author
William Ogilvie
1688–1729
A Scottish minister remembered for one of the strangest little works of eighteenth-century supernatural writing, he is best known for the ghost tale linked to Innerwick and the laird of Cool. Though biographical details are scarce, his surviving work gives him a lasting place in the folklore edge of early print culture.
1 Audiobook
The Laird o' Coul's Ghost
by William Ogilvie
About the author
William Ogilvie was a Scottish clergyman, usually dated 1688 or 1689 to 1729, and associated with Innerwick in East Lothian. Modern catalog and library records consistently identify him as the minister behind The Laird of Cool's Ghost or closely related editions of the same story, a work presented as a series of conversations with the ghost of Mr. Maxwell, laird of Cool.
What makes Ogilvie notable today is less a large body of writing than this single, memorable survival. The piece belongs to the lively world of early modern chapbooks and supernatural narratives, where religious belief, local rumor, and storytelling easily mixed. Because the work continued to be reprinted long after his death, his name has remained visible to readers interested in Scottish folklore, ghost stories, and the stranger corners of eighteenth-century print.
Reliable biographical information beyond those basics appears limited in the sources available online, so it is safest to treat him as an obscure but intriguing historical author whose reputation rests mainly on that eerie and much-reprinted text.