Ghost encounter in Scottish Castle

Inspired by the other thread about the ghost in the French rural farm house, I'm going to share one of my ghost stories.

Back in 2005/2006 I went with my family to the UK and Scotland, I was in my mid-20's. On the trip we stayed a few nights at a castle hotel, the Melville Castle in Edinburg.

We arrived in the afternoon on a sunny Spring day, checked in and then went to explore around the castle and castle grounds. There's a beautiful huge grassy yard which happened to have a soccer ball and perfect for playing, so I played with my family. It was a great afternoon, the hotel has a really nice scotch bar in the basement so we were sipping some nice scotch while we were kicking the ball outside in the yard. Beautiful day.

Now it's approaching dinner time so the front desk recommends a local pub restaurant and we went to have pot pie or something similar for dinner. Completely full and exhausted from the awesome day, everyone just goes to bed when we get back to the hotel. My brother and I share a room.

That night I had a terrible nightmare, it was very vivid. A bunch of children we're getting brutally and violently murdered out on the grassy field outside we were playing soccer on that day. It was a very disturbing and alarming nightmare so I woke up pretty quickly and it was in the middle of the night.

When I woke up from the nightmare floating at the foot of my bed was a dark shadowy figure of a woman dressed in tattered clothes just floating there at the foot of my bed for a few moments till it darted to it's left pass the bathroom towards the door. It was so frightening and when it moved the shadows moved too and the tattered clothes really stood out which made it seem so real.

I quickly flipped on the light to my bed and my younger brother woke up super tired, and I said I just saw a ghost!!! He said, "No way, are you serious?" I said yes.... After I calmed down a bit, I went back to bed, we might have slept with the light on.

The next morning waking up we go find my parents and youngest brother to figure out what we're going to do that day. I told them I saw a ghost last night, and my brother then says, "yeah he woke me up!" My parents are like "no way but that's crazy." Then while we are getting ready to leave my mom says "check out this book from the hotel, I just flipped through it...has stuff about the history of the hotel, has some cool pictures too."

The book is a three ring binder with pictures and pages of the hotel history. I take the book and read the whole thing, it wasn't very long. On the very last page it talks about a queen who is known for haunting the hotel. She visits room 106, floating at the foot of your bed, a female shadowy figure dressed in tattered clothes. I literally yelled! "OMG NO WAY!! Everyone said, "What?!?" I said, "This book literally says exactly what I saw!!! And we're staying in room 106!!!"

Everyone was spooked! My parents said "go tell the front desk, he gave us the book." I went to the front desk and told him and he literally laughed at me in a Scottish voice and said he hasn't heard anyone ever say anything about a ghost and kept chuckling.

We took off for the day to be tourists and returned back to the hotel and I had a plan. My brother and I would enjoy scotch down in the basement bar and then watch TV all night drunk in our room 106 planning to deal with this ghost, like confront her. Well she never came and we checked out the next day to continue on our trip through Scotland and the UK.

When I was leaving the room looking at it one last time, I realized after the foot of my bed on the wall was a mirror. So I would have been looking at my reflection, instead the ghost was floating in front of the mirror. That was pretty spooky to realize.

The ghost was the ghost of Mary Queen of Scots.

Here are some links about the hotel, Melville Castle.

Link

Visitors have claimed to witness sightings of some of the castle’s more famous residents, including Mary Queen of Scots, who often used Melville Castle as her hunting lodge.

The current owners as well as others have also claimed to see Elizabeth Rennie, wife of former owner Henry Dundas, while renovating.

In fact, there are several ghost reports on TripAdvisor from former guests. One review of Melville Castle hotel claimed:

“Our first night sleeping in the room we heard foot steps and loud crashes above us. Now the next day we talked to the reception as we came back to the hotel. They informed us that we were the absolute top floor and nothing was above us! We were staying in room 204 which is the top floor directly above the entrance. Apparently, room 106 is the absolute most haunted room on the property (aside from the bar area). They’ve had a guest leave the hotel because when she looked in the corner of the room, a girl was upside down in the corner of the ceiling staring back at her.”

Unfortunately this is not what the hotel book said exactly. I was hoping to find on Google what the hotel book said because that was really surreal it said exactly verbatim what I encountered.

Here's another link with someone else's encounter, link

a reply to: game over man

mary queen of scots was imprisoned there for 19 years before being beheaded

I found this as well

looks like room 108 and 106 are mentioned

“Our first night sleeping in the room we heard foot steps and loud crashes above us. Now the next day we talked to the reception as we came back to the hotel. They informed us that we were the absolute top floor and nothing was above us! We were staying in room 204 which is the top floor directly above the entrance. Apparently, room 106 is the absolute most haunted room on the property (aside from the bar area). They’ve had a guest leave the hotel because when she looked in the corner of the room, a girl was upside down in the corner of the ceiling staring back at her.”

That was a terrific story! Thank you for posting it!

When you saw the apparition at the end of your bed, did she take notice of your presence in any way?

I've always heard that places where appalling atrocities occurred are rife with forlorn ghosts. Some people say it's because their spirit hasn't yet come to terms with what happened and is unable to move on.

a reply to: game over man

There is a really cool show on Netflix right now called ‘Secrets of Great British Castles’. I’ve been watching it the last month or so.

This castle and the story of Mary Queen of Scots is in it.

Definitely recommend watching. Especially, if you want a point of reference for this story.

Cheers to old school ATS!

a reply to: sapien82

Thank you for your comment, I remember there was a back story where something terrible happened to the Queen. I thought she was murdered or suicide but you solved it. Thanks

originally posted by: CandidCandace
That was a terrific story! Thank you for posting it!

When you saw the apparition at the end of your bed, did she take notice of your presence in any way?

I've always heard that places where appalling atrocities occurred are rife with forlorn ghosts. Some people say it's because their spirit hasn't yet come to terms with what happened and is unable to move on.

Yes, she was looking directly at me. I couldn't make out any features or details other than I could tell it was a woman because of her hair and that she was wearing tattered clothes. She was a dark shadowy figure floating but not translucent.

I've heard that too about forlorn ghosts...since Hawaii is very haunted all new businesses are blessed by a pastor or kupuna of some sort to rid the place of spirits... I wonder if the hotel/castle ever did that? Or they just let her haunt the castle, or maybe the owners/workers don't believe in it? The front desk guy was cracking up at me, but the story of her haunting room 106 was right there in their hotel book. Maybe he was lying so we would forget about it and enjoy our stay.

a reply to: KKLOCO

Awesome!!! I definitely will!! Thank you for the recommendation! I'm with you, definitely miss old ATS.