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The Castle has a spiral staircase
which might
not be suitable for guests with
reduced mobility.
If you're looking for a haunted Scottish castle
to stay in, this comes close to being the ideal.
Castle Stuart stands alone, about five miles east
of Aberdeen not far from the haunted
battlefield of
Culloden. Castle Stuart was
started by the first Earl of Moray, half brother
of Mary Queen of Scots, in or around 1561.
However, he was brutally murdered and so the
castle was not finally completed until the time of
the Third Earl of Moray in 1625.
Not long after it was completed it
was attacked
by the Clan McIntosh as part of
the perpetual feuding that went on in those
times.
The Stuarts decided that the wisest course
was to flee Castle Stuart and never return.
After this,
the Castle began to fall into
disrepair.
After the Battle of Culloden, the clans were
defeated and the Stuarts were able to return to
the castle. However, in the mean time the place
had started to get the reputation of being
haunted. In 1798 a storm of terrible ferocity
struck the castle and tore off the roof of the
East Tower. It was easier to block off the main
part of the castle from its broken
wing; so the East
Tower with its staircases and
attics was sealed
off.
In the 1930s a Canadian man
called John Cameron
made an attempt to repair it.
He tells how he was up on a ladder, working alone
at the castle after all the workmen had
departed. He found
an area of the plaster that
seemed different
to the rest and after knocking
it came to
the idea that it was a closed up
doorway into
the sealed up wing. He was so keen
to find what
was behind the wall that he worked
on alone.
He soon found that he had exposed
some steps. Then his chisel struck through into a
void behind the wall. At that moment he heard a
voice cry, "No!" in a half strangled wail. His
heart started to hammer, but he stood there,
chisel in hand at the top of his ladder. He
managed to convince himself that the voice was
his imagination and he worked on. But then as he
struck again, he was pushed full in the chest and
fell backwards off the ladder. The air was filled
with a strange force and a fetid smell. He ran
out of the building to where his car was.
But as he stood there, breathing heavily, he
knew he had to go back; he'd left all his tools
there, including his torch and all the temporary
electric lights were blazing. What would
people think if he admitted he'd fled because of
a ghost? So,
he went back in, wedging the door
open. He'd
left his car headlights full on, pointing
at the
door so that when he switched out the
castle's lights, he wouldn't be left in complete
darkness. The castle was silent. Mr Cameron soon
found his tools, and his torch, broken as he'd
dropped it or kicked it. He took a few breaths
and then switched off the lights. Instead of still
being in the bright beams of the headlights, he
found he was in utter darkness. In a panic, he
felt his way, stumbling towards the door. It had
closed, despite the wedge. Suddenly he felt icy
fingers grab him, and pull him back into the
castle. His fear gave him strength and
he pulled away, making it to the door and
outside. He never entered the castle again.
The Castle was finally bought by another
family of Stuarts in 1977; this time from
Renfrewshire via a business career in the USA
who began to restore all of it, including the
haunted East Tower. The
other famous ghost
story concerns the castle's
haunted room. The
Haunted Room is the three
turreted room at the
top of the East Tower.
The tale told about the haunted room has the
air of a folk story, but is widely believed to be
true. At some time in the past, one of the Earls
of Moray returned from the high life in London to
live in the castle. However, he didn't stay long
because of the ghosts there. Though he didn't
see the ghost himself, he heard enough blood
curdling noises to convince him, he didn't want to
live at Castle Stuart. However his curiousity was
fired, and the Earl offered a £20 reward for
the man who would find out what was behind the
haunting. Despite that being a lot of money in a
poor area, it was not eagerly taken up.
In the end, the local Presbyterian Minister,
got together three other men, a Shoemaker, a
Church Elder and a big irreverant Highlander
called Rob Angus. The Minister's plan was for
each of them to spend a night in the haunted
room. They wouldn't speak a word of what they
saw until all four were together again afterwards.
If their stories corroborated each other, then
there was obviously something in the ghost story.
Each of the men had to be left in the room
overnight. Some of them, the shoemaker
particularly, were not very keen and had only
offered to take part because the Minister put
pressure on them. Because of that perhaps, the
door to the room would be locked after them and
only unlocked in the morning.
The first night the Minister fell asleep in the
room and had a dream that a huge,blood
spattered highlander came into the room and sat
next to him. He awoke with a start to find
nobody there.
The next night, the Elder was sitting up
reading his Bible, when the same huge
highlander came in. The Elder sat there,
paralysed by fright, because not only was the
strange highland man in front of him, but behind
him, in the mirror, was the grinning face of a
skull. The Highlander asked the Elder what he
was doing there, but the poor man couldn't
answer because of the fear gripping him. The
Highlander took exception to this and advanced on
him with drawn dagger. At this point the Elder
fainted and didn't get his wits back for quite a
long time afterwards.
On the third night, the terrified shoemaker
took up his post. He tried the locked door, then
looked out of the window but saw there was no
escape that way- the drop was certain death.
He went back to sit and pray by the fire.
Later, in the depths of the night, the door
handle turned. The Shoemaker began to shiver
with terror, his teeth chattering, his eyes
staring as
he watched the door slowly open.
A tall shape stood
in the doorway, staring at him
and the Shoemaker
knew at once that this was
the Devil himself.
The Devil entered the room on his cloven
hooves and sat down in the other chair. The
Shoemaker sat there, rigid, hoping to die. Behind
him he saw the reflection of a skeleton in the
mirror, though there was no such thing in the
room. Suddenly the Devil sprung from his seat,
and the Shoemaker fainted.
The fourth night, it was the turn of Rob
Angus. This big, kind highland man was afraid of
nothing. With good humour he waved off the
servant who was there to lock the room. The
servant was an old drinking companion of Rob
Angus and as he closed the door, he said he
would see Rob in the morning. Rob replied, "You
will find me as I am, or dead."
The servant was the last man to see Rob Angus
alive. The next day he was shocked to find the
whole room upside down, with the furniture
broken and the mirror in pieces. There was no
sign of Rob in the room. The man ran to the
window and looked out: down there, smashed on
the ground was the lifeless body of Rob Angus.
The end to the tale was told by a drover
who'd been looking after his sheep late
around the castle. Abut half past midnight, he'd
heard the sound of a terrible struggle. He'd
looked up at the window of the Haunted Room and
by the light spilling out from it, he saw the body
of a large man, explode through the glass,
taking the frame with it. The Drover had been
terrified by that, but even more so, when he
looked up again at the window and saw the face
of the Devil grinning down at him.
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