The Ghostly Drummers of Blairgowrie.
A mysterious concert.
The inhabitants of a section of a certain street in Blairgowrie have been greatly disturbed of late over mysterious sounds heard at nights. The sounds begin every night about eleven o’clock, with the exception of Saturday, when the mystery opens at midnight. It is heralded by a few slow raps, the sound resembling a muffled drum. After this prelude, the kettle drum, also muffled, takes up the strain, and keeps up the monotonous music for two or three hours. At first no notice was taken of the mysterious noise, but its regular repetition has caused a flutter of excitement. What it is is as yet a mystery.
The other evening the guidman of one of the disturbed households, with a bravery that is worthy of all commendation, stayed out of doors until the hour at which this drum concert usually started. He examined all around the house, but could find nothing, and, entering the house, told the guidwife the result of his quest. She answered that it had not yet started, but as soon as she said that the hidden drums were beat with unwonted vigour.
One troubled lady gives as the reason that she is certain there is someone tunnelling beneath her house; another that some coiners are at work somewhere below her dwelling. A peculiar feature of the case is that the members of each of the five households that have been troubled declare that the noise is immediately below the house in which they dwell.
It is proposed to send up a requisition to Mr W. T. Stead or the Psychical Research Society, but while the sufferers hesitate which of these authorities to write to the music goes dolefully on.
Dundee Courier, 18th January 1894.
Blairgowrie’s Goblin Drummers.
Blairgowrie has of late been phenomenally quiet. But Blairgowrie cannot afford to let this go on. It cannot permit itself to sink into the ranks of a third-rate somnolent country town, content with its soirees and dances, and doings of its E.C.L.A’s and its M.N. P. Q’s. By its latest sensation – a band of ghostly drummers – it bids fair to become as famous for a while again as Stockwell became under the reign of the Cock Lane Ghost.
Our correspondent informs us that the streets in the vicinity of the mystery are profoundly agitated over it. Those more immediately concerned are convinced that the sounds arise from underneath. That is bad. It is worse than the mysterious sounds made by the Cock Lane ghost, which brought the half of London to hear them, but which, after all, were made by a servant lassie, who took a board to bed with her and beat on it in the most ghostly fasion. It is bad enough for mysterious sounds to be heard at all, but sounds from beneath – well, no wonder that the matrons of Blair are in a state of collapse.
The old fellow who ventured out to make a survey of his premises at nigh the witching hour, and saw nothing, deserved better fortune. It was tantalising to hear the goblin drummer commence his tattoo just as he had announced to his better half that he could see or hear nothing. Mr Andrew Lang in the current number of Blackwood gives an account of many cases of mysterious sounds, and we all know how vast is Mr Stead’s faith in such mysteries. The proposal to consult that gentleman who believes so implicitly in “spooks” might be carried out with advantage.
Perhaps, however, a solution of the mystery may be got before this step is taken, and the motive found for the ghostly ongoings. The motive of the originator of the Stockwell ghost was the wish of the landlord to get the blame of a murder laid at the door of another. Let us hope that with the capture of the Blair ghost no such gruesome motive may be discovered.
Dundee Courier, 18th January 1894.
The Blairgowrie Ghost. A mystery still.
Though the excitement over the ghost mystery, or goblin drummer, is now somewhat abated, no satisfactory conclusion has been arrived at as regards the cause of the sounds heard at night, not that there has been an absence of theories on the subject. Some of these are grotesque enough, and not a few of them rather out of the way.
For example, some now believe that the sounds are caused by a young man in a neighbouring cellar breaking firewood. The floor of the cellar is wood, which, as can readily be understood, causes no little noise when the stick breaking operation is going on. The sound is then, so it is argued, carried along the drains; hence the hearing of it immediately below each house. But, if this theory were accepted, why should the industrious youth begin his operations exactly at eleven o’clock every night except Saturday, when the drummer was supposed to commence his unhallowed carnival at the witching hour of midnight? The stick notion is only good in so far as it suggests sulphureous sticks, or the gentleman whom a great writer represents as walking “on two sticks.”
Others, however, refuse to believe this theory, and one man maintains, in spite of all argument to the contrary, that the sounds are caused by an escape of water. Rather a peculiar sound for escaping water to make! Had a water-kelpie been suggested, there might have been some consistency in the idea.
One gentleman was determined to get to the root of the matter, so he sat up and watched. After waiting for some time and hearing nothing, he determined to reconnoitre. He descended to the cellar, and while listening intently heard a pit-a-pat in the neighbourhood of the stairs. Summoning his failing courage to the “sticking point”, he made a rush in the direction of the sound, and found his cat ascending the stair leisurely. It is not stated whether the grimalkin in question is a black one or not, though it ought to be a black quadruped. A black cat is fit for anything, as all the veracious records of witchcraft show.
The mystery, it is evident, is as great as ever – and as great as the Monson mystery [a recent murder]. The more adventurous spirits declare, however, that they will not rest content until it is solved.
Dundee Courier, 19th January 1894.