Haunted places in Scotland

One person runs through Scotland's haunted places: Mary, Queen of Scots. She fled a siege in disguise at Borthwick Castle, was crowned at Stirling, was held on an island at Lochleven in 1567 and 1568, and saw David Rizzio seized at her supper table at Holyrood in 1566 and dragged away to his death, in the palace where legend says his bloodstain returns.

Clan history supplies many of the others. At Inveraray Castle, seat of the Dukes of Argyll, the music of a harper, said to have been killed in the raid of 1644, is said to foretell Campbell deaths. Fyvie Castle has its Green Lady, and a windowsill bearing Lilias Drummond's name, carved overnight according to legend. Tradition gives Culzean Castle seven ghosts or more, from a piper lost in the sea caves to a girl in the kitchen corridors.

Edinburgh deserves its own trip. The South Bridge vaults, once a slum, were the subject of a 2001 study into why people feel ghosts there. At the Witchery, folklore says a burned witch lingers, though the restaurant itself makes no such claim.