Picture this: You are visiting RAF Lossiemouth, and little do you know it’s not all fast-jets and submarine hunting happening here… there is something more peculiar afoot.
You find yourself in the Station Commander’s House, “The Old Manse”. If walls could talk, this house would have plenty to tell you, having been built in 1853 and handed down through so many owners over the years, including the Royal Navy.
You stroll through the beautifully decorated halls and enter a room upstairs, one of the bathrooms to be precise.
At first there is nothing unusual; you notice the large window overlooking the grounds below. Nothing too remarkable, until…. out of the corner of your eye you see it. On one of the large windowpanes, what is that? A mark on the glass? A smudge? Maybe some dust?
You look back to do a double take and, it’s gone. The pane of glass is crystal clear. It must be your imagination, so you leave the room, and forget about it.
But little do you know, you’re not the first, nor will you be the last, to witness the “hand of the Old Manse”.
There have been many local whispers over the years about the ghost that lurks outside the window of the Old Manse.
Despite the year of the “event” changing depending on who you ask, the origin story of this tale goes the same:
“Around the turn of the century (date unknown) a maid was turned out of the house. Trying to reach her home in Lossiemouth, she was stopped short by a snowstorm that had enveloped the Moray coast.
Hoping to seek shelter she returned to the Manse, disheartened to find that everyone had retired to their rooms for the night, and the doors had been locked. In one last desperate attempt at gaining entry, she climbed onto the roof of the porch (supposedly by trellis) to open the window above it.
However, the window would not open, and the residents inside were deaf to her pleas for help and knocking on the window. Remaining on the porch, she finally succumbed to the cold where she waited by the window for someone to awaken and find her.
In the morning, tradition has it, the print of her hand remained visible on the window, and it is reputed to have reappeared there on several occasions since, with the faint knocking on the glass echoing through the Old Manse.
Whereas most of these whispers were viewed as old wife’s tales, in the early 1940’s, the British Army were occupying the house, and a soldier abandoned his post for the most peculiar reason…
“It was a wintery night, none too different to the one the maid was cast out in.
A British soldier was on guard duty in the grounds of the manse, when he alleges the ghost manifested itself.
The guard saw a figure walk from Kinneddar Graveyard, which lies immediately across the road from the house, up the drive, and then proceed to climb up to the “haunted” window.
The soldier said that the figure appeared to be climbing up something that wasn’t there anymore, perhaps there was ivy or something growing up the outside of the house at one time. Either way the event had left him startled and he abandoned his post through fear of the unknown.”
And these examples don’t just date back to the 20th century, since the RAF took ownership of the building during the transition from HMS Fulmar to RAF Lossiemouth, there have been many cases in recent years of Station Commanders who have resided in the Manse reporting odd sightings…
“One sunny afternoon when we were moving into the Manse, I was rapidly sorting boxes as the troop of movers deposited them all over the Manse at breakneck speed. At one point, I carried a box into the upstairs bathroom. I looked up as I walked into the room and noticed a smear on the window.
My first thought was “that looks a bit like a handprint”, but I didn’t think much more of it, probably because there had been some decorating before we moved in, so I reckoned it was a handprint from one of the painters.
Fast forward a few weeks and I learnt the story of the maid. I’m in no way superstitious but I went back to the bathroom to examine the pane of glass, which I found myself doing more than once over the years, and there wasn’t a single mark there…”
So, what do you think?
This story has popped up several times over the years (including in the local papers!), and, whether you are a believer or not, there is a beauty to these ghostly legends in connecting us with our local history and the dearly departed.
And if it is all make-believe and whispers on a dark night, it at least makes for a compelling ghost story!
Happy Halloween from Team Lossie.
