The Ghostbreakers: Shiela Crerar

Shiela Crerar is a poor Scottish girl thrown on her luck when her uncle dies, leaving her in debt. To manage to survive in the lonely city of London, she puts an advert in The Times offering her services as a psychic. This leads to a career and eventually marriage to Stavordale Hartland. Before that event, she faced evil in six stories, all collected in Shiela Crerar, Psychic Detective (1920).

The author of these ghostbreaking tales was Ella Mary Scrymsour-Nichol (December 25, 1888 – May 26,1962), best remembered for the Shiela Crerar stories and one Science Fiction novel, The Perfect World (1922). English-born, Scrymsour was an actress as well as a writer. Her short fiction appeared in Pearson’s Weekly, Novel Magazine, Blue Magazine, Corner Magazine, Lady’s Companion, and Woman’s Companion. She wrote Crime, Horror and Science Fiction but mainly Romance.

“The Eyes of Doom”(The Blue Magazine, May 1920) introduces Shiela. Living at Kencraig for twenty-two years, she is happy. But when Uncle John passes, she finds the estate is mortgaged. Her solicitor recommends selling but Shiela leases the property for five years to some Americans. Homeless, she leaves the Highlands for London.

Her newspaper ad for a psychic brings her back to Scotland. Lady Kildrummie hires her to get rid of the family curse. The Kildrummie Weird, as it is known, comes every twenty-three years. It has claimed her husband’s two elder brothers, and now is coming for her son, Duncan. The Weird is many ghostly pairs of eyes that appear and haunt the intended victim until they kill themselves. Duncan has already been seeing the strange eyes everywhere. His mother wants him to flee but he will not. It is up to Shiela to save him.

At first it looks as if Miss Crerar’s gifts help in no way. Shiela can see the eyes but can not fathom what they want. One night she is drawn into the turret room and finds herself blind until morning. This happens over and over but finally she is taken there and sees the twenty-three ghosts as men. They are victims of a terrible torture, where they have their eyes burned out with hot irons. The twenty-fourth victim proves to be a young woman who avoids the torture. She appears as a pair of sad eyes.

Shiela is transported to another scene, where a local priest is savaged by the torturers. He cursed them for their brutality. The men laugh, burying the twenty-three men with the girl first. Later Shiela leads a team of diggers to the spot under the chestnut tree and excavates the twenty-four skeletons. These are laid to rest with rites and the Weird is done.

Her first adventure isn’t quite over yet. Stavordale Hartland, friend of the Kildrummie family, proposes marriage to the beautiful seer. Shiela doesn’t turn him down, only delays him as she knows there is psychic work ahead that she must do.

“The Death Vapour” (The Blue Magazine, June 1920) sees Shiela now ensconced in Edinburgh. Hartland brings her the second case. His sister, Lady Malvern, has come in possession of Duroch Lodge after the death of her husband. The will stipulates she must live there nine months of the year. Unfortunately it is haunted by a strange vapour that feeds on light and screams horribly. There is a terrible smell after it appears.

Shiela hangs around awhile, waiting for the vapour to appear. When it finally does, she throws herself into it. When she is pulled out, she is covered in an ectoplasmic slime. This is collected along with her clothes and burned. When she wakes from her stupor she realizes the thing is an elemental and that it has tasted her blood. It will not be easily banished.

More research and questions of the widow produce a theory. When Lord Malvern died, he insisted that all the crucifixes in the manor be buried with him. If Stavordale’s sister dies or leaves the manor, breaking the conditions of the will, the fortune goes to a woman that Lord Malvern had wanted to marry long ago. The dead man has arranged things to doom his wife, who he loathed, in favor of the long lost love.

Shiela also realizes that the elemental has been in the manor from before it was used as a home. It was a priory where two priests had been performing the Black Mass and sacrificing children. The two were buried alive. The later dwellers kept the creature at bay by having crosses in each room.

Shiela wakes from a second encounter with a plan. She has a priest brought and the burial vault opened. There they find two skeletons still possessing hearts. This is the source of the elemental. Hot steel knitting needles are stabbed into the hearts as the priest reads a burial prayer. The vapour tries one last time to strike but is destroyed. The bones turn to ash. Lady Malvern is freed from the hauntings.

“The Room of Fear” (The Blue Magazine, July 1920) has Shiela off to Menzies Castle after the death of Sir John Baverie. The man has died of heart failure after sleeping in the Tower Room. This room is delightful in the day but those who sleep in it often die. Shiela takes on the challenge, sleeping there herself. She stays up reading a book. At the stroke of quarter to one, a terrible fear descends on her, tormenting her until the grandfather clock strikes four.

Shiela repeats this over and over, trying to determine why this terror should exist. After she invites Lord Menzies and  Stavordale Hartland to join her, the lord decides to have the place bricked up again. It is when they remove the furniture and rugs that Shiela notices the floor is different than that of the surrounding structure. Servants are brought in to remove the tiles, exposing a second floor three feet below. This is stained with blood and filled with torture devices. There is even on skeleton. Lord Menzies has the torture devices thrown in the loch and the corpse is buried properly. The terror never returns.

This tale is shorter and rather of a pattern after the first two. There is a scene at the end where Shiela is getting on a train and Stavordale kisses her. The romance between the two builds.

