One of our favorite stops on our trip was Glamis* Castle in Scotland. Our tour guide was great - among many of the stories that she told us, the below was one of the best.
*pronounced "glams"
We stood in one of the tower keeps, and our tour guide pointed out and area in the wall, where if you looked closely you could see that there had once been a doorway. She told us that back a few hundred years ago, when it had been illegal to play cards on Sunday, that the lord of the castle had been sitting up late on a Saturday night playing cards with a friend. As midnight drew near, a servant came to remind the lord that playing cards beyond midnight was forbidden. The lord, who had had quite a bit to drink, bellowed at the servant, "I shall play cards if I wish to play cards, and the devil can take me if he does not like it!" Upset, the servant retreated.
Not long after, as the clock struck midnight, a hooded figure appeared in the doorway. "I am the devil," it announced, "and I am here to answer your invitation." The next morning, none of the servants could find the lord or his friend - but they found that both the doorway to the room the lord had been playing in, as well as the window looking out, had been bricked over during the night. They say that if you stand at the bricked-over doorway on a late Saturday night, that you can hear cards being shuffled.
It is a testament to our guide's storytelling skills that what could have been a cheesy telling gave me goosebumps.
Be careful what you ask for this Halloween!
The barred, bricked-over window in the top left of the picture is supposedly the room in the ghost story.