The late 19th century was an era of fervent fascination with the paranormal. Victorian society found itself torn between the rationality of the scientific revolution and a romantic revival of the supernatural. Nowhere was this more evident than in the case of Ballechin House, often dubbed "Scotland’s most haunted house." While the hauntings themselves were enough to captivate public interest, it was the controversy that surrounded the investigation, led by Ada Goodrich-Freer and Lord Bute, that truly captured headlines. The fallout from this investigation saw reputations ruined, ghost hunters vilified, and public interest in paranormal studies shaken to its core.
The Legacy of Major Steuart and the Hauntings of Ballechin
Ballechin House, located in the Perthshire countryside, had long been rumoured to be haunted. The legends began with Major Robert Steuart, who inherited the estate in 1834 and returned there after serving in the Indian Army. A staunch believer in reincarnation, Steuart reportedly claimed that he would return after death in the form of a dog, specifically a black spaniel. When Steuart died in 1876, his nephew John Skinner Steuart inherited the house. According to the legend, fearing his uncle’s return in canine form, John shot all of the major’s dogs. This macabre act, it was said, left Robert Steuart’s restless spirit with no choice but to roam the house as a disembodied ghost.
For the next two decades, reports of strange occurrences at Ballechin House mounted. The first reported sighting came from a maid in 1876, but the majority of the haunting reports came from the Heaven family, who were tenants at the house during the 1890s. These reports included unsettling sounds and spectral apparitions, which eventually attracted the attention of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR).
The Arrival of Ada Goodrich-Freer and Lord Bute
The Marquess of Bute, John Crichton-Stuart, was an aristocrat with an avid interest in the occult. He became aware of the hauntings at Ballechin House in 1892 through a local priest who complained of sleepless nights due to the unexplained noises in the house. As a prominent member of the SPR, Bute decided to lease the house for a thorough investigation into its alleged supernatural activity. He enlisted Ada Goodrich-Freer, a respected ghost hunter and SPR member, to oversee the investigation.
Freer, known in paranormal circles by her pen name “Miss X,” arrived at Ballechin in February 1897 with a group of fellow investigators. Over the next few months, the team conducted a series of séances, Ouija board sessions, crystal gazing experiments, and automatic writing sessions in an attempt to communicate with the spirits. The investigators meticulously documented their findings, which were later compiled into the book The Alleged Haunting of B--- House (1900), co-edited by Freer and Lord Bute.
Despite the rigorous documentation, the investigation’s results were far from conclusive. Freer and Bute reported a wide range of audible phenomena, including footsteps, groans, crashes, and even voices. However, they refrained from drawing any firm conclusions, with. Freer stating, "The house at B--- was taken not for the establishment of theories, but for the record of facts." What was intended to be an objective scientific investigation would soon be marred by controversy and accusations of fraud.
The Times Article and Public Scandal
On June 8, 1897, an article titled "On the Trail of a Ghost" appeared in The Times, written by an unnamed correspondent who had stayed briefly at Ballechin House. The article was scathing in its dismissal of the investigation, criticising both Freer and the SPR for what the author called "perfunctory and absurd" methods. The correspondent sarcastically noted that while it was wise for Lord Bute to extend the investigation over several months, it was a grave error to appoint Freer as the lead investigator. The reason? "Simply because she is a lady, and because she had her duties as hostess to attend to, she is unfit to carry out the actual work of investigating the phenomena in question."
The writer attributed the various manifestations reported at Ballechin to natural causes: creaky pipes, rats, and even pranks played by guests. He reserved special ire for the SPR, accusing them of relying on "unsifted gossip" and employing investigative methods that would be "contemptible in Bedlam itself."
This critique sent shockwaves through the psychical research community and ignited a public debate about the validity of ghost hunting, the role of women in such investigations, and the reliability of the SPR itself. Over the next few weeks, The Times published a flood of letters from various participants and observers of the Ballechin investigation, each offering their own perspective on the matter.
Ada Goodrich-Freer Responds
Freer, writing under her pseudonym "X," responded swiftly to the accusations in The Times on June 9, 1897. She defended the investigation and rebuked the anonymous correspondent for revealing the name of the house, which had been omitted to protect the privacy of those involved. Freer asserted that the investigation had been conducted with the utmost professionalism and that the criticisms levelled against her were both unfounded and sexist.
In a letter published on June 12, another visitor to Ballechin echoed the correspondent’s scepticism, attributing the phenomena to hallucinations, earth tremors, and the natural creaking of the old house. The writer dismissed any possibility of supernatural activity, arguing that the house’s proximity to Comrie, Scotland’s centre of seismic disturbance, could explain many of the strange occurrences.
The debate raged on, with further letters from the owner of Ballechin House, J.M.S. Steuart, who expressed dismay that his home had been turned into a ghost-hunting laboratory. In a letter published on June 14, Steuart stated that he never would have rented the house to Lord Bute had he known the true purpose of the investigation.
The Fall of Ada Goodrich-Freer
By mid-June, the SPR found itself in full damage-control mode. On June 15, the society’s secretary, Frederic Myers, wrote to The Times defending the SPR’s methods and attempting to distance the organisation from the Ballechin debacle. Myers acknowledged that the investigation had failed to produce any conclusive evidence and stated that the society had no plans to publish the findings in their official proceedings.
Privately, Myers and other SPR leaders were growing increasingly disillusioned with Freer. The investigation had attracted too much negative publicity, and Freer’s leadership was now seen as a liability. Accusations of fraud began to surface, with some members of the SPR claiming that Freer had exaggerated or fabricated some of the phenomena. In one particularly damning letter, Freer was accused of planting false evidence to support the existence of hauntings at Ballechin.
Freer’s relationship with the SPR deteriorated rapidly. By the end of 1897, she was effectively ostracised from the organisation, her reputation in tatters. Lord Bute, who had supported Freer throughout the investigation, passed away in 1900, leaving her without one of her most powerful allies.
Though she continued to write about the paranormal and maintained a small following of loyal supporters, Freer’s fall from grace marked the beginning of the end for her career as a respected ghost hunter. The Ballechin affair remained a stain on her legacy, and the controversy surrounding the investigation ultimately contributed to the SPR’s growing scepticism toward its own members and methodologies.
The End of Ballechin House
The house itself did not escape its own grim fate. After standing uninhabited for many years, Ballechin House was largely demolished in 1963 following a devastating fire. Only the servants' quarters and outbuildings remained. The legends of hauntings continued to swirl around the property, but with no physical house left to investigate, interest in the paranormal activities at Ballechin began to fade.
Despite the controversies and accusations, the Ballechin investigation remains a pivotal moment in the history of ghost hunting. It highlights not only the complexities of studying the supernatural but also the societal tensions that existed around gender, science, and belief. While Ada Goodrich-Freer’s reputation may have been tarnished, her work at Ballechin serves as a reminder that the pursuit of the unknown often comes with significant personal and professional risks.
In the end, the haunting of Ballechin House may not have yielded conclusive evidence of ghosts, but it exposed the ghosts of human ambition, rivalry, and hubris—spectres that continue to haunt the field of paranormal research to this day.
For other examination of cases by the Society for Psychical Research make sure to listen to the episode featuring John Fraser here: https://www.podpage.com/haunted-history-chronicles/investigating-the-unknown-john-frasers-research-into-a-single-paranormal-source/
