Glamis Castle
Glamis, Angus, Scotland

It doesn't matter whether you visit Glamis Castle on a dark and stormy night or in the bright sunlight of a summer's day. You can't help but feel that this impressive and huge structure is a very scary, strange, and mysterious place.

Built in the fourteenth century, Glamis is the oldest inhabited castle in Scotland and is home to frequently sighted ghosts and spirits. The castle was originally the residence of the lords of Glamis, who lost their family fortune, after which the castle passed into the hands of Patrick Lyons in the mid-seventeenth century. Lyons renovated the place, built up the fortune, and was made the Earl of Strathmore.

According to legend, in the early nineteenth century the first son of the eleventh Earl of Strathmore was born terribly deformed. The child had a large, hairy egg-shaped body with no neck and tiny arms and legs. A special hidden room was built for him in the depths of the castle, and his existence was kept secret because of his horrible appearance.

The Monster of Glamis, as he came to be known, was the true heir to the castle and all the wealth that went with it. Only the Earl of Strathmore, his oldest normal son, the family lawyer, and the manager of the estate knew about him.

The monster was not expected to survive for very long, but he was very strong and outlived several generations of Strathmores. Each oldest son was told the awful secret when he reached the age of twenty-one.

It is said that the Strathmores were very unhappy, moody, and withdrawn men because of the secret existence of their monstrous relative. It wasn't until the early twentieth century that the creature was said to have died. It is believed that his corpse is bricked up somewhere within the walls of the castle.

No one knows where the secret room is located. Once, according to Peter Underwood in his book A Gazetteer of British Ghosts, a group of young people visited every one of the more than one hundred rooms in Glamis Castle and hung sheets out the windows to mark them. "They were sure that they had visited every room," wrote Underwood. "But when they gathered outside they counted seven windows in the massive castle with nothing hanging from them." The mystery as to why more windows are seen from the outside than the inside remains unexplained.

The ghost of an unidentified small woman is a frequent sight in the castle chapel, even in broad daylight. The sunlight coming through the windows has been seen shining directly through the woman's figure.

Another female figure frequently appears above the clock tower, enveloped by a reddish glow. She is thought to be Janet Douglas, the wife of the sixth Lord of Glamis, who was suspected of poisoning her husband. In 1537 she was accused of trying to poison King James V and was burned at the stake.

Unusual and frightening noises are often heard within the castle walls, including stamping and swearing from the tower and hammering and loud knocking sounds. There's even a door that opens by itself every night, no matter how well locked or secured it is.

There are more than enough spirits and supernatural phenomena at Glamis Castle to impress even the most skeptical ghost watcher.