The Death Bogle

7 Sept

Pitlochry, Scotland

“People who know of the existence of the ghost known as the Death Bogle are very anxious to avoid it, for it is said that those who have come across it and have been touched by its icy cold white fingers will meet their death before long.”

Something lurks on the road leading out of Pitlochry heading northwards… something that locals warn to stay away from. Because what is worse than a spectral figure haunting an area? A spectral figure with the power to kill…

The Death Bogle is a white, ghostly figure that roams on the roads to the north of Pitlochry. At the turn of the 20th Century, paranormal investigator Elliott O'Donnell spoke of witnessing the sighting of the Death Bogle himself. O’Donnell spent a lot of time in Pitlochry, and recounted one particular stay…

Whilst on his bike, O’Donnell rode back from Loch Tay to Pitlochry just before ten in the evening. Eager to make the most of the dwindling daylight, he stopped at the old crossroads for a break and to soak in the sunset. Suddenly, he became aware of a strange presence that appeared to him as a ghostly column of white light in the middle of the road.

As O'Donnell watched the apparition, he became aware of a horse and cart coming down the road with two passengers. He realised that the apparition and the horse and cart were going to collide at the crossroads. O’Donnell described a look of knowing on the passengers’ faces, as if they knew exactly who, or what, this apparition was.

The boy in the cart pleaded with the driving farmer to keep away from the spectral figure and so they halted in front of the phantom, suddenly turned, and galloped in the opposite direction whilst the ghost took pursuit. The apparition, whilst chasing the horse and cart, began to lose it’s original form and became more of a shapeless light that reached out to the passengers.

O’Donnell high-tailed out of there, and upon returning to his lodgings, explained what he had seen. The landlady explained that this apparition had been spotted several times on that crossroads, if any person was touched by the ghost they would die shortly afterwards.

“It was stupid of me not to have warned you,” she said. “That that particular spot in the road has always—at least ever since I can remember—borne the reputation of being haunted. None of the peasants round here will venture within a mile of it after twilight, so the carters you saw must have been strangers. No one has ever seen the ghost except in the misty form in which it appeared to you.
It does not frequent the place every night; it only appears periodically; and its method never varies. It leaps over a wall or hedge, remains stationary till some one approaches, and then pursues them with monstrous springs. The person it touches invariably dies within a year.
I well recollect when I was in my teens, on just such a night as this, driving home with my father from Lady Colin Ferner’s croquet party at Blair Atholl. When we got to the spot you name, the horse shied, and before I could realise what had happened, we were racing home at a terrific pace.
My father and I sat in front, and the groom, a Highland boy from the valley of Ben-y-gloe, behind. Never having seen my father frightened, his agitation now alarmed me horribly, and the more so as my instinct told me it was caused by something other than the mere bolting of the horse. I was soon enlightened.
A gigantic figure, with leaps and bounds, suddenly overtook us, and, thrusting out its long, thin arms, touched my father lightly on the hand, and then with a harsh cry, more like that of some strange animal than that of a human being, disappeared. Neither of us spoke till we reached home,— I did not live here then, but in a house on the other side of Pitlochry,—when my father, who was still as white as a sheet, took me aside and whispered, "Whatever you do, Flora, don’t breathe a word of what has happened to your mother, and never let her go along that road at night. It was the death bogle. I shall die within twelve months.’
And he did.”