The Witch-Cats of Scrabster

Show me a story about beer-swilling Scottish witch cats, and, naturally, my immediate reaction is to yell for joy and start typing.  A blogger lives for that sort of thing.

Our little tale opens in late 1718, at the Burnside of Scrabster home of a mason named William Montgomery.  He and his family had a cat problem.  Of late, a number of highly sinister felines had mysteriously invaded his home.  They terrorized his servant into quitting, (after hearing the cats talking among themselves in human and intelligible voices,) and left Mrs. Montgomery so frazzled that she threatened to leave her husband and retire to the less cat-plagued town of Thurso.  Worst of all, the diabolical kitties drank up his ale.

Montgomery decided serious measures were called for.  Arming himself with a sword, a dirk, and an ax, he launched an assault on the unwanted guests, killing two of the cats and wounding several others.  At least, he thought at the time that two of them were dead. Curiously enough, by the following morning their corpses had mysteriously vanished.  He also noted that the wounds he had inflicted drew no blood.

Then things really got weird. A local woman, Helen Andrew, who had long been suspected of being a witch, died unexpectedly.  Another reputed sorceress named McHuistan killed herself by leaping into the sea.  Most startling of all, an old lady named Margaret Nin-Gilbert had one of her legs suddenly fall off.  The local residents--who could put two and two together as well as anyone--immediately concluded that the three women were among the cats who had infested the Montgomery home. Nin-Gilbert’s “black and putrefied” leg was presented to the local sheriff (something which must have really made his day) and he was ordered to take the appropriate steps.

Margaret was quickly arrested.  Under what was probably not very gentle questioning, she soon admitted that she had been inside Montgomery’s house in the form of a “feltered [shaggy] cat,” and that the loss of her leg was due to the injuries his dirk had inflicted.  Nin-Gilbert stated that the trouble began when a woman named Margaret Olson had been evicted from her lodgings due to the “wickedness of her behavior.”  The Montgomery family moved into her former home.  As a result, Olson solicited Nin-Gilbert to “do mischief” in revenge.  

Besides Olson, Nin-Gilbert named four other women as her cat-confederates.  Naturally, they were arrested as well.  Margaret died in jail soon afterward.  (Accounts vary as to whether she succumbed to natural causes, or if she was murdered by the women who were, thanks to her, fellow inmates.)

Eventually, the whole affair reached the ears of Lord Advocate Robert Dundas.  He wrote a stern letter to the sheriff scolding him for proceeding on such a matter without his authority.  The entire case, to his mind, was so utterly absurd that he ordered the investigation to cease.  The women Nin-Gilbert had accused were freed, and that, it seems, was that.

Unfortunately, history does not record if Montgomery ever saw the cats again.

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

This week's Link Dump is honored to be hosted by the Cats of the Crystal Palace.

They are the champions!

What the hell is the "Baghdad Battery?"

The world's oldest known runestone.

Nothing to see here, just the Earth's core doing weird things.

A bit of life insurance fraud.

Ancient bioweapons.

Any holiday featuring pancakes and coffee is good by me.

The interesting explanation of why the Navajo Code was impossible to decipher.

Some forgotten warrior queens.

A new theory about the Nazca Lines.

So, it seems that everything we thought we knew about the origin of modern birds is wrong.

A man's mysterious murder of his wife.

A look at Napoleon's first division at Waterloo.

The latest from ancient Egypt.

The mystery of the "Balochistan Sphinx."

Mustaches cause appendicitis.  No, really.

Amsterdam's Cat Police.

The world's oldest restaurant.

The "other" Queen Cleopatra.

An attempted suicide at Clapham Common.

The odd death of a Georgian-era caricaturist.

A strange 7,000 year old mass grave.

A look at the Battle of Verdun.

Photos of a lost corner of Whitechapel.

The career of a Victorian fore-edge painter.

The oldest ceremony in the world.

Victorian mourning, economy style.

A million-year-old ax factory.

A child's tragic life and death.

HMS Proserpine's icy nightmare.

The Elizabethan energy crisis.

A look at the Roman Empire's navy.

