The castle's most famous apparition is known as the Blue Boy or Radiant Boy which used to be seen in what is now called the Pink Room (not open to the public).

There, when the Clock tower sounded the hour of midnight sounded, cries and moans of a child in pain and in an agony of fear were heard.

The noises came from a spot nearest to a passage cut through the ten feet thick wall into the adjoining tower.

As the blood-curdling cries died slowly away a bright halo of light began to form close to the old four-poster bed.

Anyone sleeping there saw, gently approaching them, the figure of a young boy dressed in blue, and surrounded by the light. Witnesses say his clothes were like those seen in paintings dating from the

Restoration period of the 1660s, when Charles II was on the throne. It was in this wall, during the 1920's, that the bones of a boy of tender years, and some fragments of a blue dress, were discovered.

But, to this day, occasional guests in the Pink Room claim to be awakened by strange blue flashes in the middle of the night. Any explanation of an electrical fault can be counteracted by the fact that there are no electrics of any kind in the wall where the flashes were seen.

The castle's next best known and authenticated ghost is that of Lady Mary Berkeley, wife of Ford, Lord Grey of Wark and Chillingham and Earl of Tankerville, who is still looking for her errant husband.

To this day the rustle of her dress is sometimes heard along the corridors and stairs and, as the disappointed and anxious wraith passes by, a chill, as of cold air, seems to sweep through one's very marrow. There have also been claims of her ghost 'escaping from her portrait' to wander the castle.

It was said that the nursery where it hung had been disturbed by its restlessness and children and their nurse declared that she stepped out of her frame and frightened them by following them about.

Other ghosts haunt Chillingham castle.

In what is called 'the inner pantry' people have seen a frail figure in white.

This was where the silver in use was stored and a footman was once employed to sleep there to safeguard it. One night the footman had turned in when he was accosted by a lady in white, very pale, who asked him for water.

Thinking for the moment it was one of the visitors he turned away to obey her behest, when he suddenly remembered that he was locked in and that no visitor could possibly have entered. On turning round he found the figure had vanished.

A lady's maid who had been given the upper chamber was found next morning on the sofa in the dining hall. She had quitted her bed in a panic and nothing would induce her to return. It is said that a former chef, who occupied the room, was driven to commit suicide there, and we no longer use it as a bedroom.

Chillingham Castle website