Ballechin House Haunting

Ballechin House was built in 1806 near Grandtully in Perthshire, on the site of an older manor of the Steuart family. Major Robert Steuart inherited it in 1834. He served in India and came home in 1850.

The Major reportedly believed in spirit-return. He said he would come back in a black spaniel. He died in April 1876. His nephew John Skinner, who took the name Steuart, reportedly had all 14 of his dogs shot, supposedly so the Major could not return in one of them. Gossip had linked the Major to his much younger housekeeper, who died at the house in 1873, and he was buried beside her.

Around 1878 to 1880 a governess heard "queer noises" in two rooms. In July 1892 a Jesuit priest stayed nine nights. He was disturbed on every night but the last. Lord Bute's diary records "noises between his bed and the ceiling, like continuous explosion of petards." The priest felt "somebody was relieved by my departure."

In 1896 a tenant family left early. Their letters described "six violent blows" that shook a door on its hinges, and "a piercing shriek." They told of a man "with bronzed complexion and bent figure," and "the shadowy form of a grey lady who paces with noiseless footfall the lonely corridor." The butler, Sanders, felt his bed lifted and "carried around towards the window for about three or four feet."

February 1897. Colonel Lemesurier Taylor took the house. After F. W. H. Myers wrote to him, Lord Bute paid for an inquiry run by Ada Goodrich Freer. About 40 guests came and went. Visitors included Oliver Lodge, Everard Feilding and Andrew Lang.

Freer saw a slight black figure of a woman dressed as a nun. It "stopped, and turned and looked at me." A Ouija board named her Ishbel. On 16 February Freer saw her kneeling and weeping in the glen, with an older grey woman beside her. Constance Moore heard "a murmuring voice" she was "quite certain" was not the burn.

The nights were loud. Bangs and clanging. Two women's voices talking. "Limping footsteps walking round her bed." Beds heaved. A brown wood crucifix appeared to three separate witnesses. The dog Scamp, "a dog who hardly ever barks," ran straight for the two women and barked. Then came a Bishop's blessing on 6 May. A bang on a work-table was "the last phenomenon of an abnormal kind during this tenancy."

On 8 June 1897 The Times published "On the Trail of a Ghost." It blamed hot-water pipes and other occupants, and said the house had "no reputation whatever of that kind." Several sources name J. Callender Ross as its author. Letters followed for weeks, and Professor John Milne suggested earthquakes. Myers judged there was "no such evidence as could justify us in giving the results of the inquiry a place in our Proceedings."

Local voices doubted too. The factor, the lawyer and the minister said the house had no haunted reputation before 1896. Colonel Taylor wrote, "I feel sure that there is a ghostly influence pervading the house." Yet he doubted the nun, saying "any amount of 'voices'" could be read into the stream.

In 1899 Freer and Bute published the journals as a book. "The editors offer no conclusions." By 1932 the house stood empty, and after a fire in 1963 most of it was demolished, leaving only the servants' quarters and outbuildings. In 1980 Trevor H. Hall concluded that Freer was unreliable and had deceived the Society. Its phantom nun is often set beside that of Borley Rectory.