September 4, 2025 • 14 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Phantom Regiment of Kelly Kranky by Elliot O'Donnell. This
is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
LibriVox dot org. Recording by Grant Love. The Phantom Regiment
of Killi Kanki by Elliot O'Donnell. Many are the stories
(00:24):
that have, from time to time been circulated with regard
to the haunting of the pass of Killikanki by phantom soldiers.
But I do not think there is any stranger story
than that related to me some years ago by a
lady who declared she had actually witnessed a phenomena. Her
account of it I shall reproduce, as far as possible
(00:45):
in her own words. Let me commence by stating that
I am not a spiritualist, and that I have the
greatest possible aversion to convoking the earthbound souls of the dead.
Neither do I lay any claim to mediumistic powers. Indeed,
I have always regarded the term medium with the gravest suspicion.
(01:07):
I am, on the contrary, a plain, practical, matter of
fact woman, and with the exception of this one occasion,
never witnessed any psychic phenomena. The incident I am about
to relate took place the autumn before last. I was
on a cycle tour in Scotland, and making Pitlochry my
temporary headquarters. Rode over one evening to view the historic
(01:30):
pass of KILLIEKRANKI. It was late when I arrived there,
and the western sky was one great splash of crimson
and gold, Such vivid coloring I had never seen before
and never have seen since. Indeed, I was so entranced
at the sublimity of the spectacle that I persed myself
in a rock at the foot of one of the
(01:51):
great cliffs that formed the walls of the pass, and,
throwing my head back, imagined myself in fairyland. Lost. Thus
in a DELITIONI luxury. I paid no heed to the time,
nor did I think of stirring, until the dark shadows
of the night fell across my face. I then started
up in a panic, and was about to peddle off
(02:12):
in hot haste, when a strange notion suddenly seized me.
I had a latch key, plenty of sandwiches, a warm cape.
Why should I not camp out there till early morning?
I had long yearned to spend a night in the open.
Now was my opportunity. The idea was no sooner conceived
than put into operation. Selecting the most comfortable looking boulder
(02:36):
I could see, I scrambled on to the top of it, and,
with my cloak drawn tightly over my back and shoulders,
commenced my vigil. The cold mountain air, sweeped with the
perfume of gorse and heather, intoxicated me as I gradually
sank into a heavenly torpor, from which I was abruptly
aroused by a dull boom that I at once associated
(02:58):
with distant musket. All was then still still as the grave,
And on glancing at the watch I wore strapped on
my wrist, I saw it was two o'clock. A species
of nervous dread now laid hold of me, and a
thousand and one vague fancies, all the more distressing because
of their vagueness, oppressed and disconcerted me. Moreover, I was
(03:21):
impressed for the first time with the extraordinary solitude, solitude
that seemed to belong to a period far other than
the present. And as I glanced around at the solitary pines,
and gleaming boulders, I more than half expected to see
the wild, ferocious face of some robber chief, some fierce
yet fascinating hero of Sir Walter Scott's, peering at me
(03:45):
from behind them. This feeling, at length became so acute that,
in a panic of fear, ridiculous, pure of fear, I
forcibly withdrew my gaze and concentrated abstractedly on the ground
at my feet. Then, and in the rustling of a leaf,
the humming of some night insect, the whizzing of a bat,
the whispering of the wind as it moaned softly past me,
(04:09):
I fancied, nay, I felt sure I detected something that
was not ordinary. I blew my nose and had barely
ceased marveling at the loudness of its reverberations, before the piercing,
ghoulish shriek of an owl sent the blood in torrents
to my heart. I then laughed, and my blood froze
(04:29):
as I heard a chorus of what I tried to
persuade myself could only be echoes proceed from every crag
and rock in the valley. For some seconds after this,
I sat still, hardly daring to breathe, and pretending to
be extremely angry with myself for being such a fool.
With a stupendous effort, I turned my attention to the
(04:50):
most material of things, one of the skirt buttons on
my hip. They were much in vogue then, Being loose,
I endeavored to occupy myself in tightening it, And when
I could no longer drive any employment from that, I
set to work on my shoes and tied knots in
the laces, merely to enjoy the task of untying them.
