WE OWN SCOTLAND’S
Our guest house is home to a SPIRIT who and visitors loves playing PRANKS on staff By Maureen Humphreys, 69 alike!
spookiest hotel
I’d always dreamt of running my own guest house and 30 years ago I seized the chance when I spotted Eastbank Hotel up for sale.
‘That’s the one,’ I told my husband, Arthur.
Situated in the historic village of Rothes, Moray, the hotel was perfect for tourists because there was so much to see and do. Not only did it sit right in the heart of the whisky trail of Speyside, but there was also the river nearby for walkers and wildlife watchers and the remains of Rothes Castle, which was originally built in 1200. What wasn’t there to love? So we sold our home in Southport and moved 370 miles to begin our new life, along with our son Robert, then eight.
We hired two staff, Janice and Miriam, to help us run the four-bed hotel. Everyone was really welcoming and not long after, the local Freemasons welcomed Arthur into their fold.
One night, he’d just returned from one of his meetings with them when he suggested having a nightcap in the bar.
As we sat sipping our drinks, alone, I heard a clunking noise, like someone was opening the door at the end of the nearby corridor with a big oldfashioned bunch of keys.
Arthur went to investigate. We assumed it was Kevin, a local lad we had staying with us, trying to get in, but there was no one there. And as soon as Arthur returned, the noise started again! He went back, before calling me over.
‘Maureen, do you feel this?’ he asked, standing next to a pillar connected to the stairs. ‘I feel all quivery when I’m here – but if I move away the feeling goes.’
I laughed, pressing my hand against the pillar. ‘I don’t feel anything.’
The strange noise had been forgotten about by this point, but we soon discovered something interesting that explained Arthur’s feeling…
In 1662, Rothes Castle was demolished and over time the stones were brought into the village to construct other buildings, including this one. It had been built in 1793 by the Freemasons as the first Masonic Lodge in Rothes.
Had their energy been engrained in the stonework and sensed by Arthur because he was a Freemason? We believed in the paranormal so that’s all we could think.
As time went on, more weird things happened.
I’d hear a cough in the bar and go through to find the place empty or smell pipe smoke even though it was a non-smoking hotel. Items, such as paperwork, would go missing from the front desk and reappear where we’d left them.
One time, I was in the kitchen, when the cupboard door opened by itself and a tin of peas shot out!
It wasn’t long until the staff began reporting things, too.
I was manning reception one afternoon when Janice, who’d been hoovering the landing on the second floor, came storming downstairs.
‘It’s haunted up there!’ she gasped. ‘I just walked through a cold patch!’
Meanwhile, our son Robert kept saying he could see a figure standing at the end of his bed at night.
‘Don’t be daft,’ I’d say, until the same thing happened to me.
It looked like a man, and I even saw the same shadowy figure once or twice walking through the bar area.
I began sleeping with a bible under my pillow after that!
‘Who knew the hotel was haunted?’ I told Arthur. No one had warned us!
Despite the ghostly goings on, business was good and guests loved the place. So when the building next door, which used to be a bank, became available three years later, we snapped it up and turned it into an annex with 10 more guest rooms and a sauna.
If ever a guest seemed nervous about the idea of spending a night in a haunted hotel, we’d put them there
‘I feel all quivery when I’m here’
instead, reassuring them that the annex wasn’t haunted.
Not that everyone realised what they were getting themselves into when they opted for the main building…
One guest, a man staying with his young son in room four, appeared at breakfast looking pale, saying he’d had the most awful night’s sleep.
‘I felt someone trying to push me out of bed,’ he croaked.
‘At first, I thought it was my son so I switched on the light to tell him to stop, but he was fast asleep in the other bed.’
He’d kept the light on for the rest of the night and we moved him to another room.
When we warned one regular guest of ours, Alan, about the ghost he said he didn’t care.
‘Once I take out my hearing aid, I don’t hear a thing, so what difference does it make if there’s a ghost making bumps in the night?’ he chuckled.
But who was our ghost?
That remained a mystery until 2004, when an engineer who was repairing the clock on Rothes Kirk, the church opposite the hotel, stayed with us.
After having a quiet drink in the bar, he got up to leave and suddenly remarked: ‘I have to tell you, you have a ghost here.’
‘Oh yes, we know,’ I smiled. But there was more…
‘His name’s Angus,’ the man continued. ‘He’s very old and is happy living here but gets upset when you talk about selling up!’
I’ll admit, I’d talked about packing it all in once or twice – the sort of thing you do with any job after a bad day – but I hadn’t really meant it.
‘Now I think of it, the activity gets worse after I’ve been having those conversations,’ I realised.
I wondered if Angus was a Freemason who’d helped build the hotel or whether he was an older ghost who’d come from the castle with the stones?
‘Don’t worry, Angus, if we ever move I’ll take a boulder of stone with me and you can come with us,’ I chuckled.
Angus was picked up again the following year by a psychic who stayed with us.
‘I’m detecting a spirit woman here, too,’ she revealed. ‘She doesn’t like Angus and throws things at him.’
Was she the one throwing glasses in the bar?
Catherine, the bar manager, had had one hurled at her while cleaning up after a busy night. She’d also had glasses shatter in her hand. ‘Maybe I was just over-polishing them,’ she’d shrugged at the time.
But Tracy-Ann, one of our housekeepers who has been with us for three years, had an experience that wasn’t so easy to explain away.
She’d been cleaning the second floor when she spotted a shadowy figure walking into the communal bathroom before the armchair in room two began moving on its own. Sue, our manager, was staying overnight in the room when she heard footsteps going down the corridor, when there was nobody else in the building.
After 30 years here, I’m used to Angus’s pranks but I do get a bit spooked when I’m here on my own at night, which happened a lot when we had to close during lockdown.
‘Angus don’t you frighten me,’ I’ll warn him and usually he’ll listen, but not always.
The other day, I was coming out of reception when I saw his shadow go from the dining room to the bar and, scared, I shouted for Liam, the general manager.
‘There’s no one here,’ he said searching the building, before admitting that he, too, had seen the shadow earlier and heard someone coughing in the bar.
I don’t advertise that the place is haunted but, for some, it’s the main attraction.
When we hosted a masonic dinner here, word got out about our haunted stones and Freemasons wanted to see if they could pick up the same quivery feeling as Arthur had.
‘Which bit gives off the weird feeling?’ everyone was asking.
‘I’m not telling you, have a feel of all the walls and pillars and see for yourself,’ I smiled.
To my astonishment, they all pinpointed the same spot Arthur had, even though, to this day, no one else outside the Freemasons has been able to!
Once the hotel is open to holiday makers again Angus will be delighted, I’m sure. He likes it full of hustle and bustle.
We’re so proud to have him here we’ve even named a house cocktail after him. So, if you ever visit, why not join me in the bar for a Spirit of Angus and raise a glass to our ghost.
I saw a shadowy figure in the bar