Up in the misty highlands far, far away there walks a restless soul... That, or something like it, was suppose to start this piece about ghostly legends associated with our clan. I really wanted a phantom piper like the MacDonald's have or a grey lady like Clan Douglas. But, I haven't found any MacGregor haunts and as Robbie Burns said: The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley. So, instead of MacGregor who became ghosts, I offer these bizarre stories of MacGregors who have seen ghosts.

The first strange story I read about was in True Irish Ghost Stories by Seymour and Neligan. In 1871 a Major MacGregor of Scotland went to visit a relative who had married a Dubliner. While he was there, the relatives husband fell ill and the Major was not all surprised to woken in the night. Assuming that it was a servant sent to fetch him to the ailing man, he brusquely requested that the person stop shaking him and allow him to arise from the bed. However, the servant did not desist or even answer, and after a moment the Major grabbed at the hand on his shoulder. It was a woman's hand with lace at the wrist. The unnerving part was that her arm disappeared well before her elbow. The Major rolled aside and quickly struck a match, but there was no one to see... The next morning, he was told that he had had an encounter with Old Aunt Betty who had passed on some fifty years before. They informed the Major that he was lucky to have received only a shaking as Aunt Betty had been known to pinch and slap the servants.

The next interesting story concerns the actor, Burl Ives. Ives claimed to be a descendant of Rob Roy's and gave an account in I Believe In Ghosts by Danton Walker of an incident that he described as a case of ancestral memory. He was in the heart of MacGregor country and had hired a guide to show him where Rob had lived and was buried. But soon he was walking ahead of the guide and describing to the man various geological features in the terrain that they had not yet reached; a clear case of clairvoyance as he had never been to Scotland before...

The respected educator Forbes MacGregor also recounts a ghost story (Ludh an spioraidh, 'dol timchioll na drocaid-- The way of the ghost going around the bridge)in his Scots Proverbs and Rhymes. A Dromhull Mor a' dhochain (Big Donald of the ghost) was troubled by ghostly second sight and tried to escape by emigrating to Philadelphia. Unfortunately, the first thing he saw quayside was his ghost. Annoyed that the running water had not kept the spirit away, he demanded: "Ciamar a thaing thu s' an seo? ( How came you here?)" To which the ghost replied: "Thaing mi mu'n cuairt. (I came round about.)" Apparently the resourceful spirit had used the land-bridge of the Bering Strait... Forbes MacGregor does not say whether he believes this tale or not.

Last, but hardly least, our family has its very own ghost- buster, one Alsdair Alpine MacGregor. He spent several years touring the British Isles and investigating such phenomena as the lair of the green faery dog, a phantom light known as the gaelghan, the galleytrot (corruption of the french gardez le tresor or guard the treasure), the gremlins that plagued the WW II Royal Air Force, the Bodach Glas (mentioned in Sir Walter Scott's Waverly) who walks the golf course at St. Andrews, the haunted chairs of Rossal House, and the phantom bells playing from drowned churches in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. He put his findings into two books; The Ghost Book (1955) and Phantom Footsteps (1959). They are both very hard to find, but excerpts from them can be read in Haining's Dictionary of Ghost Lore. By the way, Alsdair was definitely thumbs-up on the subject of haunts. Not surprising as 40% of the population of the British Isles is said to believe in ghosts, and 1 in 7 claim to have actually encountered one (according to Castle Ghosts of England, Scotland and Ireland-- None of my family or friends in Scotland will admit to any such thing).

Hmmm... Well, er um... I have a ghost story of my own. It concerns the poltergeists that are said to haunt the Toys 'R' Us on the El Camino in Sunnyvale, CA. The ghosts are thought to be the daughter of a wealthy land-owner and her lower-class lover. Papa didn't approve of the relationship and in true Hound of The Baskervilles style, he chased the runaways down into a nearby creek and killed/manslaughtered/self-defensed/ tragic-accidented them. The creek is gone now, but it used to run through the Toys R Us and (according to my Grandpa MacAdams) through the orchards where they built their house... Truthfully, I have never seen the ghosts, but as a child I was terrified of the basement (it was always wet) and I told everyone that there were things down there. I'm all grown up now and don't believe in the bogey-man, but the atmosphere in the basement still makes me so uncomfortable that only the direst of necessities will get me down there even as an adult (the last time was after the quake in '89 when we had to check the house for damage).

Do I believe in ghosts? Let's just say that I always whistle when I can't avoid walking past the graveyard.