A look at Gobekli Tepe.

The world's oldest billboard.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll meet some Scottish witch cats.  Beer-loving Scottish witch cats.  In the meantime, bring on James and Linda.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

"Ghost pops up to inform everyone, 'I was murdered'" is a classic genre of spook tales.  The following excellent example appeared in the "Caledonian Mercury," January 19, 1861:

The Kendal Mercury relates the following strange story: 

At the high end of Stramongate, in Kitty Gibson's yard, stand some very old buildings, and in one of these, a part of which faces the street, and was, about a century ago, a public-house known by the sign of the Black Horse, the following strange occurrences took place a few days ago: 

There is a cottage at the upper end of this yard, which is occupied by a man named Joseph Allinson, bobbin-turner, and one of the inmates, a young woman of the name of Marian Allan, sister of Mrs. Allinson, who has been bedridden and nearly blind for some time past, and an object of sympathy, on account of her sufferings, is the "medium" through which the strange story now in circulation has been set afloat. 

It appears that on Monday evening last, whilst some five or six men and women were sitting by the fireside downstairs, all at once they were considerably alarmed by some heavy sounds, as if some one was knocking violently in a room upstairs. This noise continued for some time--knock--knock--knock--louder and louder so much so that the concussion shook the house as if it were about to be brought down altogether, one person stating that the chair in which he was sitting was fairly lifted up. 

What could be the cause of this fearful noise? It was suggested that perhaps the poor young woman ill in bed and helpless might have fallen on the floor, and was knocking for assistance. On proceeding to her apartment, she gave forth this curious revelation, which bids fair to emulate the far-famed ,"Cock Lane Ghost." An apparition had visited her (which she was permitted to behold for a time, and then her eyesight left her as before), the figure of a man dressed in black, of a grim and rough aspect. She describes something breathed in her face, that the lighted candle in the room burned dim, and finally either went out of its own accord, or was extinguished by some unseen hand, when the figure appeared as stated. On acquiring sufficient utterance, she inquired of the ghost, in the name of the Holy Trinity, why she was troubled with his presence. On the third time of asking, the spectre spoke in a thick, husky, hollow voice, telling her, whilst pointing in the direction below, to follow him to the cellar of the house, where, on removing the flagstone on the hearth, something would be found buried, which was the special purpose of his visit to reveal. On stating this, the form of the unearthly visitant vanished like a dim shadow.

Slowly and silently the parties in the house went to the locality in the cellar pointed out by the man in black, dug up the earth flag, and found a quantity of bones (which yet remain for the inspection of the curious) buried a little below the surface. A quantity of hops, in good preservation, were found scattered here and there over the soil. 

These bones (human they are said to be by some accounted-competent judges in such matters) have been examined by scores of people. Their state of decay leads to the supposition that a long time has elapsed since they were put beneath the ground. It is to be regretted that the ghost did not reveal more of the "secrets of his prison-house. " It may be he was forbidden to do so no one can tell, only that conjecture is rife as to the history of these canonised bones. Whether some foul unnatural murder has been committed of ancient date, long hidden but now come out under these circumstances, we are not prepared to say. The revelation and discovery so far are the foremost topics of remark both in the town and country, from the latter of which a great number of dealers in the marvellous have been to satisfy themselves as to the truth of what they had heard.

Screams in the Night: An Unusual Mystery at Sea

As has often been said, strange things happen at sea.  One particularly eerie incident was recorded by nautical explorer Rex Clement in his 1924 book “A Gipsy of the Horn.”  He tells of a night some twenty years past when, while sailing the Pacific in a windjammer, he and his crew heard a sound they would never forget…

One dark, moonless night just before we got clear of the “forties," with a fresh breeze blowing and the ship running quietly along under t’gallant'sls, there occurred a most uncanny experience.

It was about four bells in the middle watch, the “churchyard” watch, as the four hours after midnight is called, that it happened. We of the mate's watch were on deck--the men for'ard, Burton and I under the break, and Mr. Thomas pacing the poop above our heads. Suddenly, apparently close aboard on the port hand, there came howling out of the darkness a most frightful, wailing cry, ghastly in its agony and intensity. Not of overpowering volume--a score of men shouting together could have raised as loud a hail-it was the indescribable calibre and agony of the shriek that almost froze the blood in our veins.

