Mike Reed

McRomeo and Ghouliette

March 17, 2007 |  5 comments
Image Credit: The priest will say “Till death do you part”, but some people hang around for a lot longer, especially in Scotland. Examples of places haunted by the broken-hearted, the passionate and the hopelessly loyal appear all over this part of Britain. Cawdor Castle is sited a few miles away from Nairn and is home to a particularly tragic ghost. Believed to be the daughter of the Earl of Cawdor, she fell in love with a man from an opposing family. When the Earl stumbled upon the couple, he was incensed to the point of cutting off his daughter’s hands to put a stop to the affair. Another way of averting unfavourable relationships explains the ghost that haunts the Castle of Mey, which was formally the Queen Mother’s favourite Scottish castle. The lass in question fell head over heels in love with a farm worker. Her father disagreed with the match and decided to lock her in the tower, where she reputedly fell to her death whilst trying to see her beloved as he worked in the fields.

Being legally married doesn’t ensure a spook-less afterlife either, as the next story shows. A young couple decided to spend their wedding night in Braemar Castle. These were the days when married women were virgins before their wedding night, so the bride was likely to have been a bit edgy. On this occasion, the young bride woke up the next day – alone. Failing to find her husband and concluding that he must have found her unsatisfactory, she leapt from the bedroom window in despair. Her husband had in fact set off to go hunting at first light while she was still sleeping. He was devastated when he heard of her death. The woman appears if newly-weds are staying at the castle as a green lady. Whether it is to warn the bride or groom is not known.The ghost of Meggernie Castle has a grisly story, with flirty overtones. Men sleeping in what has become known as the Haunted Room have described being woken by somebody planting a kiss on their cheek! The culprit is thought to be the ghostly apparition of a wife of a chief of the Menzies clan. The chief’s favourite hobby seemed to be accusing his beautiful wife of adultery. Eventually, he killed her and cut her in half before setting off on a trip. When he returned, he told everyone that his wife had died during this trip. As a consequence, the top half of his wife teases sleeping men with invisible kisses, while the bottom half strolls around the castle grounds and lower floors.

Before Allanbank House in Berwickshire was demolished, the ghost called Pearlin’ Jean was seen on more than one occasion. Pearlin’ Jean is understood to be Robert Stuart’s lover. Stuart was the first baronet of Allanbank and he met Jean in France where she was a nun. She left her convent to be with Stuart at Allanbank, but discovered that she was unwanted when he married another woman. Angry and with nothing to lose, she leapt onto Stuart’s carriage one day to try and convince him to take her back. Stuart sent his horses into a gallop and Jean was thrown under the wheels and killed. After her death, her ghost appeared in the house, her head bloody from the accident. She vanished as soon as Allanbank was torn down.

This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to love affairs and marriages when death wasn’t necessarily the end. Comments (5)

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