Ghosts & Gallows (3 page)

One night in the early summer of the following year, Alexander MacPherson awoke in his shepherding hut at Glen Clunie to find the figure of a man standing at the foot of his bed. The person, dressed in a blue coat, was solid and lifelike, and the young Highlander automatically assumed it was a brother of Donald Farquharson, his employer, who was sending word for him to attend to some matter on the farm. The figure moved silently out of the door of the hut and MacPherson rose and followed. Outside, the figure made its supernatural nature clear by announcing that he was in fact Sergeant Davies, late of Lieutenant-General Guise’s regiment, and confirmed the now commonly held belief that he had been murdered the previous year. The apparition spoke in Gaelic, the only language that the Highlander was familiar with, and directed him to go to a particular spot on the Hill of Christie, where he would find the soldier’s body, with the additional request that MacPherson arrange with Donald Farquharson a decent burial. The young shepherd had the courage to reply to the ghost and asked who had carried out the murder, but the figure was either unresponsive or unable to do so and immediately faded away.

Alexander MacPherson returned to his bed, telling no one of his experience. The following day he did visit the Hill of Christie, as instructed, where he recovered the sergeant’s skeletal remains, which lay within a few yards of where the apparition said he would find them, and at a spot not far from where Davies had stopped and reprimanded John Growar for his tartan coat on the day of his murder. Despite this evidential outcome to his extraordinary experience, MacPherson in fact did nothing else, returning instead to Dubrach, where he kept his encounter with the spectre to himself.

A full week later, at the same time and place, the ghost of the murdered soldier appeared to the shepherd again. This time the apparition was naked but its message was the same, that MacPherson return to the lonely hillside and bury the Englishman’s body. MacPherson repeated the question as to the identity of the killer and on this occasion the apparition complied, naming two local men, Duncan Clerk and Alexander MacDonald, both of dubious character, as his slayers. Having spoken, the figure of Sergeant Davies vanished and was seen no more.

Following this second visitation MacPherson spoke with two local men about his strange experience and the subsequent discovery of the bones of the murdered soldier. Both these Highlanders, the aforementioned John Growar and another, John Shaw, were unwilling to become involved and advised the shepherd to either do nothing or, if he felt inclined to carry out the apparition’s bidding, to undertake the burial in secret. Fearing reprisals should it become common knowledge that the killing had been carried out by local men, on no account should he allow the military authorities to discover either the whereabouts of the body or the identity of the killers.

Taking their advice, MacPherson sent word to Donald Farquharson and the two men met. The elder Scotsman at first dismissed the Highlander’s story as fantasy, but, on being told that the bones had been discovered exactly as the apparition had directed, reluctantly agreed to accompany the shepherd out to the Hill of Christie to view the remains. The two men made the trip onto the desolate hillside where the bones lay just as MacPherson had described them, now scattered about over the peat moss by the wind but still discernable as parts of a human skeleton, complete with the tattered remnants of the sergeant’s blue overcoat and striped vest, and a pair of waterlogged leather brogues from which the silver buckles had been cut. Feeling it unwise to remove the remains to the local kirk for fear of discovery, and in the absence of any direct instructions from the apparition itself as to where its mortal remains should be interred, both men agreed to bury the body at the location where the killers had concealed it. A shallow grave was dug with a spade that MacPherson had brought for the purpose and the bones of the unquiet soldier were finally laid to rest without ceremony.

Despite the Highlanders’ common reticence about disclosing both the location of Sergeant Davies’ remains and the alleged identity of his killers, at some point after this clandestine burial, word that the Englishman’s body had indeed been found on the Hill of Christie became common knowledge in the locality, most likely through the indiscretion of John Growar, with the result that over a period of time a body of evidence, albeit circumstantial, began to grow in support of the spirit’s claim that both Duncan Clerk and Alexander MacDonald were involved in the murder. The locals also became aware that the two men had been named as the killers by the ghost of the murdered man.

