In this horror tale the reader is presented with death in the open field, or The Fords of Callum to be more exact. Janet and Wattie Douglas find the corpse of Annie Douglas "swathed in blood." Her clothes were torn but no violence was done to her body. Prior to this the wraith of Annie appeared. Under Scottish legend, if a wraith of a living person appears with the sun up, the person will have a long life. If it is the opposite, pending death looms. James Hogg wrote other short stories about wraiths that included "The Wife of Lochmaben," "Tibby Johnston's Wraith," and "The Fords of Callum." For purposes of this countdown, which excludes ghost stories, the brief appearance of the wraith does not make this a ghost story.
Once Annie's body is identified in the story, lingering questions remain as to the cause of her death until this haunting passage is revealed at her funeral:
Among the mourners there was one gentleman quite unknown to every one who was present. Indeed, from the beginning, he took upon himself, as it were, the office of chief mourner, carrying the head almost the whole way to the churchyard, so that all the people supposed the elegant stranger some near relation of the deceased, sent for, from a distance, to take the father's part, and conduct the last obsequies. When they came to the grave, he took his station at the head of the corpse, which he lowered into the grave with great decency and decorum, appearing to be deeply affected. When the interment was over, he gave the sexton a guinea and walked away. He was afterwards seen riding towards Dumfries, with a page in full mourning riding at a distance behind him. How much were all the good people of Johnston astonished when they heard that neither father nor mother of the deceased, nor one present at the funeral knew anything whatever of the gentleman ; —who he was; where he came from; or what brought him there.
On the negatives side, the thick Scottish accents used in the character dialogue of this story make it difficult to read at times, but this is a fine horror short story nonetheless.
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