Ghost Cart/Coach of St Andrews January 7, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
This is a ghost story that appeared in a nineteenth-century British newspaper (SDE) for 18 Aug 1888.
I dare say you heard the old of St. Andrew’s in the Kingdom Fife, N.B.? A charmingly interesting place for lovers of history. However, l am not going to enter into a thorough description here, intention being merely to relate briefly as possible and the best of ability experiences of ghost in that city.
The account has all the signs of being a first-hand ghost account rather than fiction. The problem is that… Well, we’ll come to the problem, by and by.
I do not expect that many will credit story – they can do as they please as to that – all I can say is that I, in company with others more sceptical than I am, heard the strange ‘thing,’ and that no one has, to my knowledge, accounted for it. In the year 187— I was staying, in the absence of husband, who was away on business, with the Misses M, in North-street St. Andrew’s. The time of year was spring and the weather was bright and beautiful.
The anonymous author is taken around the city and
After an enjoyable, but rather fatiguing day, I was sitting with my kind hosts in little boudoir or sanctum, overlooking the street… We were on the point of retiring to rest, my youngest hostess had just risen to light a chamber candlestick, preparatory to accompanying me to my room, when, suddenly a noise of a heavy lumbering vehicle being driven rapidly sounded in our ears. It was evidently approaching No. –. Up jumped Miss M—, the eldest girl, crying, ‘The phantom cart, the phantom cart,’ and we simultaneously rushed to the window, and raised the blinds. The noise was now sounding nearly opposite the house my friends occupied. ‘Where is it?’ I asked. ‘I don’t see anything; where it? What is it?’ ‘Ah! that is the puzzle,’ exclaimed Miss M. ‘As for where it is no one can more than imagine it ought to be there close to us. Hark!’ I eagerly stretched my neck and strained eyes trying see, but, though the night was clear und bright, there was not an individual person, much less a vehicle to be seen in the street, ‘this thing’ rumbled loudly our window, and passing on for about 20 yards or so, stopped suddenly, as if the horses were abruptly pulled up, just where the Church of St. Salvador stands. ‘Well, this odd, to say the least it,’ I exclaimed. ‘Do tell what it all means; what the origin of this noise really is!’ All desire for sleep had completely disappeared on my part, and I certainly wanted to hear what they could tell me. ‘Well, if you are not too tired,’ replied my friend, ‘we must rake the fire together, and I will tell you all I know about this mysterious sound.’ ‘You heard a few moments ago,’ she began, ‘the sound that is heard every night in St. Andrew’s by someone or other, and several people together often. When we-first came here few years ago, constantly, between the hours of eleven p.m. and one a.m., we have listened to this heavy rattling thing passing down the street and always stopping about the same distance from this house in that sudden manner. We took little notice of it first, imagining it to be some late fish cart, yet it seemed too heavy for that, on reflection. Then we fancied it must be some heavily-laden omnibus bringing people from the station, only the trains seemed to come in very uncertain hours, even for these primitive regions [!], and the driver always appeared to be in a desperate hurry. The streets of St. Andrew’s, you see or, at least, the most ancient part of it, are paved with those little cobble stones, so that any vehicle would make great rattling on the otherwise quiet street.’
Now comes the explanation.
Every night did we hear this noise, till at last we remarked upon it, and were told that was supposed by the superstitious part of the community to be the cart or the ghost of the cart employed to bring the ghost of Archbishop Sharpe, once of St. Andrew’s, who was murdered by band of fanatical Covenanters on Magus Moor in 1679. One or two ancient and aristocratic names figured among the assassins who murdered the Archbishop before his daughter’s eyes, who vainly entreated for her father’s life. His body was placed on heavy country cart and driven St. Andrew’s, where it was deposited in St. Salvador’s Church, close to here. This happened between the hours of 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. Magus Moor being but two three miles distant. No one, even among the learned professors, has been able hitherto to account for this singular noise, and North-street is the only route which the Phantom travels. ‘It is most extraordinary,’ I said. ‘You will be here some nights yet,’ said Miss M—, ‘and I will venture to say that you will hear every night.’