Not long after, a local girl, Isobel Ego, who had been sent to fetch horses from the hillside, returned to Dubrach carrying a silver-laced hat. Her mother, convinced it belonged to the murdered Englishman and might summon both the garrison soldiers and the unquiet spirit of its owner in equal measure, took the hat and hid it under a stone by the side of a nearby burn. The hat was subsequently found by local children who took it to the village, where several people either saw it or temporarily had it in their possession. They included Donald Downie, a miller at Inverey, and James Small, who was employed as a managing agent on the Strowan estate, and it was he who passed it to John Cook, the barrack-master at Braemar Castle, who recognised its significance and held the item in safekeeping. John Growar evidently told about his conversation with Alexander MacPherson, as the dead sergeant’s rifle was also subsequently recovered by a relative from the hillside.

John Cook at the Braemar garrison may well have been the person who finally began investigations into the rumours concerning Clerk and MacDonald, but four years were to elapse before the suspects were arrested and formally charged with the murder of Sergeant Davies. During the winter of 1753, James Small, the factor of Strowan, carried out enquiries in the district for the Sheriff-Substitute and was able to amass a collection of interesting evidence. Since the Englishman’s death, Duncan Clerk, a reputed sheep-stealer who also went by the name of Duncan Terig, had married local girl Elizabeth Downie, whose gold wedding ring with a heart-shaped design was remarkably similar to one that had been on the hand of the murdered soldier, although Elizabeth was adamant that the ring had been given to her by her mother. Clerk had also become the employer of Alexander MacPherson. He apparently gave the shepherd a promissory note for £20 as an incentive to keep whatever he knew of the murder to himself, but Clerk later refused to honour it.

As a prelude to James Small’s investigations, Clerk and MacDonald had been arrested in the September of 1753 and, charged with the murder of Arthur Davies, were being held at Braemar Castle (now itself a reputedly haunted building where, amongst other eerie happenings, the cries of a ghostly baby have been heard and the apparition of John Farquharson, the Black Colonel of Inverey, has been reported over the years). Towards the end of January, the prisoners were examined by the Lords Commissioners of Justiciary and the trial began in Edinburgh on Monday, 10 June 1754. A jury of Edinburgh tradesmen was sworn in and the presiding judge was Lord Justice-Clerk Alva assisted by Lords Drummore, Strichen, Elchies and Kilkerran. A panel comprising the Lord Advocate, William Grant, together with ‘His Majesties Solicitors’ Patrick Haldane and Alexander Home conducted the prosecution, while the two Scotsmen were defended by Alexander Lockhart and Robert Macintosh.

Lockhart and Macintosh were confident and stated in their opening remarks on the first day that they would be able to satisfy the jury as to the complete innocence of the Highlanders – the men had business in the area at the time Sergeant Davies went missing; being engaged as foresters they had a legitimate reason to be armed and would be able to prove that after they had departed from the Hill of Christie that day, the Englishman was with his company alive and well. Despite this, it soon became clear that the prosecution was able to present a compelling and seemingly unassailable raft of evidence to the contrary: Jean Ghent, the murdered man’s widow, confirmed that the hat and rifle found on the hillside belonged to her husband and that she had implored Duncan Clerk, who was on friendly terms with her and her husband, and therefore knew his habit of carrying money on his person, to assist the search party once he had gone missing; Donald Farquharson testified to burying the bones where he had found them in the company of Alexander MacPherson, and also stated that he had seen a ring identical to that worn by Davies on the hand of Duncan Clerk’s wife; Peter M’Nab, a neighbour of Clerk’s, together with Elspeth Macara, a servant, also stated they had seen the same ring on a number of occasions, while James MacDonald of Allanquoich claimed that Alexander Downie, Clerk’s father-in-law, had confessed to him that her knew his daughter’s husband was the murderer.

Other witnesses said they saw the two men depart for the Hill of Christie on the morning that Davies went missing, each armed with a rifle, but their explanation was that they were intending to spend the day hunting deer, and that Alexander MacDonald subsequently was seen carrying a penknife very similar to one known to belong to the murdered man.

Alexander MacPherson also took the stand, describing the supernatural encounter which had led both to the discovery of Arthur Davies’ skeleton and the names of the alleged murderers from the lips of the very man’s own ghost.