(05:12):
But this, too, ceasing at last to attract me. I
was desperately racking my mind for some other device when
there came again the queer booming noise I had heard before,
but which I could now no longer doubt was the
report of firearms. I looked in the direction of the sound,
and my heart almost stopped, racing towards me, as if
(05:35):
it not merely for his life but his soul. Came
the figure of a highlander. The wind rustling through his long,
disheveled hair, blew it completely over his forehead, narrowly missing
his eyes, which were fixed ahead of him in a
ghastly agonized stare. He had not a vestige of color,
and in the powerful glow of the moonbeams his skin
(05:59):
shone livid. He ran with huge bounds, And what added
to my terror and made me double ware he was
nothing mortal, was that each time his feet struck the hard,
smooth road, upon which I could well see there was
no sign of a stone. There came the sound, the
unmistakable sound of the scattering of gravel. On on he
(06:22):
came with cyclonic swiftness, his bare, sweating elbows pressed into
his panting sides, his great, dirty, coarse, hairy fists screwed
up in bony bunches in front of him, the foam
flakes thick on his clenched, grinning lips, the blood drops
oozing down his sweating thighs. It was all real, infernally
(06:45):
hideously real, even to the most minute details, the flying
up and down of his kilt sporn and swordless scabbard,
the bursting of the seam of his coat near the shoulder,
and the absence of one of his clumsy shoe buckles.
I tried hard to shut my eyes, but was compelled
to keep them open and follow his every movement, as
(07:08):
darting past me. He left the roadway, and, leaping several
of the smaller obstacles that barred his way, finally disappeared
behind some of the bigger boulders. I then heard the
loud rat tat of drums, accompanied by the shrill voices
of fifes and flutes, and at the farther end of
the pass, their arms glittering brightly in the silvery moonbeams,
(07:32):
appeared a regiment of scarlet clad soldiers. At the head
rode a mounted officer. After him came the band, and
then four abreast a long line of warriors. In their center,
two ensigns, and on their flanks officers and non commissioned
officers with swords and pikes. More mounted men bringing up
(07:55):
the rear. On they came the fifes and flutes, ringing
out with a way clearness. In the hushed mountain air,
I could hear the ground vibrate, the gravel crunch and
scatter as they steadily and mechanically advanced tall men, enormously
tall men with set white faces and livid eyes. Every
(08:17):
instant I expected they would see me, and I became
sick with terror at the thought of meeting all those
pale flashing eyes. But from this I was happily saved.
No one appeared to notice me, and they all passed
me by without as much as a twist or turn
of the head, their feet keeping time to one everlasting
and monotonous tramp tramp tramp. I got up and watched
(08:41):
until the last of them had turned the bend of
the pass and the sheen of its weapons and trappings
could no longer be seen. Then I remounted my boulder
and wondered if anything further would happen. It was now
half past two, and blended with the moonbeams was a
peculiar whiteness, which rendered the whole aspect of my surroundings
indescribably dreary and ghostly. Feeling cold and hungry, I set
(09:07):
to work on my beef sandwiches, and was religiously separating
the fat from the lane, for I am one of
those foolish people who detest fat, when a loud rustling
made me look up. Confronting me on the opposite side
of the road was a tree an ash, and to
my surprise, despite the fact that the breeze had fallen
and there was scarcely a breath of wind, the tree
(09:28):
swayed violently to and fro whoapstare proceeded from it the
most dreadful moanings and groanings. I was so terrified that
I caught hold of my bicycle and tried to mount,
but I was obliged to desist, as I had not
a particle of strength in my limbs. Then, to assure
myself the moving of the tree was not an illusion,
(09:48):
I rubbed my eyes, pinched myself, called aloud, but it
made no difference. The rustling, bending and tossing still continued.
Coming up courage, I stepped into the road to get
a closer view, when, to my horror, my feet kicked
against something, and on looking down, I perceived the body
(10:09):
of an English soldier with a ghastly wound in his chest.
I gazed around, and there on all sides of me,
from one end of the valley to the other, lay
dozens of bodies, bodies of men and horses, highlanders in English,
white cheeked, lurid eyes and bloody browed, a hotch potch
(10:32):
of livid, gory awfulness. Here was the writhing, wriggling figure
of an officer with half his face shot away, And
there a horse with no head and there but I
cannot dwell on such horrors, the very memory of which
makes me feel sick and faint. The air, that beautiful,
fresh mountain air, resounded with their moanings and groanings, and
(10:56):
reeked with the smell of their blood. As I stood
rooted to the ground with horror, not knowing which way
to look her turn, I suddenly saw drop from the
ash the form of a woman, a Highland girl with bold,
handsome features, raven black hair, and the whitest of arms
and feet. In one hand, she carried a wicker basket,
(11:19):
and the other a knife, A broad bladed, sharp edged,
horn handled knife. A gleam of avarice and cruelty came
into her large dark eyes as wandering around her, they
rested on the rich facings of the English officer's uniforms.