The problem is that the books on St Andrews available to Beach have no mention of a phantom cart! Though there is a strange coach legend we’ll come to afterwards.
The next night you may be sure I kept on the qui vive for the noise, and was rewarded. It came, it passed, it stopped as before, but about half-an-hour later than the first time I heard it. When my husband joined me on the third evening I told him all about it, and, of course, he laughed me to scorn. A thorough sceptic, he would not even to please me wait up to hear my ghost, and it was a provokingly late night. Our room was away from the street, but a room the other side of the lobby looked out on it. My husband was asleep, and I lay waiting for this noise to come, determined when it did to arouse him and convince him if possible. I heard the city clock chime a quarter to one, and was beginning to despair of my phantom, when thundering down the street it came, sounding louder than I had before heard it – so loud, indeed, that it awoke my husband, who starting cried out ‘who on earth is that? It’s a fire engine,’ and out he jumped, throwing on his dressing gown. ‘It is the Phantom Cart,’ I cried triumphantly. ‘Come quick,’ I dragged him into the room opposite, just as the sound arrived before No. —. We looked out. It was a clear, cloudless night. There was no creature visible. The street was empty! Yet right past the window, from which we were both eagerly gazing, there rattled that mysterious sound as of a heavy cart being driven rapidly over the cobbled street, bringing up as it seemed with the sudden jerk at the usual place. My husband looked much bewildered and could say nothing; but next day, he declared, ‘he would find out all about it; it must be accounted for, etc., etc.’ But the triumph of the Phantom Cart was complete over even his sceptical mind, and he could gather no explanations from the learned ones of St. Andrew’s to clear the mystery, though he applied to most them.
Many a night the different periods our visit to St. Andrew’s have I heard that strange sound and [had] seen nothing. After a while I ceased to look or listen, and got quite accustomed to it, so as hardly, indeed, to notice it. There must some explanation of the thing, but I never heard it, and I should really like to know what it is that produces such a strange sound. Perhaps some elucidation may have been discovered since I last visited. St. Andrew’s, now some years ago, but I doubt the probability of such a thing, as I fancy I should have been told. So poor Archbishop Sharpe doubtless will be rattled across the ‘stony street’ till some one whose destiny it is arrives on the scene to lay the – what can we call it? – strange phonological phantom.
The author ends with a reflection again that does not suggest a personal fiction.
You see my ghost story after all not calculated ‘to make every particular hair to stand on end,’ and doubtless many would think it not worth the telling. Still, I could not resist putting it down on paper, especially as I am not the only one by good many who can vouch for the troth of the strange, unaccountable noise. Here friends, you have my description, such as is of the mighty progress through North street, St. Andrew’s, of Phantom Cart, though it is here described as a coach.
Anything else on the phantom cart of St Andrews: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
As to the phantom cart/coach here is a later reference:
Then my nephew and I saw that phantom coach in the Abbey Walk one windy moonlight night. It passed us very quickly, but made a deuced row, like a lifeboat carriage… Like a huge black box with windows in it, and a queer light inside. It reminded me of a great coffin. Ugly looking affair; very uncanny thing to meet at that time of night and in such a lonely spot. It was soon gone, but we heard its rumbling noise for a long time. [The horses were] shadowy looking black things, like great black beetles with long thin legs. [and the driver] was a tall thin, black object also, like a big, black, lank lobster, with a cocked hat on the top. That’s all I could see. On the top of the coach was an object that looked like a gigantic tarantula spider, with a head like a moving gargoyle. I can’t get at the real history of that mysterious old coach yet. I don’t believe it has anything whatever to do with the murdered prelates, Beaton or Sharpe. However, the coach does go about. Linskill, Ghost St Andrews 1921, 41-42
