Photo cc C Page Mort House, Old Boleskine Churchyard
they were shutting off the light. It was a comforting situation. There could be no doubt of the efficiency of the operation.” Tales of devilish and mysterious goings on spread out from the Boleskine Estate striking fear into the hearts of the neighbouring villagers of Foyers and the tough hard drinking Glasgow labourers then toiling off the quarter-mile stretch of road running past the estate. No doubt fuelled by Crowley’s occult practices spilling out into his quarter acre garden where he offered animal sacrifices to the Devil as he and his co-believers prostrated themselves on grass, surrounded by burning snakes and prayed to the “Supreme and Holy Directors of Sorcery and Black Magic.” Just in case the villagers weren’t worried enough Crowley brought a roaming pack of bloodhounds but, according to ‘The High Priest of Satan”, it was the ‘forces’ not the
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dogs who brought forth the most chaos. “One of my employees, who had not touched alcohol for 20 years, suddenly got drunk and tried to murder his wife and children.” wrote Crowley. “Then, one summer, half of my bloodhound pack died. Besides my servants were always taking ill.” Crowley left for England in 1903 and sold the Boleskine Estate in 1913. However, long after Crowley himself was dead and buried the ‘Curse of Crowley’ at Boleskine House has been attributed to numerous deaths and strange goings on. In November 1960 Major Edward Grant, the then owner of the Boleskine Estate, killed himself with a shotgun in the downstairs bedroom of Beleskine House. Soon afterwards a newlywed couple moved in and it’s said the wife
was blind. After just a month the husband walked out leaving his wife wandering around in her darkness. Interest in Crowley is such that even these troubled events didn’t sway Led Zepplin guitarist Jimmy Page, a self confessed Crowley enthusiast, who owned the Boleskine Estate from the early 70s well into the 80s. Page did a lot to restore the house to the way it was in Crowley’s time although the musician spent little time living there himself. “The house was owned by Aleister Crowley but there were two or three owners before Crowley moved into it. It was also a church that was burned to the ground with the congregation in it and that’s the site of the house,” said Jimmy Page, in a 1975 interview. “Strange things have happened in that house which have nothing to do with Crowley. The bad vibes were already there. A man was beheaded there and sometimes you can hear