Sunday, 7 November 2010

"It was a dark and a stormy night", or the Tale of the Phantom Coach

That's how so many stories start, isn't it?  Well, the ghost I'm about to tell you about only makes an appearance on a dark and stormy night and nobody has been able to explain exactly what it is.

On certain moonless nights when a storm rages inland from the coast, clouds hang low and the trees bend under the pressure of the wind and rain, a coach can be seen speeding along the road from StrathkinnessIt is pulled by two horse-like creatures with long legs, but the creatures' hooves make no noise as they pull the box-like coachAll that can be heard is the creak of the coach's springs and the rumble of its wheels on the road's surface, and a white, frightened face can be dimly seen pressed against the window.

It is said that sometimes the coach will stop and a white skeletal hand will beckon the observerAnyone unwise enough to accept the offer of a lift and enter the coach is never seen again.

Some say that this is the coach that Archbishop Sharpe was dragged from and murdered in front of his daughter on Magus Muir.  Some say that the white face at the window is Cardinal Beaton.  Others will tell you that the coach is driven by the Devil himself.

Whoever the driver and passenger may be, the coach is said to hurtle through the streets of St Andrews on dark and stormy nights before disappearing over the cliffs near the castle and into the sea.