In the farmland of Aberdeenshire, Fyvie Castle rises above a quiet loch, its towers built over eight centuries by five families: Preston, Meldrum, Seton, Gordon, and Leith. Kings came here. Within its walls hang portraits by Raeburn and Gainsborough. And somewhere inside, the story goes, a stone weeps.
Legend says Thomas the Rhymer, refused shelter in a storm, cursed Fyvie: no male heir would inherit until three stones were returned to where they had been taken from. One remains in the castle, said never to dry. Lilias Drummond, wife of Alexander Seton, is said to have been starved after bearing no son; on her husband’s next wedding night, her name appeared scratched into a window sill. People call her the Green Lady and claim she arrives with the scent of roses. In 1920, a servant reported a woman in a flowing white gown gliding from her bedroom wall. In 1885, the laird who ordered a sealed chamber opened reportedly broke his leg, and the room was closed again. During a coronavirus lockdown, the castle gardener smelled roses in the old coal store, and an alarm beneath the Drummond Bedroom kept sounding for no reason engineers could find.
The National Trust for Scotland shows the castle on guided tours only, and its loch-side grounds stay open year-round. Walk the wheel stair. Breathe deeply. If roses linger where none grow, you are not the first.
Story Source: www.pressandjournal.co.uk
Address: Fyvie Castle, Fyvie, Turriff, Aberdeenshire AB53 8JS, Scotland
Accessibility Rating: Guided Tours Only — Access permitted only as part of an organized tour. Independent exploration not allowed.
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What Others Have Experienced
A gardener who has lived on the estate with his family since 2012 says the security alarm keeps going off at night in the library corridor, directly beneath the Drummond Bedroom, though engineers have never found a fault. Once, in the basement coal store, he caught a sudden scent of rose perfume, the fragrance locals link to Lilias Drummond.
— from The Press and Journal
On a tour of the castle, a reporter felt the hair on her neck rise at the sight of a looming suit of armour and grew steadily more uncomfortable in the library. Even standing beside the weeping stone, she could not shake the unease that followed her through the house.
— from The Press and Journal
