Mary King's Close is populated with a cast of eerie characters taken from a history book.

EDINBURGH -- On a recent visit to Scotland we discovered a history of warring clans and conflict with the English that has left the country and its castles a hotbed of ghostly activity.

Edinburgh Castle, like a crouching lion looming on a crag over Scotland's capital, is reputed to be the haunting grounds of a headless drummer, a piper who wanders its dark tunnels and the ghostly figure of a man in Highland regalia who plays the pipes on its battlements.

A 2001 ghost hunting expedition in Edinburgh Castle by Dr. Richard Wiseman, a psychologist from Hertfordshire University, revealed more than just shadowy figures.

Labyrinth of alleyways

At times there would be an unexplained drop in the temperature and some members of his team were touched on the face and tugged at by an invisible presence.

The Old Town of Edinburgh is itself a labyrinth of alleyways and medieval buildings; many with a dark history and a reputation for being haunted.

Beneath the city a subterranean passageway called Mary King's Close has an eerie feel. On a tour accompanied by Walter King, we entered a 17th-century world once riddled with plague and peopled by characters from the past.

These include the Widow Ross, Alison Rough -- who murdered her husband, John Craig -- a grave-digger at Greyfriars churchyard -- and Patrick Burne -- a tanner whose hides polluted the Close with a powerful stench.

The history of the Close, the names of its inhabitants and details of their daily lives came to us from Housmaills Book of 1635, a record of past which has been preserved.

Standing in a patch of light cast by a wall-mounted fish oil lamp, we heard of the spectral inhabitants of the Close.

The disembodied head of a man with a white beard is sometimes seen floating in mid-air and there have been fleeting glimpses of a shadowy figure clad in a hat and a long black cloak.

Not too long ago, in one of its rooms, a Japanese psychic was accosted by a child covered in weeping lesions and sobbing because she had lost her only toy 400 years before.

Disturbed by the experience, the psychic bought a doll and left it in the room where the spirit-child Annie had appeared.

Today dolls, stuffed lambs, a striped tiger and teddy bears brought by visitors to the Close form a shrine to a little girl who died of the plague in the 17th century.

Glamis Castle is reportedly one of the most haunted in Scotland.

On our arrival at Tulloch Castle late in the afternoon, black crows swept in a co-ordinated mass around the 13th- century castle tower shrieking like banshees pursued by the devil.

In February of this year a guest burst into the castle's public rooms late at night, sweating, trembling and hysterical.

He awoke, he said, to find the castle ghost kneeling on his chest with her hands clasped around his neck. He checked out of the castle that night and subsequently sold his story to the News Of The World.

Slew of phantoms

Glamis Castle, childhood home of the Queen Mother and one of Scotland's finest stately homes, is reportedly occupied by a slew of phantoms.

Mary King's Close in Old Town Edinburgh.

Among them is Janet Douglas, wife of the 6th Lord Glamis, who was accused by King James V of witchcraft and later burned alive on Castle Hill in Edinburgh.

To this day her spirit haunts the chapel at Glamis; the sun shining through her transparent figure as she kneels praying in one of the chapel pews.

When visiting one of these haunted places, should you feel the chill of plummeting temperatures, breathe in the perfume of a non-existent woman, or experience the eerie sensation of a figure passing within inches of your face, it could mean that you have been in the company of ghosts.