Paranormal record / 1950
January 1950. Snow turning to rain on the roads of Angus. Miss E. F. Smith had skidded into a ditch after a party in Brechin, and now she was walking home to Letham with her small dog on her shoulder. It was about 2 a.m. Near Dunnichen Hill, she saw torches. Very red torches. They resolved into shadowy figures moving over the fields. The nearest group, about 50 yards away, was turning over bodies on the ground. More than 21 years later she told a psychiatrist what she believed she had seen. The Picts, searching for their dead after the Battle of Nechtansmere, traditionally fought near that hill in 685.
On 20 May 685, the Picts under Bridei mac Bili defeated and killed Ecgfrith of Northumbria at the Battle of Nechtansmere, or Dún Nechtain. Tradition places it near Dunnichen Hill in Angus, beside a mere that has since vanished. In 1948 Dr F. T. Wainwright mapped the lost loch from aerial photography and flood marks.