234 MEMORIAL$ OF BDINBURGH.
we have now to describe, is understood to be still standing in the nether regions of the I
Royal Exchange area.
From Professor Sinclair’s veracious narrative, it appears that Mr Thomas Coltheart, a
respectable law agent, removed from a lower part of the town to a better house in Mary
King’s Close. The maid-servant was warned by the neighbour3 of its being haunted on
her first coming about the house, and became so intimidated that she deserted her place,
leaving Mr Coltheart and his wife alone in their new dwelling, to defy the devil and his
minions as they best might. The good lady had seated herself beside her husband’s bedwho
had lain down on the Sunday afternoon, being slightly indisposed-and was engaged
in reading the Bible, when happening to lift her eye, she was appalled by beholding a head,
seemingly that of an old man with a grey beard, suspended in mid air at a little distance,
and gazing intently on her. She swooned at the sight, and lay in a state of insensibility
till the return of her neighbours from church. Her husband, on being told of the apparition,
sought to reason her out of her credulity, and the evening passed over without further
trouble ; but they were not long gone to bed when he himself spied the same phantom-head,
b i the light of the fire, gazing at him with its ghastly eyes. He rose and lighted a candle,
and took to prayer, but with little effect; for in about an hour the bodiless phantom was
joined by that of a child also suspended in mid air, and this again was followed by a naked
arm from the elbow downwards, which, in defiance of all adjurations and prayers, not only
persisted in remaining, but seemed bent on shaking hands with them. The poor agent in
the most solemn manner addressed this very friendly but unwelcome intruder, engaging to
do his utmost to right any wrongs it had received, if it would only begone, but all in
vain. The goblins evidently considered that the worthy couple, and not they, were the
intruders. They persisted in making themselves at home; though after all they seem
to have been civil enough ghosts, with no unfriendly intentions, so that they were only
allowed the run of the house. By and by the naked arm was joined by a spectral dog,
which deliberately mounted a chair, and turning its nose to its tail, went to sleep. This
was followed by a cat, and soon after by other and stranger creatures, until the whole floor
swarmed with them, so that “ the honest couple went to their knees again within the bed;
there being no standing in the floor of the room. In the time of prayer, their ears were
startled with a deep, dreadful, and loud groan, as of a strong man dying, at which all the
apparitions and visions at once vaniahed I ”
Mr Coltheart must have been a man of no ordinary courage, or this night’s experience
would have satisfied him to resign his new house to the devil, or his subtenants, who seemed
to have taken a previous lease of it. He continued to reside there till his death without
further molestation ; but at the very moment he expired, a gentleman whose law-agent and
intimate friend he was, being in his house at Tranent-a small town about ten miles
from Edinburgh-was awoke while asleep ia bed there with his wife, by the nurse, who
was affrighted by something like a cloud moving about the room. While the gentleman
got hold of his sword to defend himself and them against this unwonted visitor, the cloud
gradually assumed the form of a man. ‘‘At last the apparition looked him fully and
perfectly in the face, and stood by him with a ghostly and pale countenance.” The gentleman
recognised his friend Thomas Coltheart, and demanded of him if he was dead, and
what was his errand? Whereat the ghost held up his hand three times, shaking it towards
