THE WORMWOOD FILES: The Dark Prophet of Brahan

Investigation By Dr. Abner Mality

In the annals of prophecy, it seems that Nostradamus gets all the publicity. The books, articles and films inspired by the French prophet could easily fill a library (in fact, Judas Priest is preparing a double album devoted to his exploits). But Nostradamus is by no means the only prophet who foresaw the future with uncanny accuracy. In the rustic Highlands of 17th century Scotland, a man named Kenneth Odhar foretold future events with such accuracy that it would be hard for the most skeptical scientist to dispute his gifts of prophecy.

Prophets and soothsayers are no strangers to Scotland. They have been held in reverence there since the days of the pagans and even inthe present day, one may still find certain village elders respected for their mystic abilities. In the native tongue, these individuals are called taibhsear, which we would translate as "seer". Kenneth Odhar was one such indivudal, known as the Brahan Seer, and he remains the best known prophet of the Highlands.

He was born as Coinneach Odhar (the Gaelic first name was translated to Kenneth) on the remote Isle of Lewis in 1600, the son of a poor crofter family. His youth was unremarkable, but at some point in his teenage years, he acquired the power to see the future. Legends have it that he received a magic stone from "the fairy folk" or the ghost of a Queen buried in a nearby graveyard. Acquiring the "second sight" apparently cost Kenneth vision in one of his eyes, because he was described afterwards as having a perpetual squint and poor eyesight.

Many of Odhar's early predictions are lost to us, but eventually news of his power came to Lord Mackenzie of Kintail, the powerful overlord of Brahan. Mackenzie sent for Kenneth to test his gifts of prophecy. The Seer then went to live at Brahan, but Lord Mackenzie soon died, to be succeeded by Kenneth, Third Earl of Seaforth. It would be the Seaforth clan that would bring doom to Kenneth Odhar...and in turn, be doomed by him.

Kenneth Odhar was not a cheerful fellow and most of his prophecies foretold death and disaster for those around him. He would often look at an individual and reveal how that person would die or come to ruin. Many of his prophecies made no sense at the time he made them, because they saw events decades, if not hundreds of years into the future. Some of Odhar's prophecies are still coming true today.

An example of his ability to see a person's death came when an old Scotsman named Duncan Macrae asked Kenneth if he could see how he would die. Odhar told him immediately that he would be struck down by an enemy's sword. Things were peaceful at the time and Macrae was known as a mild-mannered man, so the prophecy was disbelieved. Several years later, though, Macrae encountered a troop of British soldiers who had been sent to enforce order in the Highlands. The soldiers brusquely asked Macrae in English what his business was. Speaking only Gaelic and startled by the sight of the hated Englishmen, Macrae put his hand on the hilt of his sword...and was cut down by an overzealous soldier. The Brahan Seer's prophecy had come to pass.

Odhar would often make cryptic pronouncements out of the blue that no one could understand. One of the most amazing was his prediction that a woman named Annabelle MacKenzie would one day die of measles in the village of Baile Mhuilinn. There was no such woman in the village during Odhar's lifetime. But in 1860, an old woman named Annabelle Mackenzie did indeed die of measles in the village. The event would seem to be insignificant to anybody but Annabelle Mackenzie's family, yet Odhar foresaw it more than 150 years before it happened. This was the sort of prophecy that cements Kenneth Odhar's reputation as one of the great prophets...foretelling events in the far future with uncanny accuracy.

The Brahan Seer could also foresee major turning points in history. One day while walking across a bleak and lonely moor, he made this famous pronouncement: "Oh, Drummossie, thy bleak moor shall, ere many generations have passed away, be stained with the best blood of the Highlands! Glad am I that I will not see that day. Heads will be lopped off by score and no mercy shall be shown!" One hundred and sixteen years later, the bloody Battle of Culloden was fought on Drummossie Moor...a devastating massacre that destroyed any hopes of Scottish independence from the British Empire.

He also foresaw another disaster for the native Scotch when he said that sheep shall supplant men and Scotsmen would "head south" and emigrate to all corners of the world and leave their home behind. In the 18th century, the Highlands were drastically depopulated when the British ordered that giant sheep farms be established, ending the small "crofts" that had been the standard of rural Scotland for centuries. The "clearances" led to many Scotsmen emigrating to America, Canada and Australia.

Sometimes inanimate objects and buildings would initiate a prophecy. A huge stone monolith known as the "Stone of Petty" had marked the boundary of Culloden for centuries. Odhar said that one day the Stone would be torn from its long-time home and be transferred to the waters of Petty Bay almost 300 yards from where it was. People wondered how such a massive bulk could be moved and why it should be. In 1799, long after Odhar's death, a terrific storm struck the area. The day after the storm, the Stone of Petty was found in the Bay. To this day, no one is sure how the Stone was moved. Even howling winds would not be able to move a rock weighing many tons and surely the people of Culloden had no cause to move the Stone.