(11:40):
I knew what was in her mind, and forgetting she
was but a ghost, that they were all ghosts, I
moved heaven and earth to stop her. I could not
making straight for a wounded officer that lay moaning piteously
on the ground some ten feet away from me. She
spurned with her slender, graceful feet the bodies of the
day and dying english that came in her way. Then,
(12:03):
snatching the officer's sword and pistol from him, she knelt down, and,
with a look of devilish glee in her glorious eyes,
calmly plunged her knife into his heart, working the blade
backwards and forwards, to assure herself she had made a
thorough job of it. Anything more hellish I could not
have imagined, And yet it fascinated me. The girl was
(12:27):
so fair, so wickedly, fair and shapely. Her act of
cruelty over. She spoiled her victim of his rings, epaulets, buttons,
and gold lacing, and, having placed them in her basket,
proceeded elsewhere. In some cases, unable to remove the rings easily,
she chopped off the fingers and popped them just as
(12:49):
they were into her basket. Neither was her mode of
despatch always the same. For while she put some men
out of their misery in the manner I have described,
she cut the throats of the others with as great
and nonchalance as if she had been killing fowls, whilst
others again she settled with the butt ends of their
guns or pistols. In all she murdered a full half score,
(13:15):
and was decamping with her booty when her gloating eyes
suddenly encountered mine, and with a shrill scream of rage,
she rushed towards me. I was an easy victim for
strain and prey. How I would I could not move
an inch. Raising her flashing blade high over her head,
an expression of fiendish glee in her staring eyes, she
(13:36):
made ready to strike me. This was the climax. My
overstrained nerves could stand no more, and ere the blow
had time to descend, I pitched heavily forward and fell
at her feet. When I recovered, every phantom had vanished,
and the past glowed with all the cheerful freshness of
the early morning sun. Not a whit the worse for
(13:59):
my venture. I cycled swiftly home and ate as only
one can eat who has spent the night amid the
banks and braves of Bonney, Scotland, and of the phantom
regiment of Killycrankie By Elliot O'Donnell
The Phantom Regiment of Kelly Kranky by Elliot O'Donnell. This
is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
LibriVox dot org. Recording by Grant Love. The Phantom Regiment
of Killi Kanki by Elliot O'Donnell. Many are the stories
(00:24):
that have, from time to time been circulated with regard
to the haunting of the pass of Killikanki by phantom soldiers.
But I do not think there is any stranger story
than that related to me some years ago by a
lady who declared she had actually witnessed a phenomena. Her
account of it I shall reproduce, as far as possible
(00:45):
in her own words. Let me commence by stating that
I am not a spiritualist, and that I have the
greatest possible aversion to convoking the earthbound souls of the dead.
Neither do I lay any claim to mediumistic powers. Indeed,
I have always regarded the term medium with the gravest suspicion.
(01:07):
I am, on the contrary, a plain, practical, matter of
fact woman, and with the exception of this one occasion,
never witnessed any psychic phenomena. The incident I am about
to relate took place the autumn before last. I was
on a cycle tour in Scotland, and making Pitlochry my
temporary headquarters. Rode over one evening to view the historic
(01:30):
pass of KILLIEKRANKI. It was late when I arrived there,
and the western sky was one great splash of crimson
and gold, Such vivid coloring I had never seen before
and never have seen since. Indeed, I was so entranced
at the sublimity of the spectacle that I persed myself
in a rock at the foot of one of the
(01:51):
great cliffs that formed the walls of the pass, and,
throwing my head back, imagined myself in fairyland. Lost. Thus
in a DELITIONI luxury. I paid no heed to the time,
nor did I think of stirring, until the dark shadows
of the night fell across my face. I then started
up in a panic, and was about to peddle off
(02:12):
in hot haste, when a strange notion suddenly seized me.
I had a latch key, plenty of sandwiches, a warm cape.
Why should I not camp out there till early morning?
I had long yearned to spend a night in the open.
