More On Haunted Ethie Castle

   It is surprising how stories of the same old ghosts are doomed to haunt the pages of anthologies about haunted places, and this seems to be one aspect of their eternal doom: being allowed no rest, but trudging endlessly through the plagirised (or highly derivitive) pages of yet another weakly researched book about the 'Haunted Places of Scotland' or the like. The sources I have used below offer rather more on the subject of Ethie thankfully.

  Ethie Castle near Arbroath is said to have at least three ghosts: a ghostly child, Cardinal David Beaton, and a rather more anonymous Green Lady. I wrote previously about the hauntings in the blog piece Cardinal Beaton's Ghost and Other Castle Ghosts  The Green Lady is possibly the most intriguing of the big three haunters of the building. She was said to have made a regular appearance which presaged a death of the family of the Carnegie Earls of Northesk who inhabited the old house until the early decades of the 20th century. Nobody knows who she was, an if there is a tale which gives her an identify, I have not discovered it. Many castles have Green Ladies, and this one has the reputation of having a slightly different appearace on each sighting. 

   The ghost of Cardinal Beaton, who died in 1546, is an exceptionally long-lasting presence in the building, outstripping the other residual spirits which faced away in the 20th century or even earlier. More often heard rather than seen, Beaton is identified by his lame leg. During his lifetime he is said to have suffered badly from gout.  A housekeeper named 'Old Fyvie' was said to have barricaded herself in her bedroom whenever she heard the tell-tale sound of the long-gone prelate approaching. One of the earlist written accounts came in a history of the Carnegie family published in 1867

The haunted room, which is in one of the attics, has long been unoccupied. It is always kept locked, and few have been privileged to enter it. By the kinddness of Lord Northesk, the writer was allowed to explore this mysterious apartment. He found a veritable trace of the Cardinal in the form of a large oak cabinet, the only article of furniture in the room.

A mansion-house of such antiquity as that of Ethie, and possessing so many historical associations comlected especially with a character so celebrated as Cardinal Betoun, could not fail, bke other old castles, to gather around it many singular traditions, which have passed down from one generation to another, and which even at the present day are articles of faith at Ethie. As a specimen, it may be mentioned that it is still reported, as an indisputable fact, that at a certain hour of the night, a sound is heard resembling the tramp of a foot, which is believed to be the Cardinal's, and is popularly called his leg, walking very deliberately up and down the original stone stair, which still connects the ground flat with the second storey of the house. The haunted room, which is in one of the attics, has long been unoccupied. It is always kept locked, and few have been privileged to enter it. By the Idndness of Lord Northesk, the writer was allowed to explore this mysterious apartment. He found a veritable trace of the Cardinal in the form of a large oak cabinet, the only article of furniture in the room.

   A strange flickering light and unexplained noises, reputedly the cardinal moving about, were experienced by someone staying in the castle in the 1960s or 1970s, according to Forbes Inglis.

   In Confessions of A Ghost Hunter (1928), Elliott O' Donnell recounts the haunting of a castle 'overlooking Lunan Bay' which must be Ethie. Friends took the author to view the castle, which was then undergoing building repairs and renovation. Asked whether they had ever noticed anything strange about the place, the workmen stated that they often heard things but had only once seen anything. 

'It was last week,' he said,  'Thursday afternoon, 'about half-past four. Three of us, Jock, Ned and

myself, were doing some repairs on one of the spiral stone staircases here, when we suddenly heard a curious sound. We had all heard the castle was said to be haunted by a phantom leg, supposed to be Cardinal Beaton's wooden leg, but we had only laughed at the idea. Now, however, the noise we heard was so much like the tapping sound of a wooden leg, that we all stopped our work and looked at one another. Tap, tap, tap, down the stairs it came, until it sounded close to us, and then, suddenly, coming round the bend of the stairs, we saw an eerie blue light coming towards us. It was coming up the stairs at a fairly rapid pace, and it took us so much by surprise that we sprang back against the wall as if we'd been shot, and remained there, still as death, until it had passed us and was out of sight. I can laugh now as I think of the expression on the faces of my mates, they looked so scared, but I didn't laugh then, I can tell you! I was just as badly scared as they were.'

   'Some of the other men working there heard the tapping too, and when we spoke about it to the 

servants at the castle, next day, they only said, "You needn't be at all afraid; what you heard and 

saw we often hear and see in the same place, and it's quite harmless. It must be the ghost of Cardinal Beaton, for the sound is exactly like the tapping of a wooden leg." '

   O'Donnell also tells this story in his book Rooms of Mystery.

   The mystery of the haunted child is quite insoluble, but at least we have a general origin story for the haunting, even if it names no guilty names. In 1896, Horace Pym had the following story direct from the Carnegie family who then owned the castle:

Many years ago, it is said that a lady in the castle destroyed her young child in one of the rooms, which afterwards bore the stigma of the association. Eventually the room was closed, the door screwed up, and heavy wooden shutters were fastened outside the windows. But those who occupied the rooms above and below this gruesome chamber would often hear, in the watches of the night, the pattering of little feet over the floor, and the sound of the little wheels of a child's cart being dragged to and fro; a peculiarity connected with this sound being, that one wheel creaked and chirruped as it moved. Years rolled by, and the room continued to bear its sinister character until the late Lord Northesk succeeded to the property, when he very wisely determined to bring, if possible, the legend to an end, and probe the ghostly story to its truthful or fictitious base.

   Consequently he had the outside window shutters removed, and the heavy wall-door unscrewed, and then, with some members of his family present, ordered the door to be forced back. When the room was open and birds began to sing, it proved to be quite destitute of furniture or ornament. It had a bare hearth-stone, on which some grey ashes still rested, and by the side of the hearth was a child's little wooden go-cart on four solid wooden wheels!

   Turning to his daughter, my lord asked her to wheel the little carriage across the floor of the room. When she did so, it was with a strange sense of something uncanny that the listeners heard one wheel creak and chirrup as it ran!

   Since then the baby footsteps have ceased, and the room is once more devoted to ordinary uses, but the ghostly little go-cart still rests at Ethie for the curious to see and to handle. Many friends and neighbours yet live who testify to having heard the patter of the feet and the creak of he little wheel in former days, when the room was a haunted reality...

   The story was too good to die however. In 1928, the castle passed from the Carnegies to a gentleman named Cunningham-Hector. A story says that his child's nanny, around 1930, heard the sound of an unknown infact crying, accompanied by the sound of a push along child's cart. The remains of a child's cart were found in a bricked up place in the castle, then laid to rest, after which the haunting sounds were no more heard (accoridng to Forbes Inglis). Something of the same gist was retold by Peter Underwood, with the additional information that a set of pathetically small bones were found alongside the remains of the toy cart.

   Those interested in reading about Beaton's mistress can consult the previous post Marion Ogilvy: Lady of Three Castles

Some Sources

William Fraser, History of the Carnegies, Earls of Northesk, and of Their Kindred (Edinburgh, 1867)

Elliott O'Donnell, Confessions of A Ghost Hunter (London, 1928)

Elliott O' Donnell, Rooms of Mystery (London, 1931)

Forbes Inglis, Phantoms and Fairies: Tales of the Supernatural in Angus and Dundee (Brechin, 2010)

Horace N. Pym, Chats in The Book-Room (London, 1896)

Underwood, Peter, A Gazeteer of Scottish Ghosts, London, 1974