We rushed to the rail, the mate and the men too, and stared searchingly into the blackness to wind'ard. The starbowlines, who a moment before had been sleeping the sleep of tired men in their bunks below, rushed out on deck. Shipwreck would hardly bring foremast Jack out before he was called, but that cry roused him like the last summons. If ever men were “horrorstruck" we were.

Even the old man was awakened by it and came up on deck. Everyone was listening intensely, straining their eyes into the blackness that enveloped us.

A moment or two passed and then as we listened, wondering, and silent, again that appalling scream rang out, rising to the point of almost unbearable torture and dying crazily away in broken whimperings.

No one did anything, or even spoke. We stood like stones, simply staring into the mystery-laden gloom. How long we peered and listened, waiting for a repetition of the sound, I do not know. But minutes passed and still it did not come, and slowly, like men coming out of a trance, we began to move about and speak to each other again.

We heard it no more and gradually, one at a time, trickled back to fok'sle and half-deck. As far as the occupants of the latter were concerned, no one evinced any inclination to turn in and we sat around, smoking and discussing what the sound we had heard could possibly be. Nobody slept much more that night and thankful we were when the grey dawn broke over the tumbling, untenanted sea.

This was all. In bare words it doesn't sound very dreadful, but it made that night a night of terror. For long enough afterwards the echoes of that awful scream would ring in my ears, and even now it sends a shiver through me to think of it.

Who and what it was that caused it we never learnt. We hazarded a variety of guesses, many of them farfetched enough. The cry of a whale was suggested, but I never heard a whale utter any sounds with its throat. Some other sea-monster, somebody else thought, that only rarely comes to the surface but this was more unlikely still. The scream of seals or sea-lions on an island beach was another hypothesis--again, the nearest land was Easter Island, six hundred miles to the north'ard. Besides, the shriek we heard had certainly a human, if not a diabolic, origin. Whether it was, as some imagined, a shipwrecked boat's crew who saw our lights and in their extremity raised a sort of death-scream, or whether, as others asserted, it had a supernatural origin, remained a mystery insoluble.

Some time after, Nils, our taciturn Russian Finn, who was as superstitious as big Mac, told me we should have called out: “Jou wass come here, oldt man,” and the thing, whatever it was, would have come and done us no harm. Nils evidently thought it was a seaspirit. Who shall say? For my own part, I hold with Hamlet that “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy," and certainly more than one can well put a name to.

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

This week's Link Dump is hosted by the fearsome Brunnhilde!

Why the hell do we yawn?

Librarians on horseback.

The (homicidal) Flower of Temple Street.

The painful life of the inventor of Coca-Cola.

The time the FBI got involved with an allegedly haunted school.

The loss of HMS Wasp.

The ghosts of Old Edinburgh.

Why 1642 was a bad year for the Earl of Leicester.

Some superstitions about blood.

A poetic bereavement therapy.

How donkeys changed human history.

The Fire Dog who dined with Teddy Roosevelt.

Rudyard Kipling's years in India were...um, lively?

An Indiana banshee.

So, let's talk meowing nuns.

The legend of the White Woman of Gippsland.

The "Irish giant" is finally taken out of display.  After 200 years or so.

Charles Dickens' Deputy.

Archaeological predictions for 2023.

A murderer cheats the chair.

The literature of ancient Egypt.

A look at a medieval marriage.

The birth of the Burgundian kingdom.

A newly-discovered previous owner of the Voynich Manuscript.

The sort of thing that happens when you mix erring wives and jealous husbands.

Lawless women in the Star Chamber.

A hanging as entertainment.

The origins of "stump speech."

The mystery of the disappearing poet.

Why Roman Empire baths disappeared.

An old coin and a "lost" Roman Emperor.

Celebrating the Lunar New Year on the front lines of WWI.