Now was my opportunity. The idea was no sooner conceived
than put into operation. Selecting the most comfortable looking boulder
(02:36):
I could see, I scrambled on to the top of it, and,
with my cloak drawn tightly over my back and shoulders,
commenced my vigil. The cold mountain air, sweeped with the
perfume of gorse and heather, intoxicated me as I gradually
sank into a heavenly torpor, from which I was abruptly
aroused by a dull boom that I at once associated
(02:58):
with distant musket. All was then still still as the grave,
And on glancing at the watch I wore strapped on
my wrist, I saw it was two o'clock. A species
of nervous dread now laid hold of me, and a
thousand and one vague fancies, all the more distressing because
of their vagueness, oppressed and disconcerted me. Moreover, I was
(03:21):
impressed for the first time with the extraordinary solitude, solitude
that seemed to belong to a period far other than
the present. And as I glanced around at the solitary pines,
and gleaming boulders, I more than half expected to see
the wild, ferocious face of some robber chief, some fierce
yet fascinating hero of Sir Walter Scott's, peering at me
(03:45):
from behind them. This feeling, at length became so acute that,
in a panic of fear, ridiculous, pure of fear, I
forcibly withdrew my gaze and concentrated abstractedly on the ground
at my feet. Then, and in the rustling of a leaf,
the humming of some night insect, the whizzing of a bat,
the whispering of the wind as it moaned softly past me,
(04:09):
I fancied, nay, I felt sure I detected something that
was not ordinary. I blew my nose and had barely
ceased marveling at the loudness of its reverberations, before the piercing,
ghoulish shriek of an owl sent the blood in torrents
to my heart. I then laughed, and my blood froze
(04:29):
as I heard a chorus of what I tried to
persuade myself could only be echoes proceed from every crag
and rock in the valley. For some seconds after this,
I sat still, hardly daring to breathe, and pretending to
be extremely angry with myself for being such a fool.
With a stupendous effort, I turned my attention to the
(04:50):
most material of things, one of the skirt buttons on
my hip. They were much in vogue then, Being loose,
I endeavored to occupy myself in tightening it, And when
I could no longer drive any employment from that, I
set to work on my shoes and tied knots in
the laces, merely to enjoy the task of untying them.
(05:12):
But this, too, ceasing at last to attract me. I
was desperately racking my mind for some other device when
there came again the queer booming noise I had heard before,
but which I could now no longer doubt was the
report of firearms. I looked in the direction of the sound,
and my heart almost stopped, racing towards me, as if
(05:35):
it not merely for his life but his soul. Came
the figure of a highlander. The wind rustling through his long,
disheveled hair, blew it completely over his forehead, narrowly missing
his eyes, which were fixed ahead of him in a
ghastly agonized stare. He had not a vestige of color,
and in the powerful glow of the moonbeams his skin
(05:59):
shone livid. He ran with huge bounds, And what added
to my terror and made me double ware he was
nothing mortal, was that each time his feet struck the hard,
smooth road, upon which I could well see there was
no sign of a stone. There came the sound, the
unmistakable sound of the scattering of gravel. On on he
(06:22):
came with cyclonic swiftness, his bare, sweating elbows pressed into
his panting sides, his great, dirty, coarse, hairy fists screwed
up in bony bunches in front of him, the foam
flakes thick on his clenched, grinning lips, the blood drops
oozing down his sweating thighs. It was all real, infernally
(06:45):
hideously real, even to the most minute details, the flying
up and down of his kilt sporn and swordless scabbard,
the bursting of the seam of his coat near the shoulder,
and the absence of one of his clumsy shoe buckles.
I tried hard to shut my eyes, but was compelled
to keep them open and follow his every movement, as
(07:08):
darting past me. He left the roadway, and, leaping several
of the smaller obstacles that barred his way, finally disappeared
behind some of the bigger boulders. I then heard the
loud rat tat of drums, accompanied by the shrill voices
of fifes and flutes, and at the farther end of
the pass, their arms glittering brightly in the silvery moonbeams,
(07:32):
appeared a regiment of scarlet clad soldiers. At the head
rode a mounted officer. After him came the band, and
then four abreast a long line of warriors. In their center,
two ensigns, and on their flanks officers and non commissioned
officers with swords and pikes. More mounted men bringing up
(07:55):
the rear. On they came the fifes and flutes, ringing
out with a way clearness. In the hushed mountain air,
I could hear the ground vibrate, the gravel crunch and
scatter as they steadily and mechanically advanced tall men, enormously
tall men with set white faces and livid eyes. Every
(08:17):
instant I expected they would see me, and I became
sick with terror at the thought of meeting all those
pale flashing eyes. But from this I was happily saved.
