craigswan:If you’re out on the streets of St Andrews late at night...
" St Andrews is also one of Scotland’s most haunted locations. Cardinal Beaton was murdered in St Andrews Castle and suspended from its walls in 1546. Some say he still haunts the castle environs. Archbishop James Sharp was hauled from his coach and murdered at nearby Magus Muir in 1679, and now drives a phantom coach along the Strathkinness Road.
But St Andrews’ most celebrated spooks, a ghostly monk and a white lady, are to be found amongst the crumbling ruins and scattered gravestones of the cathedral precinct.
The ghostly monk of St Rule’s Tower Two magnificent edifices dominate the ruins of St Andrews Cathedral. One is the gravity-defying east gable, which has somehow managed to withstand the ravages of time, gales, Protestant reformers and those in search of cut-price building-stone. The other is St Rule’s Tower, which is all that remains of the cathedral’s predecessor, St Rule’s Church, built around 1130.
No-one should visit St Andrews without ascending the tower.Tokens purchased from the Historic Scotland gift shop allow access through a metal turnstile. Inside, a winding stone staircase leads up to a 33 metre platform that offers a panoramic view of the city.
In summer there is likely to be a steady stream of tourists up and down the tower.
But on winter afternoons it is often deserted.
At such times, the whistling of the wind and the eerie cries of the sea-birds make it seem a lonely and desolate spot.
In the 1950s, a visitor to the tower stumbled partway up the spiral stairway.He grasped the handrail to recover his balance, and when he looked up was surprised to see a figure, dressed in a cassock, a little further along the passageway.
“Are you alright?” the figure asked. “May I offer you my arm?” The visitor politely declined his assistance, passed him on the stairway and continued up the tower. It was only when he reached the top that he realised he had not felt anything as he had squeezed past the cassocked figure.
When he returned to the ground, the visitor questioned the custodian who told him that no-one else had entered the tower, and that he must have encountered the ghostly monk of St Rule’s – a kindly spirit who likes to ensure the safety of those who ascend the stairway.
William T Linskill (1855-1929), formerly the Dean of Guild of St Andrews, was an avid collector of supernatural tales. His excellent book, St Andrews Ghost Stories, gives some useful background information about the ecclesiastical spectre. The benevolent spirit is a former Prior of St Andrews, Robert de Montrose, whose custom it was, on fine moonlit nights, to ascend St Rule’s Tower to enjoy the view.
Although a good and wise Prior, Montrose was forced to discipline one of the monks under his charge for a catalogue of offences including a serious instance of sexual misconduct. This aroused the enmity of the ill-natured monks, and so: “One evening just before Yuletide, when the Prior, as usual, was on top of the tower, the contumacious monk slyly followed him up the ladders, stabbed him in the back with a small dagger, and flung him over the north side of the old tower.” [W. T. Linskill, St Andrews Ghost Stories.] From that time onwards, the murdered Prior was often seen peeping over the tower, and at times falling from it, in a grim reenactment of his death. Nowadays he is more likely to be encountered offering visitors a helping hand up the tower where he met his own violent end."