It is the site of some of the most dramatic and gruesome events in Scotland’s history. Now staff at Edinburgh Castle have revealed new accounts of their creepy encounters for the first time.
Among the ghostly figures reported by guides is a blonde-haired boy in a red coat near Scotland’s Crown Jewels, while females starting work in the former royal apartments claim to have been greeted by a woman with red hair wearing a gold-coloured dress.
A governor is said to have been woken at 2am on his first night in the castle by lights switching on, which turned off again after he introduced himself out loud. On another occasion, a guide dog displayed “danger behaviour” and refused to take its visually impaired owner into a former prison.
Edinburgh Castle, now run by Historic Environment Scotland (HES), is said to be one of the most haunted locations in Scotland. Well-known tales include a ghostly “grey lady”, a shadowy drummer said to play in times of imminent attack and a foul-smelling prisoner who fell to his death after attempting to escape in a cart of manure.
One of the most notorious spots, David’s Tower, hosted the Black Dinner murders of 1440, which inspired the Red Wedding in TV’s Game of Thrones. Castle guide Jacob Allison will today lead a special over-18s tour, Whispers from the Past, offering access into normally restricted “dark and claustrophobic” areas.
He will share tales from the castle’s dark past as well as the personal experiences of staff themselves. Jacob, 30, said: “Historic Environment Scotland’s official stance on the paranormal is that, well, it doesn’t exist.
“This tour has been produced by the guides based on our own experiences. Wherever we go in the castle it is quite likely that at some point someone may have died on that spot or there could be someone buried.”
Jacob said staff had reported seeing the “grey lady” in a former wartime hospital while a group of children once reported seeing a woman in nurse’s uniform standing in the corner watching them, “looking rather annoyed and aggravated”.
Staff also reported a figure in period costume watching a film crew at work in David’s Tower. When the group was leaving the guide asked ‘where’s the other guy?’ but he was told there was nobody of that description.”
Jacob said Major General Alastair Bruce, who stepped down as Governor last month, reported “ghostly happenings” from the first night that he stayed there, when the lights switched on accompanied by a “pressure in the air”.
He said: “A gentleman through and through, he says he said ‘hello there, I’m Alastair Bruce, the new Governor of Edinburgh Castle. I love history’. And at that point the lights switched back off — that was all he needed to say. He took it upon himself to drink the glass of water next to him so he knew this was not a dream when he woke up in the morning.”
Jacob said his first experience was in a staff room around two months after he joined, when he saw a shadowy man “with crossed arms, hunched down sitting on a chair”. “My first thought was it was one of the mobility drivers having a snooze so I opened the door again and there was no one there at all”, he said.
On another occasion he heard voices in David’s Tower. He said: “It didn’t faze me because there are speakers. A few weeks later my boss entered in a panic saying he heard voices and laughter in David’s Tower. I said it would be the speakers but he turned to me and informed me that there are no voices on the speakers at all. That made us both turn as white as sheets.”
He added: “The most scary story came from one of my long term colleagues. A lady with a visual impairment, led by a guide dog, was in the Prisons of War section. She spent a good while in the first room and eventually made her way into the second room but she just as quickly came back out.
“My colleague went to check up on her and offer to show her round, but the lady told her ‘no way, I’m not going back in there, my guide dog just pulled me out the way he is trained to when he senses danger‘. That sends shivers down my spine.”
Jacob and fellow guide Kristie McGowan, 34, both claim to have seen the blonde-haired boy. Jacob said: “I was on post in The Crown Jewels and saw the reflection of a young boy with short blonde hair wearing a red coat near the exit. It’s a one way system and I knew that he hadn’t been in the room so I went to check up on him but he was nowhere to be seen.”
Kristie, who started her job last May, said: “Before I started at the castle I firmly did not believe in anything like this but I have seen things now that I can’t explain. Jacob’s story has thrown me into a loop because one of the stories that I haven’t told anybody is when I was in the guides’ changing room, just above the Crown Jewels.
“One of the other guides has short blonde hair and sits in a chair in that room to read. I walked in with my headphones on and I saw a little blonde head peek round from the lockers wearing red.
“I thought it was her so I took my headphones off and shouted over ‘hi’. She didn’t respond so I walked over to speak to her and there was no-one there. The first time I was locking up the Royal Apartments by myself was the first time I ever saw anything in my life.
“I had followed the last customer out and closed the door and I turned and saw a woman standing at the end of the corridor. Her hair was off her shoulders and she’s wearing a long gold or yellow period dress. I panicked because I thought I’d missed a customer so I shouted ‘sorry, excuse me, this room’s closed now’ and she looked at me and walked through the door into the antechamber.
“She was very pale, fair skin and red hair, in her late 30s or early 40s. I put my head through ready to tell her to leave and she wasn’t there. I didn’t feel scared or terrified. It didn’t feel evil or anything. She looked at me but it was a curious look.
“That was my first [ghostly] experience so I told some people and others – all women – have said ‘yes, we’ve seen her as well, on that spot’. They think it’s Mary of Guise.
“I’ve never seen her since but new starts often see her in that area. I think it’s like ‘don’t worry, I know you’re here by yourself but it’s going to be ok’. I think it’s more of a comforting thing she’s doing, which I think is quite nice.”
Jacob said: “I try to approach it with logic in mind. If there’s a way to describe something away I will go with that version of events. I don’t jump to ghosts unless I have no other explanation.”
Former castle guide Craig Archibald-Shepherd, 40, said he caught a glimpse of “someone in a long grey coloured skirt walking up the stairs just ahead of me” on New Year’s Eve 2016-17.
He added: “What do I think? All I know is I can’t explain what it was. There are some parts of the castle where the vibe is just odd. But I don’t think I ever spoke to a visitor who wasn’t keen on the idea that there’s something a bit odd about the place.”
Don’t miss the latest news from around Scotland and beyond. Sign up to our daily newsletter.