Dalhousie Castle - Ghost Story
A fine-looking fortress standing stoically on the banks of the river Esk, a few miles south of Edinburgh, Dalhousie Castle is the 13th-century ancestral home of the Ramsay family. The magnificent red-stone façade features crenelated battlements and turrets and long sash windows offering fabulous views of the woodland estate. Contrary to its seamless, modern fixtures and contemporary hydro spa, Dalhousie has a fascinatingly tangled and turbulent past, so it’s not surprising the castle is famed for having many ghosts within its ancient walls. Its 29 characterful bedrooms are filled with period detail and lavish furnishings... but what else do they house?
A story that seems to feature more than any other is that of 16-year-old Lady Catherine who was left to perish in the castle tower...Sometime in the 1500s one of the Ramsay lairds’ wives discovered that her husband was fooling around with a Lady Catherine and so banished her to the castle tower and starved her to death in one of the upper chambers. Her ghost is known as The Grey Lady – so called because of her dress – and she has been seen roaming the stairs, halls and turrets ever since.
The castle steward and pipe sergeant wrote that he had seen the apparition rustling up and down the stairs. “It appears she does not like the bag pipe music,” he adds. “When seen by me, the bag pipes fail to play a sweet tune.” It has also been said that The Grey Lady is a very active ghost who likes to make herself present. She is the reason why ghost tours feature regularly now at the castle. She has been known to tap on doors and shoulders and is sometimes even seen sitting at the end of a bed!
Sir Alexander Ramsay has also been seen wandering the castle grounds, a famously deceased resident of Dalhousie Castle, who was reportedly starved to death in 1342 by the castle’s then-owner, William Douglas. To get a true feel for Dalhousie Castle’s grisly past, take a trip to the ‘bottle dungeon’ – nowadays the wine cellar – where prisoners were once lowered by rope with no means of escape through its 11-inch walls. You can still see the rope marks worn into the stonework!