This site is at Melgarve, just before the track of General Wade’s Military Road heads into the mountains proper, and over the Corrieyairack Pass. The little index card you can see on Trove.scot describes it as a squarish tapering granite block 0.8m high, with another similar lying beside it (supposedly one stone broken in two).
“This stone... is traditionally said to mark the grave of an Irishman called Cathelus, who ran off with Cluny MacPherson’s daughter and was murdered on this spot about 200 years ago” (meaning about 200 years before 1870 when this was recorded in the name book). Confusingly it was also called ‘Uamh Clach Chathail’ where uamh means ‘cave’, but “although there is no recorded cave associated with the stone, there is one traditionally associated with Cathelus in Creag Chathalain at NN496946.” Your sense of Christian morality will be relieved by the note: “According to MacAskill, the body was later removed from this spot and buried in sanctified ground.” But it’s likely a prehistoric standing stone, of course.
I found a story connected with the area (if not the stone) which I am appending for Highland Atmosphere. It’s from a letter to The Scots Magazine, 1st September 1975.
Dear Sir, – For those of your readers who are interested in the supernatural I would like to relate an experience that my parents had which could well be in the nature of the occult. This was many years ago now – I would place the date about 1898.... Both my parents were great walkers, and on one occasion decided to walk to Fort Augustus by General Wade’s old military road... I take it that they went from Laggan via Crathie and Garva Bridge and on to Melgarve, Corrieyairack Pass and down Glen Tarff to Fort Augustus. This was no mean walk, even on a summer’s day with long daylight. I would say that the distance was all of 20 miles. I gather that all went well until they were well through Corrieyairack, when the mist came down, restricting visibility to a few yards. The track here was not at all clear, and they had wandered off it. Suddenly, out of the mist strode a tall, kilted and plaided Highlander, accompanied by two magnificent deer-hounds. Approaching them, he said, “Your road to Fort August lies this way,” leading them through the mist to the track. Not another word was spoken, and then he and his hounds walked off into the thick mist. While walking to the proper route, my mother made a fuss of the two beautiful dogs, talking to them, and the hounds seemed to appreciate her advances and responded with the usual signs of pleasure.
A point of interest arises here. Although the hounds were very obvious, my father never saw them, and asked her who she was talking to. She was more than surprised that he had not seen them, especially since they were in front when the Highlander appeared out of the mist. They were too delighted to have got help in such a lonely place to bother any more about the matter at the time. At the hotel that night... one man, a guest in the hotel, was interested in their walk and jokingly asked them if, while in Corrieyairack, they had seen the famous kilted ghost. Somewhat reluctantly my parents told the whole story. Neither my father or mother had any foreknowledge of the ghost legend.... My mother’s reaction was that, if all ghosts were like this one, she wouldn’t mind meeting one again... J. Alastair Faed, Elphin, Sutherland.