Like Nostradamus, the Seer could see general events of the far future which he could not understand but which he attempted to explain in his own fashion. One of these predictions involved "strings of black carriages without horse or bridle" that would move across the Highlands following a "chariot of fire". Surely this is an accurate description of the arrival of the locomotive to remote Scotland.

All of these prophecies are fascinating and uncannily accurate. Many of Kenneth Odhar's prophecies are of times yet to come, such as days when "horrible black rain" would fall from the sky. This may refer to radioactive fallout of some kind or perhaps a disaster in the North Sea oil fields near Scotland. But the greatest of the Brahan Seer's prophecies was the horrible doom that he foretold for the house that had protected him and which would soon kill him...the Seaforth Family.

Odhar could apparently not see his own grisly end but he saw the demise of those who killed him with amazing accuracy. The Doom of the Seaforths is one of the bloodiest and more chilling tales to come from Scotland, a land haunted by gory deeds and supernatural terrors.

Kenneth Seaforth, the powerful patron of the Seaforth clan, was married to Isabella Mackenzie of the equally great Mackenzie family. Kenneth Seaforth was a close friend of King Charles II and was sent by Charles to Paris on a diplomatic mission. This mission kept Seaforth out of contact with his wife for many weeks. Isabella asked Odhar what her husband was doing and the Seer's answer was blunt as usual: the Earl of Seaforth was "on his knees before a fair lady".

Isabella went into a towering rage and ordered Odhar to be boiled in tar for revealing her husband's unfaithfulness. The Seer was shocked by the lady's brutal decision and further dismayed when the order of execution was upheld. Just before Kenneth Odhar went to meet his horrible fate, he uttered a terrible prophecy that also functioned as a devastating curse. It was a prophecy that would be fulfilled centuries later in every detail.

"I see far into the future and I read the doom of the race of my oppressor. The long-descended line of Seaforth will, ere many generations have passed, end in extinction and sorrow..."

He said the last head of the Seaforth clan would be both deaf and dumb and that he would have four young sons who would all precede him in death. One of them would die in battle upon the water. His white-hooded daughter would be responsible for her own sisters death, bringing an end to the entire Seaforth family.

He further stated that the truth of his prophecy would be known because four great lords...Gairloch, Chisholm, Raasay and Grant...would be in power during the days of the last of the Seaforths. One would be buck-toothed, one would be half-witted, one would have a harelip and one would be a stutterer. Another lord, this time Lord Tulloch, would kill four of his wives but would be outlived by the fifth and the last. All of these things Odhar foretold before being boiled in tar.

For many years, it looked like the prophecy would not unfold. The fortunes of the Seaforth clan waxed and waned, but by the end of the 18th century, they were at the height of their power. Lord Francis Humberstone Mackenzie was a man of tremendous power and influence, with six daughters and four sons. He was a General in the British Army and a former governor of the island of Barbados. On the surface, Lord Francis was on top of the world.

But when he was 12 years old, he had suffered a bout of scarlet fever which left him completely deaf. As the years wore on, he gradually lost the power of speech, until he was only able to communicate by signing. Odhar's prophecy was beginning to come true.

Francis' family felt the brunt of the curse.Two of his sons died at a very young age. The third son died at sea as foretold...he was a sailor in the Royal Navy whose ship was sunk in battle with the French Fleet. The fourth son was William, who went on to have a successful political career. Yet he,too, died suddenly, preceding his father in death. One year after William's passing, Francis Mackenzie, last of the Seaforth chieftains, followed him in death.

By now, the once-obscure words of Kenneth Odhar were keenly scrutinized by the public. At Francis' funeral were these mourners: the buck-toothed Hector Mackenzie of Gairloch, the mentally retarded Laird Grant of the Grant Clan, the stuttering Laird Macleod of Raasay and finally, the hare-lipped Laird Chisolm of the Chisholm clan. Exactly as foretold. Duncan Davidson, the Laird of Tulloch, also attended Francis' funeral, but he had not quite fit his part of the prophecy yet. Many years later, though, he had outlived four of his wives, yet was to be outlived by his fifth and final wife.

And what of the last Seaforth daughter? Several years after Francis' demise, with all male heirs of the Seaforth line dead, his oldest daughter Mary returned home to Scotland from India. She had married Sir Samuel Hood, who had passed away. With Hood's passing, Mary was to take over the estate. Wearing a traditional white hood of mourning, just as Odhar had foreseen, she was driving a carriage to Brahan Castle with her sister Caroline as a passenger. The horses inexplicably panicked and the carriage crashed, killing Caroline instantly but leaving Mary alive.

The Doom of the Seaforths was complete and no survivors came forth to continue the family line. Kenneth Odhar's grim prophecy had come true in every detail.

Today, descendents of the Brahan Seer still live in the rough hills of Scotland and are viewed with great respect. His dark but amazingly accurate prophecies stand as virtually irrefutable evidence that there are those with the power to see the future. Many of Odhar's prophecies have yet to pass. Considering that many others have indeed transpired, it would foolish to disregard those foretellings...

This is Dr. Abner Mality, turning out the lights...