The Lady of Glamis Burned for Witchcraft

Glamis Castle, Angus, Scotland

Janet Douglas, Lady Glamis, was burned on Castle Hill, Edinburgh in 1537 on charges of witchcraft and conspiring against James V. Her ghost has haunted Glamis ever since.

Glamis Castle, birthplace of the late Queen Mother and ancestral home of the Earls of Strathmore, is one of the most haunted buildings in Scotland by reputation. The ghost most consistently reported is Janet Douglas — Lady Glamis — who was burned on Castle Hill, Edinburgh, on the 17th of July 1537. The case against Janet Douglas was political rather than supernatural. She was a member of the powerful Douglas clan, which King James V feared and wished to destroy. She was charged with poisoning her late husband and with practicing witchcraft against the King, specifically with attempting to consume him using wax images and powders. Her confessor, her son, and various servants were tortured until they confessed to witnessing acts that would support the charges. She was burned alive at the Castlehill. Her son was forced to watch. He was held in Edinburgh Castle until James V died — at which point he was released and Glamis restored to his family. Parliament subsequently reversed all convictions. The figure seen at Glamis — a grey woman on the clock tower, a light in a high window where no living person goes — is identified in local tradition as Janet. She is also felt rather than seen: a particular quality of weight in the upper rooms, a sense of observation that has no visible source. The castle's more famous secret — a room that is not in any plan — is a separate tradition, said to involve a monster kept alive in the locked room. Lady Glamis is the older presence.