20+ Haunted Castles in Scotland (Scottish Ghost Stories)

With over 20 haunted castles in Scotland, palaces, and historic houses across Scotland, we’ve got a story for everyone! Spine-chilling tales of witchcraft, the supernatural, ghosts, ghouls, torture, and murder most foul…

1. Culzean Castle

Culzean Castle is the featured location.

This Robert Adam masterpiece, perched high on the Ayrshire cliffs, is shrouded in tales of terrible deeds and evil spirits. In 1570, the 4th Earl of Cassillis kidnapped and roasted the abbot of Crossraguel Abbey until he agreed to sign over his lands. Sir Archibald the Wicked of Culzean was so evil that even the devil came to his funeral. There are also reports of a ghostly knight in armour appearing to household staff and a phantom piper playing on stormy nights as the waves pound the cliff face below.

2. Brodick Castle

FEATURED LOCATION: Brodick Castle

A castle with 800 years of ghost stories and paranormal activities lies beneath the towering peak of Goat Fell. There are numerous accounts of sightings of the Grey Lady and White Stag, as well as murders and supernatural occurrences. Follow in the footsteps of clairvoyants and paranormal investigators by standing on the exact spot where castle pets will not cross. Visit the plague victims’ entombment site and the hanging tree.

3. Pollok House

Pollok House is the featured location.

Discover the chilling story of the “bewitched baronet” and the “witches” of Pollok. Janet Douglas, a mute serving girl, arrived at Sir George Maxwell’s Pollok estate in the 1670s, shortly after he fell mysteriously ill. Janet regained her ability to speak and immediately accused five locals of conspiring with the devil. The story of their trial and subsequent burning at the stake has long captivated historians, as has the story of Janet herself. She was said to have visited America and participated in the infamous Salem witch trials of 1692.

4. Greenbank Garden

Greenbank Garden is the featured location.

This wonderful garden oasis is both idyllic and mystical, with several resident ghosts. Look out for the Lady in Red (who has been seen in Greenbank House’s dining room), a phantom large black dog, and the ghost of a young girl skipping beside the burn – thought to be the ghost of a local girl tragically killed in the courtyard in the early twentieth century. After that, relax your nerves with a scone and a cup of tea in our café.

5. The Hill House

This domestic architectural masterpiece was designed in the early 1900s by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh for Glasgow publisher Walter Blackie, who is said to appear on the upper landing on occasion. He emerges from the dressing room, wearing a long black cape, before disappearing into the main bedroom. If you smell pipe smoke in or around the library, don’t be alarmed; smoking was one of Walter’s favorite pastimes.

6. Gladstone’s Land

Gladstone’s Land is the featured location.

Scotland’s historic capital’s vennels and passageways are full of ghostly goings-on, having been home to the murderous Burke and Hare and the site of many public hangings. Explore our 17th-century tenement near Edinburgh Castle on a special ghosts, witches, and murder tour in search of both good and evil spirits. Not for the faint of heart!

7. Culross

Culross is the featured location.

This serene 17th-century village serves as a living open-air museum. Listen to stories about Culross witches imprisoned and tortured in the Town House, petty criminals branded for life with the S-shaped courtroom key (S for sinner), and miscreants dragged to the Mercat Cross and nailed to the town stocks. Sir George Bruce built Culross Palace around 1600. If you visit its remarkable stone-vaulted strongroom, you might catch Sir George counting his money. While he smiles and waves to children, he warns adults not to get too close to his fortune. You may also come across a young and elegantly dressed Mary Erskine admiring the palace garden while holding a bouquet of lavender. Her family bought the palace in the early 1800s.

8. Alloa Tower

Alloa Tower is the featured location.

This 700-year-old keep, Scotland’s oldest, is home to numerous ghost stories dating back centuries. Learn about the Abbot’s Curse and visit the dungeon, where a ghostly serving girl bandages the rat-gnawed foot of a man in chains.

A young girl trapped in the stone well; a woman dressed in black watching over a cradle; and a maid pacing nervously up and down near the family portrait depicting Alloa Tower with an adjoining mansion – the very mansion that burned to the ground in August 1800 when a maid placed a lit candle too close to bedclothes. Visitors frequently report the acrid smell of burning on the anniversary of the fire.

You might come across a young boy crying, an armed man with strange eyes, or a gaunt clergyman dressed in black in the Charter Room. The Solar Room is the most terrifying of all, where a man has been seen hanging and where you may be overcome by the physical sensation that you, too, are being strangled.

9. Falkland Palace

FEATURED LOCATION: Falkland Palace

The palace has a turbulent history rife with murder and despair, having been besieged by Rob Roy and partially destroyed by Cromwell’s troops. The Duke of Rothesay, heir to the Scottish throne, was imprisoned in Falkland Castle in 1402, where he is said to have starved to death. In 1542, James V’s body was kept in state in the Chapel Royal for nearly a month before being transferred to Holyrood Abbey and buried.

The ghosts of Mary, Queen of Scots, the White Lady, who roams the Tapestry Gallery looking for her lost lover, and the Grey Lady, who walks the ruins of the East Range and disappears through a wall where once there was a door, have all visited the palace over the years. The sinister faces that appear at the Queen’s Room window are the most terrifying.

10. Kellie Castle

Kellie Castle is the featured location.

Kellie Castle, once home to a daughter of Robert the Bruce, is brimming with eerie tales. The oldest tower, built in 1360, is said to be haunted by the spirit of Anne Erskine, who died when she ‘fell’ from an upstairs window. Although she is rarely seen, the rhythmic thump of her footsteps on the turnpike staircase announces her presence. Professor James Lorimer’s ghost, who began the castle’s restoration in 1878, has also been seen seated in quiet contemplation. Kellie Castle was allegedly exorcised… without success!

