The following incident is said to have happened quite lately in another Scotch country house. Two sisters, one quite a young girl, went to stay at this place, and were given rooms close to one another. One night the younger sister suddenly woke up. The room was dimly lighted by a bright moon, and there, close by the bed, the girl saw, apparently rising out of the floor, a human hand. Thinking she had nightmare she closed her eyes and vainly tried to sleep, but feeling impelled, in spite of fear, to look again, there was the hand--nothing else--close by her bedside still. This time she felt horribly frightened, and hurling herself out of bed, she rushed to her sister's room, which she insisted on sharing for the rest of the night. In the morning she told the elder girl what she had seen, declaring she could not pass another night in that room. Her sister scolded her a little for what she considered foolish imagination, and begged her to say nothing of the "bad dream" to their friends, as people did not like it to be thought that there was anything ghostly about their houses.
Later in the day the son of the family was taking the elder sister over the house, which was old and interesting. Presently he remarked, "We have a ghost here, too, you know." The visitor pricked up her ears, and asked what form the ghost was supposed to take. "It is a hand," was the reply, "nothing else." "Then my sister saw it last night," exclaimed the girl, whereupon she was much surprised to see her companion turn pale and seem agitated. But in reply to her questions he would say nothing further, leaving his listener wondering uncomfortably if the appearance of the spectral hand was a bad omen; and if so, whether it boded ill to the owners of the house or to the individual who had had the disagreeable experience of seeing it.
Before leaving Scotland we must mention an Aberdeenshire house, described to us by a friend as inhabited by the ghost of an old lady, who regularly appears in a certain room once a year. Evidently her unrest is caused by an uneasy conscience, if tradition be correct; which says that she was a wicked old person who flourished in the early seventeenth century. Having a deadly feud with a neighbouring family, she decoyed them with false promises and an invitation to a feast into the tower of the house. Then she had the doors locked, and setting fire to the tower, she got rid of her enemies in one horrible holocaust.