Township: Kilmoluaig

Map Reference: Kilmoluaig Q

Name Type:

Meaning: The house of young Alan

Other Forms:

Related Places: Croit Iain Eachainn Iain mhic Ailein Òig

Information:Taigh Ailein Oig, the house in Kilmoluaig down by the loch had a reputation of being haunted. Milk pails overturned, sticks with caps on went flying round the room. The minister eventually stayed there all night with the Bible in his hand to try to exorcise the house. Lachie Campbell, Crossapol, 12/2011.

About twenty years ago a house in Kilmoluaig was the scene of similar disturbances. With one or two exceptions, all the people of the island believed them to be produced by some supernatural evil agency, and all the superstition that with the spread of education had been quietly dying out, was revived with renewed vigour. Noone could deny the agency of spirits when the evidence was so clear. The annoyance began by the trickling of dirty water (mixed with sand) from the roof. Then burning peats were found among the bedclothes, and pebbles in bowls of milk, where no pebbles or peats ought to be; linen was lifted mysteriously from the washing and found in another room; articles of furniture were moved without being touched by visible hands; and stones flew about the house. The disturbances did not occur during the day, nor when a large company assembled at the house. Several went to lay the ghost, and a good deal of powder and shot was wasted by persons of undoubted courage in firing in the air about the house. The annoyance became so bad, and the advice of 'wise people' so positive, that the family removed to another house in the hope that the evil would not follow. The removal, however, had no effect, and it is privately rumoured that the disturbances only ceased when some money that had gone amissing was restored. The cause was never clearly ascertained, but there is reason to suspect it was caused, as all similar disturbances are, by someone suborned for the purpose and shielded from suspicion by a pretended simplicity and terror. The Gaelic Otherworld, Rev John Gregorson Campbell, ed Ronald Black, Birlinn, 2008, p 290.

See also Poltergeist Over Scotland, by Geoff Holder, The History Press, 2013, p 74-6.

Local Form:

Languages : Gaelic

Informants: Lachie Campbell, Scarinish, 12/2011