As compelling and astonishing as the sum of this information no doubt was, the Crown’s most powerful piece of testimony came from Angus Cameron, a Highlander from Rannoch. In the autumn of 1749, Cameron, together with a companion of the same name, was in hiding from the authorities on suspicion of inciting a local uprising in the region and had spent the night of 27/28 September in a hideout on a hillside at Glen Bruar. The following day, in anticipation of a meeting with a group of fellow political fugitives from Lochaber, they took up refuge in a hollow on the Hill of Galcharn and, around midday, while waiting for their co-conspirators to arrive, saw two men approaching from a distance. From their vantage point, Angus Cameron recognised one of these men as Duncan Clerk, a person whom he knew by sight. Both Highlanders were armed and passed by close to where Cameron and his compatriot were hiding, before moving on without being aware that they had been observed.

Later on that day, towards sunset, while still sheltering on the hillside, Angus and Duncan Cameron observed a figure in a blue coat carrying a rifle ‘about a gun-shot off’ on a rise opposite. Soon after, walking up the hill towards him, came into view the two men they had spied upon earlier in the day. The three figures met on the brow of the hill and after a short time Angus Cameron saw one of the Highlanders strike out at the blue-coated figure, who recoiled and made to move away, upon which the two men raised their rifles and as one shot the man dead. Shocked by what they had seen, the watchers ‘deemed it prudent to beat a retreat’ and, scrambling away from the hollow unobserved, they left the area. It was not until the summer of 1750 that Angus Cameron became aware of the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Arthur Davies and quickly realised that he and his companion had in fact witnessed his murder. By the time he was empanelled to testify at the trial in Edinburgh, Duncan Cameron had been executed, leaving Angus to explain that he had kept the facts of the matter to himself as he feared reprisals by the military authorities.

Lockhart and Macintosh attempted to prove that Clerk and MacDonald had been elsewhere on the day of the killing, and railed against the wealth of circumstantial evidence and the eyewitness testimony of Angus Cameron. At six o’clock on the evening of 12 June, the jury unanimously found Duncan Clerk and Alexander MacDonald not guilt of the murder of Sergeant Arthur Davies and the two men were dismissed from the court. The defence council, it seems, found that they were able to turn one piece of the Crown’s evidence against the prosecutors, namely the supernatural testimony of Alexander MacPherson. It is easy to see how, for when the shepherd was cross-examined and asked specifically what language the ghost addressed him, the Highlander responded, ‘As good Gaelic as I ever heard in Lochabar’, prompting Alexander Lockhart to wisely respond, ‘Pretty well for the ghost of an English sergeant’.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), who published an account of the Davies case for the nationalist Bannatyne Club, included mention of the trial again in his
Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft
(1830), in which he felt that ‘although there were other strong presumptions against the prisoners, the story of the apparition threw an air of ridicule on the whole evidence for the prosecution’, something that the jury clearly agreed with. Sir Walter was of the opinion that MacPherson, having found the remains of the Englishman during the course of his normal business on the hillside, and knowing of the local suspicion regarding Clerk and MacDonald, invented the story of the spectre in order to avoid being branded as an informer. ‘To have informed … might have cost MacPherson his life; and it is far from being impossible that he had recourse to the story of the ghost, knowing well that his superstitious countrymen would pardon his communicating the commission intrusted to him by a being from the other world,’ adding, ‘… we know too little of the other world to judge whether all languages may not be alike familiar to those who belong to it.’

Scott may well have been correct as at this distance of time it is difficult to cast new light on this interesting case. However, during the trial, support was given to MacPherson’s account by Isobel MacHardie, the wife of his employer, who stated that she also saw the apparition on the occasion of its second visit. Awoken during the night, she was aware of a naked figure which entered ‘in a bowing posture’ through the doorway of the hut and moved across towards Alexander MacPherson’s bedside. The vision was enough to make the woman through ‘either modesty or fear’ pull the bedclothes over her head, and as such she was unable to say what happened next.

Despite the trial’s unsatisfactory outcome, no further reports of the ghost of Sergeant Davies have been forthcoming since those times, although it is conceivable that, somewhere out in the wild landscape around Inverey, his bones still lie in an unmarked grave, now over 250 years old.