I, too, have seen a ghost.

I'll be brief.

While visiting Scotland, I was staying in a notoriously murderous old castle: the Priorsford House. With any good castle, a lot of people had died a lot of different ways. The house was also a block or two away from one of rural Scotland's other notoriously murderous haunts: the Cross Keys Pub.

As it happened, it was a dark and stormy December night. I was hunkered down on the floor in my sleeping bag, and my friend and Priorsford House denizen was occupying the bed. The wind picked up and rattled a tree against the window and woke me up. Looking around a little, I noticed that someone was in the corner of the room standing near the dresser. Naturally, I thought it was my friend getting something, so I asked: "Hey, what are you looking for at 2 o'clock in the morning?"

From above - on the bed - I hear, "Oh, you see that, too."

Fairly, I responded, "That's not you over there?" A moment passed, and the distinctly shadowy form persisted in the corner.

Hesitantly, from above, "No, it's not."

Not being sufficiently disquieted by this, I had to ask, "What the hell is that?"

Being unhelpful, my friend offered, "Just ignore it and go back to sleep. It'll go away."

The next morning, I crawled out from underneath the bed and continued: "Seriously, what was that?"

The answer? "I think it's the lady that tumbled down the stairs and died. She lived in this part of the house."

This event has been dutifully recreated in the Corner... more or less.

And, as a matter of trivia, this was the trip where I was rudely awoken by BBC-FM/Radio Borders and interviewed - at length - about how I lost my glasses. In February, this loquacious monkey strikes.