Hundeprest of Melrose

At Melrose Abbey in the Scottish Borders, William of Newburgh tells, there died a priest so given to hunting and worldly pleasure that the local people nicknamed him the 'Hundeprest' — the dog-priest. After his death his corpse would not rest: by night it tried to force its way into the abbey cloister where he had been so unworthy in life and, repulsed there, went to groan horribly outside the bedchamber of a noblewoman he had once served.

One of the abbey's monks, with three companions, kept watch by the grave through a bitter winter's night. When the revenant rose, the monk struck it a great blow with a battle-axe; the creature fled back to its tomb, which seemed to open to receive it. In the morning they dug it up, found the very wound the axe had made, and burned the body, scattering the ashes. The Hundeprest is among the most vivid of the medieval Scottish revenant accounts — a cautionary tale of a churchman whose corruption followed him beyond the grave.