GHOSTS OF GLAMIS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 5, 7 January 1927, Page 12

GHOSTS OF GLAMIS

IN M OLD-TIME CASTLE ANCESTRAL HOME OF THE DUCHESS OF YORK FAMOUS SCOTCH MYSTERIES. After wandering for years over ocean and continent the Prince of Wales, so it is now reported, has been doing his royal utmost to see a ghost! declares a correspondent of the "New York Times Magazine." With this end in view he has been visiting the eerie land of Scots which, according.. to the spectral census, is haunted by as many bogies as people. • ' ' . . '"."'"■' In Scotland the Prince has been the guest of his "popular sister-in-law, the Duchess of York, at her ancestral home in Glamis Castle, which, since the days of Shakespeare's Macbeth, has been the acknowledged capital of occult Caledonia. If you cannot see ghosts at Glamis, There: ' is something amiss with your supernatural eyesight. To begin wiyi, ghosts observe a eer-" tain etiquette. They are shy, even to a fault, and like to be properly introduced. Still, while thoir behaviour is usually irreproach />lo, it is none the loss a fact that they are partial to ladies, that they prefer the lady to be alone, and that she is usually retiring for the night and often asleep when the apparition upsets. her nerves. Indeod, ghosts are lacking, perhaps, in j gallantry. For when.the lady shrieks or swoons at sight of the spectre, he does not seize her in his arms and say to her, "Now, now, it is only Julius Caesar with his forty wounds" or "It is only Charles I. with an oozing nock," but he vanishes in flight, leaving the lady to emerge from her shivers all by herself.

This is because men as a rule are more adapted than women to be murdered. '■■■ And the disembodied swain, while he seeks pleasant society, dislikes a scene. ' f At Glamis a king is said to have been killed. He was not King Duncan, known to Macbeth, but Malcolm LT. It is true that some historians declare that Malcolm died in his bed and was buried at lona. But the suggestion at Glamis—and it is the suggestion that matters—is that he was done to death in a room, still shown. It is Malcolm 'who stalks abroad. ■ ' A GHOST IS A BORE.

On the illustrious family which lives, at Glamis Malcolm knows by long experience that it is no use for him to try his tricks. Familiarity with apparitions has made the Strathmores immune to terror,, and to the Duchess of | York even a new ghost is just a bore. , It is the cuest who has just arrived that becomes fair game for Malcolm's antics. Ghosts are always on the lookout for the new-comer who can be taken by surprise. In appearance Glamis is a French chateau of the sixteenth century. But, in fact, the tower, is ancient. It was in the tower that Malcolm suffered so unfortunate a mishap. And by a coincidence it is the tower that contains the most comfortable guest chambers. There is no more gloom in the tower than there is in any other skyscraper. The views are gorgeous. The bedrooms are the last word in charm. Ladies are fascinated at ones by the romance of the tower and its modernity. Yet when -the pillow seems so soft' there is heard the clank of a mailed foot, fleeing from the clatter of swords. The door is banged: there are groans and curses; blood, flowing under the door, slowly stains the carpet; the door bursts open; a miffhty monarch staggers in, wounded unto death, his face pallid, his limbs bathed m gore; the lady then faints. And as morning dawns some housemaid has always cleaned the carpet. As a matter of fact, the real mystery at Glamis is not the ghost of Malcolm, who, after all,' is only one of many such beings, but,the secret room The point is that this room is not a myth. Its existence is admitted by the Earls of btrathmore themselves. And it has to be admitted also that the reason for the secrecy is substantial an* not merely fantastic. There has been, and perhaps still is,.something that the earls desire at all costs to conceal of£« c w?\s the tower at Glamis' are often 15ft thick. Not many years ago the removal -of plaster; disclosed a wholly unsuspected fireplace, while dur ing alterations a well was found, running throngh. the walls upwards so as to serve the upper rooms with water wJT -° £ eed- The secret Camber was designed as a refuge for the pursued. And as such it was in no way remarkable. There are many such sS tuanes from.feudal violence 'w*• at f ami^ the family itself has Inrtead \i^l°™ th- e secret Camber! rSe^eln noi4,^yPSr SS aw-** 6 £ Sked aboUt **• truth about !t is,known only to the Earl and his factor and to the heir when he comes of age . And the heir, who as a boy promised in advance to teTl the silly old tale in the Bmoking-room 6 ud-K-lll6^! f erioUß and sUent I 1? old tale was actually disclosed to him. The room is no mere jest of the superstitious. It guards something of which a great family of hereditary nobles are exceedingly solicitous, and SIST^n5 o^a^ heir-3to j VAND3HED OGILVYS. Among all,the legends of Glamis there is one and one only that appears i to suggest a rational explanation of I the secret room, its ghosts, and its ' noises.' There was a feud between the Li n2 Sa?f. and the Ogilvys. A number of fugitives belonging to the Ogilvy clan, sought safety in Glamis Castle. They were admitted and concealed in the secret room. For some reason a

dark crime was then perpetrated. It' is a> crime as terrible as the horror inflicted on captives in the Black Hole of Calcutta. The Ogilvys were left to die of starvation. The scene, of which we i have hints, defies description. Madness, cannibalism, and curses changed the room into an inferno .until after a prolonged agony tho end was silenced For treachery such a tale transcends even the record of the massacre in the vale of Glencoe. ■ . It explains ■ all that. has followed in j later years. To prevent the disclosure ■' of evidence could not fail to bo the aim of the Strathmores.. They would fear I vengeance; they would dislike a stain on the honour of the. house. Yet the secrecy would be futile unless it was absolute. Of those vanished Ogilvys '■• there must not be one trace discovered or at any time discoverable. The disposal of the bodies, unseen by an unauthorised eye, however friendly, !' could only be accomplished by night and might involve the use of a hammer. The lady who at breakfast complained that carpenters were at work somewhere near her room at 4 o'clock in the morning may have been speaking the truth. And there may have been excellent reasons for paying a large sum of money to a mason who, after employment .at the castle, emigrated. Also the horror of a young Earl who first looked upon, the lawful evidences of the crime is no matter for wonder. And in the dim tradition of a distorted face appearing at a remote window and falling back? into the shadow would be in line with the facts as assumed. . ■ i

To say that tho Ogilvy feud is the real explanation of this world-fam-ous mystery would be going beyond the evidence. No other story, however does explain the situation. And this story is adequate to tho problem. It would be a. truth stranger than fiction —the persistent endeavour of a great and noble clan to bury deep in its own subconsciousness the memory of an intolerable, act of cruelty which, if confessed, would be at once a favourite theme of novelist, dramatist, and poet —a stain forever on an ancient escutcheon—a classical instance of the extremes.to which hatred and statecraft may drive a remorseless chieftain