GHOSTS & HAUNTINGS · UK HISTORICAL CASE
Location: Glenluce area, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland
Period: Mid-1650s disturbances; accounts recorded in 1661, 1672 and 1685
A weaver’s threads are cut, stones enter the house and a voice disputes scripture with visiting ministers. The Devil of Glenluce is one of Scotland’s most elaborate household-disturbance narratives, but it also has a traceable publishing history. George Sinclair expanded an earlier account, while a 1661 letter shows the story already circulating before his famous collection appeared.
A working household at the centre of the trouble
Sinclair identifies the householder as Gilbert Campbell, a weaver in the old parish of Glenluce. His account names Campbell’s wife as Grisel Wyllie and refers to several children. A son studying philosophy at Glasgow supplies information. Thomas, usually called Tom, becomes a particular focus of the disturbances, while Janet is associated with an early episode at the well.
The opening connects the trouble with a threatening beggar, Alexander Agnew, disappointed with the alms he has received. That connection belongs to the narrator’s explanation of the haunting. It does not establish that Agnew caused later events. Sinclair’s religious purpose is overt: he presents the material as an argument against disbelief in spirits, which helps explain why theological exchanges occupy so much of the chapter.
Whistling, stones and damage to the loom
The first noises include whistling inside and outside the house. When Janet fetches water, the sound follows her. After she challenges it to speak, a voice allegedly threatens to throw her into the well. Sinclair says the voice resembles her own, a detail more distinctive than the general idea of disembodied speech.
The disturbances then affect both home and livelihood. Stones are said to enter through doors, windows and the chimney. The weaver finds warp and thread cut as though with scissors; clothes are similarly damaged. Bedclothes are pulled away, trunks opened and equipment hidden in recesses. Campbell moves possessions to a neighbour’s house and cannot continue his trade normally. In the narrative, the losses are practical and cumulative, not simply frightening noises in an unused room.
Sending the children away does not settle it
Neighbours advise Campbell to distribute his children among other households to see whether the activity follows one of them. After a short quieter period, Tom’s return is followed by renewed trouble. Fires are reported, with neighbours helping to extinguish them. Campbell asks the minister to take the boy into his own house.
Sinclair’s account does not allow a simple conclusion that removing Tom ends everything. Those who remain are still troubled. Ministers urge that the boy be brought home, while a voice allegedly warns him away from the house or places where his father works. This tension—between an apparent association with a child and continuing activity in his absence—is part of the source, and should remain visible in a modern retelling.
The night of the speaking voice
A central episode is dated Monday, 12 February, followed by a visit from the minister and local company. Sinclair lists gentlemen, a woman called Mrs Douglas and the minister’s wife among those present. A voice seems to speak from beneath a bed. Some visitors search and wonder whether it is coming from the children. The text therefore preserves a proposed human source inside its own narrative, not only the compiler’s spiritual interpretation.
Much of the ensuing conversation consists of scriptural challenge and response. The voice claims authority to vex the family; the minister distinguishes permission from commission and rejects its claim. When it begins naming supposed witches, the minister refuses to accept the information. That refusal is significant in a story otherwise steeped in seventeenth-century demonology: the voice’s accusations are not presented as a trustworthy list of guilty neighbours.
Other details make the scene intensely domestic. A broad-brimmed hat becomes the target of a threat to cut it down. Children continue their activities. The voice asks for oatcake and demands that a candle be extinguished. A hand and forearm are reportedly seen striking the floor. These are accounts within Sinclair’s compilation, not new observations by UKPX or a verbatim recording of the room.
Prayer, a synod and an uneven ending
The minister eventually instructs the family not to answer the voice, but to pray when it speaks. Later visitors agree not to use formulas of conjuration or engage it in conversation. The account gives prayer periods without disturbance, followed by renewed whistling or losses after the company leaves. It does not describe one simple ceremony that instantly and permanently closes the case.
Campbell seeks advice from the synod in October 1655 about whether to abandon the house. A committee is to meet at Glenluce in February 1656, and a wider day of religious observance is arranged. Sinclair then describes respite, renewed assaults on food, further night-time disturbances and a threatened fire. His conclusion says Campbell lived on in the same house and eventually had peace, but admits uncertainty about how the final removal was achieved.
An earlier letter and the later enlarged chapter
Historian Mark Jardine reproduces Robert Baillie’s letter of 31 January 1661. It describes a weaver’s household in Glenluce being troubled for two or three years, ministers holding prayer meetings, cut cloth, stones and fires. It calls the householder John Campbell rather than Gilbert, and says the activity has been quiet for about a year. The discrepancy should be retained as a feature of transmission, rather than quietly harmonised.
Sinclair says he printed the story in his Hydrostaticks in 1672 and that it was subsequently copied into Saducismus Triumphatus. His 1685 chapter is expressly an enlarged version with additional material. Those publications are connected stages in one source trail, not three independent investigations. The map marks the Glenluce locality because the precise Campbell house has not been established for this file; the village photograph is context, not an image of the haunted dwelling.
Timeline
Mid-1650s — period of the household disturbances described by the surviving accounts.
October 1655 — Campbell’s request for synod advice, according to Sinclair.
February 1656 — committee and religious response described in the expanded account.
31 January 1661 — Baillie’s letter records the already familiar Galloway story.
1672 — Sinclair publishes a version in Hydrostaticks.
1685 — Satan’s Invisible World Discovered prints the enlarged chapter.
Sources and further reading
George Sinclair and Robert Baillie: primary texts reproduced by Mark Jardine
Includes the 1685 Glenluce chapter and Baillie’s 1661 letter, with historical commentary. The seventeenth-century texts are public domain.
Robert Baillie, Letters and Journals, volume III, page 436
Archive reference for the 31 January 1661 letter; the wording used here was read in Jardine’s transcription.
Location note
Broad Glenluce village/parish area. The Campbell house has not been securely located; this pin does not identify a present-day private home.
Map location source · Checked 4 November 2026.
Related cases
Rerrick, 1695: Andrew Mackie’s household, the flying stones and Telfair’s nightly record