Spooky smoke is no joke for creepy Braemar Castle’s staff

Doreen Wood with the 4 poster bed at Braemar Castle which is haunted by the ghost of the Black Colonel, there is also the smell of pipe smoke (Peter Jolly)

THE ghost of a womanising 17th Century colonel is giving castle staff the heebie-jeebies – by leaving the smell of pipe smoke in his old bedroom.

The smoking spectre is believed to be the ghost of John Farquharson, the Black Colonel who apparently haunts Braemar Castle near Ballater, Aberdeenshire.

Staff have noticed the smell of tobacco smoke in one of the colonel’s favourite rooms. The outline of a reclining figure has also been spotted indented in the sheets of a four-poster bed.

Doreen Wood, vice chairman of the Braemar Community Group, which runs the castle, said: “He was a womaniser so that is one of the bedrooms he would have known and he still visits.

“I’ve never seen him but you smell pipe smoke.”