Haunted place · Scotland, United Kingdom

Linlithgow Palace

Updated November 202631 sources How to visit

Protected heritage
2 archive documents

Ruined royal palace in West Lothian: a man in a blue gown warns James IV before Flodden, told in the 1570s; we found no early source for the modern Blue Lady.

The story

Linlithgow Palace, in West Lothian, is a ruined royal palace in the care of Historic Environment Scotland (HES) and a scheduled monument (SM13099). According to HES, there has been a royal residence here since at least the reign of David I (1124-53), and in 1301-1302 Edward I wintered there and fortified it. James I began the palace in 1424 after a fire. James IV added royal apartments between 1488 and 1513. James V was born there in 1512, Mary, Queen of Scots in 1542 and Princess Elizabeth in 1596. The court left for London in 1603 and the palace declined. It burned in 1746, after government troops left on 1 February.

The legend

The ghost stories told here have very different pedigrees.

The old one is not a woman. The chronicler Pitscottie, writing in the 1570s in his Historie and Cronicles of Scotland, tells of an apparition before the Battle of Flodden in 1513. We read his text in the 1899 Scottish Text Society edition on the Internet Archive. While James IV was at prayer in the church at Linlithgow, not in the palace itself, a man came in at the church door, dressed in what Pitscottie calls a “blew goune” and carrying a roll of linen cloth. Pitscottie gives him long red-yellow hair, a bald forehead and the look of a man of fifty-two. He told the king not to go where he planned to go, and to avoid women, then vanished like a gleam of sunlight or a gust of wind. Pitscottie does not say he spoke to witnesses. His words are “I hard say”: he had heard it said that David Lyndsay and the marshal John Inglis stood beside the king and tried to seize the man. The editor of 1899 notes that the historian Buchanan names Lyndsay as his informant, and he also suggests such stories may be popular rumors that grew after the defeat.

Walter Scott retold the scene in his poem Marmion (1808), with the figure in an azure gown. In his notes to the 1809 edition he calls the Linlithgow apparition probably an attempt by “those averse to the war” to work on the king’s superstitious temper. That is a skeptical explanation from a poet writing three centuries after the event, not evidence. It does show that at least one writer doubted the story two hundred years ago.

The modern figure is the Blue Lady, said to walk from the entrance toward the church. The identity depends on who is telling it: English Wikipedia has one line naming Mary of Guise, mother of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the travel site The Fairy Tale Traveler asks whether she is Mary of Guise or Margaret Tudor. That site also says Queen Margaret’s Bower is haunted by Queen Margaret watching for her husband; other websites, seen only in search results, call a figure there a White Lady or name someone else. We found no early source for either. The only traces we opened are that site, which cites nothing, and Wikipedia; The Scotsman’s article refused our check. We also found nothing in the Victorian collections we checked: a text search of Ingram’s Haunted Homes (1884) found no Linlithgow ghost, only the shooting of the regent Moray as he passed through the town, which Ingram dates to January 1569, and neither volume of Crowe’s book of 1848 mentions the town. American newspapers we searched have nothing on it either, beyond an 1895 reprint of the same regent story.

There is a tempting link: a figure in blue in the 1570s account, a lady in blue today. It would be a neat explanation, but we have no evidence of when or whether one became the other, so it is a guess. We also could not find the first mention of a ghostly lady in the palace, whether in the nineteenth or twentieth century. One site gives much detail with no source, and our first research saw sites claiming to draw on palace records without sourcing them, so we set them aside.

What remains today

The palace is a ruin in the care of HES. The scheduled monument page on the HES portal confirms the protection. The HES page we read on 6 November 2026 showed it open, with the king’s bedchamber and the court kitchen closed for conservation work. We did not verify any claim about the rest of the interior or the church.

Visiting

Historic Environment Scotland looks after the palace, and its page says standard entry is booked online for a specific date and time. It did not list opening hours, so check the Historic Environment Scotland website for the current times and any closures before you plan a trip. This is a protected monument, so treat it with care.

The ghosts

Ghostly lady

The Blue Lady

Said to be Mary of Guise (Wikipedia) or Margaret Tudor (The Fairy Tale Traveler); Mary, Queen of Scots in search results only

A lady in blue is said to walk from the entrance to the church. We found no early trace and the identity differs between websites.

Apparitions

First reported: No early source found. Reported by: The Fairy Tale Traveler; one line in English Wikipedia; The Scotsman (seen only in search results)

Spirit

The man in the blue gown (before Flodden)

Said to be Unidentified; Scott judged it probably a human ploy against the war

A man in a blue gown is said to have appeared to James IV at prayer in the church at Linlithgow, warned him not to go to war, and vanished. Pitscottie reports it as hearsay naming two men present; Walter Scott thought it probably staged by opponents of the war.

Apparitions

First reported: Pitscottie, written in the 1570s. Reported by: Pitscottie, as hearsay naming David Lyndsay and John Inglis; Buchanan, citing Lyndsay (per the 1899 editor)

Ghostly lady

The watcher at Queen Margaret’s Bower

Said to be Queen Margaret (The Fairy Tale Traveler); other names and the label White Lady appear only in search results

A figure is placed at Queen Margaret’s Bower, said by one travel site to be Queen Margaret watching for her husband. Websites seen only in search results give other names.