Considering its numerous ancient castles, keeps and
ruined churches and its bloody and turbulent past, the
South Rhins is remarkably free of ghosts. Only two serious
contenders have emerged and both are no longer active -
well, not presently at any rate.
The stonework from the ancient castle of the Adairs, at
Low Drummore, produced one spooky candidate when
it became clear, during demolition, that dark deeds had
been carried out within, when a walled-up cupboard was
found full of human bones and a spear. Undeterred, the
stones were moved to form part of the farmhouse, then
under construction, but the building itself was soon troubled
by supernatural and unexplained sounds. Nothing was
ever seen, but in the dead of night, the sound of a spinning
wheel could be heard, building up to a crescendo, then
gradually subsiding before the sound of the thread being
snapped was clearly audible. Things reached such a state
that no one could sleep in the room. That ghost
seemed to find its eternal rent when the castle was finally
demolished and disappeared.
The other ghostly visitor in the South Rhins was much
less boisterous and haunted the old farmhouse at
Auchabreck. The noise of an invisible pen scraping
across parchment so terrified locals that they pleaded with
the schoolmaster at Kirkmaiden to try his hand at exorcism.
He and a companion spent the night in the haunted
room and so terrified were they at daybreak, that they
could not speak about it and left soon after for the
American colonies, never to be seen again in the South
Rhins ... nor was the ghostly writer heard again either.
