out of my wits by this same witch, six years after she was dead and buried.
The startling statement I have now made, and the incidents that follow, I solemnly declare were witnessed by me.
Before proceeding further with my story I wish to state that I am very far from being superstitious, and I am equally free from slavish fears, and have, since I arrived at manhood, been an independent and, I may I add, a fearless thinker. My courage however, was put to the test that

"Might have strewed the snows of age

on youth's auburn ringlets, or blighted

Beauty's rosy cheek for ever.

How I had nerve sufficient to brave the appalling sight I was doomed to witness I have never been able to satisfy myself, and it remains an unexplained puzzle to me to this day.

Gardners during winter, when the weather is too cold and stormy for work out of doors, generally take to the house, and emply themselves in making baskets to carry fruit or vegetables to the great man's house.

On a very cold and tempestuous day I sat in my apartment engaged at basket-making, and listening to the spinning wheel, and the low, wailing notes of the so-called witch's Gaelic air. Bye-and-by the wheel, and the sad music that accompanied it, ceased, and in less than five minutes my door was opened, and in entered the old hag for the first time, "withered, wild and ragged in her attire." I was honoured with a glance that seemely to me absolutely infernal in its expression, and hideous in its wrinkled deformity. From what I had heard of her I expected my press would be laid under contribution; and so it was, for, with a look of resolute determination, thither she went, and at once commenced to pillage its contents. Not relishing such familiarity, I rose and stepped towards her, and laying my hands on her shoulders, wheeled her round and pushed her out, barring the door behind her. Just as the door closed, she turned round and give vent to a shriek so frightful as to ring in my ears like a howl from the damned.

Next day, in connversation with the Grieve, I told him wht I had done, seeming, at the same time, to treat the affair lightly. He shook his head, and said, "Man, I would not have done what you say for fifty pounds!"

I replied, "I would do it again for far less;" adding, "I am not afraid of witches."

"You will break your neck, or leg, or be drowned some of these days," he replied.; adding, as he moved off, "Mind what I say!"

When six months had nearly expired, the old lady died and was buried, the neighbours wondering all the while why I had escaped unharmed from the vengeance of this terrible witch. I was careful to take a note of the year and day of the month on which she was buried; this I jotted down on the fly-leaf of a favourite book.

Before proceeding further with my story, I wish it to be distinctly understood that I have no intention to magnify my own courage and resolute bearing under the frightful ordeal I was doomed to encounter. I can only say that I was sustained in a mysterious way beyond my comprehension. Let me explain how I felt. I felt my muscles tighten, and a strength and firmness of body and limb, as if I had been a man of iron. In short, I stood boldly convinced that my right of way upon earth was a good as any ghost's could be, and it is questionable whether a psychologist could give a better reason. Why this strange old creature should always regard me with a look of intense hatred, which she did every time she met me, I cannot explain; at all events, I would have rendered her all the kindness in my power, had not her deportment towards me made that impossible.

Some four or five months after her death I removed to a situation in Forfarshire, a distance from my Highland abode of about thirty-five miles as the crow flies. It was here I met the ghost of the witch - a pretty long distance from the spot where her bones were mingling with the clods of the valley. I had been married, and had settled down in my new abode for some years, when I got leave of absence for two or three days to go and see a friend who had returned from abroad in bad health. I was on my return home when I met the witch, enveloped in horrors - a veritable embodiment of all imagination can conceive of the terrible in the world unseen.

It was late in the day when I started on my journey, and, being winter, darkness soon set in; but in other respects it was a pleasant night for the season. Between one and two o'clock in the morning I had reached within a mile or so of my home, and having nothing to hurry me, was walking leisurely along. On my right hand was a lea field, which terminated at a thick belt of young fir trees about 150 yards in advance of where I was walking. At that moment I happened to look forward to the dreary-looking line of trees, and then it was I saw a dark-looking ill-defined figure move out on the lea about fifteen feet or thereby from the road, and approaching rapidly in a straight line down the field. Owing to the darkness, I should not have seen the figure till it came nearer; but, at all events, I did see it the moment it emerged on the field. When opposite me, I saw it kneel in a halo of intense light, which shot out tremulous rays into the darkness, with a low spluttering noise, in all directions. My astonishment knew no bounds the moment I discovered that the figure kneeling before me was the witch, grasping her staff with her skinny hands, and holding it upright in front of her. I recognised every patch on her tattered cloak, her staff, the terrible expression of her eyes, more frightful now than ever; and I could see her toothless gums when she opened her thin lips, from which proceeded horrid mutterings, seemingly devilish in their import.

"If this is not a ghost, there never was one," I thought to myself.

Horror upon horrors! looking into her eyes, which blazed like two furnaces, I could see in their far depths a tiny image of myself, standing, as it were, in a sea of flame. So intensely awful was the sight that it made me instinctively utter, "Merciful God, support and protect me at this moment." A sound like the flap of a bird's wing made me lok up, and there I saw, above the kneeling figure, a ring of lurid red colour, about five feet in diameter, and stationary. So threatening in their expression were the features of the apparition, that every moment I expected it would spring at me. I was about to move away, when I observed the ring slowly descending, whilst the figure, at the same time, rose slowly, as if to meet it; and when the head and shoulders of this frightful phantom rose above the ring and stood at its centre, the spectacle was appalling in a terrible degree. Suddenly the ring again began to descend, and the wild glaring eyes all the while fixed on me, fierce and undefinable in their hate. No sooner had the ring reached the ground than the fiend-like features relaxed, the eyes grew dimmer, the ring seemed to sink into the earth, the halo of light vanished, and a dark form stood a few moments in gloomy stillness, then slowly melted into the shades of night.

In passing the wood from which I first noticed my unearthly visitor emerge, I felt a shock rattle through my brain like a shower of icicles and on raising my hand to my head I found my hair drenched with a cold, clammy sweat, and a momentary giddiness came over me, but soon passed away. On my return home I looked up the book in which I had noted the witch's death and found, curiously enough, that it was exactly six years since the witch died and was buried. Though it is now well-nigh fifty years since the occurrence of the event which I have related in my story, I have still a most vivid recollection of all the incidents of which, improbable as it may seem, I was an unharmed eye-witness.