Haunted place · Scotland, United Kingdom

Glamis Castle

Updated November 202618 sources How to visit

Protected heritage

Angus castle held by the Lyon family since 1372. Its secret chamber is in print by 1830; a hidden monster is rumored by 1897, detailed only in the 1960s.

The story

Glamis Castle stands beside the village of Glamis in Angus, Scotland. It is a category A listed building (Historic Environment Scotland LB11701), and its grounds are on the national inventory of gardens and designed landscapes (GDL00189). In 1372 King Robert II granted the estate to Sir John Lyon, and the property has stayed with the Lyon family, later Bowes-Lyon, ever since. The title of Lord Glamis dates from 1445, and in 1606 the ninth lord, Patrick, became Earl of Kinghorne and began major building works. The castle was the childhood home of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the future Queen Mother, and the birthplace of Princess Margaret (21 August 1930).

Two historical episodes feed the ghost lore. A local tradition says King Malcolm II was killed at Glamis in 1034, but we found no direct evidence for it, and Historic Environment Scotland does not mention it. And in 1537 Janet Douglas, Lady Glamis, who had been accused of treason and then of poison (of the king in one account, of her husband in another), was burned in Edinburgh on 17 July. Pitcairn’s collection of criminal trials set aside the charge of witchcraft, according to Wikipedia. The link to Shakespeare is literary: the historical Macbeth, who died in 1057, had no connection with Glamis, while the play of 1603 to 1606 makes him Thane of Glamis. Historic Environment Scotland speaks only of an association with the play.

The legend

This account follows the historian Mike Dash’s two articles on how Glamis acquired its reputation, checked against the older books and papers we could read.

The oldest layer is a secret room. Walter Scott recalled a night at Glamis around 1791 in his Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (1830). He passed through the King’s Room, where tradition placed Malcolm’s murder, and he mentions a secret chamber, but he describes no occupant and no monster. The year of his visit varies in the sources, 1790 or about 1791. According to Dash’s 2012 article, the first stories of a prisoner appear in the 1840s, on the strength of a Notes & Queries correspondent who wrote in 1908 that he had been told some 60 years earlier of a chamber where “is confined a monster, who is the rightful heir.” Dash adds that by the second half of the century a deformed heir was frequently reported. An anecdote of 1850, about towels or sheets hung from windows to find the hidden room, comes from a diplomat’s memoirs of 1902. In 1870 the singer Virginia Gabriel told of a steward, Ralston, who refused to sleep in the castle. Wikipedia ties her to the monster story, but what Dash quotes from her is the Ralston anecdote and talk of a family secret, not a description of a monster. American papers in 1881 carried the same article about “the mystery of Glamis,” for example the Portland Daily Press on 4 November and the Iola Register on 25 November, with eighty bedrooms said to have been prepared in 1715 for a prince; it is a mystery, with no monster. The Memphis Daily Appeal of 3 November 1882 wrote of “the secret chamber referred to by Sir Walter Scott,” known to only two people, the earl and the heir. In 1905 the Earl of Crawford noted in his diary that the family invented tales for every guest, and that the secret was that there was no secret.

Other strands run alongside. The tale of the skeletons of Ogilvys, who fled the Lindsays and were locked away to starve by their host at Glamis, was according to Dash’s 2010 article the prevalent 19th-century legend, found in Ingram (1897), Chambers’s Journal (1898) and Dyer (1900). Earl Beardie, who in the story plays cards on the sabbath and vows to go on until doomsday or to take the Devil as his partner, is attached either to Alexander Lindsay, fourth Earl of Crawford (died 1453) or to Alexander Lyon (died 1486); Ingram (1897) already gives it, citing the earlier writer William Howitt, with a local variant about an “Earl Patie,” and Elliott O’Donnell called it hackneyed in 1911. The Washington Times of 16 October 1903 gave a version with an ancestor throwing dice until the day of judgment and, beside it, a family member born “in the form of a monstrosity” and confined for life. The White Lady, said to be Janet Douglas and linked to a seat reserved in the chapel, is a story given by guides according to Wikipedia; we found no earlier source for it. The Alexandria Gazette of 13 February 1923 listed “a human toad” and Macbeth’s witches among the ghosts; Dash says “a human toad” was already a 19th-century name for the monster.

The monster itself, a deformed heir kept hidden in the castle, is older than the 1960s, but its early traces are thin and second-hand. Scott (1830) gives the room no occupant, and O’Donnell (1911) names no monster. Ingram (1897) reports, as one “wild suggestion,” that a kind of vampire is born into the family and kept concealed, and calls it a “monstrosity”; the 1903 Washington Times and the 1908 letter say much the same. Dash’s two articles differ in emphasis. In 2010 he wrote that Victorian sources “only rarely hint at the existence of a Monster,” that the Ogilvy story prevailed until early in the 20th century, and that James Wentworth-Day “first put the full tale into circulation” in The Queen Mother’s Family Story (1967), after an article in The Queen in December 1964; in 2012 he stressed the earlier reports. Peter Underwood’s lurid descriptions came later (we know The Queen, Wentworth-Day and Underwood only through Dash). Believers point to relatives with disabilities who lived in institutions, but Dash presents that as their argument, and it is not evidence of a monster.

The verdict, then: a secret chamber goes back to Scott’s night at Glamis about 1790, a hidden heir or monster is rumored from the 19th century on thin evidence, and the detailed monster dates from the 1960s.

What remains today

Glamis is a largely 17th-century building on an earlier L-plan tower house, still the seat of the family. It is protected and remains a historic house with gardens. We could not read the official site, so we cannot say what its rooms or chapel contain today, and we have not verified any chapel seat, secret room or tour content beyond what Wikipedia reports.

Visiting

The castle is described as open to the public. We could not read the official website (it returned an error), so seasons, hours and tour formats are unverified; check the official site before traveling. It is also the family’s home, so respect the boundaries of the grounds. Ask guides how they distinguish documented history from legend, and bear in mind that the chapel’s White Lady seat is a guide’s story.

The ghosts

Spirit

Earl Beardie

Said to be Alexander Lindsay, 4th Earl of Crawford, or Alexander Lyon; the story is unsourced

A lord plays cards on the sabbath, vows to go on until doomsday or to take the Devil as his partner, and a stranger arrives. In some versions he is condemned to play forever.

First reported: By 1897 (Ingram, citing William Howitt). Reported by: William Howitt via Ingram (1897), Elliott O’Donnell (1911)

Spirit

The Monster of Glamis

Said to be A deformed heir said to be kept hidden; no evidence of any such person

A hidden heir kept in a sealed room is the best-known Glamis legend. It is absent from Scott (1830) and O’Donnell (1911), appears as rumor in Ingram (1897) and the 1903 press, and reaches its detailed form in the 1960s.

First reported: Rumor by 1897 (Ingram); a 1908 letter recalls the 1840s; detailed account 1964-1967. Reported by: Ingram (1897), Notes & Queries (1908), Wentworth-Day (1967), Underwood, as analysed by Mike Dash

Ghostly lady