Haunted Places in Scotland
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Scotland does haunted differently. The weather helps, but so does the history: clan feuds, castle sieges, witch trials and a capital built on top of its own buried streets have left the country with more first-hand accounts per square mile than almost anywhere else. This list of haunted places in Scotland takes in the vaults beneath Edinburgh, the Highland castles, and the battlefields that locals still avoid walking across after dark.
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Ardblair Castle Green Lady: The Drummond Who Drowned
Feuding families, a beheading and a drowning in a bog: the Ardblair Castle green lady story carries all of it. The castle itself sits…
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Green Jeanie and a Skeleton Beneath the Hall: Balgonie Castle Ghosts
Stand in the courtyard of this Fife tower and you are looking at roughly four centuries of building work stacked against one another, some…
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A Mine Shaft, a Tryst and the Auchentiber Ghost
Four miles northeast of Kilwinning, where the Lochlibo Road runs across the flat bog country of North Ayrshire, sits a hamlet whose Gaelic name…
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Magic Circles and Roof Fires: Haunted Birkwood Castle
Few buildings in the Clyde valley have collected so much folklore in so short a time as haunted Birkwood Castle, the gutted castellated shell…
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The Demons Crowley Never Banished: Boleskine House
Few private homes in Britain carry a reputation quite like Boleskine House, the low manor standing above the south-east shore of Loch Ness in…
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Empty for Forty Years: Haunted Castle Grant on Speyside
Ask around Speyside for a haunted Castle Grant story and you will get atmosphere rather than evidence. The building itself supplies plenty of the…
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A Black Mass in a Spy Novel: the Haunted Castle of Mey
Six miles west of John o’ Groats, on the far north coast of Scotland, a squat grey tower looks out across the water towards…
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Duns Castle Ghost Stories and the Keep That Cannot Be Dated
Anyone arriving at Duns Castle expecting a well documented haunting should know up front that the paper trail is unusually thin. Search for a…
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The Castle of Spite and the Carbisdale Castle Ghost, Betty
Ask about the Carbisdale Castle ghost in this corner of the Scottish Highlands and you will get a single name back: Betty. That is…
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Cardinal Beaton and the Ethie Castle Ghosts of Angus
Talk of the Ethie Castle ghosts tends to arrive attached to one name: David Beaton, Scotland‘s last Cardinal, who held this sandstone pile in…
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Boiled in Lead by Legend: Haunted Hermitage Castle
Few ruins earn their reputation as squarely as the haunted Hermitage Castle, a squat, blackened block of masonry standing alone in the valley of…
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Red Paint on the Rocks: the Kinnaird Head Wine Tower
Fraserburgh keeps its strangest building in plain sight. A few dozen paces from the old lighthouse on the headland stands the Kinnaird Head Wine…
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Bandaged Eyes at the Foot of the Bed: the Leith Hall Ghost
Of everything the Leith-Hay family left behind in Aberdeenshire, the most talked about is a man nobody can see properly. The Leith Hall ghost…
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The Yew Staircase and the Lochnell Castle Brownie
Local tradition around Ardmucknish Bay holds that the Lochnell Castle brownie has never left the house, and that several people have heard supernatural music…
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Meggernie Castle Ghost: The Severed Bride of Glen Lyon
Halfway up Glen Lyon, where the river Lyon runs down towards its meeting with the Tay, a five storey keep stands with a long…
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The Maid in the Brown Dress: the Neidpath Castle Ghost
Walter Scott gave her a name in verse, and the name stuck: the Neidpath Castle ghost is said to be Jean Douglas, the Maid…
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The Green Lady of Stirling Castle: A Warning of Fire
Of all the stories attached to the rock above the River Forth, the Green Lady of Stirling Castle is the one that has stuck.…
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Strangled and Burnt Outside: the Haunted Aberdeen Tolbooth
Reputations are usually built on stories. The haunted Aberdeen Tolbooth has something rarer behind it: a documented record of executions, witch trials and transported…