Qualla: Meggernie Castle

Meggernie Castle: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rob Burke, CC BY-SA 2.0. Workmen restoring Meggernie Castle in the mid-19th century broke through a wall in one of the towers and found a chest. Inside the chest were the upper-half skeletal remains of a woman. They removed the bones for proper burial. The ghost sightings did not stop. That was the strange thing. Guests at the castle had been reporting the same apparition for generations: the upper half of a woman's body, floating through the rooms, sometimes through the walls into the next chamber. One visitor woke to the sensation of a red-hot kiss on his cheek and watched her torso drift away from his bed and vanish into the wall. Meggernie sits halfway up Glen Lyon, the longest enclosed glen in Scotland, where the River Lyon runs through some of the loveliest and loneliest country in Perthshire on its way to join the Tay. The castle is five storeys of solid stone with walls five feet thick. And it has the most peculiar haunting story in the Highlands.

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Image: Rob Burke | CC BY-SA 2.0

Meggernie Castle: Boggy Meadow

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Benutzer:Brunswyk, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name is older than the building. Meggernie may be of Pictish origin, possibly cognate with the Welsh migwernedd, meaning boggy meadow. That gives some sense of how long people have been here, naming the land in tongues that have since been swept away by Gaelic and English. Be...

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Image: Benutzer:Brunswyk | CC BY-SA 3.0

Meggernie Castle: Architecture of Defence

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dlsnider, CC0. The castle is a working piece of late-medieval military architecture, even with its softer additions. The walls are about five feet thick, in keeping with its defensive role, and the keep stands five storeys tall. At each corner is a small square tower bracketed out from the main...

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Image: Dlsnider | CC0

Meggernie Castle: The Menzies Murder

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Djupsjo, Public domain. The haunting story is older than the Wills baronets. It dates to a time when Meggernie was occupied by the Menzies of Culdares. An early Menzies of Culdares married a young woman much younger than himself, and her youth and beauty drove him to jealousy. He murdered her in a fit o...

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Image: Djupsjo | Public domain