A chilling north east tale for Halloween
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The Tale of Ailsa Johnstone ... and her chilling encounter with the scoundrel, ‘Jack o’ Spades’
By Steve Storey
Born into the unadorned community of early 19th century Glenernie, close by the town of Forres, I grew to be an inquisitive young Scots quine. Being such, I often found myself questioning what might truly have happened to my grandmother, Ailsa Johnstone’s, missing third finger of her left hand.
Was it by accident or illness; was it a consequence of birth deformity or resulting from a malicious act that this unnerved woman featured an irregular stump? I cannot deny that as a young ‘un a half-century back, I found her disfigurement somewhat vexing to my eye and to my mind, resulting at times in a sense of acute anxiety – especially when required to walk with my hand in hers, or when she affectionately chose to run fingers through my hair!
Countering my frequent questions, I was ‘entertained’ with many a yarn told in response by mother and older siblings. For example: Grandmother had once duelled with a jealous opponent in love, fighting over the affections of a learned man both rich and handsome, when she was stabbed through her finger with a rapier before, by Gad! dispatching her antagonist with much skill; some years past, grandmother had travelled the road of the long Silk Route and there been attacked by an irate brown bear while passing through Russia’s Caucasus. She eventually forced the ferocious creature to make off, exchanging her finger for a claw – a trophy which grandmother wore on the most special of occasions as a pendant necklace; one time, a wily old pike took the opportunity of an easy meal when grandmother happened to cross a deep ford not ten miles downstream from home. Her wits retained, the angered woman took a hold of the wilful fish, before it found its way, marinated in dry white wine and milk, into a delicious pie.
Being younger and the more impressionable back then, I was prepared to believe each new tale told me – doubting just one out of hand as being too fanciful; but in all honesty, it was this particular story that was later confirmed to have been told in all truthfulness; an account which I shall here narrate as best as memory permits.
– Margaret Ailsa McCabe. Elgin: 8th September, 1882.
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Ailsa Mary Johnstone – she, my mother’s mother – had not always been the troubled woman I knew. She was recognised as goodly and pious amongst the community in which she lived and worked in the mid-1820’s; a dairymaid on the Glenernie Farm. Remembered for being skilled in the churning of butter and the preparation of excellent cheeses, Ailsa also cleaned the dairy sheds and helped herdsmen with the morn milking of the many Ayrshires.
One day, an hour or so after dawn, with the sky full leaden and reverberating to the sound of rolling thunder, grandmother was unfortunately kicked by an unsettled milker while in the sheds. It was the head herdsman who raised the alarm, racing to the Estates Office from where a buggy was despatched to collect the doctor from his pharmacy rooms in Forres.
The physician who arrived at the shed and attended Ailsa was a young man, keen in his calling, but nevertheless newly appointed. His qualifications were gained from lectures, and he lacked the proper experience afforded by years of ‘hands-on’ work. Having correctly cleaned, stemmed and bandaged the bleeding from the limp Ailsa’s head wound, he then tested her condition with spirit of hartshorn. She exhibited no reaction to the solution of smelling salts and was impromptuly confirmed as ‘Deceased’. In accordance with tradition, the doctor threw open the shed door so that Ailsa’s soul could be retrieved by those who had previously passed – and then he immediately closed it again, ensuring she could not return.
That afternoon the bellman went about the shocked Glenernie community announcing the death of Ailsa Johnstone, inviting the people to present themselves at her wake and funeral.
As to have been expected, after all had passed through the house, Ailsa Johnstone’s funeral was attended by both kith and kin, and the good folk thereabouts. At three in the afternoon, her black mort-cloth draped coffin was borne from her home by her husband, brother and a rotation of six other men of the village across the old Bridge of Bantrach that straddled the waters of the Divie, and along the road to its final destination – the burying-yard of Edenkillie to the east, and a prepared grave.
Now, sat a short way off and unseen by the funeral participants, a stranger watched with interest from his horse drawn gig the slow procession as it moved reverently behind the village bell ringer. The people of Glenernie were not to know, but this character was a notorious Irishman of Wicklow, named John McCall. Many would come to hear and dread his given aliases, commonly ‘Jack o’ Spades’ and ‘The Night Doctor', a fellow widely feared as a resurrectionist – the leader of a gang of corpse-stealers that tormented the wider region under the employ of fervent anatomists. His reputation was such that it was firmly believed that should a newly interred body be taken before a single night was out, then the certain culprit was the Irishman McCall.
The kirkyard stood surrounded by a low dry stone wall with proper access to the consecrated enclosure made through double iron gates. Within the yard stood a small watch-house which could be manned by two – if paid a fee by the kin of the departed – to keep a close nightly watch over the fresh burial of a relative, thus providing security against the scourge of the snatchers. Unfortunately Ailsa’s family could not afford such watchmen, and therefore her newly occupied grave remained unguarded.