So maybe we shouldn't blame rats for the Black Death.

19th century letters of introduction.

A 2,500 year old love letter.

17 interesting Georgians.

A little bit of paradise in Cornwall.

The dogs who explored Antarctica.

A Juvenile Almanack.

Ireland's Great Hunger.

What we know about ancient Egyptian medicine.

Queen Victoria as an artist.

A brief history of Jell-O salad.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at an eerie little mystery at sea.  In the meantime, here's a British folk group that you've probably never heard of before.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

There's that old saying about how nothing is certain but death and taxes.  Well, here's a story that manages to combine the two.  The "Nevada State Journal," October 1, 1907:

LONDON, Sept. 30--Tax Assessor H.M.W. Richards called on the 300-year-old ghosts in the eerie predawn hours today to support the claim of their host, the owner of a lonely country mansion, that his taxes should be reduced because the house was haunted. 

The investigation took all night. As the sun rose, Richards stumbled from the ancient 12- room cobwebbed mansion and left immediately without comment for an extended weekend in other parts of the country to consider his decision. 

Richards was aided in his investigation by a London medium, Mrs. Florence Thompson, four psychic investigators, the caretaker and newsmen--10 persons in all.  Mrs. Thompson insisted the ghosts kept the rendezvous. 

According to the legend, the house is haunted by the ghosts of a beautiful young girl and her handsome lover who crossed the wishes of the girl's father. The irate father shut both of them in a cellar closet and they died in each other's arms. Since then their spirits have been earthbound. 

The present owner, D. Key, of Eel Pie Island, Twickenham, whose family has owned the mansion for the past 100 years, complained to Richards that mansion has been haunted ever since that closet door closed and no one would live there except the caretaker, Miss Amy Dickinson, gaunt and crippled 67-year-old spinster. Because of this, Key said, he wanted a tax reduction. 

Richards, tax assessor and a member of the city council of Apsley Guise, Bedfordshire, which heard the complaint, was not convinced. He wanted a demonstration.

Unfortunately for Mr. Key, although Richards eventually came to the conclusion that the house was indeed haunted, the Luton area assessment committee felt otherwise.  Ghosts or no ghosts, they ruled, Key had to pay his taxes in full.

It was a nice try, though.

Disappearance, Suicide, and Possibly Murder: The Strange Case of Diane Schulte

22-year-old Diane Marie Schulte lived in Nampa, Idaho with her husband of two years, 24-year-old Fred Schulte.  They had moved to Nampa from Iowa in the spring of 1976.  Neither of the Schultes could be described as social butterflies, but Diane possessed an unusually reserved and non-social disposition.  She spent most of her free time at home, where she occupied herself with macrame, reading, and her three cats.   She was described in an official report as “extremely introverted and insecure," and that she “responds antagonistically when approached by strangers, or believes a stranger is encroaching on her psychological territory.” Diane was long estranged from her parents, had no friends in the area, and apart from her husband, the one person she was close to was her grandmother, who lived far away in Flint, Michigan.  Diane and her grandmother only rarely saw each other in person, but they spoke often on the phone.  Most people would find Diane’s life a dull and lonely one, but it suited her.  She seemed quite content with her lot, and neighbors believed that she and her husband, whom co-workers described as “solid and happy,” were extremely devoted to each other.  Diane once wrote to her husband, “I know that I don’t always show it, but I love you with all my heart and soul. Your love is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

On March 25, 1977, the Schultes visited the local library.  Afterwards, Fred suggested that they go for a walk, but Diane declined, saying she wasn’t feeling well.  The following morning, Fred went to his job at a Boise unemployment office.  Later that morning, a neighbor observed Diane outside the house, as if she was preparing to go for a walk.  (Something she often did, with or without Fred.)  When Fred returned home that evening, his wife was gone.

Aside from Diane’s uncharacteristic absence, everything in the house seemed normal.  Her car was in the driveway, and there was mail and a UPS box waiting on the front porch.  All of Diane’s possessions, including her purse, were inside.  The only items missing were the keys to a P.O. box and their rented house.  Her three cats were shut up in a spare bedroom, which is what she always did when about to go somewhere.  However, her watch and wedding ring were on a desk.  She always left them there when she was at home or preparing to leave for just a very brief time.  Fred found the situation weird enough to immediately contact police.

