In the run-up to Halloween sixty years ago, police swooped on the Old High churchyard in Inverness to shift a large crowd of children congregating there.
The children and teenagers were gathering to exorcise a ghostly man in black they believed stalked the graveyard.
They had been ‘staking out’ the burial ground in large numbers every evening for around a week.
100 children ‘intent on exorcising an alleged ghost’ in Inverness
History sadly doesn’t record what they planned to do if they did indeed see said ghost.
The police gave a statement: “There were over 100 children in the burial ground all intent on exorcising an alleged ghost which they believe stalks there in the evenings.”
The church officer, Duncan Mackintosh of Church Street, eventually called the police out, having watched the bizarre scene unfold each evening.
When police arrived at the churchyard most of the children ran off, but the few who remained were warned not to gather there.
The minister, Rev T M Fraser, was out of town at the time for health reasons but among the church elders, the story of the ghost was a mystery.
One elder, Mr W Rankine, said: “I have never heard of it at all. It seems to be one of those childish ideas which has spread around the town.
“Now our graveyard appears to be the recipient of a host of children as well as empty whisky bottles which are often thrown in there.
“I have been a member of this church for 17 years and I think I would have known about any ghost stories in the churchyard by now.”
Mr Mackintosh was also mystified.
He said: “I don’t know how this story started. There have been a number of children in the graveyard and they say that a man in black walks each night about eight o’clock.”
The sixty-year-old story surfaced when the group Highland Paranormal researched the churchyard for the popular ghost walks they carry out there.
Mystery solved?
Liam Shand of the group Highland Paranormal has his own theory about what the children saw.
Could it have been the real flesh-and-blood, black-clad figure of the church bell ringer, crossing the churchyard from Church Street where he lived, to toll the curfew bell at 8pm every evening?
Liam said: “From 1703, a bell in the Old High Church tower was rung every day at 5pm, marking the start of a curfew preventing the risk of fire breaking out from people carrying lanterns in the dark through streets where most of the buildings were made of wood.
“The bell was silenced during World War II but was later rung at 8pm nightly, though the curfew, of course, no longer applied.
“Since the church closed the bell has, sadly, been silent but its story remains an important part of social history.
“Until the 1990s the bell was manually rung and the bell ringer would enter the graveyard every night around 8pm to ring it. This would have been the case in the 1960s.”
Let us know in the comments below if you remember this incident, or were even there at the time and can shed light on the origins of the story…
Meanwhile Liam, who calls himself an open-minded sceptic when it comes to the paranormal, has had his own spooky experience in the Old High churchyard.
Highland Paranormal started live-streaming walks around parts of Inverness during lockdown, and Liam’s experience came on Saturday April 25, 2020 when he was doing a live-stream.
He said: “My final destination that day was the Old High Church graveyard and on finishing the livestream, I had put my phone back in my pocket when I sensed someone was watching me from around the front of the church.
“I immediately turned round to see who was looking at me, expecting one of the ‘locals’ who frequent the graveyard to be standing there, but this was not the case.
“On facing my watcher, I saw for a split second the grey shape of a human head looking at me.
“But as I faced it, the object morphed into a grey mist, lifting off the ground high into the air, then flying across the graveyard towards the Free Church of Scotland.
“However it did not reach the church, vanishing instead into thin air in front of my own eyes.
“I have often questioned what I saw that day, but never have I found a rational explanation for it.
“So the next time you visit that ancient site, be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the Watcher!”
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