Strangled and Burnt Outside: the Haunted Aberdeen Tolbooth

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 25, 2026 · How we verify

Reputations are usually built on stories. The haunted Aberdeen Tolbooth has something rarer behind it: a documented record of executions, witch trials and transported children, all attached to a working town house on one of the busiest streets in the north east of Scotland. The building is a 17th-century former gaol, now run as a museum, and it keeps its cells, its barred doors and the city’s guillotine on public display.

A Gaol Built Between 1616 and 1629

The tolbooth is considered one of the oldest buildings in Aberdeen. It was built between 1616 and 1629 and is attached to Aberdeen Town House on Union Street, in the middle of the city centre. In 1686 a market cross was raised in front of it. That cross was restored in 1821 and moved to its present site in 1827, so the ground outside the tolbooth looked rather different when crowds gathered there.

The building also held one of the earliest public clocks in the country, built by J. Gartley of Aberdeen in 1816.

Marion Hardie and the Aberdeen Witch Trials

Aberdeen commissioned its first guillotine in the mid-16th century for executing criminals at the tolbooth, and that device is still in the museum for visitors to see. Around 1630, Marion Hardie of Elgin was arrested for practising witchcraft, imprisoned in the tolbooth, and then strangled and burnt in front of the public outside the building.

She was not alone. By 1703 witchcraft was no longer a crime, but by that point many of the 45 women and 2 men accused of it in the area had already been executed. Whatever a visitor makes of the ghost stories, this part of the tolbooth’s history is a matter of record rather than folklore.

Jacobite Prisoners and the Children Shipped Out of Aberdeen

During the Jacobite rising of 1715, local people declared their support for James Francis Edward Stuart as the true King of Scotland in front of the tolbooth. After the rising of 1745 and the defeat at the Battle of Culloden, the building held more than 96 Jacobite prisoners while they waited for trial.

A darker chapter followed in the 18th century, when Aberdeen merchants and magistrates imprisoned many local children in the tolbooth and other buildings in the city before transporting them to America to work as slaves. They were supposed to have been street children with nobody looking after them, although some were said to have been snatched while out playing.

What the Most Haunted Team Found, and What the Sources Do Not Say

Aberdeen City Council took over the former gaol and opened it to the public in 1995. In April 2009 a paranormal investigation team visited as part of the Most Haunted television series, and the episode aired in December 2009. That programme is the reason the tolbooth turns up on lists of haunted Scottish buildings at all.

It is worth being blunt here. The available record confirms that the building has been used as the setting for a ghostlore story on television, but it does not set out named witnesses, dated encounters or a catalogue of specific phenomena. Anyone arriving expecting a well documented resident ghost with a name and a routine will not find one in the history. What the tolbooth does have is a genuinely grim past, which is usually where reputations like this begin.

Seeing the Cells and the Jacobite Cell

The museum is open to the public and holds prison cells with their original barred windows and doors, alongside police and law and order exhibits. The guillotine used to execute convicted prisoners is displayed for visitors to view.

The best known room is the Jacobite cell, where an interactive model of Willie Baird, a prisoner here in 1746, sits beside his compatriots James Innes and Alexander Annand and talks about his life while they await trial and sentencing. The museum marked its 400th anniversary in 2016.

The entrance is on Union Street in the city centre, attached to the Town House, so it fits easily into a walk around central Aberdeen. Check opening days with Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums before travelling, as hours for the smaller city sites change with the season.

Address: Union Street, Aberdeen, Scotland

See The Tolbooth for Yourself

Sources

• Aberdeen: Its Traditions and History, with Notices of Some Eminent Aberdonians
• Aberdeen Tolbooth
• Visit The Crime & Punishment Tolbooth Museum Gaol
• The Public Clocks of Aberdeen
• Dark history of child kidnapping unveiled at Aberdeen museum
• Wikipedia: The Tolbooth, Aberdeen

Ghost Tours Nearby

500 Years of Crime and Punishment: A Self-Guided Audio Tour★ 4.1 (30)from $9Private Aberdeen Dark Side Walking Tour★ 5.0 (2)from $187

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