Scottish Ghost Stories

by Helen McClory (Introduction)

Atmospheric, chilling and often witty tales from the storytellers of ancient and modern phantom appearances

From the misty air of the highlands, to the reekie streets of Edinburgh's underground city, comes an entertaining selection of classic and mysterious Scottish ghost stories, including ‘The Screaming Skull of Greyfriars’, ‘Mary Burnet’, ‘Wandering Willie’s Tale’ and ‘Glamis Castle’, from the pen of John Buchan, Elliott O’Donnell, Margaret Oliphant, Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott and more.

From myth to mystery, the supernatural to horror, fantasy and science fiction FLAME TREE 451 offers tales, myths and epic literature from the beginnings of humankind, through the medieval era to the stories of imagination and dark romance of today.

256 pages, Paperback

Published December 13, 2022

About the author

Helen McClory lives in Edinburgh and grew up between there and the isle of Skye. Her first collection, On the Edges of Vision, was published by Queen's Ferry Press in August 2015 and won the Saltire First Book of the Year 2015. Her second collection, Mayhem & Death, was written for the lonely and published in March 2018.

There is a moor and a cold sea in her heart.

Reviews

[Niki · Rating 2 out of 5]

Difficult to read...The stories were OK, typical ghost story collection fodder...the difficulty lay in trying to read the words themselves...they were written in a thick Scottish brogue! So it took a lot of time and concentration to make heads or tails of the passages. Does not bode well for the other book I got at the same time: Victorian Ghost Stories...

[Kyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great and fun to read about some of the places and read the Scottish accent while in the country. But the stories weren’t too eery, suspenseful, or captivating

[Marsha Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you love Scotland, you will find this book an interesting addition to your knowledge base. If you do not love Scotland, you may wonder why you would bother and I would have to agree with you. The tales reprinted here are very old-fashioned in style and composition. People don’t write like this anymore. And several are written in “Scots” ie a written dialect which is definitely challenging. However that’s what makes those stories worth reading to a Scots-lover: trying to glean the meaning of both words and phrases is as often frustrating as it is easy but you don’t have to understand every single word to get the gist of the story. I could also call these ‘quaint’. Again, originally written in the 19th and early 20th century.

I purchased this serendipitously, while looking for a couple of books to buy to encourage a new bookstore. The back of the book includes paragraphs about the original publication, a chronological list of additional ‘fantastic reads’, and a list of other publications from the publisher, Flame Tree 452.

Not all ghosts are ‘ghosts’. My personal rating would be a 4 but I’m rating it a 3 for the general reader, sort of as a warning that they’ll probably want to skip it unless they’re willing to readjust their reading choice parameters.

[Banana · Rating 1 out of 5]

To be fair, I wasn't expecting more from the book due to how the images on the cover is obviously just random stock images that might give some impression of a spooky setting. Also the book's not that overpriced, bought this for around 10 dollars or so.

I have a personal interest in Scottish lore and culture, so I found a lot of the details in this book to be quite interesting. I have usually also little problems interpreting dialects and languages that have similarities to those I know, so that's really not a big issue either.
Yet, my rating is for those who're expecting this to be a book filled with ghost stories that's written in English and not a lot of Scots. I understand using Gaelic with translation when characters talk, but when writing the entire story in Scots, one should publish the entire book as Scots or at least give a heads up in the description so the buyer knows what to expect.
I know some even have problems understanding older English terms, and many of the stories in this book are filled with them to the extent where it can be difficult to even keep track of what's going on in the story.


The title of the book is misleading. Not all the stories in this book are ghost-stories but also typical folklore about the devil and so on. A more proper title would be Scottish Folklore Stories or something similar.

It should have been described in the description of the book the full list of what stories that were in it too, not just some of them.

The list of stories is as following:
A Journey of Little Profit, by John Buchan
The Haunted Ships, by Allan Cunningham
Mary Burnet, by James Hogg
The Screaming Scull of Greyfriars, by W. T. Linskil
The Old Nurse's Story, by George MacDonald
The Sin-Eater, by Fiona Macleod
The Ghost of the Hindu Child, by Elliott O'Donnel
Glamis Castle, by Elliott O'Donnel
The Open Door, by Margaret Oliphant
Wandering Willie's Tale, by Sir Walter Scott
Thrawn Janet, by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Larid o'Coul's Ghost, by J. Maxwell Wood


I guess this book could be a hit and miss at discovering stories that one might like or not, but it's really mostly not horror and by my opinion not that great stories either. They have more value in other aspects as in culture and Scottish lore for those specifically interested, but not for those who want eerie horror.

I'd say you'd be better off reading reviews on Goodreads for each individual author of the stories, and rather decide from that if the author is wort a try or not. Maybe you'll even find some translated versions instead of Scots.

[Irish_I_was_reading · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tis spooky season, so time to read some spooky stuff!

This book is classified as Ghost Stories. This book is about ghost stories around Scotland. The point of view changes throughout the chapters: John Buchan, Allan Cunningham, James Hogg, W.T. Linskil, George Macdonald, Fiona Macleod, Elliott O'Donnell, Margaret Oliphant, Sir Walter Scott, and J. Maxwell Wood.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some stories were really great, but most of them weren't.

[CJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

[Carla Eacret · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too, too much Scottish dialect that was extremely hard to figure out. Could not make heads nor tails of most of the stories.

[Vel · Rating 4 out of 5]

a good bit of these short stories were not my speed, but a couple of them were absolutely great!! so it’s a bit hard to rate the collection as a whole, but I think 4 fits pretty well, especially since I didn’t dislike any from lack of quality.

the writing definitely takes getting used to for those who don’t have much experience with Scottish accents, writing, etc., because dialogue is written specially for the accent — it does WONDERS for immersion and a constant reminder of where these stories are set, so i’m not upset about it by any extent, but it does take longer to understand overall and was a denser read for me as a result. one of the stories has a translation available online, but the others don’t, which i found a bit weird; more than one of them were written in the previously heavy Scottish accent, and one of them had (maybe?) Gaelic sayings without translation that i couldn’t understand at all. maybe including a translation was a call made by that specific author versus the person who collected the stories? unsure

overall, not bad, and there’s some stories i will likely revisit in here later on, but i wouldn’t reread all of them

(this is my older review pulled from Fable — lightly edited for wording and clarity)