Creepy community – The White Lady of Comiston

A fan of local ghost stories? Have you heard about the White Lady of Cominston? A creepy community.

Not far from Craiglockhart campus lies the suburb of Oxgangs which borders onto the suburb of Comiston. This area used to be farmland until the local council constructed houses in Oxgangs in the 1950s and 1960s for Edinburgh’s growing population. There were several farms there previously. And this is reflected in some of the street names such as Oxgangs Farm Drive. When out walking in the area I came across a lane with a more unusual name – White Lady Walk.  There was ruined stonework nearby and I decided to investigate further!

The White Lady of Comiston

The lane is accessed from a main path called Cockmylane. This runs along the eastern border of the Oxgangs 1950s/60s housing development and what is now Pentland Primary School. Now a well-maintained path, it formed part of the route used by Robert Louis Stevenson to visit the family holiday home in Swanston village. Turning off Cockmylane, White Lady Walk cuts through woods. It is believed that a defensive structure stood from possibly as far back as the 14^th century. Currently, only a tower remains which is said to date from the late 16^th or early 17^th century. It was used defensively but was later used as a dovecot. Later Old Comiston House stood here. It lay ruined for some time. And the tower now forms part of the wall around the property conversion of the house stables.

The area has clearly been inhabited for hundreds of years and it is quite eerie and secluded. It’s not hard to imagine that people sense something strange here but when did people start to see the White Lady?

The Ghost Story of Comiston

There is a written account of a ghostly encounter which featured in Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson published in 1878:

The district is dear to the superstitious. Hard by, at the back-gate of Comiston, a belated carter beheld a lady in white, ‘with the most beautiful, clear shoes upon her feet,’ who looked upon him in a very ghastly manner and then vanished.

There’s no more mention of the White Lady until the 1960s. In October 1965 some children from the nearby primary school at the time, Hunter’s Tryst (now closed), had gone up to the woods in their break and some of the schoolgirls claimed to have seen the White Lady. They were very frightened and the headmaster acted, banning the schoolchildren from visiting the old farm buildings and surrounding woods. The police also became involved. Children claim to have seen the lady again in the 1970s and she was spotted by another group at the window of the ruined buildings.

Nowadays there are many hillwalkers and mountain bikers using the main path to get to the Pentland Hills, but there don’t seem to be any current sightings of the lady, however dog walkers report that their dogs feel uneasy around the area. I decided to borrow a dog and take a walk along the lane to see if this was the case. We set off along the lane and at first Luna seemed perfectly happy. Around halfway along she stopped, pricked her ears up and was reluctant to go any further. Had she sensed something or was it just the noisy magpies unsettling her?

Unfortunately I have been unable to find out the supposed identity of the White Lady. A farmer’s wife or daughter, or perhaps an earlier inhabitant of the defensive structure? Whoever she was she has left an impression on several people, enough for the council to name the lane after her.

By Vivienne Hamiliton

Interested in ghost stories, we have plenty.