No one appeared to notice me, and they all passed
me by without as much as a twist or turn
of the head, their feet keeping time to one everlasting
and monotonous tramp tramp tramp. I got up and watched
(08:41):
until the last of them had turned the bend of
the pass and the sheen of its weapons and trappings
could no longer be seen. Then I remounted my boulder
and wondered if anything further would happen. It was now
half past two, and blended with the moonbeams was a
peculiar whiteness, which rendered the whole aspect of my surroundings
indescribably dreary and ghostly. Feeling cold and hungry, I set
(09:07):
to work on my beef sandwiches, and was religiously separating
the fat from the lane, for I am one of
those foolish people who detest fat, when a loud rustling
made me look up. Confronting me on the opposite side
of the road was a tree an ash, and to
my surprise, despite the fact that the breeze had fallen
and there was scarcely a breath of wind, the tree
(09:28):
swayed violently to and fro whoapstare proceeded from it the
most dreadful moanings and groanings. I was so terrified that
I caught hold of my bicycle and tried to mount,
but I was obliged to desist, as I had not
a particle of strength in my limbs. Then, to assure
myself the moving of the tree was not an illusion,
(09:48):
I rubbed my eyes, pinched myself, called aloud, but it
made no difference. The rustling, bending and tossing still continued.
Coming up courage, I stepped into the road to get
a closer view, when, to my horror, my feet kicked
against something, and on looking down, I perceived the body
(10:09):
of an English soldier with a ghastly wound in his chest.
I gazed around, and there on all sides of me,
from one end of the valley to the other, lay
dozens of bodies, bodies of men and horses, highlanders in English,
white cheeked, lurid eyes and bloody browed, a hotch potch
(10:32):
of livid, gory awfulness. Here was the writhing, wriggling figure
of an officer with half his face shot away, And
there a horse with no head and there but I
cannot dwell on such horrors, the very memory of which
makes me feel sick and faint. The air, that beautiful,
fresh mountain air, resounded with their moanings and groanings, and
(10:56):
reeked with the smell of their blood. As I stood
rooted to the ground with horror, not knowing which way
to look her turn, I suddenly saw drop from the
ash the form of a woman, a Highland girl with bold,
handsome features, raven black hair, and the whitest of arms
and feet. In one hand, she carried a wicker basket,
(11:19):
and the other a knife, A broad bladed, sharp edged,
horn handled knife. A gleam of avarice and cruelty came
into her large dark eyes as wandering around her, they
rested on the rich facings of the English officer's uniforms.
(11:40):
I knew what was in her mind, and forgetting she
was but a ghost, that they were all ghosts, I
moved heaven and earth to stop her. I could not
making straight for a wounded officer that lay moaning piteously
on the ground some ten feet away from me. She
spurned with her slender, graceful feet the bodies of the
day and dying english that came in her way. Then,
(12:03):
snatching the officer's sword and pistol from him, she knelt down, and,
with a look of devilish glee in her glorious eyes,
calmly plunged her knife into his heart, working the blade
backwards and forwards, to assure herself she had made a
thorough job of it. Anything more hellish I could not
have imagined, And yet it fascinated me. The girl was
(12:27):
so fair, so wickedly, fair and shapely. Her act of
cruelty over. She spoiled her victim of his rings, epaulets, buttons,
and gold lacing, and, having placed them in her basket,
proceeded elsewhere. In some cases, unable to remove the rings easily,
she chopped off the fingers and popped them just as
(12:49):
they were into her basket. Neither was her mode of
despatch always the same. For while she put some men
out of their misery in the manner I have described,
she cut the throats of the others with as great
and nonchalance as if she had been killing fowls, whilst
others again she settled with the butt ends of their
guns or pistols. In all she murdered a full half score,
(13:15):
and was decamping with her booty when her gloating eyes
suddenly encountered mine, and with a shrill scream of rage,
she rushed towards me. I was an easy victim for
strain and prey. How I would I could not move
an inch. Raising her flashing blade high over her head,
an expression of fiendish glee in her staring eyes, she
(13:36):
made ready to strike me. This was the climax. My
overstrained nerves could stand no more, and ere the blow
had time to descend, I pitched heavily forward and fell
at her feet. When I recovered, every phantom had vanished,
and the past glowed with all the cheerful freshness of
the early morning sun. Not a whit the worse for
(13:59):
my venture. I cycled swiftly home and ate as only
one can eat who has spent the night amid the
banks and braves of Bonney, Scotland, and of the phantom
regiment of Killycrankie By Elliot O'Donnell
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