Unfortunately, this was one of those missing-persons cases where investigators were immediately stymied by a lack of clues.  Diane’s grandmother told police that the last time they talked, just the day before Diane disappeared, her granddaughter was “highly upset and emotional”--possibly because Diane’s parents were planning to visit her later that year.  (According to Fred, Diane "hated" her mother, and her father had caused her a great deal of pain.)  Diane was so anxious to avoid this reunion, she asked Fred to persuade them not to come.  On the other hand, Fred stated that when he last saw his wife, she was in an “unusually good mood.”

A friend of Diane’s named Sue Stampe told a reporter that everyone who knew the couple was baffled.  “We’ve all talked to the police and with each other, and we don’t know what to think,” she said.  Stampe added that in the last letter Diane sent her, “I never heard anyone be so happily married.  But sometimes it’s hard to tell about Diane.  She doesn’t always tell you what she really feels.”

On April 1, operating on the (not unreasonable) theory that “It’s usually the spouse who did it,” police asked Fred to take a polygraph test.  He seemed perfectly willing to cooperate, but on April 3--shortly before Fred was to be polygraphed--the mystery took a sudden, shocking turn, when Fred’s corpse was discovered inside Diane’s car.  He had been speeding down Highway 95, when he shot himself in the head.  The car subsequently crashed down into a canyon.

Fred left behind two documents: a will and a suicide note.  In the latter, he stated that he was killing himself because “I have given up hope of Diane’s returning alive…She was always warm and loving and supportive and fun. She was everything I’ve ever wanted and needed in a woman.  In turn, I gave her the strength to cope with a world that terrified her...Having lived with her, I find that I cannot live without her, so by the time you read this, I will have taken my own life.”  

Then, his note took an abrupt turn.  About a month before Diane disappeared, a ten-year-old Nampa boy named Steven White was murdered.  (The case was not solved until 2001.) Fred referenced the crime, stating “I challenge any sane, thinking person to spend one full day really observing this insane, absolutely absurd world we’re living in. Can you honestly say that you’re proud of it? That it makes any sense at all? That there is any justice in it? Diane Schultes and Steven Whites are being cut down left and right while the criminal elements (from the nickel-and-dime shoplifter to the politicians and businessmen that run the world) are free to ply their trades with virtually no fear of punishment.”

“Why does so much of the GNP of the world go into producing ships and war planes that are blown to bits when the same GNP could produce food, clothing, and other niceties of life? That is to say, productive rather than destructive items? Why is there so much war, crime, pollution, injustice, inflation, vandalism, etc.? I say it is because our society is disintegrating and doing so more rapidly each year.”

He gave no hint that he knew where Diane was, or how she had died.

Fred’s death was all the police needed to close the books on the case.  Investigators reasoned that his premature certainty that his wife was dead, plus his own suicide, were both indicators of guilt.  Nampa Police Detective Robert Shank admitted that his belief that Fred murdered his wife was based on “supposition and intuition,” rather than “factual proof,” but added that “on the little bits of evidence we picked up, we believe he killed her.”  The “bits of evidence,” however, were frustratingly vague: a missing living room rug, a dent in the floor that could have been made by a bullet, and a four-inch hole cut from a drape.

Shank may have been correct.  However, if Fred was entirely innocent, under the circumstances it would not have been illogical for him to conclude that his wife was the victim of foul play, and was never coming back.  Considering that the key to the couple's P.O. box was missing, it is conceivable that Diane went for a walk to check on the box (something she did regularly) and along the way was kidnapped by a passing psychopath.  There is another possibility, one apparently not considered by investigators: suicide.  Perhaps when Fred realized she was mysteriously missing, he guessed she had left to kill herself, but for whatever reason, didn’t want to share his suspicions with authorities.

Diane Schulte’s fate remains a complete mystery, and at this late date, it is a riddle that probably will never be solved.