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Crocketford

It was at Crocketford that the sorry tale of Elspeth Buchan, who founded a religious sect called the Buchanites, came to a macabre end. Part of the sect’s beliefs was that Elspeth was immortal, and that she could bestow immortality on others by breathing on them. After having been driven out of Irvine, she and her followers headed south towards Dumfriesshire and settled there. Alas, Elspeth disappointed her followers by dying a natural death, and the sect broke up.

But one man, who lived in Crocketford, still believed in her immortality, and that she would rise from the dead. He therefore acquired her body and kept it in a cupboard at the top of the stairs in his cottage, where it gradually mummified. Eventually he built an extension to the cottage, on the other side of the wall from the fireplace, and kept the corpse there. He even had a small opening cut through the wall so that he could examine the corpse every day to see if it had come alive again. Of course it didn’t, but this never shook his belief in her resurrection, and the body remained in the cottage with him until his own death.