A Lanarkshire man has captured the eeriest of images whilst out walking at Dalzell Estate in Motherwell.
Martin Leeson, of Coatbridge, was snapping picturesque photos of the scenic nature area and former stately castle, that now serves as luxury flats, when he spotted a strange looking enigma in one of the windows of the historic building.
Deciding to investigate further, the 55-year-old snapped away and was later shocked to discover the ghostly image clear as day in his pictures.
Intrigued by his haunted sighting, Martin returned to the scene to take the same image again a few weeks later and lo and behold this time around the 'ghost' was nowhere to be seen.
Martin, who takes nature and landscape photographs as a hobby told Lanarkshire Live: "I was visiting the Estate a few weeks ago with my dog and I was taking autumnal landscapes photos when I noticed a white image at one of the windows above at the side the garden is on.
"I remembered reading a story about the Dalzell Estate supposedly being haunted by the ghosts of three ladies and decided to take a photo of the image at the window.
"I was using a camera with little zoom to take photos of the nature landscapes but I decided to enlarge the images of the photo on my computer when I got home and I was very surprised to see the image looked like a ghostly face.
"I decided to read up a little more on the history and watched an online video about the Dalzell Castle Estate and found that there are three ghosts reputed to haunt the castle from different eras in history- a grey lady, a white lady and a green lady.
"I was very surprised to then learn that the white lady is said to appear at windows and that she is thought to be a maid who jumped from the tower above the Whinney Burn.
"And the window where I took the picture is on the tower above the Whinney Burn!"
The tragic maid is thought to have lived in the 19th century but, abandoned by her lover, threw herself off the battlements into the rocky gorge of the burn.
It is said that she now haunts the whole estate, while green lady haunts the south wing and the grey lady is said to be a nurse from World War I when the house was used as a hospital for wounded soldiers.
Martin added: "The whole thing really intrigued me so I returned to the estate a few weeks later to take the same picture again but this time there was nothing!"
Dalzell Estate has a rich and fascinating history, starting life as a Royal Hunting Forest in 843, and was owned by the Dalzell family until 1647 when it was granted to James Hamilton 1st of Dalzell.
The Estate then passed down through successive generations of the Hamilton family until 1952 when following the death of Lord Gavin Hamilton it became a boys school – Gresham College – until it was purchased in 1967 by the local authority.
The House then lay empty until it was sold for one penny in 1985 and converted into a number of private dwelling houses.
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