PEARLIN JEAN
In the words of Scottish antiquarian, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe (1781-1851), ‘Pearlin Jean was the most remarkable ghost in Scotland and my terror as a child’.
According to lore Pearlin Jean is a female ghost with head and shoulders covered in blood, which haunted the mansion of Allanbank at Edrom in Berwickshire. She was said to be the spirit of a beautiful seventeenth-century French girl named Jeanne who was scorned by her lover, Sir Robert Stuart of Allanbank and knocked over and killed by his carriage when he drove away from her pleading cries. As a result of her tragic death she returned to haunt Allanbank. Those who saw her would know it was Jean as she was dressed in the same pearlin lace she had always worn in life.
Text from The Element Encyclopedia of Ghosts & Hauntings by Theresa Cheung (HarperElement, 2013)
