Phyllis has gifted us with an awesome story Mists and Moonlight friends. A few weeks ago I asked her to write a guest piece for the site about something from Europe, since so many readers come from that continent. And she did, specifically, in this case, beautiful Scotland..

​As usual, she did a bang-up job and we can't thank her enough. She threw out a few possibilities for a story to me and I told her to just go where the spirit led her. Glamis Castle is what she felt drawn to; and wow, did her talent and inspiration deliver us a special contribution this Spring month of March!  For Ms Burns FB page click her photo.

​Glamis Castle near Glamis, Angus, Scotland in the United Kingdom is a beautiful medieval structure and
reputed to be haunted by several ghosts, maybe even more than anyone realizes.
The castle was the childhood home of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, wife of King George VI.
Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, the second daughter of Elizabeth and George was born in Glamis
Castle.

Since the 14th century the castle has been home to the Lyon family who were of Celtic origin per
genealogist Sir Iain Moncreiffe, who stated the family were descendants of a young son of the Clan Lamont.
However, the general opinion that is widely accepted is they are descendants of the de Leon French family.
Since the 15th century, the castle has been the seat of the Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne.
There is a lot of interesting history there involving Edgar, the son of Malcolm III of Scotland and Donald III of
Scotland, King of Scots in 1093 1094.
​
As a self proclaimed historian I may write about that some day, but
for now let's get to the ghosts who are patiently waiting for their stories to be told to the living.

​Monster of Glamis ~

The "Monster of Glamis" is the most famous ghostly legend of the castle. Apparently, many people claimed
that a hideously deformed child was born in the Bowes Lyon family. Rather than put the child to death, as was suggested, he was kept in a secret room till his death. He was well taken care of for he lived for over 30 years in that room. After his death, the room was bricked up. His restless spirit is still there according to some legends.

According to legend in the local village, the "monster" was Thomas Lyon Bowes, the first child of Thomas LyonBowes, the Lord Glamis and his wife Charlotte Grimstead Lyon Bowes.  The birth of Thomas was recorded as 21 October 1821 and death on the same day.

In a 1967 book titled 'The Queen Mother's Family Story' by James Wentworh Day there is an account of
rumors from the villages that the baby did not die and the midwife had claimed the deformed child was
alive and in good health when she left the birthing room in the castle and returned to the village.
When death of the baby was announced it raised a lot of suspicion. In the latter half of the 18th century the
rumors and suspicions were still widely discussed. In 1912 A. W. Jarvis wrote "An Unsolved Mystery, the
Secret of Glamis Castle", which appeared in The English Illustrated Magazine (published by Macmillan and
Company) wherein he wrote: ""Miss M. Gilchrist, writing in 1885, was not only confident that such a monster
did actually exist, but even described him – half frog, half man!".

In Outis (1908), "Notes, The Glamis Mystery" the earliest surviving written account can be found where it
was claimed, "in the Castle of Glamis is a secret chamber. In this chamber is confined a monster, who is the
rightful heir to the title and property, but who is so unpresentable that it is necessary to keep him out of sight
and out of possession".

When reputed family accounts were published in the 1960s it was found that there was no gravestone for
the child Thomas, which tends to support the original village rumors and suspicions of the late 1800s.
Having no gravestone for an infant was in keeping with customs of the time. So, therefore Thomas
Lyon Bowes never had even a memoriam to honor his name and life, whether he died as an infant or died
when he was in his early 30s in the sealed room.

Where was the body of the baby, or the man, buried? Apparently no one alive knows. Maybe that is why his
restless ghost is often sensed or heard in the castle he
is looking for peace and a final resting place and
recognition. Sad story, indeed.
​
Is there really a secret chamber where Thomas lived for over thirty years? There is an old story that the
servants of the castle wanted to know if there really was a hidden room where the "monster" was kept. They
went to every room in the castle and hung white towels out the windows. Then they went outside to count
the towels. Sure enough, there were several windows in one section that had no towels.

Room of Skulls ~
Hidden somewhere else in Glamis Castle walls is the "room of skulls" where the Ogilvie family were walled
up to die of starvation. They had come there to seek protection from their enemies, but were imprisoned
instead. It is probable that their spirits are there trying to find a way out.

King Malcolm II ~

In 1034 the site was the Royal Hunting Lodge where King Malcolm II died painfully from mortal wounds
received in a battle close by.
​
The Grey Lady and the White Lady ~
Yet another ghostly presence at the Castle is that of "the Grey Lady". Her story is a sad one. She was falsely accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. Her ghost is frequently seen in or near the family chapel.

The apparition of Lady Glamis, Janet Douglas, is occasionally seen. She is referred to as the "White Lady". She was married to John, sixth Lord Glamis, in the 16th century. The legend is that after John's death she
married Archibald Campbell. Jane continued to live in the castle with her new husband.

