Glamis Castle, Scotland

Standing deep in the Angus countryside, about ninety minutes north of Edinburgh, Glamis has more ghost stories and legends attached to it than any other building in Scotland. One of the earliest involves the feud between the Lindsay and Ogilvy clans. Sir Patrick Lyon, the first Lord of Glamis, offered sanctuary to several Ogilvy women who were fleeing their enemies. Fearing political fallout, he later sealed them inside a windowless hidden room high in the tower. When the doorway was finally broken open, all that remained were skeletons. Ever since, people have reported seeing an extra window that belongs to no room, and at night the halls echo with knocking, sobbing, and desperate pleas for help.

From the same era comes the tale of Alexander Lindsay, Earl of Crawford—better known as Earl Beardie. One Saturday night, a servant warned the earl that midnight was near and the Sabbath would begin, when the Church forbade gambling. Beardie boasted that he would deal cards with the Devil himself. At the stroke of midnight, a stranger in black appeared and wagered rubies on the game. After Beardie’s death his ghost returned, doomed to play cards forever. The room where the game took place was walled up in the 1700s, yet shouts and the clatter of cards are still said to echo from behind the stones.

Another grim chapter centers on Lady Janet Douglas, wife of the sixth Lord Glamis. Because King James V despised the Douglas family, he seized the castle and accused Janet of witchcraft and plotting his murder. After torturing her relatives and even her young son John, the king’s judges extracted false confessions. Blinded and broken, Janet Douglas was burned at the stake in Edinburgh in the 16th century; her son was released only after the king’s death. James V himself was the first to see her specter—now called the Grey Lady. To this day her figure is said to appear in the castle chapel, silently praying before the altar, always accompanied by a dull hammering sound like carpenters building a scaffold.

Witnesses have also reported the ghost of a tongueless woman whose bloody mouth gapes in mute agony—believed to be a maid who discovered one of the castle’s secrets and had her tongue cut out so she could never speak.

From 100 Cursed Places · Fern Flower Press