My husband is Scottish and on our first anniversary, we
went to Scotland to visit his family. His mom died when he
was 11 and his father died five years ago. The only family
members left were his older brother, who was married with
three kids, a younger sister, and his paternal
grandfather “Paddy”.
We stayed with “Paddy” who lived in
a small village. (I am not mentioning the name of the
village because the locals are not advertising their
ghost). Paddy was 86 years old but was as fit as a man a
dozen years younger. There was a running stream where
Paddy fished almost every day, about a quarter of a mile
from his house.
A few days passed and Paddy asked me to accompany him on
his daily fishing trip. I wasn't an outdoors person, nor did I
care very much for fishing, but I knew Paddy asked me along so
he could find out more about me.
I took my camera along because the scenery was quite beautiful and with a basket
lunch, we headed off to his favorite fishing spot.
He asked about my family, background, how I met his grandson
and so on. I expected as much and didn’t mind the
questions at all. After a while he turned his attention to
fishing. I told him I was going to walk around and take
some pictures. The area was actually flat with few trees,
but there was a hill not too far off. I went there and
took most of my pictures standing on top.
I could see clearly all around the place from the hill. I
turned to take a picture of Paddy fishing and while
adjusting the lens looked up to see a woman appear out of
nowhere behind Paddy. She couldn’t have been more than 75
feet behind him and for the life of me, I didn’t know how
she got there. I could see everything from my point of
view and there was no tree or rock or building for her to
emerge from. It was all open space. I saw her clearly
since I wasn’t too far off myself, maybe 120 feet away. It
was daytime, probably around 10:30 am, no clouds, which is
rare in Scotland, but sunny skies.
She had long, light brown hair, down past her waist and
she wore a long, dark blue dress. It didn’t dawn on me at
the time how old fashion the style of the dress was, I was
still so surprised to see her there. She walked at a
normal pace, not appearing to be in any hurry, towards
Paddy. I started towards the two of them down the hill.
Halfway, I looked down for a second since there was loose
soil and I didn’t want to fall. The woman was about 20 or
30 feet away from Paddy when I looked down. And when I
looked up again, she was gone. I didn’t see her vanish, it
was more, one second she was there and the next, she was
gone.
I was in shock. I just couldn’t believe what I saw. I
never really believed in ghosts, but I couldn’t explain
what I just saw. There was no place for the woman to hide
behind. She couldn’t run that fast and unless she flew
away, she had to be a ghost. The whole incident lasted
maybe eight or ten second, but I saw her as plainly as I
saw Paddy. I didn’t say anything until late that night to
my husband. He just looked at me and said okay, nothing
more. I didn’t think he believed me, so I nudged him awake
and said I saw I ghost, but he just said, yes I know, and
went back to sleep.
I thought okay, he thinks I imagined it, or he is just
humoring me. Either way, I was upset and couldn’t sleep at
all. The next day, I was hanging out with my sister-in-
law. We were in the kitchen preparing lunch, talking about
this and that, nothing really important. She then started
talking about things my husband did as a boy, giving me
the dirt on his past when she mentioned the ghost. She
said maybe I’ll be lucky and see the ghost. I told her,
you mean the young woman by the stream. She was delighted
that I saw her. She said that ghost has been around for so
long, almost everyone has seen her one time or another. It
was always fun to have an outsider see her. They always
get really spooked, but the locals don’t think much of it.
I didn’t think it was fun seeing her and yes, I was and
still am spooked by the whole thing. The story behind the
woman varies a little, not surprising since it was said to
happen a long time ago. No one is really sure of the true
accounts, but a few parts remain the same. The woman is
thought to be the daughter of some rich land owner. She
marries the son of one of her father’s friends, or the son
of a neighbor. She either finds out she is pregnant and
goes to tell her parents or she just visits them and then
comes home to find her husband with another woman. When
her husband tries to explain his way out, she calmly walks
out the room, out of the house, down to the stream and
drowns herself. Do I believe the story, not really. There
is no proof that this is what happened. All I know is I
saw her and I can never forget it.
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