The Haunted Tower

Although St Andrews itself was not a walled town, its cathedral priory was surrounded by a wall, most of which is still intact and was the work of Prior James Hepburn.  The walls are up to twenty feet high and three feet thick, and towers were set along them for defensive purposes.

Thirteen of the towers still remain, but the one known as "The Haunted Tower" is the square tower which bears a panel with the Hepburn arms surmounted with a pot of lilies.

This tower has had the reputation of being haunted for centuries.  The fisherfolk would run past it if they were returning from the harbour after dusk because the figure of a veiled lady dressed all in white was sometimes seen gliding along the ramparts between the towers and sometimes seen drifting over the Kirkhill between the castle and the cathedral.

The story of the White Lady remained a legend with no basis in fact until 1828, when a young apprentice mason called Grieve was working on pointing the tower.  His chisel slipped through a hole in the wall and fell into the upper chamber.  Young Grieve looked into the hole to recover his chisel, only to get the fright of his life.  He rescued his chisel and told Mr Hall of the Woods and Forests Department who was responsible for the maintenance of the Abbey Wall, what he had seen.  The hole in the wall was rapidly sealed up and Grieve was told not to talk about what he had seen.

Mr Hall did, however, tell a few friends and, on the 7th September 1868 before 6 a.m., accompanied by Mr Smith, the watchmaker and Mr Walker, the university librarian, he watched as Mr Grieve, now a qualified mason, made a hole in the wall that was just large enough to allow them to wriggle into the tower.

Inside the upper chamber was a dozen or so coffins,each containing the body of a perfectly preserved man. Each, that is, except one which had rotted enough to allow the body of a perfectly preserved body of a young woman with flowing dark hair, dressed in a white flowing dress and with the remnants of a white leather glove on one hand to fall through its base and onto the floor.

The men sealed up the tower again and left the chamber as they had found it, and the stories of the hauntings continued.  Dean of Guild W.T. Linskill, however, was intrigued by the stories of the White Lady, and on the 21st August 1888, he persuaded Mr Grieve to open up the upper chamber again, and the two men entered it at midnight.

When they entered the chamber they found that the coffins had been smashed and some scattered bones lay around.  There was no sign of the corpse of the beautiful lady.

People have claimed to have seen the ghost of the White Lady as recently as the 1970s, but she is recognised as a harbinger of bad luck.  Who was she?  Nobody knows for certain. 

The fact that she was in an oak coffin with a ridged lid and also that she wore a white leather glove suggests that she might have been a holy woman interred long before the Reformation.  Such corpses were often gloved so that their hands could be kissed by people looking for blessings.

Legend says that she might have been a mistress of Cardinal Beaton, or even Marion Ogilvie, the wife he set aside when he entered the Church.

I doubt if we'll ever know for sure.