Speaker 1: The Veiled Nun of Saint Leonard's by W. T. Lindskill.
Curiously enough, although I have been in many old haunted
castles and churches at the exactly correct hour viz. Midnight
in Scotland, England, Wales 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 learned
that Saint Andrews 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 seem to
be that there is really no room for any modern
aspirants whom 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 banshees 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 Rolls Tower, the
Haunted Tower Ghost, the Blackfriar's Ghost, the Wraith of Haxton
of Rithelot, the Specter of the Old Castle, the Dancing Skeletons,
the Smothered Piper lad, the Phantom Bloodhound, the Priory Ghost,
and many many more. The Nun of Saint Leonard's is
as curious and interesting as any of them, though a
bit weird and gruesome. In the time of Charming Mary Stuart,
our White Queen, there lived in the old South Street
to 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
merely 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 ladies parents were in perfect agreement with the
devoted youth. He did hasten to Saint Andrews 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 the terribly marred
and mutilated face, still wanders of nights. In the peaceful
little avenue to old Saint Leonard's Ironkirk 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 visitor to
that avenue meet her, she slowly so weeps her face
veil aside, raises the lantern to her scarred face and
discloses those awful features to his horrified gaze. Here's the
curious thing that I know happened there a few years ago,
a new young fellow here who was reading 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 he never saw
anyone merrier and brighter and full of old days at Cambridge.
Then he hurried off to see the links in the club.
Late that evening, Wilson rushed in, Come along quick and
see 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 Penns 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.
We could see Talbot nowhere in sight. After hunting about
for a long time, he found him leaning against the
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 Leonards Nun. And I had almost
forgotten the existence of the strange story till so curiously
reminded of it. I never saw Talbot again, but I
had a letter from him a year after, written from Rheinfeld'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 Rosariu
of heart failure. I ofter 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