The Phantom of Glamis Castle

Glamis Castle, Angus, Scotland

The ancestral home of the Queen Mother hides a sealed chamber containing a monster — a secret so terrible that each Earl of Glamis, upon inheriting the title, is told only in private.

Glamis Castle in Angus is one of the most haunted buildings in Scotland and one of the few where the haunting comes with an acknowledged, carefully-guarded secret. The castle has been associated with the Lyon family — later Bowes-Lyon — for centuries. It is the ancestral home of the late Queen Mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, and thus of the British royal family. This social respectability has not suppressed the legend that surrounds it; if anything, it has amplified the mystery. The central legend is this: somewhere within Glamis Castle there is a sealed room. In this room there lives, or has lived, or once lived, something. The nature of what it is varies by account: a hideously deformed member of the family, kept alive and secret for generations; a monster, literally non-human, born to the family and concealed rather than destroyed; a room where a card game with the Devil took place and whose participants still play. What is consistent across accounts spanning several centuries is the mechanism of disclosure: each Earl of Glamis, on his twenty-first birthday or upon inheriting the title, is taken aside by the family lawyer or factor and told the secret. Those who have been told have universally emerged pale and shaken. Several have stated that if outsiders knew the truth, they would not envy the family its secret. Guests at Glamis have counted windows from the outside and found them impossible to reconcile with the rooms accessible inside. Workers employed to renovate the castle have reported finding passages that did not appear on any plan, leading to blank walls. The castle remains a family residence. The secret, if it exists, has never been disclosed.