The Study, Culross, which is reputed to be haunted.
They’ve got used to their ghost.
Culross (pronounced Coo-riss) is six miles west of Dunfermline. Its narrow, cobbled streets and ancient buildings are a great attraction to the visitor. One three-storeyed house in th eheart of the village is said to be haunted. On the ground floor Mr and Mrs J Foster have lived for eight years. “We had many an anxious moment when we first came,” says 70-year-old Mrs Foster. At night thecouple often heard a rattling noise as if a poker was being drawn over the bars of the old-fashioned fireplace upstairs, despite all windows and doors being locked. Next morning the old poker would be found in its usual place by the fireside.
Once the Fosters’ son spent a few days with his parents. In the early hours of his first night he came through to their bedroom asking if they were ill. He had heard movements in the house and someone drawing a poker across a grate. “Next morning I took him upstairs,” says Mrs Foster. “I rattled the poker on the grate and he said it was exactly the same sound as he’d heard in his bedroom.”
One night they were awakened by a noise like someone shuffling across the floor in loose slippers. Mr Foster ran upstairs in his stocking soles but the place was empty.
At first Mr And Mrs Foster were looking for another house but now they are quite content where they are. The poker has disappeared – where they don’t know – so the rattling noises on the grate have stopped. Mrs Foster hears other strange sounds when she is alone at her housework, but she turns a deaf ear. Mr Foster says he hears them perhaps every two or three months, “but I just ignore them now as well. They are hard to describe – something like the end of a peal of thunder.”
There have been many offers from people who want to sleep in the room upstairs for the experience, but the Fosters have turned them down. When the house upstairs was tenanted, most people only stayed a few weeks. The Fosters’ daughter lived there 16 years ago but left after a month. She complained of “clanking” noises and was loath to be alone in the house.
Through her wallpaper an iron ring protruded. When the National Trust took over the top two storeys of the house they found this ring opened a small receess in the wall. Here they discovered a narrow iron bed.
Local legend says the ghost is a monk and the rattling of the of the poker on the grate was his means of welcoming a newcomer to the household. A monastery was founded at Culross in the thirteenth century and the monks built this house as a place to study astrology. In the sixteenth century it was taken over by Bishop Leighton for a similar use. The house is still known as The Study.
Dundee Evening Telegraph, 24th June 1949.