Author follows in the footsteps of ghosts with new book 'The Stone of Destiny'
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This Halloween sees the release of The Stone of Destiny, the second instalment of Andrew Neil MacLeod’s The Casebook of Johnson and Boswell trilogy of works.
The paper caught up with the author to discuss the inspiration behind the historical fantasy series set in 18th century Scotland.
“Doctor Johnson, creator of the definitive English Dictionary, was a confirmed horror aficionado, who took a particular interest in psychic phenomena such as second sight and clairvoyance,” Andrew explained. “He was even called on to investigate a real-life haunting in the Case of the Cock Lane Ghost, which he subsequently debunked.
“His best friend and companion James Boswell, who was as superstitious as the next Scotsman, suffered from Calvinistic terrors of the afterlife, frequently tormented by the ‘dreary terrors of Hell’, and visions of ‘black angels and devils dragging bad people down to Hell'.”
It was no great leap of the imagination for Andrew to reinvent the two men as "paranormal investigators par excellence" in The Stone of Destiny, an anthology of supernatural tales held together by a search for the titular stone, and based on their 1773 tour of the Scottish Highlands.
“Growing up in Glasgow, I was strongly influenced by the horror anthologies on late night TV, where a group of strangers would meet on a train or a haunted house to share their gruesome tales, only to discover they had more in common than they at first supposed,” said Andrew. “It’s a form that’s coming back in vogue, with Guillermo del Torro’s Cabinet of Curiosities currently popular on Netflix.”
The Stone of Destiny draws inspiration from a Highland road trip Andrew and his wife Amber embarked on for their honeymoon, following in the 300-year-old footsteps of ghosts.
“We started at Edinburgh’s Witchery Hotel,” said Andrew, “a Gothic landmark which takes its name from the hundreds of women burned at the stake as witches on Castlehill.” Adjacent to James Boswell’s residence on High Street, the notorious site marks the starting point for Johnson and Boswell’s spiritual odyssey.
“Our own road trip brought us to Raasay House where Johnson and Boswell enjoyed the hospitality of clan chief John MacLeod.”
During their stay Andrew discovered a mildewed copy of Doctor Johnson’s Journey to the Western Isles in the library of Raasay House, and after becoming acquainted the hotel’s resident ghost, the idea for his series of books was born.
The newlyweds continued their journey in the footsteps of their literary heroes, with Andrew taking copious notes as they hopped from island to island. “As we travelled to each new location, I drew on local myths and legend for inspiration.”
The solitary outpost of St Kilda forms the backdrop for perhaps the most atmospheric tale of his collection, The Birdmen of St Kilda.
“The secluded archipelago, situated some 40 miles west of the most westerly outpost of the Outer Hebrides, is the perfect setting for the supernatural. It’s completely isolated, fenced-in by one continuous high face of rock,” said Andrew, who first visited the desolate location in 2013. “To help me conjure up the bleak atmosphere, I visualised the whole island as a haunted house.”
The natural stronghold also served as a prison for Lady Grange, a tragic figure who was deposited there against her will by a cruel and tyrannical husband in 1734, and whose drunken ghost, according to Andrew’s book, can be seen “walking the lonely beach at night in nothing but her cotton shift, tearing at her hair and crying at the Moon”.
“When I was a child, I remember being sorely disappointed to discover that the Hound of the Baskervilles was just a big dog, not the two-legged werewolf of my imagination." He goes some way to address this oversight in The Wolf of Badenoch, which forms the centrepiece of his anthology, a gothic masterpiece of draughty castles, hidden rooms, and ancient ancestral curses.
Other historical figures receive a similar treatment. Sir James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, a luminary of the Scottish Enlightenment, becomes a homicidal graverobber in The Menagerie of Doctor Monboddo, a tale that owes much to HG Wells’s Doctor Moreau, and the weird fiction the author devoured as a child.
Witchcraft, ritual sacrifice and demonic possession abound in the Hebridean cycle of the novel, set on Skye and Raasay respectively.
The Stone of Destiny reaches its spiritual nadir on the isle of Iona, the final resting place of Kings, where Doctor Johnson has his epiphany. "I have spent half my life chasing ghosts," muses Johnson. "And yet perhaps I have been chasing myself all along. For what is a man, Boswell, if not a ghost?"
It’s a question that has troubled philosophers from time immemorial and, if our continued fascination with Halloween is anything to go by, a question that still haunts us to this day.
The Casebook of Johnson and Boswell Vol. II: The Stone of Destiny is out for general release on Halloween, Monday October 31.
You can preorder it at: www.amazon.co.uk/Stone-Destiny-Casebook-Johnson-Boswell-ebook/dp/B09ZT3HRGB
The book is priced at £12.99 for the print edition and £2.99 on Kindle.
