All Hallows Telling

As a child, I was always fascinated by graveyards and things that went bump in the night. I didn’t like horror movies, but I liked anything to do with lost spirits, namely ghosts.

That interest has never waned. Some ghost/ lost spirits need help to move on, and some are attached to the land or the place they were from and want to stay. Unless they are malevolent and feeding off of someone, why disturb them? A between-world life is just as valid as an earthly one.

Although it is not All Hallows in the south of the world, as we head into Beltane, it is in the north. So I write this for my northern kin.

The Lady in Green

You’ve seen those Scottish movies of those glorious estates on a loch, right?

In my younger years, as I was travelling my ancestors' homeland, I took a job as a chambermaid.

When I arrived, I was overcome by its beauty and the expansive grounds. They even had a walled secret garden! The job, however, was not as beautiful. The head housekeeper was on hormone replacement therapy, and cranky as all hell. The head caretaker was a huge lump of formidable Cornish attitude. He sat at the top end of the table with a mug that was half the size of his enormous skull. Don't get me started regarding the food and the never-ending staircases I had to climb up and down.

It was very much Downton Abbey servant vibe with a lot less manners.

The rooms that I tended had accommodated royalty and the upper class. Incredibly elegant with four-poster beds, lush curtains and fittings complementing large windows eking out to the stunning views of Loch Awe. It was that fold the toilet roll end correctly and put chocolate on the bed when you do the turn-down kind of place.

There was one room in contrast to all of the others. It clearly had been newly renovated, for what reason I didn't know.

Although it was lovely and the wallpaper a soft gold, it was nothing like the others in my view.

One night as I was turning down the bed, the door that was already shut clicked a few times. A shiver instantly ran up my back. I checked the door lock and continued with the final touches of the room, only to hear it click the same number of times again. I quickly grabbed the handle and opened the door, thinking maybe another worker might be playing a trick on me. Nothing. I left the room with another shiver up my back and proceeded on to the other rooms.

This continued to happen every time I cleaned the room. The people staying in the room had no complaints as far as I knew. I kept turning around when the door made the sound and even called out, ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’ I had a strange sense of being watched.

On my time off, which was quite sparse, I would walk the grounds of the property. I adored the secret garden full of flowers, and the rich green woodland edging the loch, and although the job was a hard slog, the nature was breathtaking. I spent a lot of time wandering in the woods and dangling my feet in the icy waters of the Loch.

On this particular day, I returned a different way from my walk and came across a small graveyard to the far side of the hotel. I hadn’t seen it before, as it was tucked away in a little enclave.

I have always been a lover of graveyards. I find them fascinating. Most of the headstones were very old, and some names were hard to read. One of the graves, for some reason, intrigued me more than the others, and I sat in front of it. It was a woman’s grave, and she died at the age of 22.

As I was sitting thinking of what life must have been like in that era, being here by the loch, a short-haired black cat appeared from behind the headstone. I was a little taken aback as I hadn’t noticed it on the grounds at all nor in my vicinity at the graveyard.

I love cats and gestured to it to come closer. I wound its black tail across the headstone and walked over the grave straight into my lap and made itself comfortable with a deep purr. I petted it, and as I looked up and around, I noticed a figure at one of the hotel windows. My sight was pretty good back then.

She appeared to be a young woman in a green dress. Not a guest, as I recall, well at least I didn’t think so. She looked straight at me as the cat continued to knead and purr on my lap. The dress was very distinctive and not from this era, as it seemed to accentuate her figure in an old-fashioned way that didn’t meet these modern times.

I looked down at the headstone, trying to make out the name and looked up again to find her bending her head in what seemed an acknowledgement.

I said from within, do you need help to leave? ( I have always been that way; my Scottish mother used to say I always had the sight)

I distinctly saw her shake her head from side to side. The black cat rose, stretched and butted its head on my chin, hopped off my lap and headed into the woods. Looking up again, the window was empty. I stood up to try and follow the cat, but within a moment it had vanished. Out of sight.

When I returned to the hotel, I walked around to try and work out what room that window was from. As it was mid-afternoon, I headed up to the floor I calculated it to be, only to find the room that window was connected with was the modernised room that gave me shivers.

I did not have the room keys on me, so when I returned to the kitchen I asked the Caretaker,

‘Are there any ghosts here in this hotel?’

“Why whit did ye see”

I told him that the golden room gave me shivers up my back and that I had seen a woman at the window when I was at the graveyard.

‘Oh so you saw the Lady in the green then?’

‘Yes’, I replied

‘Aye, she died of influenza they say, come along then’.

I followed his wide stature up the back stairs, through the hallway and into the dining area, which I had hardly been in due to being too busy with all the bedrooms

He pointed to the wall.

Facing a large bay window was the portrait of the same woman I saw in the green dress….. holding a black cat.

Remember, All Hallows is not all about dress-ups.

It's primarily respecting those beyond the veil.

Blessings

Odette

(c) O. Nightsky 2026