In Sharpe's account she was a Frenchwoman, perhaps a sister of charity, whom Mr Stuart, later the first baronet of Allanbank, met in Paris. As he was leaving in his coach she appeared, stepped on the fore wheel to speak to him and, when he ordered the driver on, fell, and a wheel passed over her forehead. On a dusky autumn evening when Stuart drove under the arched gateway of Allanbank, he saw Pearlin Jean sitting on top of it, her head and shoulders covered in blood.
After that, for many years, doors opened and shut at midnight and the rustle of silks and pattering of high heeled shoes were heard in bedrooms and passages. Sharpe's old nurse said seven ministers were called in together to lay the spirit, but they did not do much good. Her portrait was hung between those of her lover and his wife, which kept her comparatively quiet, and she grew worse when it was taken away. She was named from the pearlin lace she always wore. Thomas Blackadder, in the nurse's courting days, saw a female figure in a light dress in the orchard that vanished and reappeared farther off. About 1790 two ladies who knew nothing of the ghost were disturbed all night by something walking to and fro in their room. A later housekeeper, Betty Norrie, said she and others often saw Pearlin Jean and were used to the noises.
The Langs add that the ghost was said to have haunted the house until it was pulled down early in the nineteenth century, and that an old woman asked where Pearlin Jean would go when the house was demolished. They also give a second, less known version in which the last baronet of Allanbank was ruined and sold up, and a room where Jean had lived was left undisturbed for two generations, with servants unwilling to enter it alone for fear of seeing her wraith. Allanbank House is gone, so the pin is placed at Allanton and is approximate.
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