LOTHIAN GHOST STORY

Shannon News, 5 October 1926, Page 3

LOTHIAN GHOST STORY

“HORSEMAN” IN A BEDROOM. There is a very old house in Scotland standing among trees —the remnant of a wood which formerly extended to the bent-covered sand dunes bordering the beach. The house has been added to, at various times, and modernised, but part is still as . originally built. One long,* low-ceiled, wainscotted room is apart from the family’s rooms, and ib only used by them to store away 'surplus clothing etc. A good many years ago,, the housekeeper, an old family servant, took possession of this room, her own bedroom being very small; but after a very few nights she returned to the small room, saying she felt much cosier in it. Some years later, on e of the young maids became ill, and her room-mate wais moved into the South corner, as th e odd room was called. This young woman burst into the housekeeper’s room at an early houi one morning, in a wild state of terror at what had happened to her. She woke up to hear bagpipes playing in the distance, and, while she listened to the approaching isound, a big grey horse cantered in through the window, a slight figure, in shining corslet and helmet on its back.

The girl sat up and called out in affright, whereupon the rider pulled up and said. “Fear not. ' I am Six Adam Aird,” then wheeled his steed and rode through the folding, doors of what is now a big cupboard, but waJs originally part of a passage leading out to the back, where a path through the wood still leads to the shore.

The housekeeper admitted that an identical experience had driven > her back to her old room, except that she had remained motionless with fright and that the rider had passed through in silence.

“Both of my informants are sensible, matter-of-fact Scots women,” says a writer in telling the story in the weekly Scotsman, “and declares this to be literally true. Neither of them ever heard of any person named Aird. The house ib on the Lothian coast, but I am not -at liberty to give its name.