“The Phantom Isle” (The Blue Magazine, August 1920) has Shiela enjoying a well-deserved holiday at Roslyn Chapel. That is interrupted by a message from Mrs. Murdoch. She drives out to Rosyln Chapel because she fears for her daughter, Elspeth. The engaged girl has had a complete change of personality, has turned away her fiance and claims she will soon marry a ghost. The new bridegroom is Malcolm MacLaurie. But all the Maclauries were massacred in 1745 by the chieftain of the Murdoch clan. The two new lovers have been meeting on Tath-Gart Isle.

Shiela goes to the island but it is rocks and ruins. It is only when Elspeth arrives that the medium’s gift allows her to see the isle as it was in the past. Shiela moves among the ghosts but is not seen. The faces of the MacLauries are bland or evil. It is only when Elspeth, her mother and Shiela return for the wedding that the psychic can interfere. Shiela throws herself between the bride and groom and banishes the spirits away.

“The Werewolf of Rannoch” (The Blue Magazine, September 1920) is a werewolf-hunting story. Shiela goes to stay with an old friend, Dr. Chisholm at Cnoc-na-Ruaidh. She is on the trail of a Killer, that is haunting the Rannoch area. The doctor thinks it is a mad dog but Shiela does her research and discovers it is a werewolf. Crerar’s werewolf is different than the Hollywood variety. The beast is formed from ectoplasm while the man sleeps. This astral monster hunts fresh blood to fuel its existence. Sometimes the human does not realize they are the source of the evil, but Shiela figures out this one knows what it is.

The medium encounters the beast several times, fighting it off with a sprig of whitethorn. She takes Dr. Chisholm with her to sit in a graveyard where a pack of evil wolves run by, directed by an invisible master. Shiela realizes he was in danger because he left the consecrated ground of the churchyard. The doctor, who is a skeptic of the occult, figures Shiela’s aura must have kept him safe.

The search for the Killer goes on. Shiela finally settles on a suspect, Dr. Chisholm’s partner in medicine. Dr. Olaf Sylmak is a gruff Dane. Shiela has an immediate dislike for him. She is appalled when Dr. Chisholm’s unmarried sister falls for the man. She tells the psychic that she and Olaf will marry after he completes an important experiment. Shiela ends up shooting at the wolf when it comes to her room. The creature flees when shot at and Sylmak is injured slightly on his baby finger. Crerar’s suspicions seem confirmed.

The tracking goes on. Eventually Shiela finds the lair of the werewolf, a cave with a long, tight entrance. She hides in the cave and watches a hooded figure murder a baby. He uses the infant’s blood to make two clay voodoo-like dolls, called corp chreidh in Gaelic. The sorcerer burns the first, one looking like Miss Chisholm, and another like Shiela! Terrible pain comes along the medium’s arm. Shiela waits no longer and shoots her revolver twice into the wizard’s chest. The man turns into a wolf and flees.

Shiela, her arm horribly burnt and blistered, hurries back to Cnoc-na-Ruaidh to deal with Sylmak. When she arrives all becomes evident. It is not Olaf who has been shot but Dr. Chisholm. His dead body bears the fangs of a wolf. Shiela apologizes to the Dane. He, too, suspected his partner.

I am surprised that this tale has been in all the anthologies like so many other werewolf tales. Perhaps its copyright date is why it has been avoided by anthologists? It’s not as old as the usual suspects (Marryat, Stevenson, Stoker, etc.)

“The Wraith of Fergus McGinty” (The Blue Magazine, October 1920) happens five years after Shiela began. She has now paid off the debts against Kencraig and will marry Stavordale Hartland. She is staying with the Chalmers. Their quiet home is invaded by a ghost of a man with white hair and a beard. He is harmless but begins to get on every one’s nerves. Mrs. Chalmers asks Shiela to do something. She does. She follows the spirit to a secret door that leads to a stair that goes to a secret room. There they find a chest. Inside the chest are old crumbling clothes, a sword and fortune in gold.

One of the pieces of gold is recognized as the Plate of Strathbolla. Lord Strathbolla is contacted and everything is explained. Three generations ago the plate disappeared. The lord at the time had wasted his money and was attacked by creditors. Fergus McGinty, the lord’s friend and valet, hid the gold. The ghost is that of McGinty, wanting the Strathbollas to receive their fortune. All is set right and Shiela and Stavordale marry. They go to Kencraig for the honeymoon. Hartland asks her not to get into any occult business during the holiday. Shiela can’t promise anything.

The series ended there, potentially to go on, but Scrymsour moved onto other works.

Conclusion

Grey Dog Tales says that the Scotland of Scrymsour is confusing. This may be true. For a guy living in Canada, Scotland is but a dream of a land where his relative came from in another century, so I had no problems with this. I really liked these tales. For a writer working in the 1920s (pre-Pulp) she has more action and supernatural weirdness than most of her precursors. John Silence, Flaxman Low, etc. are dull by comparison. Only Carnacki by William Hope Hodgson has a similar amount of excitement. I have no idea if Scrymsour had any influence in America where the Pulp adventures of John Thunstone or Jules de Grandin would take place. I suspect not. Despite that, she is a welcome member of the ghostbreakers alongside Jessie Douglas Kerruish’s Luna Bartendale.