Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 38 on 11/04/2008.

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St. Andrews' ghosts

The ruins of St Andrews Cathedral in Fife are steeped in history. Gary Hayden reports.

In medieval times, St Andrews was the religious centre of Scotland. Its magnificent cathedral housed some of Christendom’s most precious relics (a tooth, an arm-bone, a kneecap and three fingers of St Andrew the Apostle), and pilgrims flocked from far and wide to see them.

The cathedral now lies in ruins. Its relics are gone, and so are the pilgrims. But St Andrews still has plenty to offer. The ancient streets retain their medieval charm; it boasts the oldest university in Scotland; has wonderful beaches; and is a Mecca to golfenthusiasts the world over.

It is also one of Scotland’s most haunted locations. Cardinal Beaton was murdered in St Andrews Castle and suspended from its walls in 1546. Some say he still haunts the castle environs. Archbishop James Sharp was hauled from his coach and murdered at nearby Magus Muir in 1679, and now drives a phantom coach along the Strathkinness Road.

But St Andrews’ most celebrated spooks, a ghostly monk and a white lady, are to be found amongst the crumbling ruins and scattered gravestones of the cathedral precinct.

The ghostly monk of St Rule’s Tower Two magnificent edifices dominate the ruins of St Andrews Cathedral. One is the gravity-defying east gable, which has somehow managed to withstand the ravages of time, gales, Protestant reformers and those in search of cut-price building-stone. The other is St Rule’s Tower, which is all that remains of the cathedral’s predecessor, St Rule’s Church, built around 1130.

No-one should vis.....

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By Gary Hayden

Section : Haunted Scotland

Page number : 28