Halloween Horrors – The Screaming Woman of Pittodrie House
Beware the stairs…
The Halloween season slowly draws nearer. Gather about your charming fireside, my friends, and allow me to weave a tale from the depths of Scotland: one involving an ancient house, a tragic death and a screaming spectre.
Pittodrie House stands near the town of Inverurie, nestled in the countryside of Aberdeenshire in north-east Scotland. It is a country house now used as a hotel. The building has a complex history, having been expanded and altered over the centuries. Its wheel staircase has been dated to around 1490, although much of the old western section is thought to date from the seventeenth century. A wheel staircase is a spiral staircase, and this surviving feature hints at the building’s origins as a tower house.
However it began its life, Pittodrie House has come a long way since then. It is now a grand Scottish mansion, with turrets, stepped gables and pale rendered walls. As a four-star hotel, it has welcomed many guests over the years. Yet there is one resident of the old place who refuses to leave: a terrifying figure whom both staff and visitors might hope never to meet—the Screaming Woman.
The woman is believed to have been a servant girl who fell to her death down a staircase while trying to flee a fire. One modern retelling places her death in 1640, although that date remains unverified.
For more information and links see below.
The poor woman is said to have cared for the children of the household. Her spirit reportedly haunts the room formerly used as a nursery and has also been seen on the stairs.
It is said that on 31 October, Halloween night, people are disturbed by her ghostly cries echoing from the very staircase where she met her doom. But those who merely hear this miserable phantom might count themselves lucky, for actually seeing her would surely be enough to unsettle the most stoic of minds.
Accounts describe footsteps, cries for help and the smell of burning around the staircase. In one version, a girl with ‘flame hair’ appears on All Hallow’s Eve and throws herself down the stairs, apparently doomed to relive the terrifying moment of her death. What is most unnerving about this account is the description of her hair. Was it a red-haired woman who died there, or, worse still, does it suggest that her hair was ablaze?
Such a fine place as Pittodrie House is surely deserving of more than one ghostly inhabitant, and this venerable property does not disappoint. A phantom carriage drawn by a lone horse has reportedly been seen travelling along the driveway, while an unidentified spectre is said to appear in the library.
In an update published by ghost researcher Paul Lee in January 2022, the hotel’s general manager reported numerous accounts of strange incidents, particularly during the COVID-19 lockdowns, when staff were staying at the hotel.
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Links below.
Stay spooky.
Sources
Wikipedia
her.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/Monument/MAB15940
www.paullee.com/ghosts/hotels
https://www.paranormaldatabase.com/highlands