King James the fifth had a history of hatred for the Douglas family and highly resented Janet. He had her imprisoned on false charges of witchcraft and that she poisoned her husband John Lyon. For many years Janet wasted away as a prisoner in Edinburgh Castle till the king had her burnt at the stake. Both Janet's husband Archibald and her son Lord Glamis were also imprisoned. Archibald was killed when trying to escape and Lord Glamis remained a prisoner till after the death of King James. In the small family chapel at Glamis Castle there is a seat reserved for Janet only and no one is ever allowed to occupy it.
​
Playing cards with the Devil ~

A guest of old, Earl Beardie, was a gambler with a violent temper. His ghost is often heard in one of the
rooms, playing cards with the Devil.
This came about when the servants refused late one night to play cards with the Earl, for the Sabbath was
just an hour or so away. He became violently angered and threatened to play cards till doomsday or with
the Devil himself if no one else would play and he put out that challenge biggest
mistake of his life, for the
Devil will gladly meet any challenge head on.
Apparently the Devil heard the enticing challenge and took Beardie up on it, taking not only his money, but
his soul as well. Beardie has to repeat that fateful night over and over till doomsday for having the audacity
to challenge the Devil at cards.
After Beardie died the room was sealed up. Beardie's screams and angry cursing can often be heard coming
from his damned soul.

Now, you see, with the stories of Thomas, the Ogilvies and Earl Beardie, that makes three sealed up rooms
in Glamis Castle containing who knows what.

Shakespeare's Macbeth ~
Glamis Castle was used as the setting for William Shakespeare's Macbeth, the perfect place for such
strange happenings.
​
To The Last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.

Some of the most popular folktales are those to do with hauntings and ghosts and there are no better
hauntings than those found in castles which abound with myths and legends of the land. Because most
castles were built to last practically forever there are centuries of spirits abiding within the thick walls and
grounds of these beautiful and enchanting structures of old.
​
Time has only added to the legends and stories of hauntings in the ancient castles. Whether the stories are
true or based on hysteria is a matter of individual thoughts and experiences. However, castles were not built
just for the peaceful habitation of the lords and their families. Within the walls were often rooms or cells for
imprisonment, torture and even execution which leaves hanging about a lot of unhappy spirits to ramble
and roam the dark corridors and dank dungeons and the most intriguing of all, the "secret rooms".
~ ~ ~ ~
Glamis Castle on 30 May 2009, wiki cc
Caption: Glamis Castle, May 30, 2009
Wikipedia Creative Commons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glamis_Castle
***

A Cryptid Enigma
The witness to this story about the Beast of Bladenboro is someone I've know about indirectly for decades and personally for the last couple of years. He was a boy living in Bladenboro, North Carolina, in the years 1953-4, when the beast phenomena first occurred.

His parents were well known and influential folks in the county of Bladen, where the small town of Bladenboro is located. He was in a position to later on glean any inside information the mayor, police chief, and other officials received at the time of the attacks and subsequent mayhem. The friend, for obvious reasons, wishes to remain anonymous and will be referred to as Jay.

This article will follow the story as best it can be told, considering as Jay pointed out, the tendency for unusual events to take on a life of their own and snowball. Several fallacies or assumptions will finally be set right for the record; and this much can be stated for a fact at the beginning: the attacks were no hoax. Something quite out of the ordinary most certainly took place in Bladen County back then and apparently continues to off and on, even up until today - and in different counties throughout the state, at that..

To begin with, let's set the record straight on this matter: some arch skeptics have claimed Mayor Fussell of Bladenboro, who owned the town's movie theater, in large part invented the story to capitalize on a British horror flick featuring a monster cat or something similar playing there at the time. The solid fact is, the mayor booked the film after the killings had started.

As a smart picture show exhibitor, it wouldn't have been unusual. The mayor was quoted at the time as saying "A little publicity never hurt a small town" or for that matter the ticket receipts on a horror movie that only started the day the mayor - to diffuse the by then dangerous and out of control situation - proclaimed the crisis over.
​
Before that day arrived, however, it became alarmingly apparent to the mayor and his police chief that they had a far more important situation on their hands than any booked scary B-movie. In fact, publicity was soon to be the very last thing they wanted coming to town - in any, way, shape or form. And that, too, is a fact. Indeed, fear factor may be a better term for it all.

The Beast of Bladenboro enters the pages of unexplained mysteries and paranormal legends.

Back in the 1950s there were newspaper reporters who came through Bladenboro that were known as stringers. They would travel around their assigned areas on the watch for any interesting or newsworthy stories they could wire in to the main paper in Wilmington, North Carolina.

According to Jay, the erroneous assumption in some circles that have Mayor Fussell calling the papers once the killings started is incorrect. It was one of the roving stringers that heard about an attack on several dogs from a farmer who had reported them as being killed by an animal resembling a cat, but with strange characteristics to its appearance. The dogs "skulls were crushed in and chewed" he told the intrigued reporter.
​
They were also drained of blood in an eerie manner reminiscent of today's Chupacabras; a suspected tooth of which has recently been declared after a year's study at a top laboratory to be from an unknown species, by the way. Other folks were soon reporting mutilations of cows, hogs, and even a goat (not mentioned in the papers) who's head had been flattened-out like a pancake.

The eyewitness accounts of the beast itself, described an animal about four and a half to five feet long, furry, resembling a panther-like beast, but with canine and ursine (bear) type characteristics as well. The tracks found were rather strange and unusual, but generally seemed to resemble something akin to the feline family.