That very night McCall posted a lookout man by the river crossing and another on the road leading beyond the boneyard to the adjoining settlement. These accomplices were instructed to fire a pistol shot as an alarm signal in the event that McCall – in the conduct of his dastardly deed – might be discovered. And so it was that ‘Jack o’ Spades’, with a third henchman, went about their work. With his gig-horse tethered to one of the access gates, McCall carried his lit lantern, spades, mattock, a sailor’s rope knife and jute sack, and made his way to Ailsa Johnstone’s fresh burial plot. Standing the lantern on the adjacent turf, the pair dug at the unsettled earth deposited over the coffin. Down, down they dug, into the kingdom of the worm, heaping the recovered earth at the head of the grave until they had cleared the pine box lid. The two then exhumed and sacked the body of Ailsa Johnstone, dressed as she was in her wedding gown, before clearing tools and loading their charge to sit between them on the gig.
McCall had felt the wedding ring upon Ailsa’s hand when the men lowered her into the rough sack at the graveside; but it was only now that he took the opportunity of closely examining the ornament by the tallow candle light of his lantern. He concluded that although simple it had some value, and so he made to remove the ring from Ailsa’s finger. This proved impossible due to swelling, so McCall chose to use the rope knife to cut the finger from the hand. What happened next happened quickly: The body of Ailsa Johnstone suddenly revived to life as the sharp knife began to saw. It seems the intense pain brought her around from a state of unconsciousness wrongly diagnosed by the inexperienced Forres physician as expirement. She began to howl as she writhed. Blinded by terror, McCall’s accomplice jumped from the gig and ran hard into the darkness without so much as a rearward glance.
McCall’s wickedness undone drove a short distance before pushing the sacked and wailing Ailsa Johnstone from the boxed seat to the stony ground before taking off as fast as his horse could haul under a heavy whip hand. There she lay awhile keening for her dead self; yet she was no phantom, no witch nor devil; but simply a woman misdiagnosed by the young physician.
Ailsa Johnstone lay by the roadside until dawn began to light the sky, regaining a small degree of composure as the first of the day’s shadows stretched forth long dark fingers that crept across the land. Freeing herself from the sack, Ailsa Johnstone, orientated by the closeness of the boneyard, made for home. Sometimes crawling, sometimes running, sometimes stumbling and sometimes walking – she made her way past the kirkyard and across the waters of the Divie accompanied by unnatural shrieks. She finally arrived at her cottage, dirt covered, blooded and traumatised before banging on the door. The story goes that it was her husband who answered – and immediately dropped dead of fright on seeing his ‘deceased’ wife standing before him in her one-time wedding dress and enveloped in awful torment.
Ailsa’s eldest daughter – my mother – then ran sobbing to fetch the priest whilst her son went to collect the young physician. What a sight must have met these men's eyes on arrival as the restored Ailsa Johnstone sat wailing beside the body of her lamented husband. The doctor was reticent in his approach, but quickly regained composure, and with the priest examining Ailsa, he confirmed the passing of her husband before turning his attention to the woman. Apart from her former head wound, he noted the blooded scuffs to her limbs and discovered the bruising sustained to her back (that had resulted from her fall from McCall’s gig), the only other apparent physical injury was to the third finger of her left hand; partly severed when McCall attempted to claim the attractive ring. It had been the coldness of the night-time temperature that had staunched the bleeding; however, there was no option but to complete the amputation and make good the injury – a procedure which the physician thankfully completed with success.
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So, having recounted the story as I remember it being told me, what became of Ailsa Johnstone? These events remained ever vivid to my grandmother; although she lived amongst us for some further 40 years, the woman augured many an ill trait. For example, I can remember hearing that when going to bed at night she would always place a carefully dated note by her bedside in clear view. Each time, the note would state, ‘I am only sleeping.’ Further, when she did eventually die, Ailsa was buried at her insistence in a coffin fitted with a grave bell which she could sound if revived back to life. I would add for the record, that there has been no account of this bell being sounded!
And what of the macabre resurrectionist (and latter murderer) John McCall? Two years passed following his encounter with Ailsa Johnstone before the Wicklow man was finally apprehended in Edinburgh’s Greyfriars Kirkyard. He had been going about his foul night-work, when inadvertently he disturbed a trip wire that triggered the firing of a cemetery gun, filling his leg with lead. Blooded and in much pain, he offered no resistance to the watchmen who, alerted by the shot, discovered and detained him before delivering McCall to the authorities. His capture and subsequent trial for both grave theft and murder were the sensation of their day. It was McCall’s one time accomplice, the man who had leapt in terror from the gig when Ailsa revived that fateful night who, in exchange for immunity from prosecution, aided the conviction of McCall for his many crimes – and, it was this man’s testimony which ascribed the awful previously unknown aspects of her ordeal I am here able to relate.
The resurrectionist’s public execution was attended by a boisterous throng, many of whom were later to follow ‘Jack o’ Spades’ – with much celebration and gaiety – on his final journey; his body taken down from the scaffold, and itself conveyed by cart to the wooden dissection table of an anatomy doctor.
