1980
My room was on the third floor in the Preston Tower at Fyvie Castle and was rather cramped, with only one small, high window, but at least it was far away from the noise of the visitors who would be pouring in at the weekends. I unpacked my clothes, cursing the fact I’d only brought one jumper with me. What was I thinking? This was Aberdeenshire in the summer. Well, perhaps I could try to hitch a lift into a nearby town at some stage on a day off, if I got desperate.
Mrs MacPherson had told me that, though the bathroom was on the second floor, down the narrow stairs, I was the only one using it. Indeed, I was the only resident in the Preston Tower. Andrew, like the other regular guide, Silvia, whom I’d yet to meet, stayed locally so I was the only one, apart from the family, who lived in. They were in the Leith Tower, at the other side of the castle from my room. I was relieved as I’d become less sociable during my two years at university, with all that had gone on, and the thought of having to take all my meals with someone like Andrew didn’t fill me with joy. But he seemed to be the type of person who did whatever he liked, including telling the eager visitors mistruths.
Since my first proper shift was on Monday, I planned to study all the information about the castle over the weekend and prepare what I was going to say then. When one of the visitors had asked Andrew how old the Dunfermline passage was, I realised I had no idea. He told them that until the Gordons took over Fyvie in 1733 and did their own renovations, there had been no 109 corridors as such, simply interconnecting doors. There was still so much to find out, but right now I was going to do some work on my dissertation. I got out all the books I’d been allowed to keep on extended loans during the summer from the university library. I’d brought far too many, but there’d be little else to do in my spare time.
When I’d told Doctor Birkett the subject of the dissertation, she’d been interested as, even though her period was mid-sixteenth century, specialising in Mary, Queen of Scots, she knew little about Alexander Seton’s private life, just the fact that his family was one of the most loyal to the Queen. I’m certain she hadn’t known his wife was now a ghost. I smiled when I thought of that; what a ludicrous story to tell the poor visitors.
I opened my first book, which was on the Seton family, and began to read. Alexander’s father George had been the Queen’s Master of Household at Holyrood and also provost of Edinburgh, and his aunt was Mary or Marie Seton who was one of the famous Four Marys who attended the Queen. She was the only one who didn’t marry and indeed she ended up at a convent in Reims in northern France where the Abbess was the sister of the Queen’s mother, Mary of Guise. All that was common knowledge. But soon I reached the pages about Alexander’s wives.
First, he married Lilias Drummond in 1585 and they had five children, all girls, one of whom died in infancy. So many children died as babies and so many of the mothers never survived childbirth, so this would not have been unusual. I began to cross-refer to notes on Lilias Drummond from another book I’d taken photocopies of from the library. I thought back to what Andrew had said when we were in the Seton Bedroom about Lilias now being known as the Green Lady and haunting the place. By that stage, though, I’d taken some things he’d said with a pinch of salt, so I wanted to discover the truth about her. I’d 110 been struck by her portrait: she looked innocent, almost naive, and certainly not as assured as the second wife, whose portrait we saw later. They were all engaged or married so young and to much older men. But then, I was hardly one to talk.
I took a deep breath and continued flicking through my notebooks until I came to some interesting newspaper clippings from a couple of years before, which Doctor Birkett had found in archives for me when I’d secured this job at the castle. In 1972, a radio production team had visited Fyvie to record a live show about haunted castles and a strange thing occurred. The team from BBC Scotland in Aberdeen had turned up in the morning to set up before recording the programme at lunchtime, and when the presenter had arrived in the taxi from the airport they told her they’d been having problems with the microphones when they were doing their sound checks. When she insisted they mike her up and just start anyway as she had an evening flight back to London, the sound man said they’d try but they couldn’t be sure it would work.
According to one of the tabloid cuttings, she told the crew that was nonsense. So-called “acquaintances” of the presenter Oonagh Donnelly were quoted as saying she was not known for her patience; indeed she was renowned for her off-hand, abrupt manner.
The crew had changed the batteries and it looked as if the sound was recording, but then it didn’t play back, even though it had been fine in the studios earlier. The presenter was eager to try anyway and suggested they use more than one tape.
Resigned, the sound man miked her up, they did a test – the usual “What did you have for breakfast” – and he played it back. It worked and she gave him a smug look and insisted they crack on. This was a live show, after all, they had no time to waste. So they recorded the programme. 111
And then something astonishing happened. Some twenty minutes into the live transmission, there was an interruption over the recording and a ghostly voice whispered the words, “He killed me”. The words were breathy and husky, but it was definitely the voice of a woman. Oonagh and the crew were totally unaware of the voice until they played back the recording later. Many listeners had written in to ask what it meant or why had the BBC inserted spooky-sounding words over Oonagh’s voice in the middle of the show.
There were no logical answers, apart from specious excuses of white noise – or perhaps some audio had broken through from a tape that had been used before. What they did not reveal at that point was the fact that research was ongoing about the extremely rare phenomena called EVP, Electric Voice Phenomena, which some believed were voices of the dead – “spirit voices” – heard in recordings.
The public had presumed the words had been inserted to give atmosphere to the programme. The production team insisted they had not. And as for Oonagh, she was apparently so unnerved when she listened to the programme later that she retired from radio presenting soon after. I shut the notebook, thinking that I must try to contact this Oonagh via the BBC as soon as I could.
I went to switch on the light at the door and noticed there was an inside lock, which I pulled to. I picked up my handbag and riffled inside to find the tiny torch Mum had insisted I bring along with me. Thankfully, it was there. Even as I thought about her setting it down for me on the kitchen table with my sandwiches for the train, I smiled. Mum had always had my back covered, even more so in the past year.
I did not believe in ghosts, what nonsense. The radio recording had obviously played something that had been recorded over on the tape. Whether or not I would give the visitors the 112 spiel about the Green Lady in my guided tour I’d yet to decide. For now, I needed to go to bed. I opened the window a little to let in the chill air and saw the crows circle and swoop around the tall oak trees in the gloaming.