Durness
Manse
Mystery
In
Sutherland a story is told of a manse that was haunted by
a particularly ominous spirit. According to the legend, the
spirit first manifested itself many years ago when the minister
in Durness became aware of the sound of knocking at his front
door. The knocking became a regular occurrence. As the minister
never heard anyone approaching the door, he was suspicious
and did not answer the knocks. After several repetitions of
this strange phenomenon, the minister invited a colleague,
the minister from Kinlochbervie, to call on him one night.
He did not give the reason for his invitation.
The
minister of Kinlochbervie duly made the journey to Durness
and settled down for a pleasant evening. After some time had
passed, the men heard a knocking at the front door. The Durness
minister asked his friend if he would answer it, and his friend
obliged, having no idea that the knocking meant anything sinister.
The
Kinlochbervie minister cheerfully went and opened the door,
only to be faced with the fearful apparition of an old man
wrapped in a shroud. Terrified, he saddled his horse at once
and rode back to Kinlochbervie with all possible speed. He
had not escaped the clutches of the terrible death spirit,
however. It is said that barely a month later, although he
was a man of robust health and only in his mid-forties, the
Kinlochbervie minister died suddenly and mysteriously.
The
tragedy became a double one when his wife followed him to
the grave very shortly afterwards. It seems unfair that the
minister from Durness should survive unscathed after such
cowardly behavior on his own part, but it would appear that
the deathly figure that came to his door had no sense of justice.
It seemed, rather, to want to take whomever it could.