The story really begins to roll on January the 5th, 1954, with Wilmington's Morning Star newspaper reporting, "This nervous town chewed its collective nails today, dreading the pitch of night that might bring a return visit by a mystery killer-beast with vampire lust." Perhaps this is tabloid-like descriptive language for our own day and time, but spot on nonetheless.

As Jay explained it, everyone became jittery and frightened, and in the ensuing panic some folks actually did start to see a monster beast behind every nook and cranny. Events quickly began to snowball. One area resident got very jumpy when he heard some dogs' barking outside one night. The man grabbed his shotgun, ran into the yard, and then blasted away at his child's bicycle, much to his later red-faced embarrassment.

But all the misplaced excitement still didn't change the fact that something really was killing animals and leaving strange tracks at the scenes of slaughter. According to one resident, "Everybody was scared, everybody, near 'bout, that had a gun was carrying it." And to quote Jay, "Things were just getting warmed up for what was soon to come."

So, what we have here is a real "cryptid mystery," described by those that sighted the creature as a weird combo of wolf and cat, a hybrid even, with some eyewitnesses reporting a bear-like gait to its locomotion as well. County residents were in a heightened state of anxiety, that was fast becoming something akin to the panicked jitters. Who can blame them when you think about it. And these were not reactions the residents were prone to.
​
Many adults and all the children were staying indoors at night and officials, besides declaring a curfew, were at a loss as to what to do about the bizarre and unexpected animal killings and attendant frenzy. Little did they know at the moment that help was soon to arrive for the frightening situation in numbers nearly over-whelming for the small town of Bladenboro and its surrounding county.

The hunt begins and ends.

Police Chief Flores got up a hunt for the beast but most of the dogs refused to follow the unusual scent. The few that did were later found torn to pieces. Flores then suggested tying up a goat or dog in the forest, presumably as bait, but Mayor Fussell nixed that idea.
​
By this time the story had gone national and pandemonium was soon to descend on the county of Bladen. Hunters and trackers from all over started showing up in droves with all kinds of firepower, tracking gear and hunting dogs; along with much respected sage and savvy trapping advice to go along with it all. At one point a large group of men thoroughly searched a swamp of about 400 acres, but this kind of hunt wasn't much territory to cover in a county of nearly 900 square miles.

The Mayor was getting worried about someone getting badly hurt or even killed; so when a large bobcat was snared and slain- the population of which had a rather rapid and steep decline in the area- it was stretched out and photographed- but did not have its body or skin run up a flagpole as is so often written about as fact. A sign laid next to the carcass read, "THIS IS THE BEAST OF BLADENBORO." The panic and hunting frenzy now began to ease up some.

Jay says it was all over within two weeks or so. The beast was gone, perhaps back into the deepest recesses of the nearby Green swamp in next door Columbus and Brunswick counties,  or even deep into what is now the Bladen Lakes State Forest. The Green and other area swamps were known as mysterious and often deadly abodes. Growing up in the Piedmont region of the Carolinas, I recall hearing stories from the grown-up men about  hunters and other outdoorsmen going into some of those swamps and never being seen or heard from again.

Our insider told me as the years went on and the subject came up, most folk, and especially those in South Carolina, assumed with confidence the beast had been a big panther cat, ranging up from their swamps into Bladen County, as they knew of they're continued existence in those areas back then. If so, it must have been an escapee or released pet (most unlikely) - or if wild, one of the last of its kind as they were surely killed or run out of their range about this time in the Carolina coastal regions, if not long before. Some books and articles report a large striped cat either seen or killed, but Jay didn't mention this as having happened. However, if true, then it could indicate an escaped leopard or tiger. But if so, why were the tracks found so hard to identify?
​
An investigation by the television series Monster Quest pointed to a similar conclusion as it probably being a cougar. Possible, but it's hard to see how even an unusually big panther, or other large cat species, could smash the skulls of domesticated animals and tough tracking dogs like crushed aluminum cans and leave nary a trace of blood. But if not the big cats, then what? And, again, what about the odd tracks? If they were a cougars or another big feline wouldn't they have been positively identified as such by all those tracking experts? Bears were extant in the swamps and forests back then and still are in some coastal areas to this day, but this hardly seems the mystery solver to such an intriguing and unusual cryptid mystery.
​
Starting in 2007, Jay told me that the town of Bladenboro has been hosting a Beast Fest every Oct.31st on the spot where the old movie theater used to be. Fun and games for all, with a beast impersonator, doggy costumes, car shows, musical band performances; plus dancing, food, horse carriage rides, and cook-off competitions, just to name several activities available at the Fest. It has turned into a big event with people coming from far away to enjoy everything available.

The link in the paragraph above is to a 2015 YouTube video and gives a good idea what the Festival is like. The town and county are right off Highway 74 heading into Wilmington and the coast, and with a map or GPS, should be easily found if one wants a short side trip to see the area and/or town or attend the cool October 31st fun-filled event.

​And last but not least, to finish the article my thanks go out again to "Jay" for his time and inside baseball.