The Monster of Glamis

Craigmillar Castle park was rather dark and eerie today so a dark and eerie story is in order.

One of my favourite ghost stories (From a book called Scottish Ghost Stories by Elliot O'Donnell and not necessarily true..) takes place in Glamis Castle. There is said to be a secret room in the Square Tower and visitors who have slept there have been woken by strange noises.

The visitor in the book had fallen asleep and did not dream until she found herself in a strange narrow room with one window, too high up in the wall to reach. It was very dark and the furniture was "fitted for the cell of a lunatic asylum or prison". She had a feeling of horror and of something being in a particularly dark corner of the room that she could not see. Then something moved. This is what it looked like:-

Legs - crooked, misshapen, human legs. A body - tawny and hunched. Arms - long and spidery, with crooked, knotted fingers. A head - large and bestial, and covered with a tangled mess of grey hair that hung around its protruding forehead and pointed ears in ghastly mockery of curls. A face - and hearin was the realisation of all my direst expectations - a face - white and staring, piglike in formation, malevolent in expression; a hellish combination of all things foul and animal, and yet withal not without a touch of pathos

The creature did not approach her but lay down in the beams of early morning sunlight that were coming through the window. At this point a door in the room began to open, and the woman woke up, back in her own room with unearthly screams ringing in her ears! There are many other tales but the description here puts a shiver down my spine, even though is is not strictly a ghost story.

Legend speaks of a secret, passed down from each Earl of Strathmore to his successor of a deformed child, born in 1821 to the Great Great Grandparents of the Queen Mother. As a deformed Earl was unthinkable in those days, people were told the child had died at birth but he was in fact kept in a secret room in the castle and occasionally glimpsed by people while being taken outside for walks, giving rise to stories of a "monster". He was said to have lived for a very long time, well into the 20th century.

It all seems very unlikely to me but it does make a great story. How I would love to go to Glamis and try to find the secret room. I am pretty confident I wouldn't be allowed..