The Veiled Nun of Saint Leonard's by W. T. Lyndskill. Curiously enough,
although I have been in many old haunted castles and churches at the exactly
correct hour viz. Midnight in Scotland, England Walls and the Rhine Country,
yet I have never been able to either see or hear a ghost of any
sort. The only thing of the kind I ever saw was an accidental meeting
with the far famed spring hailed Jack in a dark lane at Helensborough. It
was many years ago, and as I was then very small and he was
of immense proportions, the meeting was distinctly unpleasant for me. Now from legends
we learn that Saint Andrew's is possessed of a prodigious number of supernatural appearances of
different kinds, sizes and shapes, most of them of an awe inspiring and
blood curdling type. In fact, so numerous are they eighty in number,
they seemed to be that there is really no room for any modern aspirants who
may want a quiet place to appear and turn people's hair white. It might
be well to mention a few of them before telling the tale of the Veiled
Nun of Saint Leonard's Church Avenue. We will put aside ordinary bansheese and things
that can only be heard well. There is the celebrated phantom coach that Willie
Carson told us of. It has been heard and seen by many. There
is also a white lady that used to haunt the abbey road, the ghost
of Saint Rahl's Tower, the Haunted Tower Ghost, the Blackfriar's Ghost, the
Wraith of Haxton of Ruthulet, the Specter of the Old Castle, the Dancing
Skeletons, the Smothered Piper lad, the Phantom Bloodhound, the Prairie Ghost,
and many many more. The Nun of Saint Leonard's is as curious and interesting
as any of them, though about weird and gruesome. In the time of
Charming Mary Stuart, our White Queen, there lived in the old South Street,
a very lovely lady belonging to a very old old Scottish family, and
her beauty and wit brought many admirers to claim her hand, but with little
or no success, she waved them all away. At last she became affianced
to a fine and brave young fellow who came from the East Lothian country and
For some months all went merrily as a married bell, but at last clouds
overspread the rosy horizon. She resolved that she would never become an earthly bride,
but would take the veil and become a bride of holy Church and none.
In point of fact, when her lover heard that she had left home
and entered a house of Holy sisters, he at once announced his intention of
hastening to Saint Andrew's, seizing her, and marrying her at once. In
this project, it would seem the young lady's parents were in perfect agreement with
a devoted youth. He did hasten to Saint Andrew's almost immediately, and there
received a terrible shock. On meeting this once lovely and loved maiden, he
discovered that she had actually done what she had written and threatened to do sooner
than be an earthly bride. She had mutilated her face by slitting her nostrils.
She had cut off her eyelids and both her top and bottom lips,
and had branded her fair cheeks with cruel hot irons. The poor youth,
on seeing her famous beauty thus destroyed, fled to Edinburgh, where he committed
suicide, and she after becoming a nun, died from grief and remorse.
That all happened nearly four hundred years ago, but her spirit, with a
terribly marred and mutilated face, still wanders o nights in the peaceful little avenue
to old Saint Leonard's Iron kirk Gate down the Penn's Road. She is all
dressed in black, with a long black veil over the once lovely face,
and carries a lantern in her hand. Should any bold visit her to that
avenue meet her, she slowly weeps her face veil aside, raises the lantern
to her scarred face and disclose those those awful features. To his horrified gaze,
here is a curtious thing that I know happened there a few years ago.
I knew a young fellow here who was roading upon theology and church canon
law. I also knew a great friend of his, an old Cambridge man.
The former I will call Wilson, and the latter Talbot, as I
don't want to give the exact names. Well, Wilson had invited Talbot up
to Saint Andrews for a month of golf, and he arrived here on a
Christmas Day. He came to my rooms for about ten minutes, and I
never saw anyone merrier and brighter and full of old days at Cambridge. Then
he hurried off to see the Lynx in the club. Late that evening,
Wilson rushed in, Come along quick and say, Talbot, he's awfully ill,
and I don't know what's up a bit. I went off and found
Talbot in his lodgings with a doctor in attendance, and he certainly looked dangerously
ill and seemed perfectly dazed. Wilson told me that he had to go to
see some people in business that evening down by the harbor, and that he
took Talbot with him down the Penn's Road. It was a fine night,
and Talbot said he would walk about the road and enjoy a cigar till his
friends return. In about half an hour, Wilson returned up the Penns Road
but could see Talbot nowhere in sight. After hunting about for a long time,
he found him leaning against a third or fourth tree up the little avenue
to Saint Leonard's kirk Gate. He went up to him, when Talbot turned
a horrified face toward him, saying, oh my god, have you come
to meet me again, and fell down in a fit or a swoon.
He got some passers by to help to take poor Talbot to his rooms.
Then he came round for me. We sat up with him in wonder,
in amazement, and briefly this is what he told us. After walking up
and down the Penns Road, he thought he would take a survey of the
little avenue, when at the end he saw a little light approaching him,
and he turned back to meet it, thinking it was a policeman. He
wished him good evening, but got no reply. On approaching nearer, he
saw it to be a veiled female with a lantern. Getting quite close,
she stopped in front of him, drew aside her long veil, and held
up the lantern towards him. My God, said Talbot. I can never
forget or describe that terrible, fearful face. I felt choked, and I
fell like a log at her feet. I remember no more till I found
myself in these rooms and you two fellows sitting beside me. I leave this
place tomorrow, and he did by the first train. His state of panic
was terrible to see. Neither Wilson nor Talbot had ever heard the tale of
the awful apparition of the Saint Leonard's Nun. And I had almost forgotten the
existence of the strange story till so curiously reminded of it. I never saw
Talbot again, but a letter from him a year after, written from Rhinefell's,
telling me that on Christmas Day he had had another vision, dream or
whatever it was, of the same awful specter. About a year later I
read in a paper that poor old Talbot had died on Christmas night at Rosario
of heart failure. I after wonder if the dear old chap had had another
visit from the terrible veiled Nun of Saint Leonard's Avenue. And of the Veiled
Nun of Saint Leonard's by W. T. Lindskill