The Veiled Nun of St Leonards - Williiam Thomas Linskill

The veiled nun of Saint Leonard's, by W.T. Lynn's skill.

Curiously enough, although I have been in many old haunted castles and churches, at the

exactly correct hour, this midnight, in Scotland, England, Wales and the Rhine country, yet

I have never been able to either see or hear a ghost of any sort.

The only thing of the kind I ever saw was an accidental meeting with the far-famed Spring

Hill Jack, in a dark lane at Helensboro. It was many years ago, and as I was then very

small and he was of immense proportions, the meeting was distinctly unpleasant for me.

Now from legends we learn that Saint Andrews is possessed of a prodigious number of supernatural

appearances of different kinds, sizes and shapes, most of them of an awe, inspiring and

blood-curdling type. In fact, so numerous are they, 80 in number they seem to be,

that there is really no room for any modern aspirants, who may want a quiet place to appear

and turn people's hair white. It might be well to mention a few of them before telling the tale

of the veiled nun of Saint Leonard's church avenue. We will put aside ordinary banshees and

things that can only be heard. Well, there is a celebrated phantom coach that Willie Carson

told us of. It has been heard and seen by many. There is also a white lady that used to haunt

the Abbey Road, the ghost of Saint Rolls Tower, the haunted tower ghost, the black friars ghost,

the race of Haxton of Rithlet, the specter of the old castle, the dancing skeletons,

the smothered piper lad, the phantom bloodhound, the priory ghost and many, many more.

The nun of Saint Leonard's is as curious and interesting as any of them, though a bit weird and

gruesome. In the time of charming Mary Stewart, our white queen, they lived in the old south street

to a very lovely lady belonging to a very old Scottish family, and her beauty and wit brought

many admirers to claim her hand, but with little or no success. She waved them all away,

at last she became a fiancée to a fine and brave young fellow who came from the East Lothian

country, and for some once all went merrily as a married bell, but at last clouds overspread the

rosy horizon. She resolved that she would never become an earthly bride, but would take the veil

and become a bride of Holy Church, a nun in point of fact. When her lover heard that she had left

home and entered a house of Holy Sisters, he at once announced his intention of hastening to

St Andrews, seizing her and marrying her at once. In this project it would seem the young lady's

parents were in perfect agreement with a devoted youth. He did hasten to St Andrews almost immediately,

and there received a terrible shock. On meeting this once lovely and loved maiden, he discovered that

she had actually done what she had written and threatened to do. Sooner than being an earthly bride,

she had mutilated her face by slitting her nostrils, she had cut off her eyelids,

and both her top and bottom lips, and had branded her fair cheeks with cruel hot irons.

The poor youth on seeing her famous beauty thus destroyed fled to Edinburgh where he committed suicide,

and she, after becoming a nun, died from grief and remorse. That all happened nearly 400 years ago,

but her spirit with a terribly marred and mutilated face still wanders on nights in the peaceful

little avenue to old St Leonard's iron-kirk gate down the Pen's road. She is all dressed in black

with a long black veil over the one's lovely face, and carries a lantern in her hand.

Should any bold visitor to that avenue meet her, she slowly sweeps her face veil aside,

raises the lantern to her scarred face, and discloses those awful features to his horrified gaze.

Here is the cutest thing that I know happened there a few years ago.

A new young fellow here who was reading upon theology and church canon law. I also knew a great

friend of his and old Cambridge man. The former I will call Wilson and the latter Talbot,

as I do not want to give the exact names. Well, Wilson had invited Talbot up to St Andrews for

a month of golf, and he arrived here on a Christmas day. He came to my rooms for about 10 minutes,

and he never saw anyone merrier and brighter and full of old days at Cambridge.

Then he hurried off to see the links in the club. Late that evening Wilson rushed in,

come along quick and see Talbot, he's awfully ill, and I don't know what's up a bit.

I went off and found Talbot in his lodgings with a doctor in attendance, and he certainly looked

dangerously ill and seemed perfectly dazed. Wilson told me that he had to go to see some people in

business that evening, down by the harbor, and that he took Talbot with him down the pen's road.

It was a fine night, and Talbot said he would walk about the road and enjoy a cigar till his

friends return. In about half an hour Wilson returned up the pen's road, because he'd Talbot

nowhere in sight. After hunting about for a long time, he found him leaning against the third

or fourth tree up the little avenue to St Leonard's Kirk Gate. He went up to him when Talbot turned

a horrified face toward him, saying, oh my god, have you come to meet me again, and fell down in a

fit or a swim? He got some passersby to help to take poor Talbot to his rooms. Then he came round

for me. We sat up with him in wonder and amazement, and briefly this is what he told us.

After walking up and down the pen's road, he thought he would take a survey of the little avenue.

When at the end he saw a little light approaching him, and he turned back to meet it.

Thinking it was a policeman, he wished him good evening, but got no reply. On approaching

nearer he saw it to be a veiled female with a lantern. Getting quite close, she stopped in front

of him, drew aside her long veil, and held up the lantern towards him. My god, said Talbot,

I can never forget or describe that terrible fearful face. I felt choked, and I fell like a log

at her feet. I remember no more till I found myself in these rooms, and you two fellows sitting

beside me. I leave this place tomorrow, and he did by the first train. His state of panic was

terrible to see. Neither Wilson nor Talbot had ever heard the tale of the awful apparition of

the St. Leonard's nun, and I had almost forgotten the existence of the strange story till so curiously

reminded of it. I never saw Talbot again, but I had a letter from him a year after written from

Rangfels, telling me that on Christmas Day he had had another vision, dream, or whatever it was,

of the same awful specter. About a year later I read in a paper that poor old Talbot had died

on Christmas night at Rosaria of Heart Failure. I often wonder if the dear old chap had had another

visit from the terrible veiled nun of St. Leonard's avenue. End of The Veiled Nun of St. Leonard's

by W. T. Lenskyl.