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Traitors' Nest

Cursed Castles: Weeping Stones and Shadow Hounds

In Traitors’ Nest, the heroes find themselves far from home, in a grey castle where terrible accidents keep happening. Slates and portcullises fall, nearly killing people. Everybody has bad dreams. Slowly they become aware that the castle is cursed, and that it hates every one of them…

I’ve always loved castles and their legends and folktales. Many of them are said to be haunted, but some are also rumoured to be cursed.

A prophet’s rage and a weeping stone

During a freakish storm, the famous prophet and doomsayer Thomas the Rhymer arrived at Fyvie Castle in Scotland, expecting to be made welcome. Instead, the doors slammed in his face. Some say they were shut by the owners to keep him out, others claim that they were flung shut by a stray gust of wind.

Either way, Thomas took this as a personal insult, laying a curse upon Fyvie Castle and the family that owned it. Generation after generation, their first sons would die young due to sickness or war. The only way to lift the curse would be to find three lost stones, taken from the castle boundaries, and reunite them. So far the family have only found one, which they guard carefully. Mysteriously, the stone repeatedly grows moist, and is said to be weeping for the lack of the others…

The witch and the hound

Another story tells of Moll Bloxham, a rumoured witch who was allowed to sell some of the milk, butter and eggs from Warwick Castle’s supplies. When the locals complained that she was cheating them, however, the earl cut off her supply and she was publicly whipped. Moll vanished, and a short time later a huge, ferocious, red-eyed dog appeared in the castle. Was this her curse upon the castle, or the angry spirit of Moll herself? Three priests managed to drive it up to the top of Caesar’s tower, from which it leapt into the river.

The curse of the Marshals

William Marshal was one of the greatest and most powerful knights of the medieval era. His stronghold was the mighty castle of Chepstow in Wales. At one point, however, he seized two manors from an Irish bishop. After William Marshal’s death, his sons refused to return the manors, so the bishop laid a curse on them. Some would die “a lamentable death” and all would die without heirs, so that the castle would pass to others who did not bear the Marshal name. Sure enough, all five sons died before their time, without male heirs, and in some cases messily...

A wail from the well

In Himeji castle, there is a legend that a beautiful serving maid named Okiku once rejected the amorous advances of a samurai. In revenge, he hid one of the castle’s ten treasure plates, and framed the innocent Okiku for its theft. In punishment, she was tortured and thrown into the castle well. It is said that her ghost can still be heard down the well in the dead of night, counting the plates, her voice rising to a shriek of despair when she reaches ‘nine’ and finds the last plate missing…

OK, I admit it, that’s a ghost rather than a curse, but I love Himeji castle and I wanted to sneak it in. Isn’t it beautiful?

Buy Traitors’ Nest (UK edition) via Hive.co.uk or from Amazon.co.uk