Haunted Scotland Read Online Free

it’s
a stone recording,’ he insisted. Both good and evil spirits have the means to interact with human beings. A ghost, even when it has been shown the light, is able to come and go as it pleases,
whereas a stone tape is a hologram, nothing more. He went on to explain that if somebody dies in a state of imbalance, they will pass over, while some of their negative traits may possibly remain
behind. These can attach themselves to the living. ‘Sometimes when people experience mood swings, it can be because this negativity has latched onto them. That’s where an exorcist needs
to step in.’
    Whenever Gordon gives a consultation, he previously aligns his operational space with crystals for protection. ‘It’s important that clients are welcomed into a comfortably furnished
room,’ hesays. ‘But hidden in the system there are things to protect them, me and the house.’
    To help him, he makes use of obsidian, lapus lazuli, rose quartz, good for balancing the emotions, and citrine, the ‘stone of the divine’, which has four main functions – it
‘absorbs, transmutes, dissipates, and grounds negative energy’.
    When Gordon volunteered to give me what he calls a ‘Wash Down’, he had me first remove my shoes and wristwatch. Watches, he explained, absorb the bad experiences of life. If you have
worn a watch for a period of years, it is a good thing to have it cleansed.
    The Wash Down itself is a process by which he claims somebody is introduced to their full potential. It involved me clasping a piece of angelite in my right hand and a piece of lapis lazuli in
my left. Having relaxed in a vintage Parker Knoll chair covered with a white cloth, I was instructed to close my eyes. In the background, I listened to a soundtrack of Enya, while Gordon enunciated
various prayers.
    The Wash Down took a fleeting four minutes. To be honest, I found it both relaxing and enervating in equal measure, creating an inner sense of calm which surprised me. In my analytical state of
mind, I had not expected that. Moreover, I was introduced to my spirit guide who, I was told, would become responsible for my future wellbeing.
    ‘You are now empowered to fulfil all of your innermost wishes,’ said Gordon.
    As I drove home that night I somehow found this extremely reassuring.

3
SECOND SIGHT
    It would be a gain to the country were it vastly more superstitious, more bigoted, more gloomy, more fierce in its religion than at present it shows itself to be.
    Cardinal Newman, ‘History of my Religious Opinions from 1833 to 1839’ in
Apologia Pro Vita Sua
(1865)
    My grandmother was the seventh child of a seventh child, which in the Celtic tradition made her fey or psychic, and there is a story in the family (as I am sure exists in every
Scots family) that one night she had a dream in which a childhood friend came to her bedside to say goodbye. On coming to consciousness, she immediately awoke her disgruntled husband to tell him
about this. The next day a telegram arrived to confirm that their friend had died in the night.
    Second sight is infinitely more closely allied to the Celts than to any other race, although it also occurs in tribes of Red Indians, and in the folklore of Australian Aboriginals and the Maoris
of New Zealand. Why Scots and Irish should specifically be singled out for the gift might suggest some sort of unique genetic provenance buried deep within their Celtic birthright.
    Premonitions are commonplace throughout Scotland’s long and lawless story. As early as the twelfth century, Thomas of Ercildoun predicted the union of Scotland with
England; in 1388, the second earl of Douglas dreamed of his own death before the Battle of Otterburn; in 1513, a ghostly spectre seen at the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh warned of the impending
catastrophe at Flodden.
    In
Supernatural Scotland
, I wrote of my friend Swein MacDonald of Ardgay, in Sutherland. Swein died at the age of seventy-one in 2003. He too was possessed of the