The Phantom Funerals of Resolis

Older residents of the Black Isle with the Second Sight reported watching silent funeral processions march toward Kirkmichael graveyard days before anyone had actually died.

Kirkmichael burial ground, in the parish of Resolis on the Black Isle, has been in continuous use from medieval times into the present day, and sits at the centre of a piece of Highland second-sight tradition specific to this stretch of coast. Taibhsearachd — the Second Sight — is a well-documented strand of Highland folk belief: certain individuals, usually described as inheriting rather than choosing the ability, were said to perceive events before they happened, most often deaths. In the Black Isle telling, this took a specific and recurring form. Older residents who possessed the sight reported seeing funeral processions moving silently along the roads toward Kirkmichael, complete in every visible respect to a real funeral, at a time when no one in the district had died and no funeral was actually taking place. The vision was read as an omen rather than a haunting: a warning, sometimes days in advance, that a genuine funeral to that same graveyard was coming. Family accounts of these sightings were passed down through generations in the district, part of the same broader Highland tradition of second-sight death-warnings recorded elsewhere in Gaelic Scotland, but tied here specifically to the road and the graveyard at Kirkmichael. Kirkmichael today is maintained by the Kirkmichael Trust, its older stones and restored chapel drawing genealogists and local historians rather than ghost-hunters — the phantom funerals remembered now mostly as a piece of family oral history rather than an active local legend.

Folklore Disclaimer: These accounts are drawn from local tradition, oral history, and community memory. They are not presented as factual claims.

Location accuracy: Approximate. Coordinates indicate the general area.