Cardinal Beaton and the Ethie Castle Ghosts of Angus

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

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 Angus before his murder in St Andrews in 1546. The castle stands roughly three miles north of the fishing town of Arbroath, and it is still a lived-in building rather than an attraction, which makes it an unusual entry in any guide to haunted Scotland. The record here is solid on the history and thin on the hauntings, and it is worth keeping the two apart.

Quick orientation: a 14th-century castle of some 1,402 square metres, dating in its earliest form to around 1300, now the seat of Clan Forsyth.

The Keep the Arbroath Monks Built

Ethie’s origins lie with the church. The castle dates to around 1300, when the monks at nearby Arbroath Abbey raised a sandstone keep on the site. From ecclesiastical hands it passed to the de Maxwell family, and then to Cardinal David Beaton, whose tenure is the reason most visitors have heard of the place at all. Beaton was murdered in St Andrews in 1546, and the castle carries the memory of him in its fabric rather than only in its stories: there is a small chapel, and a room known as the Cardinal’s Sitting Room with a secret staircase running up to the Great Hall above.

Carnegies, Northesk and the Trafalgar Dormer

In 1665 the castle was bought by the Carnegie family, who in time became the Earls of Northesk. The 7th Earl was a Vice Admiral and commanded with Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, and as a tribute he was entitled to incorporate Trafalgar in his arms. That grant is not a footnote in an archive somewhere: it is set into a dormer at Ethie, and it is still there to be seen. In 1927 the castle and its grounds were bought by the Glasgow artist and antique collector William Cunningham Hector. The building was later restored by Alistair Forsyth, chief of the Forsyth Clan, and it now serves as the clan’s seat.

Walter Scott’s Castle of Knockwhinnock

Ethie has a literary afterlife as well. It is reputed to be the basis for the fictional Castle of Knockwhinnock in Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Antiquary. The connection is at least plausible in a way many such claims are not, because Scott was a close friend of William Carnegie, 8th Earl of Northesk, and stayed at Ethie frequently.

The Grey Lady and the Abbot of Arbroath

Two figures dominate what is said about the castle. The first is a Grey Lady spectre, reported without much in the way of detail attached. The second is Beaton himself, who was Abbot of Arbroath in the 16th century before his death, and who is said to have never entirely left the house that bears his mark. These are traditions, not documented events. No verified incident underpins either account, and the surviving record of Ethie describes only that the castle is reputed to be haunted by them. Read them as folklore that has grown around a genuinely old building with a genuinely violent chapter in its ownership.

Seeing Ethie Castle Without Trespassing

Ethie is a private home and the seat of Clan Forsyth, not a heritage site with a ticket office and a tea room. Anyone hoping to see it should treat it accordingly and make enquiries in advance through the castle’s own website rather than turning up at the door. Arbroath, three miles to the south, makes the obvious base, and the abbey whose monks began the whole story is there to be visited in its own right. Never enter private ground without permission.

Address: Ethie Castle, near Arbroath, Angus, Scotland

Sources

• Ethie Castle: History
• Eminent Arbroathians
• Celtic Studio – Clan Forsyth
• Forsyth Clan Chief
• Halloween happenings in your area
• Wikipedia: Ethie Castle