Braemar Castle – home of Hardies plus ghosts

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Chris and Sherry Hardie visit Braemar Castle a second time in 2024 when renovations are complete.

Chris Hardie/For Agri-View

The castle features a yett, an old English and Scots term for gate. It’s a door with wrought-iron bars used for defensive purposes.

Chris Hardie/For Agri-View

The Laird’s Bedroom in Braemar Castle is where visitors have reported seeing a figure – believed to be John Farquharson. ‘The Black Colonel’ reclines on the bed and there’s a lingering smell of tobacco.

Chris Hardie/For Agri-View

The Laird’s Pit is in the lower level of Braemar Castle. It’s a 12-foot by 6-foot hole covered by bars that was used as a prison.

Chris Hardie/For Agri-View

The dining room in Braemar Castle reflects an earlier time when Alwyne Farquharson and his American wife, Frances, entertained guests there in the 1950s and 1960s.

Chris Hardie/For Agri-View

Braemar Castle is home to curved stone stairs.

Chris Hardie/For Agri-View

The Farquharson Clan crest includes a Latin motto that means 'fidelity and fortitude.'

Chris Hardie/For Agri-View

Braemar Castle is under renovation when Chris Hardie visits it in 2022.

Chris Hardie/For Agri-View

Braemar Castle is about 60 miles west of Aberdeen in the Highlands of Scotland. It was leased to a nonprofit group in 2007; it was reopened in 2023 after an extensive project to restore its exterior cover.

Chris Hardie/For Agri-View

Braemar Castle is an L-shaped tower house with an exterior wall and courtyard. It was built in 1628 by John Erskine as a stronghold for the Earls of Mar and as a check against the Farquharson clan. It originally had a moat.

Chris Hardie/For Agri-View

Chris Hardie For Agri-View

Editor’s note: Chris Hardie and his wife, Sherry, toured Scottish castles and homes during two trips to Great Britian. This is the second in a series of stories profiling the legendary ghosts and hauntings at some of those locations.

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Chris Hardie and his wife, Sherry, live on his great-grandparents’ Jackson County farm in Wisconsin. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2001, he’s a former member of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council and past-president of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association. Email chardie1963@gmail.com with comments.