Ghosts of Dunrobin Castle

Dunrobin Castle stands on the east coast of Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands. The early castle was a square keep with six-foot-thick walls and a vaulted ceiling. In the 16th century, additional buildings were added.

During the Jacobite Rising of 1745, Clan Sutherland supported the British government and was besieged by Jacobite forces under the Earl of Cromartie, who briefly held the castle. The room he occupied is still known as the Cromartie Room.

Then, in 1845, the castle was remodeled from a fortified stronghold into a Scottish Baronial-style great house. Besides the Lords of Sutherland, the castle is said to be home to a few other worldly spirits.

As Richard tells the story ...

More French château than impregnable fortress, Dunrobin Castle is nonetheless a majestic residence, and with 189 rooms, it is the largest house in the northern Highlands. It sits gazing out across the gray waters of the North Sea and is one of Britain's oldest continuously inhabited houses, parts of which date back to the 1300s. The castle is the seat of the Earls and Dukes of Sutherland and may well take its name from the 6th Earl, called Robert or Robin.

In the 15th century, the wicked Earl of Sutherland kidnapped a beautiful, young daughter of the Mackay clan and imprisoned her in what is now the castle's haunted room. He was determined to make her his wife, but she steadfastly refused his advances and contemptuously rebuffed his proposals. One day, he came to her room and found her attempting to escape through the window by means of a rope of knotted sheets tied to the rafters. Drawing his sword, he sliced through the rope and sent her plunging to her death. In the past, her heartrending sobs were said to echo from the room in the dead of night, although no one in living memory has heard her. In Duchess Claire's bedroom on the floor below (now the clan gift shop), however, ghostly footsteps have been heard pacing back and forth, and from time to time, the apparition of a man has been seen walking along the landing and disappearing through a closed door.

Thus do the ghosts of Dunrobin Castle present the casual visitor with a spectral conundrum for, as the guidebook puts it, "we have a ghost story with no ghost, and a ghost with no story!"

- Richard Jones