Windhouse

Standing isolated above Whale Firth on the island of Yell, the roofless shell of Windhouse has long been called the most haunted building in Shetland. The house, built on the site of an older dwelling, is said to be troubled by several spirits: a man in a top hat, a phantom dog, a servant girl, and most famously the 'Lady in Silk' — a woman believed to have been a housekeeper or mistress of the house who fell down the stairs and broke her neck. She is said to walk in a circle at the top of the staircase before vanishing with a sigh.

The haunting gained an eerie corroboration during nineteenth-century renovations, when workers digging beneath the main staircase uncovered a skeleton — by some accounts that of a large man — lending grim substance to the old stories of violent deaths at the house.

A separate strand of local folklore tells of a shipwrecked sailor who came ashore one Christmas Eve and took shelter at Windhouse, ignoring the family's warnings as they fled the house for the night. Left alone, he was confronted by a monstrous troll, which he fought and killed with an axe before dawn — a tale that fused the house's reputation for hauntings with older Shetland troll-lore.