Haunted place · Scotland, United Kingdom

Lochleven Castle

Updated November 202613 sources How to visit

Protected heritage
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Island castle in Loch Leven, Scotland, where Mary, Queen of Scots, was held in 1567–68 and lost twins; tradition says her grieving spirit lingers there.

The story

Lochleven Castle occupies a small island in Loch Leven, near Kinross in Perth and Kinross. Its position, roughly between Edinburgh, Stirling and Perth, made it valuable to whoever held it, and the water around it made it a natural prison.

A castle may have stood on the island by 1257, when the regents of the 16-year-old Alexander III brought the young king there against his will. During the First War of Scottish Independence the English occupied it, and the curtain wall may date from that period. The Scots retook it before 1300. Later tradition, going back to the poet Blind Harry in the 1470s, credits William Wallace with the capture, but Historic Environment Scotland notes there is no real evidence for that. An English siege in 1301 was broken by Sir John Comyn, and Robert the Bruce stayed at the castle in 1313 and 1323.

In 1335, during a new English invasion in support of Edward Balliol, the castle was besieged again. The chronicler John of Fordun tells a colorful story: the English dammed the loch's outflow to flood the defenders, but while their commander Sir John de Stirling was away at a religious festival, the garrison under Alan de Vipont slipped out at night, broke the dam and swamped the English camp. Later historians have doubted the episode.

The five-storey tower house, built in the 14th century or perhaps a little later, is among the oldest substantially surviving towers of its kind in Scotland. Late in the 14th century the castle came into the hands of the Douglas family, who held it for about three hundred years. Throughout this period it served as a state prison: future king Robert II was held there in 1369, Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Douglas, in the early 1400s, and Patrick Graham, Archbishop of St Andrews, who died a prisoner there in 1478.

Its most famous captive was Mary, Queen of Scots. Her first stay, in 1561, had been as Sir William Douglas's guest. Six years later she returned as a prisoner, arriving on 17 June 1567. While on the island she miscarried twins, probably fathered by her husband the Earl of Bothwell, and the infants were reportedly buried hastily there. On 24 July 1567 she was made to sign her abdication in favor of her infant son, James VI. Historic Environment Scotland says the floor above the hall in the tower house served as her prison, with a window recess as a small oratory; Wikipedia says she lived for most of her captivity in the Glassin Tower.

On 2 May 1568 she escaped. Willie Douglas got hold of the keys, and George Douglas waited on the far shore. When the water level dropped in the 1800s, old keys turned up in the loch, and tradition identifies them as the ones Willie took. Afterward three people, Janet Boyman, Marion Nicnevin and William Stewart of Luthrie, faced witchcraft accusations, charged with having foretold the escape.

In 1588 the queen's former gaoler inherited the earldom of Morton and moved away. In 1675 the architect Sir William Bruce purchased the island and turned the ruin into a focal point for his garden. No one lived in it again. The partial draining of the loch in 1836 made the island considerably larger than it had been in Mary's day.

The legend

Lochleven's haunting belongs to a large family of Scottish traditions that place the ghost of Mary, Queen of Scots, in castles connected with her life. Here the story is given an emotional twist tied to real events: her spirit is said to remain because she is waiting for, or grieving over, the twins she lost on the island, and one telling has her wishing to assure them that she was not to blame for their deaths.

Enthusiast websites add more. They describe a pale figure at prayer by the oratory window of Mary's former room, sometimes with a silent man beside her, and speak of anxious footsteps around the shore and the ruins, sudden drops in temperature, screams and unexplained noises. One site names two local spirits, "Crooked Dave" and "Green Jane", without telling any story about them. Some of these pages also place her in the Glassin Tower, the round tower of about 1550 at the south-east corner of the curtain wall.

Honesty matters here. We found no dated sighting, no named witness, no newspaper report and no paranormal investigation or television episode for Lochleven. The castle's custodian, Historic Environment Scotland, does not mention any ghost. The tragedy at the core of the legend, a captive queen losing her children and her crown within weeks, is documented history; the haunting is a tradition built on top of it, with no traceable origin.

What remains today

Historic Environment Scotland looks after the ruins, which are protected as a scheduled monument. They include the curtain wall, the 14th-century tower house, with the floor above the hall that Historic Environment Scotland says served as Mary's prison, and the later round Glassin Tower. Since Sir William Bruce's purchase in 1675 the castle has been a ruin rather than a residence.

Visiting

The castle opens to visitors in the summer season and can only be reached by the boat that Historic Environment Scotland runs from the pier at Kinross. Tickets are timed, so booking ahead is wise. Do not try to reach the island by private boat or attempt a visit out of season. No ghost tour is known.

The ghosts

Ghostly lady

Mary, Queen of Scots

Said to be Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587), imprisoned on the island in 1567–68

Mary is said to linger at Lochleven, grieving for or searching for the twins she miscarried there in 1567; in one telling she wants to assure them she was not to blame. Enthusiast sites describe a pale woman praying by the oratory window of her former room, sometimes with a silent man. No dated sighting or named witness is known.