The ghost of Sergeant Davies

Macpherson, staying in a shepherds' summer hut, said the ghost of Sergeant Davies, killed at Braemar in 1749, pressed him to bury its bones and named two Highlanders as its killers. The two men were tried for the murder.

Andrew Lang, in The Book of Dreams and Ghosts, quotes Macpherson's own statement. Macpherson was staying in a sheiling, a shepherds' summer hut up in the hills, when the ghost of Sergeant Davies began pressing him to bury its bones. He refused, so the ghost told him to go to Donald Farquharson instead. Farquharson did not believe it until Macpherson offered to show him the bones. He went along in the end, reasoning that if the story were true the ghost might start on him next.

The published record of the trial, edited by Walter Scott, spells the sergeant's name Davis and calls him a huntsman. It spells Macpherson as M'Pherson, and says he told several people that the spirit had named two Highlanders from the district as its killers, Duncan Terig, also called Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald. Other evidence built up, including a witness who said that he and a second man, since dead, had been hiding on the hill of Christie and saw the killing. The two men were tried for the murder.

An Litir Bheag, published by LearnGaelic, gives the sergeant's full name as Arthur Davies and says he was murdered in Braemar in 1749. It says his ghost appeared nine months after his death to a shepherd, Alasdair Mac a' Phearsain, the Gaelic form of Alexander Macpherson.