2017 Haunted Castle tour!

I'm June, Vice President of The Advanced Ghost Hunters of Seattle Tacoma and here is my account of our amazing trip.

On November 3, 2017 I left to do a layover in Reykjavik Iceland for a couple of days. I was really planning on going to a couple of the graveyards there but the weather turned pretty bad so my other tour was canceled, but luckily I did get to see the Northern Lights that first night. That was incredible!!

The next day was a full on ice and snow blizzard while heading to the airport, that was also the day that I started to put my coat on and it blew away. So had to get a new coat when I got to London.

I stayed in the Tower hotel the first night. That was incredible, right next to the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. I had actually gone through it a couple of years before, so did not go through it again.

Then I ventured into the church, All Hallows-by-the-Tower, also previously dedicated to St Mary the Virgin and sometimes known as All Hallows Barking, is an ancient Anglican church on Byward Street in the City of London, overlooking the Tower of London. The extremely sweet elderly woman in the church talked to me quite a while telling me the ghost stories of the crypts below the church.

The crypt area was extremely eerie and I felt like someone was standing close to me. As I stood there looking at the artifacts I did an EVP session.

It was really interesting how they unearthed a lot of pagan artifacts under the church

It was time to move on after that and meet up with Ross and Jon in London, the next day was High Gate Cemetery. Although I had been there a couple of years before, the West side can only be seen if you are in a group tour. So we got to do that this time. The whole cemetery is incredible:

We then made our way to Chillingham Castle. This was not an easy place to get to without a car. Found out the bus that was going there from the small town that was relatively close by only left every 4 hours, so we took a taxi there. The driver said that it didn't even show up on his GPS but he thought he knew where it was. BUT we got there just fine. Weather was sunny but cold and no rain. So it was great. Chillingham castle is supposed to be one of the most haunted castles in the UK. This is where we also met up with our friends Mark and Aileen from Edinburgh. We even took the Ghost Tour that night and did a couple of investigations.

Below is an interesting short video at Chillingham Castle, it could have been just a draft but it was interesting that it even opened further when asked. This didn't happen again.

Investigation in the Haunted Woods at Chillingham Castle

Before we went to Rosslyn Castle we made a stop at the The Holy Island of Lindisfarne, also known simply as Holy Island, is a tidal island off the northeast coast of England, which constitutes the civil parish of Holy Island in Northumberland. An old ruin now, the best Mead I have ever had.

Our next stop for a few days was Rosslyn Castle. What an amazing place. Mark and Aileen arranged for us to stay there for 3 nights/4 days. Ruins around us with a dungeon and prison cells below us. We had night after night of investigations and eerie strange happenings.

On dark and stormy nights, so it is said, a blood-curdling sound can be heard in the woodlands around Rosslyn Castle. According to folklore, it comes from a phantom dog, the ghost of a war hound which belonged to an English knight. In 1302, there was a fierce battle in Rosslyn Glen between Scottish and English forces. When a Scotsman killed the English knight, the dog set upon him and he was forced to slay that, too; but that wasn’t the end of the story, because every night from then onwards the ghost of the dog would appear in the guard room at Rosslyn Castle, terrifying the soldiers who were garrisoned there. One night, the man who had slain the dog was on watch duty: he let out a terrified scream when he saw the apparition, and died three days later. After that the ghostly visits ceased, but the dog’s baying could occasionally still be heard in the glen.

We were not that far from Edinburgh and got to see the Gilmerton Cove, it is a series of underground passageways and chambers hand-carved from sandstone located beneath the streets of Gilmerton, an ex-mining village, now a southeastern suburb of Edinburgh, Scotland. A five-year collaborative project between Gilmerton Heritage Trust and The City of Edinburgh Council allowed the newly restored Cove to open in 2003 as an educational resource for the community as well as a place to visit. There are many theories about the origins of the Cove and its purpose. It is known that it was the 18th century residence of local blacksmith, George Paterson. The parish records show that he was reprimanded for allowing alcohol to be consumed within the Cove on the sabbath. It is not known whether Paterson was responsible for carving the Cove. Popular theories are that it was used as a drinking den for local gentry, a Covenanters refuge, and a smugglers' lair. Extensive archaeological and historical research has failed to resolve the mystery. In 2007, the documentary television series Cities of the Underworld featured Gilmerton Cove in the episode Scotland's Sin City which postulates that the Cove was linked to a nearby Hellfire Club building via a secret passage.

Also went to the very haunted Mary Kings Close and the whole City of Edinburgh:

I just can't tell you what an amazing time we had. We had the WHOLE castle to ourselves and we loved spending time with Mark and Aileen. It was incredible. I also left a little heart filled with some of my mom's ashes (she passed away in February 2017, she always wanted to go to Scotland so I thought this would be nice to leave a bit of her there hidden away someplace.

After our incredible experience there, we took the ferry over to Bally Gally castle in Northern Ireland. While we were there we also took a trip up to see the Giant's Causeway. That was awesome too. Bally Gally Castle has a room that they just call the ghost room. It was inhabited by a girl whose father didn't care for her and was angry with her that she was not born a boy. One day he decided to starve her and locked her in the room. Her mother was distraught and tried to climb up and save her, sadly she slipped and fell to her death. Her ghost has been seen wandering the area.

It was then time for us to take the bus down to Belfast. I didn't know a lot about Belfast, just the warnings of people who said stay away from the city, it's very violent. It used to be, it's considered one of the safest cities in the world now. It is also a very haunted city from the wars, so many people died there. One of the highlights is we got to sign the Peace Wall.

Our next stop was Dublin and the very haunted Clontarf Castle: