As might be expected, the island of Iona figures in many stories of strange sightings and experiences. Inside the Abbey itself, ghostly chanting of monks has been heard, and the monks themselves, or, rather, their centuries-old spirits, have been seen in slow procession in the vicinity of the Abbey. One woman has recorded her sighting of a monk: ‘I saw him clearly with mental vision - so vividly that I’d know him at once if I saw him again. Very gentle and benign he was. He wore a brownish robe, and a hempen rope round his waist; and there was a halo round his head,’

On another occasion, a man was walking over a part of the island which he knew like the back of his hand. As he walked, however, he became slowly aware that the scene before his eyes was strange and one which he failed to recognise. In a growing state of confusion he walked over to the White Sands. No sooner had he arrived when he noticed a fleet of Viking longboats emerge from behind a small islet, Eilean Annraidh, ‘fourteen long, thin boats with high stems.’ As he continued to look at this uncanny sight, he saw the boats land on the shore. Out of these leapt armed men who fell on a group of monks nearby. These they quickly dispatched before making off in the direction of the Abbey. Shortly afterwards, still seeming to be fixed in a time long past, the onlooker saw the returning men loaded with booty boarding their ships and push off from the White Sands.

As his time-slip brought him back to his own time and hour he found he could recall some of the emblems which he had seen emblazoned on the longboats’ square sails. These were later verified by authorities as belonging to the late tenth century.

Another person who has witness to a similar occurrence on Iona was the late F.C.B. Cadell, the Scottish artist. A year or so before he died in 1938 he was painting near the Hermit’s Cell when he found himself surrounded by fighting men of an obvious ghostly nature. The vision so disturbed him that he packed up his easel and paints and left the spot. He recorded later that he was puzzled by the fact that the knees of the warriors were on the level of the ground. This point could be explained in that during the intervening centuries the ground level might well have risen a foot or so.