Scotland Diary: Glencoe | Day One
For my birthday, I’d booked a twin room in a B&B in Glencoe. It looked absolutely amazing on the internet, so upscale and vintage, with a price that wasn’t too over the top. My parents actually sent me the money for the booking as my mum thought I deserved a nice hotel for my 31st. What a bloody diamond she is!
Needless to say, we were looking forward to it! Two luxuriously comfortable beds with actual duvets, a warm private room to lay all our things out, with an en suite bathroom and a cooked breakfast each morning? Perfect.
We took our time with the drive back down to Glencoe from Fort William as check-in wasn’t until three, however, the drive really wasn’t that long at all. We thought we would check out the town, maybe go for a short hike but as we found a nearby street to park in, I began to feel really uneasy. Uncomfortable, I suppose.
Rachel was beginning to feel hungry and wanted to find somewhere to eat but the only place we could see was a horrendously busy cafe. It seemed to be more hassle than it was worth but before she could suggest another place, I blurted out how strange I felt.
‘Oh no’, she said, ‘are you getting something?’
I should explain.
One thing you ought to know about me is that I can sense things. Ok yeah, even typing that sounds crazy. It’s not something I tend to tell people unless I’m very close to them because who’s going to believe me? Although it hasn’t escaped me how easily I have just written it on here for the whole world to see. Luckily, Rachel already knew this about me from our first year in New Zealand (she did two years, I did three) as we had shared two houses together and hostel rooms for such long periods of time.
I’m talking about spirits, souls, ghosts, or whatever you choose to call them. I can’t always see these things but I can certainly sense them, which in turn, helps me to visualise and build their picture in my mind. To be entirely truthful, it’s not something I’ve ever gotten used to.
I don’t remember the exact moment it all started but I do remember certain occasions, for instance, in one of our old family homes. I was always super aware of a figure on our upstairs landing and the feeling that I shouldn’t be downstairs past 9 pm alone. Even if I needed a glass of water at night. We lived in that house until I was at least 14 or 15 and I swear to you, there were a good few years where I’d spend the vast majority of nights on my parent’s bedroom floor. I’d have months where I was too scared to be in my bedroom, scared of the figure on the landing. The feeling would come and go, of course, and as I got older, I learnt to distract myself or talk myself out of what I was experiencing.
When we moved to our next house, an old cottage that made it through both world wars, the activity grew tenfold. But unlike the previous house, I was never frightened. I could feel a woman’s presence, calming and gentle which made me think she may have been a nurse of some kind. I also felt two strong male presences, one that mostly lingered outside my window and the other felt… old. Gentlemanly, old-fashioned and traditional. I’d get this strange sensation of being watched and it wasn’t until I eventually reached out to the female presence to help me that it all went away. It felt as if she had literally ushered the male presences out and although I felt so ridiculous talking to an empty room, I also felt comforted that perhaps they were listening to me and perhaps even respecting me.
At that point, the only encounters I had were in my home, I’d never experienced anything elsewhere until I was at college. My friend and I were in the theatre hall and still to this day, I can see the face so clearly of a deceased man that bore his eyes straight into mine. It still sends shivers down my spine!
I didn’t tell my parents until I was much older. I mean, how were they ever going to take me seriously if one day out of the blue I had said, ‘oh by the way mum and dad, I’m pretty sure I can see dead people’. Nah, I wouldn’t have believed me either.
I was nineteen, home from London where I was studying music, for the Christmas holidays. I remember playing the piano downstairs, and singing loudly as I was home alone. As I was singing, I glanced up at the window. There he was. The old spirit. Walking straight by the staircase. Dressed in a sandy-coloured uniform, very thin, not very tall and with a long pencil-like moustache. I could see him clear as day but I knew he wasn’t human as I could see the stairs right through him. I had stopped singing, my fingers had frozen on the piano, and I was transfixed. Then suddenly I snapped back into the real world, shut the piano lid and raced up to my bedroom to feel safe.
Probably worth noting that in order to get to my room I had to run through where he had been and up the same staircase.
As I had told Rachel about my uneasiness with Glencoe, I started to get butterflies in my stomach. Not the good kind. More like the nervous, anxious kind that felt as if something was going to go very wrong.
‘I think something terrible might have happened here’, I whispered.
Rachel would have been well within her rights to laugh at me or tell me I was being ridiculous, but she didn’t. Instead, she led us straight back to the car. It was only upon arriving back at the car that everything became quite clear.
Not too far from where we’d parked was another road with a small but extremely clear sign reading - Glencoe Massacre Monument.
With slight morbid curiosity, we followed the sign and the trail that led up to the monument. The butterflies in me were going wild, thumping against my insides as if trying to break out at any given moment but oddly, as the monument came into plain sight and I stared up at it, the anxiousness began to ebb away. I felt much better as if a weight had been lifted. Then in its place, a great deal of grief. You can guarantee I googled the shit out of the massacre when we returned back to the car!
Once we pulled up to the B&B, both of us scanned the exterior. It was just an average-looking house with embellished metal gates and plenty of flowers. The immediate surrounding area was actually pretty dismal, and deathly silent. To be honest, that’s just Glencoe in general. It was always quiet.
As we collected our things from the car and knocked on the door, a man answered but before we could introduce ourselves, he jumped in with a list of instructions about Covid restrictions. He slapped a silver key, attached to a large wooden plaque with the number 1 on it, into my hand and began reeling off the breakfast menu. Then he abruptly shot up and left us standing in the doorway leaving us no choice but to head on upstairs and check out the room.
The room, well, what can I say? I felt like I’d been transported back in time. The walls were smothered in suffocating patterned paper, the beds were made up to suit some fifties housewife and the decor - I can’t even describe it. But from that moment on, we had affectionately named our B&B ‘The Granny Murder House’, so that ought to give you some idea of what it looked like.
Rachel really enjoying our room…
Needing to get out and away from the stuffy room, we opted to visit a nearby waterfall called ‘Grey Mares Waterfall’ in Kinlochleven. And we were so glad we did.
The walk itself was ok, just a simple trek through the woodland, but the minute we got to the waterfall and saw a wild deer tiptoeing through the overgrown grass, we were mesmerised.
I’ve always loved waterfalls. There’s just something about how naturally beautiful they are, powerful and majestic.
Grey Mares Waterfall in Kinlochleven
Once we’d spent enough time at Grey Mares, we headed to the little Co-op on the corner, picked up some sandwiches, and trudged back to Granny Murder House.
Read the next entry ‘Scotland Diary: Glencoe| Day Two’
Read the previous entry ‘Scotland Diary: Fort William’
