Farmhouse haunting horror.
Most people will have fun this weekend celebrating Hallowe’en but ghosts have a far more sinister influence on the lives of one Dumfriesshire family…
The McNay family – who live in an old farmhouse near Auldgirth – are so worried that they have been forced to turn to a leading expert in the paranormal for help. Every member of the family at Cairn Farmhouse have had VERY strange experiences, and Professor Archie Roy from Glasgow University believes the McNay’s claims of eerie events could constitute what he described as a “genuine haunting” – he is to visit the house to hear what’s going on.
For years the farmhouse has had a reputation as the home of “ghosts.” And for Stephen and Allison McNay that reputation is all too real. This week the young couple told how their lives have been disrupted by a string of events that would have sent many fleeing in fear. They revealed how: Allison awoke one night to see a “man” standing at the foot of the bed; Their young son Allan was left terrified after seeing the “bad lady”; Stephen leapt from his bed after being grabbed round the ankle as he lay alone; and Friends, relatives and babysitters refuse to stay overnight.
Stephen, who is a shepherd, has lived with the frightening phenomena since he first moved in twelve years ago this weekend. The fact that it is Hallowe’en is purely coincidental for the experiences, which normally occur from August to October, are all too real. They were shared by his first wife, Carol, now remarried and living near Mennock.
Stephen first realised there was something strange about the place while preparing to move in. “My friend and I had been laying a carpet,” he recalled. “We were sitting on the floor having a cup of tea when the bathroom door suddenly swung off the wall and slammed shut. There was no-one near it and that door just does not move on its own normally. It certainly gave us a fright.” Doors closing on their own are a common occurrence to this day.
And noises genearlly are part of everyday life in the household. One of the most regular is a clicking sound, similar to that made by old fashioned light switches. There’s also a chiming noise “not quite like a clock” as Stephen puts it. And the couple regularly hear furniture being moved around in the kitchen below their bedroom. “It’s just like a heavy cupboard being scraped across the floor,” said Stephen.
There is a long first floor landing connecting the upstairs bedrooms. Footsteps are often heard and they seem to stop outside what is the spare room. In the last couple of weeks that room has been closed off because of the events that have been involving 4-year-old Allan, something that is clearly disturbing Stephen and Allison. “His screaming woke us up one night,” said Allison. “He was sitting up in bed crying and shaking. All he would say was ‘Get Daddy to get that bad lady and throw her out of the window.’ We actually had to pretend to throw someone out of the window before he began to calm down.”
The couple accept that could have been the result of a nightmare but point out that twice during the day Allan has been terrified after “seeing the bad lady.” It happened once when he went downstairs in the morning and the second time when he was playing with his toys in the spare bedroom.
Stephen admits to being more apprehensive than Allison. He has never seen anything but has been touched twice. The first time was during his first marriage. “I was sitting at the dinner table eating when I felt a hand grab my knee. At first I thought it was Carol,” he said. “I looked at her and then it dawned on me she was eating. Her hands were above the table.”
“I was touched again not so long ago. I was in bed and Allison was downstairs in the living room. I was just about falling off to sleep when I felt something grab my ankle. I just started shaking my leg to get it to let go. It was really frightening. I just hope I never see anything.”
Allison appears more at ease with the situation remarkably because of the experience of seeing a man at the bottom of the bed. “I’m a light sleeper,” she said. “One morning I was suddenly wide awake and I could see him at the end of the bed. There was only his head and the top half of his body. He appeared to be between 40 and 50; he was clean shaven; and he was well dressed although I couldn’t describe his clothes. But I was overwhelmed by a strong feeling of reassurance. He was telling me nothing nasty was going to happen.”
Carol, now Mrs Rammell, confirmed many of Stephen’s recollections. She also revealed she had twice woken to sense someone or something in the bedroom. “I could only describe it as a shape. Both times as soon as I sat up it disappeared. I never spoke about it because I put it down to imagination.”
Shortly after Stephen and Carol’s daughter Emma wasborn the house would ring to the cries of a young child. “It was the cry of a child in pain,” said Stephen. “We would rush upstairs and it would stop as we went into Emma’s bedroom. She was always fast asleep. That and the footsteps on the landing upstairs have frightened off our babysitters. We really would like to know what is going on.”
But no-one seems to know of any incident that might provide an explanation for the events that have been disrupting the family’s lives. However members of the older generation living in the area say they are nothing new. One lady who worked at Cairn when it was a turkey farm in the 1940s said similar things were happening then and it was common for families to move in and leave soon after because they couldn’t stand what was going on.
The events have interested Professor Roy who is president of the Society for Psychical Research and has investigated hundreds of such cases over the last thirty years. After hearing of the events, he said: “My first impression is that what we have here is a genuine case, a haunted house. It would appear that as things happen at a set time of year, it could be the anniversary of an event. The question is now what can be done about it. One of the best things is that you can with confidence reassure the family there is nothing evil in the house. It’s almost a re-enactment of something that has happened in the house a long time ago.”
Dumfries and Galloway Standard, 29th October 1993.