Three Knights of Saint Blane

One from Ross, which was shared on our Ghost Story evening last year. We'll be doing another night of tales in March...look out for details soon...

Hundreds of years ago, in the time of the old Stewart Kings there lived on the banks of the river Clyde a man so rich, wicked and tyrannous that he was known among the common folk of the whole area as a man “possessed of supernatural powers and evil spirits”.  All the countryside from Cartsdyke to Skelmorlie rejoiced when he died, but they did not rejoice for long, for he came again, some decades later in a form so terrible that no one dared be out on the moors above the Clyde after dark for many years, even the horses and the cattle huddled round the farms.

At length it was it was determined that he must be laid, and so three clergymen (A Presbyterian, Episcopalian and a Catholic) went at the dead of night to the old Chapel of St Blane’s near Greenock to exorcise him. They drew a circle before the altar and took their stand within it. Each man had a lighted candle in his hand, and together they began their prayers.

Suddenly the Bogle appeared in the Church and came roaring up towards them, but when it came to the circle it stopped as if it had it a stone wall. They went on with their prayers, but so terrible was the roaring and so close did the monster come that one man’s heart failed him, and the candle that he held went out. But they continued with their exorcism.

But the Bogle reappeared as a giant black cat, and then again as a huge sea serpent; then it seemed as if a wave from the Clyde was flooding the Church, and then as if the west wall was falling down. The second man wavered in his faith, and the second candle went out. Still the third went on, though his candle was faint. At last the Bogle appeared in his mortal form as the wicked Laird that the old country folk remembered. And they questioned him, and asked why he had come back in such dreadful shapes.

“I was bad as a man”, he said, “and I am worse now as a devil.” And he vanished in a flash of fire.
Then their candles all burned up again and they prayed steadily, and the Bogle appeared again, but this time smaller and then in smaller forms again, until at last he was only a fly, and they caught him in a metal box and threw him into the sea at Kempock point, to lie there for ninety-nine years. Some say that it was for nine hundred and ninety-nine years; but at any rate, be careful what you pull up when fishing off Kempock point.