Mysterious noises.
The common people of this district remain to this day so credulous, as to think that fairies do exist; that an inferior species of witchcraft is still practised, and that houses have been haunted, not only in former ages, but that they are haunted, at least noises are heard, which cannot be accounted for on rational principles, even in our days. An instance of the latter happened only three years ago, in the house of John Spence, boat-carpenter, which house stands within the distance of a quarter of a mile from the manse of Stronsay.
In the month of April, 1791, this carpenter had almost completed a boat, which he had on the stocks: He, his wife, his servant, and his children, one night sometime after they were laid in bed, heard a noise resembling what he had been accustomed to make when driving nails into the boat. It continued a long time. He supposed it to be boys, who having come that way at a late hour, were amusing themselves. At last he got up, and went out with an intention to reprove and dismiss them. The noise ceased on his going out of doors to the boat, which stood hard by his house; but he could neither see nor hear anybody.
The noise was heard by all the family, not only that night, but many nights after; not nightly, in constant succession, but at irregular intervals. Whilst the boat lay on the stocks, it was still apprehended that the noise proceeded from it, although no marks of strokes could be decerned, even after it had been newly covered over with tar, within and without, when the least touch will make an impression. The mistress of the house and the children were alarmed; at her earnest request, therefore, in order to remove effectually the supposed cause of the noise, the boat when finished, was sent home, which happened to be a place on the other side of the island, from which place the noise could not reach the carpenter’s house.
Yet lo! and behold! the same noise continued even when there was no boat on the stocks, and that for no less than four months; and as the time elapsed, the noise increased with still louder and quicker strokes, until it came to resemble the strokes of two men hard at work on a smith’s anvil. It uttered at last, not only the sounds of much fatigue, when men are employed in such work, but moans of great distress. All which seemed to this family to proceed sometimes from one quarter, and at other times from another quarter within their house. Some of the neighbours were brought to sleep in the house, in order to discover the delusion or imposition, if any such existed. The same noise, at the usual time of the night, was heard by these neighbours as well as the family. The master of the house himself began at last to be somewhat alarmed; but, putting his trust in God, he resolved to address this supernatural disturber, and to ask what it meant or what it wanted:
Accordingly, in the month of August following, one night after he had lain some time in bed with his wife and children, upon hearing the last mentioned aggravated noise, accompanied with dismal groans, he sat up in his bed, and solemnly conjured it, in the name of the Holy Trinity, to speak, if it had anything to say to him. Inarticulate sounds of a faultering tongue unable to speak, accompanied with dismal groans, were heard.
The noise soon after ceased, and did not return any more to disturb this family. The preceding account the minister frequently heard from the said John Spence, and also from his wife, when separately examined by him on this subject, on which occasions they always appeared grave and serious. – Old Stat. Acct., v. xv. pp. 430-32.
in County Folklore v.3, Orkney and Shetland Islands, Collected by G.F. Black. 1903.