The Provost’s Ghost

The Ghost of Provost Alexander Douglas,
murdered in 1663

The storyteller tells a story...

History told as a story



They say ghosts walk for a reason. Some injustice binds them to the earth—an unpunished crime, a stolen legacy, a name erased. So it was with Provost Alexander Douglas of Banff, a man whose murder was never solved and whose tomb was taken from his grave.

Douglas was no ordinary civic figure. A physician by trade and a staunch Covenanter by conviction, he played a decisive role in the turbulent politics of 17th-century Scotland. During the 1640s, he served as Provost of Banff and represented the town in Parliament. He was said to have welcomed General Munro’s Covenanting army into Banff, where they laid waste to the Ogilvies’ mansion—no surprise, as Douglas and the Ogilvies were bitter enemies. In retaliation, King Charles I elevated George Ogilvie to Lord Banff, though the Royalist army later sacked the town as well. The war ended in defeat for the Royalists, and Douglas remained a prominent figure in Banff’s civic life.

In 1658, he erected a monument at the gate of St Mary’s Kirkyard, and likely commissioned his own tomb—a grand affair: a knight in armour beneath a sculpted arch, a fitting tribute to a man of conviction.

But the Restoration changed everything. In 1660, Charles II returned to the throne, and Covenanters like Douglas found themselves out of favour. In October 1663, as Sheriff of Banff, Douglas was leaving the courthouse when he was stabbed by a man selling peat. The killer fled on his pony up Strait Path and vanished. He was never caught. Some whispered that the new authorities had little interest in justice.

A century passed. The second Earl Fife, eager to bolster his family’s claim to noble lineage, sought a tomb that would suggest medieval grandeur. One night, under cover of darkness, his men removed Douglas’s tomb from the old kirk and installed it behind the Fife Mausoleum, concealing the original inscription. The Provost’s name was buried—but not his presence.

Soon after, strange things began to happen. George Imlach, writing in the early 1800s, recounted odd disturbances around the mausoleum. “I made Lord Fife’s people believe,” he wrote, “that the Provost’s ghost turned the vase—an urn full of monkish bones—into the river.”

Two centuries have passed since that tale was told, but the warning remains.

Do not visit the Fife Mausoleum at night.

The Provost still walks, searching for justice, or perhaps simply for his name.

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