A “ TERRIBLE ” SECRET.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 449, 21 January 1909, Page 4

A “ TERRIBLE ” SECRET.

Superstition Dies Hard.

Viscount Glamis, heir to the Earldom of Stratford, who was .married recently to 'Lady Dorothy .’Osborne, daughter of the Duke of Leeds, was three years ago on his 21st birthday, told the “ terrible secret ” which for centuries has hung over the Glamis Castle. A secret chamber in the. castle is known only to the (Strathmore, Viscount Glamis, and the factor of the estate. It is always locked, and its whereabouts is always jealously guarded from prying eyes. A reputed visitant of the haunted room is the ghost of a former Lady Glamis, who was falsely accused of witchcraft against the life of James V., and was dragged from the room, then her boudoir, and burned at the slake. It is also said that the room contains the skeletons of a rival chieftain —an Ogilvy—and his clan who were walled up in it, and in an agony of starvation, devoured each other. Another version of the mystery is that the room is haunted annually by the ghost of a former Lady Glamis and a friend, who meet there and play cards until cockcrow. They were playing cards on the Sabbath, and Lord Glamis “swore a loud oath” that the game should be finished if it took them till doomsday. A “stranger 1 dre«sed in black ” thereupon appeared, and told the gamblers he would take them at their word. The late Earl of Strathmore spent many hours in his private chapel “ praying down the sinister, influence ”of the secret room. He is credited with having said to a Iriend ; “If you could guess even the nature of this secret you would go dowp On your knees and thank God you were ignorant of it.