Your Memories: Ghostly goings-on at Lauriston Castle

THE tour of visitors was finished and David Scarratt was just closing up for the day, shuttering up the windows and doors around Lauriston Castle. The 19th century mansion, just three miles from the centre of Edinburgh, was quiet again as David, the building manager for the Museum of Edinburgh and Lauriston, moved through its elegant rooms, furnished in Edwardian style.

"I had gone into one of the bathrooms, when someone walked out of the bedroom through an adjacent door," the 57-year-old from Portobello explains. "They went into the sitting room and I heard a door close behind them."

But when David, who has worked at the castle for more than 30 years, went to check, there was no-one there. "Three or four years later I was moving some of our costume collection, including a ribbed silk dress, and the slippery material made this swishing sound, and it just came back to me. That was it, that was the sound I had heard."

Had he heard the ethereal presence of a lady from generations ago, swishing in her silks across the floor of the castle, making her familiar way from her bedroom to the sitting room?

If he did, David has two theories about who it could be. Firstly, Sophia, the 19th century wife of Andrew, Lord Rutherfurd, solicitor general and friend of William Henry Playfair.

Discovering she was dying, she wrote her husband a poignant letter, to be delivered to him only on her death. Sophia died in the bedroom, as did one of the last inhabitants of the castle, Margaret Reid, wife of William Reid, owner of Morison and Company, a cabinet makers.

See how the servants spring cleaned Lauriston Castle 100 years ago, today and tomorrow at 3pm and 4pm. 0131-336 2060.