Scotland's Best Haunted Sites to Visit

So, you're going on a trip to Scotland during one of the spookiest times of the year. You might be wondering where you can meet some of the less-than-alive locals, soak up some of the ectoplasmic culture, as it were. (0:21) Well, don't worry, we've got you covered. We are heading to four of the most haunted places in Scotland, so grab your EMF detector and hop aboard. Now before we hit that foggy road, let's go by foot to a creepy little spot you can visit right after you arrive. 

Just in case you don't know, closes are small alleyways typically named after a memorable occupant or a business. They began in the middle ages and they really never stopped. Closes often evolved to have whole stretches that were effectively underground.

As street levels rose, reinforced closed chambers became foundations for new buildings above. They became de facto subterranean villages all their own. Merry King's Close, which branched off of the Royal Mile, was one of the largest. According to myth, when bubonic plague hit Edinburgh in 1645, Merry King's was bricked up, cask of amontillado style, to keep the infected inhabitants quarantined from the rest of the city. 

Sorry to disappoint, but the bricking up part is false. In fact, plague doctors regularly visited residents there, but indeed much of the close was considered unsanitary and undesirable, and thus slowly over the centuries parts were abandoned and sealed up. 

The last remaining residents were the Chesney family, who were forced out of their home in 1902. Since then, the complex was theoretically completely sealed off, but people still occasionally broke in to explore, including a few local witches who used to perform rituals there. Basically everyone knew the place was haunted.

In fact, Merry King's Close is considered one of the most haunted places in the UK and ranks very, very highly globally. The most famous non-corporeal resident is the ghost of a small child named Anne. In the 1990s, Japanese psychic Aiko Ghibo was filming in The Close with a documentary team when she became suddenly chilled and petrified.

She refused to move further into the room they were exploring. Eventually, her cameraman coaxed Ghibo back in, where she communicated with a spirit calling itself Anne. Supposedly little Anne had accidentally stumbled into The Close during the plague years.

She died alone and afraid. Anne's sole desire in the afterlife was to find her lost doll, and after hearing this, Ghibo immediately rushed to the nearest souvenir shop and bought a doll. The tartan-dressed toy was placed in the room by the fireplace.

It stayed there until 2019, in fact, when it mysteriously disappeared. But don't worry too much, visitors to The Close have been donating dolls and jewelry to Anne for years, creating a sort of a shrine to the poor lost girl. In the 2000s, Mary King's was officially reopened, revealing amazingly well-preserved chambers.

It's now a tourist destination, but if you visit, you do need to be prepared for dank sunless warrens of rooms where disembodied voices and unexplainable cold are commonplace. 

Our next stop isn't too far away, a churchyard in Edinburgh, a portion of which holds the title of the most haunted graveyard in the world. How do you get that sort of reputation? Well, the history of Greyfriars Kirkyard is pretty grim.

It was built in the 1500s, and was pretty peaceful for a time. That is, until 1638, when a group of religious reformers protesting the Anglican Church met at the Kirkyard to sign a little document called the National Covenant. This paper was incendiary.

It was the fuse, the touchstone, the match for a fiery war that would engulf Scotland and England. Alright, that's a bit much. But anyway, the Protestants who signed the document became known as the Covenanters, and their movement swept across Scotland.

Of course, loyalist Scots didn't really take this too kindly. Almost 400 of the original Covenant signers were rounded up and imprisoned on the grounds of Greyfriars. Now, the conditions for this imprisonment were abysmal, to say the least.

Due to the harsh conditions, half of the prisoners perished before they could even be executed. These prisoners were buried in the graveyard, which resulted in a darkly sarcastic nickname for the plot, the Covenanters' Prison. Now, the chief prosecutor against the Covenanters was one George Mackenzie.

Reports describe him as a brutal man, quick to temper. Ironically, after he passed, his body was put to rest in a mausoleum in the Kirkyard, near the Covenanters' Prison. You know where all the bodies of the men he arrested lay.

