Camped up and static I've never really been too scared. Climbing off mountains, usually unroped in places where a slip etc would mean death, I always found comfort in the dark, doing stuff routinely that I'd really have to think about in daylight.
I've had more than my share of scares mind, walking those very dark and lonely haunted highland roads, usually on my jack jones
Never run, is perhaps the best advice, that way lies terror.
During the great drunk driving purge of the mid 80's I found myself tasked with mobilizing a recently jilted family friend, "get him out of his bed and over here christmas eve" were my instructions. This chap was holed up in his illegally sited, but with permission, caravan. I arrived early and informed him of the plan and that his mother requested his presence that night. I sat and I sat but he wasn't for shifting, I'd sat so long because he was my lift.
So, there I was out on granny's most haunted with 10miles to walk an hour from midnight, very few cars on the road and none stopping. I had a brain wave, before I left the village's single point of illumination, the phone box, I called another pal who lived nearby and begged a bed for the night. He agreed and he offered to run me the rest of the way in the morning, he couldn't come and get me though, as he'd been drinking and with Sergeant Gillies on the war path, it was a no go.
So now with 2 or 4 miles, depending on route and bravery levels, to walk I set off.
Up the brae of the bochan, past the loch of the each uisge, past the spot of the banshee, eyes to the ground and fingers in my ears least I saw or heard her, as there's no luck in that.
With that past me I started down the other side of the hill, round a bend and there was the house lights of the next village, well if 10 house a village makes
a little further and I could see the street light by the school bus shelter.
As I made my way towards the light I was heartened to hear the kids singing gaelic psalms, the sound getting nearer as if to mark my progress and as it was soon behind me I neared the village, which is set some way back from the road. I rested by the bus stop, route decision time was on me.
Did I go round the road to the station, 2 miles and more ghosts, the black dog being the worst, or did I take to the bog for the shortcut? The most haunted bit but only around 500 yards from where I stood to where I needed to be. Emboldened by the presence of my fellow man in close-ish proximity and with the singing fading, I took the latter option.
Soon I was sat by my pals hearth, although the bog route wasn't without issue especially in the dark with just the spark of a clipper lighter to assist navigating the most hazardous spots.
At 12 on the dot, old Feracer (Farquhar) next door came through with a bottle of whisky, he poured us all a measure and we toasted the arrival of christmas. Turning to me, still flush with the earlier exertion about my gills, he asked me where I could possibly have been walking at that time of night? So I told him and he couldn't believe it, I'd walk the bog, at night and in the dark, bad enough the road, but nobody walks the bog at night. Well I just had, and without a torch.
I explained I'd taken comfort from the lights of the neighbouring village and the sining of the kids, so decided to just go for it. It was difficult but flicking the lighter behind me was just enough to let me see and navigate the worst of it.
He told me that when he was a boy (he was in his 80's old Fachie) christmas wasn't a holiday, the field my pals caravan was parked in was the old school yard, the adjacent building, the old school. Apparently the teachers would walk the kids from the area over the brae to the school for a midnight service with the kids from that village, en route there and back they'd sing psalms and hyms, thats how christmas was marked for the kids in the late 1800's early 1900's.
"Well boy! you better take another dram because I think you were hearing voices from yesterday". "There are only two kids in the village over the way, and neither have any gaelic"; a shiver ran up my spine, and it's doing it now again as I type this.
So, a ghost story and one of several that I have. There I was jumping at my own shadow dreading a ghostly encounter then taking courage from just such an encounter. After that I was never scared to walk the road on my own, as others have said; there's nothing to fear but fear it's self.