11. House of Dun

FEATURED LOCATION: House of Dun

Beware the Headless Horseman, who prowls the Dun lanes at night, seeking vengeance on unsuspecting travelers. This stunning Georgian mansion and its surrounding estate conceal many dark secrets, including the murder of a harpist at the Den of Dun, where his ghost has been seen playing musical laments. You may also come across the phantom of the knight who discovered his wife had been duped into marrying his friend after returning from the Crusades. Following a sword fight, the usurper was run through and impaled on an ancient yew tree.

12. Drum Castle

FEATURED LOCATION: Drum Castle

Drum, given to the Irvines by Robert the Bruce in 1323, is one of Scotland’s oldest tower houses and a hotspot of supernatural activity, ranging from apparitions of Anna Forbes Irvine (who died in 1900) to the haunting laughter of her son Alexander, who died in 1865 at the age of six. Hear stories about family heirlooms that mysteriously move at night and ghostly footsteps in the dark. In 2014, one of Drum’s resident ghosts was even photographed, which was widely publicized in the local and national press.

13. Crathes Castle

Crathes Castle is the featured location.

Visit the Green Lady’s Room, which was named after the spirit of a young woman who was frequently seen by the fireplace wearing a green dress and holding an infant in her arms. During a renovation of the castle in the 1800s, the bones of a child, presumed murdered, were discovered beneath the hearthstone of the fireplace.

The archives describe the strange appearance of a luminous block of ice that moves like a person but is not human in shape – these visions are always accompanied by a sharp drop in room temperature. The White Lady, thought to be Alexander Burnett’s young lover, Bertha, also lives in the tower house. Bertha returns on the anniversary of her murder, poisoned by Lady Agnes for being unworthy of her son’s hand in marriage.

14. Leith Hall

Leith Hall Is The Featured Location.

Leith Hall, home to the Leith-Hay family for nearly 400 years, is haunted by the ghost of John Leith, who was shot in a drunken brawl in Aberdeen in 1763. He was returned home, but he died three days later on Christmas Day. He is dressed in dark green pants and a shirt and appears to be in a lot of pain, lamenting his injuries, with a dirty white bandage wrapped around his head and covering his eyes. Other sightings have included apparitions of a family dog and children playing.

15 . Castle Fraser

FEATURED LOCATION: Castle Fraser

Castle Fraser, one of Mar’s grandest castles, is full of quirky features such as secret staircases, trapdoors, and a spy hole. There have been numerous sightings of a young woman who was murdered in the Green Room over the years. Her bloodied body, dragged down the round tower, stained the steps so badly that they had to be covered in the wooden paneling that you see today. Lady Blanche Drummond’s ghost, dressed in a long black gown, wanders the castle and its grounds. In the Great Hall, ghostly whispers, laughter, and music have also been heard.

16. Haddo House

Haddo House is the featured location.

For over 400 years, the Gordon family lived in this elegant Georgian mansion. Lord Archibald Gordon, affectionately known as Archie, was one of its most famous residents. Unfortunately, he died in a car accident in 1909, making him one of the first people in Britain to be killed in a car accident. Archie’s ghost, dressed in hunting tweeds and sporting a shock of ginger hair, is frequently seen smiling and conversing with visitors.

Haddo also has a more sinister supernatural side, with locked attic doors shaking violently at night and spirits threatening and chasing staff through the servants’ corridors and vaulted cellars.

17. Fyvie Castle

FEATURED LOCATION: Fyvie Castle

Murder and betrayal stories cast a chilling shadow over this 800-year-old Scottish Baronial fortress. When the room temperature drops suddenly and the air fills with the scent of roses, it’s said that you’re in the presence of the ghost of Lilias Drummond, ‘The Green Lady’. According to legend, Lilias was starved to death by her husband, Alexander Seton, because she failed to provide a son and heir. Her ghostly laments could be heard outside the marital bedchamber on the night of his second marriage. Her name was discovered freshly scratched into the castle walls in the morning, and it is still visible today.

Listen to stories about phantom soldiers, poltergeists, and the curse of the weeping stones before visiting the Grey Lady’s secret burial chamber, where her remains were discovered encased in the castle walls and her spirit roams the passageways.

18. Brodie Castle

FEATURED LOCATION: Brodie Castle

This iconic 16th-century Scottish tower house, which has been home to the Brodie family for nearly 450 years, has seen a number of ghostly sightings over the centuries. A phantom uniformed soldier has been seen sitting in contemplation in the Blue Sitting Room; the spectre of a small dog has been seen heading towards the children’s nursery; and the ghost of Lady Margaret, wife of the 21st Brodie of Brodie, visits the Best Bedchamber, where she died in a fire in 1786.

19. Hugh Miller’s Birthplace Cottage & Museum

Hugh Miller’s Birthplace is the featured location.

Visit Hugh Miller’s thatched cottage, where he wrote about local legends and terrifying ghost stories. Hear about the apparition of a’severed hand’ who reached out to him as a child on the night his father died in a shipwreck. Learn about Hugh’s great-grandfather, the buccaneer John Feddes, and then visit the ‘little antique room,’ where many strange occurrences have occurred.

20. Killiecrankie

Killiecrankie is the featured location.

The peace and tranquillity of this beautiful gorge were shattered on July 27, 1689, when the first shots in the Jacobite cause were fired. One soldier escaped by leaping across the Garry River at what is now known as Soldier’s Leap. The Pass of Killiecrankie is said to ring with the sound of footsteps as the government army marches to their doom on the anniversary of the battle. Others have told of terrifying encounters with a gruesome floating head.

Topic: 20+ Haunted Castles in Scotland (Scottish Ghost Stories)

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