I can't decide if that's poetic justice or not. Nowadays, these areas are largely locked away from the public. Because until the 20th century, the Kirkyard had a problem with resurrectionists.

That is to say, grave robbers who dug up body parts to sell to medical students. Some speculate that these desecrations are the reason for the many apparitions reported over the years. However, a much more recent story says that Mackenzie's spirit was released in 1999, when a homeless man broke into the mausoleum, seeking shelter for the night.

He was met with abnormal sounds and the appearance of bruises on his arms. The man ran away in fright, but Mackenzie's spirit apparently refused to go back to rest. After that, the mausoleum was nicknamed the Black Mausoleum, and the spirit was referred to as the Mackenzie Poltergeist.

As of now, over 100 tourists have reported scratches, bruises, and bite marks after visiting the Black Mausoleum. An exorcist even was brought in once to banish the poltergeist, but after starting the ritual, he for some reason stopped and refused to finish. A few weeks later, this exorcist passed away from a heart attack.

You just don't mess with George Mackenzie, I guess. And apparently Mackenzie isn't keen on being in the public eye, either. In 2003, a head tour guide and writer named J.A. Henderson was researching the graveyard and Mackenzie for a book.

One night, he returned home to find his apartment, which overlooked Greyfriars,  burning, ruining all of his collected notes. 

The story here is that the Burnett family was given the estate outside Banchori,  their progenitor being appointed royal forester of Drum by Robert the Bruce himself in 1323. The family managed this land for centuries, and in 1596 used their wealth to build the castle. This lovely site stayed in the family until 1951, in fact, when it was finally passed to the National Trust.

The castle is filled with magnificent furniture, enough to make even the most casual viewer of HGTV jealous. But we're not here to talk about the furniture, of course. Like most ancient buildings in Scotland, Crathes is known for paranormal sightings.

However, this castle boasts not one, but two famous spirits, the White Lady and the Green Lady. Not the most original names, but, you know, not every ghost can afford a PR team for branding. We'll start with the White Lady, the less seen spirit of the two.

The White Lady's real name was Bertha. In the 16th century, she was a young noblewoman who fell madly in love with the also young Laird Alexander Burnett. It could have been a fairytale romance, except that this tale also includes a villain.

Alexander's mother, Lady Agnes, hated Bertha, believing her to be the wrong match for her son. In-laws. One day, not long before the couple were to be wed, Agnes poisoned the soon-to-be bride while Alexander was away on business.

She even threw a party to celebrate. Now, technically, it was a party to honor Alexander's homecoming, but I'm sure there was some, well, subtext for her. Apparently, Agnes was partying so hard, she forgot to toss away the chalice used in the poisoning.

According to the story, Alexander went to take a sip from the cup, whereupon Agnes snatched it away and tossed it into the lake. Woo-hoo! Party! Hmm. In time, Bertha's family came to collect her body.

Greeting them, Agnes suddenly pointed into the distance and screamed, She comes! She comes! Before falling stone dead. Of course, Alexander was inconsolable, but he did eventually find another bride. Bertha, a.k.a. the White Lady, never really got over being murdered and can be seen wandering the castle near the anniversary of her death.

As for the other spirit, the Green Lady, no one really knows her real story. She is, however, the most seen spirit in Krathos. Sometimes appearing as a woman clad in a green gown carrying a child, or simply a green orb of light floating around a certain bedroom and into the fireplace.

Most legends claim the Green Lady was a Bernet Laird's daughter, or perhaps a servant girl. Either way, she fell in love with a servant boy and got servantly pregnant. The pregnancy was most likely hidden until the baby was born, and that's it.

That's all we know. The story ends there as the woman and the child were never seen again. Presumably, they were murdered or committed suicide.

This incredibly vague story does have legs to stand on, though. During renovations in the 1800s, workmen lifted a fireplace hearth and discovered the bones of a baby underneath it.

