In 2017, my husband and I spent three weeks in Scotland and Ireland. It was a fantastic trip, full of beautiful landscapes, good food, kind people, and wonderful old buildings and castles. I love history, so it’s always a treat to travel around the world and explore places that are so much older and storied than the United States.
Though not at all on my husband’s bucket list (he remains skeptical of the supernatural), it was important to me to visit a haunted castle. They seem to be all over Scotland and Ireland, so it wasn’t too hard to find a place. What I didn’t bargain for was getting to spend the night in one! (note: Castle Eilean Donan in the photo is not where we stayed, but was great to visit nonetheless). The castle we stayed in – Castle Levan – is actually someone’s home/bed and breakfast outside of Glasgow. It is a wonderful place, and I recommend staying there (this is not a paid advertisement, we just really enjoyed it). Imagine my delight when we learned that the room we were staying in – one of two guest rooms in the house – was the one that people sometimes have a ghostly experience in, with visits by the White Lady.
The room was the place where a previous owner in the mid 1500s imprisoned his wife and starved her to death after learning that she was under house arrest for having killed their tenants while he was away on military service. I worried that maybe we would have an angry ghost. Or even worse, that I might not have an experience at all, which would have been disappointing. The room itself was lovely – stone walls, a cozy bed, low ceilings, a window with a view of the yard.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid to stay in this room. When the lights were out, it was pitch dark – you couldn’t see your hand in front of you. And the room has a bit of “old castle” scent – it just smells old, which is part of the charm. So, the stage was set for a creepy feel at night. I found the room to be too dark, and left the LED light candle on my bedside table on for the night for a bit of lighting, and to make it possible to find the bathroom in the middle of the night.
I fell asleep just fine, but awoke in the middle of the night with the distinct sensation that there was someone standing besides my side of the bed. At this point in time, I didn’t know the history of the room or who the supposed ghost was, but the sense I got was that the presence was female. She wasn’t angry or scary, but was definitely present. Just as I was sensing this, a glow of light started to appear on the television across from the bed, red and blue and the TV’s power came on. I was thrilled and scared! It seemed to me to be an actual supernatural event, with the feeling of a presence and flickering of light in an electrical device.
As the TV came on a bit more, my husband woke up, looked at the TV and said “What the hell is going on in here?!” I couldn’t tell what emotion he was expressing. I did tell him that I was awakened by a presence and that as I felt that the TV turned on by itself. He grabbed the remote and tried to turn it off, but the remote didn’t do anything at first. The TV did turn off shortly, but I don’t remember if it happened with the remote or if it just faded off on its own. My husband, not the believer that I am, noted that there was a storm outside and that obviously it was messing with the electricity in the house. Perhaps.
We awoke to a beautiful morning and at breakfast in the dining room, we talked with one of the castle owners. I told her that we had a small event in the room during the night. She didn’t believe that there was a ghost in the castle, but said that she did periodically get stories from guests about things happening in the room we were staying in. She asked for my impression of the ghost, and said my impression of a woman observing us matched what other guests with a more psychic nature had told her; that was validating.
We went on to have an enjoyable day exploring the area and spent an uneventful second night in the room (LED candle on again, of course). My husband may not agree, but I feel certain that we did have a brief visit that first night and that the White Lady had enough energy to interact with the television to let us know she was there. This stay was definitely a highlight of the trip!