char *(null)=" castle.ghost

castle.ghost

 
In 1980, while touring all over Great Britain by myself, I visited Stirling
Castle in Scotland.   
 
For some reason (I think it might've been a British holiday), there were only
a handful of people wandering around inside the castle walls.  The sun was
beginning to set and I had a train to catch, so I was trying, with little
success, to find my way back to the gatehouse where I came in.
 
I turned a corner and saw a man.  He was wearing typical highlander garb:
plaid kilt, etc., so I figured he worked there and could point me toward
the entrance.  I called out to him, asking which way the front gate was.
Seeming not to hear me at all, he rounded a corner and disappeared from sight.
I followed, but when I turned the same corner, he was nowhere in sight.  I
continued walking in the direction he'd gone, sort of down a ramp I thought
might go under some buildings and come back up where I needed to be, but the
ramp came to a dead-end.  I  really didn't think much of it; I just figured
he'd gone through some secret, employees-only door, but I do remember
wondering where the hell he'd gone.
 
I backtracked, found my way to the gatehouse and caught my train.  While
heading back to London, I pulled out the souvenir booklet I'd gotten at
the castle, opened it to the map, and tried to figure out where that
guy had gone.  No luck.  The ramp that dead-ended had at one time led to
an underground dungeon, but for "safety reasons," the entrance had long since
been bricked over.  
 
I shrugged my shoulders and never gave any more thought to the incident until
last fall, when, while channel-surfing one Friday night, I tuned into a show
called "Sightings," that's all about UFOs and ghosts and such.  Though I'd
never seen this show before, something in the preview (you know, the teaser
at the beginning where they say what's going to be on) caught my eye.  It was
a segment about Stirling Castle, so I decided to watch.
 
And (just thinking about this right now has my hair standing on end) among the
ghost sightings were numerous accounts of people seeing a man in highlander
garb round a corner and disappear in the area of the old dungeon entrance!
 
So, it took me 13 years to learn that I had seen a ghost and didn't know it
at the time.  Looking back, I'm really really really glad I didn't know it
at the time!  I've never believed in ghosts; in fact, I'm still stubbornly
trying to find some other explanation.  But if I ever get back to Stirling,
I'm going to make sure I'm with a Large Group of People.
 
Jennifer L. Johnson 
jjohnson@convex.com
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