Located in Turif, this castle looks enormous due to its four large towers with bardisons. It was tradition for each family that owned the place to add a new tower, because, you know, when you're incredibly wealthy and just bought a castle, what else are you going to do? Now, if impressive towers aren't your interest, I do invite you to explore the insides of the castle. The Fyvi Castle comes equipped with some beautiful rooms, though you can't actually visit one of them.

That is the secret chamber, which is directly below the charter room in the southwest corner of the castle. That one is sealed, because anyone who enters it will meet with a grisly death. They'll die, and to boot, their spouse will go blind.

Seems a tad excessive to me, but there you go. Oh, and while you're exploring,  see if you can spot the indelible bloodstain in one of the rooms. We won't say which one.

It's a surprise. Fyvi Castle is open to all guests, but that's not tourism at work.  That's basically because back in the 13th century, the castle was cursed after they denied entry to Thomas the Rhymer, the legendary prophet from Earlston.

The curse made it so that no male heirs would live to be owners of Fyvi Castle, and interestingly, there haven't been any. The curse is commonly referred to as the Curse of the Weeping Stones. It's said these stones would ooze water and were once the boundary markers between the castle and the nearby churchyard.

The only way to really lift the curse would be to remove the stones from Fyvi back to the churchyard. That has since been demolished. A task that isn't so simple, to be sure.

One of the stones was dropped into the River Yithin, that runs alongside the castle. Another got built into the foundation of one of the towers. The third is on display, however, in the Charter Room.

However, it no longer weeps, apparently. Well, you might be asking at this point, are there any actual ghosts here? Yes, it's a castle in Scotland, so yes, there are. Our first ghost is called the Green Lady, and no, you did not mishear me.

There are in fact two ghosts in Scotland called the Green Lady. Imitation, flattery, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. However, this Green Lady had an actual name, Lilius Dromund.

She was married to Alexander Seton, one of the castle's owners. Lilius and Alexander's marriage was, how would you say, rocky, as Lilius couldn't seem to produce a male heir. They probably shouldn't have kicked that stone into the river, perhaps.

Anyway, one legend says that Alexander Seton locked Lilius into the Charter Room, where she starved to death. Other tales are considerably less dark, as Lilius simply moves back home to her old family in Fife, where she wastes away with a broken heart. So, again, probably starved to death.

Meanwhile, Alexander Seton wasted no time in returning to the field and married Lilius's cousin, Griselle Leslie. On the first night they lay in bed together, heavy sighs came from outside the window, followed by heavy scratching. They assumed it was just the wind blowing, but never count out a woman scorned and possibly starved to death.

The following day, when they awoke, the name D. Lilius Dromund was scratched into the outside stone of the windowsill, which, we should note, was not on the ground floor. Ever since, visitors say they sometimes catch glimpses of Lilius clad in green, wandering around the Charter Room. Some tourists even claim to hear her voice whispering to them to leave.

The second most famous ghost of Fife Castle is the so-called Grey Lady, and she even made headlines. On 15 January 1920, a wall in the castle was dismantled to investigate a damp patch. Workers found an entire skeleton preserved inside.

The skeleton was interred in the local cemetery. But not long after, a maid was cleaning the skeleton room when suddenly a woman clad in all white appeared from the wall, stared at her balefully, and then sailed across the floor and right through the opposite wall. I'm guessing she just didn't like the maid sweeping dust under the carpet.

You know, it's hard to find good help these days. This apparition continued to harass residents of the castle until the Laird, pretty desperate by now, decided to re-remove the skeleton back to its original spot in the wall. And things apparently settled down after that. Well, mostly. I mean, you can still see the Grey Lady. She's just less obnoxious, I gather.

So who is this Grey Lady? Well, it's theorized the skeleton belonged to Lady Meldrum, who died in the 13th century. But no one could figure out why she ended up in the wall.