Kellie’s Castle

William Kellie-Smith arrived in Malaya from Scotland in 1890, aged 20, and made a fortune clearing forest, planting rubber and dredging for tin in the Kinta valley, then one of the richest tin fields in the world. He named his estate Kinta Kellas after his family farm, brought his wife Agnes to Malaya in 1903, and in 1910 began building a mansion, Kellas House, on a bend of the Sungai Raya near Batu Gajah. After his son was born in 1915 he planned something grander: a four-storey castle mixing Moorish, Indo-Saracenic and Roman styles with fourteen rooms and what was to be Malaya’s first lift.

To build it, Kellie-Smith brought some 70 craftsmen from Madras (Chennai), along with Indian bricks and marble. In 1918 the influenza pandemic struck the workforce, and when the Tamil labourers asked to build a Hindu temple nearby, he agreed; in thanks they are said to have placed a figure of him among the deities on the temple wall. Descendants of the workers still live in the area. Then, in 1926, Kellie-Smith died of pneumonia on a trip to Lisbon. Agnes returned to Scotland, construction stopped, and the half-built castle was sold and left to the jungle.

The romantic ruin, with its legends of secret rooms and tunnels, was bound to gather ghost stories. Local residents and visitors say Kellie-Smith’s spirit still walks the corridors, guarding his unfinished home, and some believe the workers who died during construction linger too. A visitor quoted by IIUM Today in 2017 said she believed many spirits wandered the castle “since all the workers died” – a claim the record does not support, though the 1918 epidemic did take lives. A 2006 New Straits Times report, cited by the same article, even suggested the castle for “paranormal tourism.”

The castle’s facilities were improved by the state’s management around 2011, and it is now a popular attraction, drawing hundreds of visitors a day in school holidays. It was used as a set for Anna and the King (1999).

Visitors and locals say a figure believed to be Kellie-Smith walks the corridors as if guarding his home, and tell of footsteps and voices in empty rooms and a sense of being watched in the unfinished wing and the rumoured tunnels. Some believe the spirits of construction workers linger nearby. The reports are anecdotal.

The corridors and upper floors of the unfinished castle wing, the older ruined Kellas House beside it, and the underground passages and cellars said to lead toward the river and the Hindu temple.

Kellie’s Castle appears in Malaysian ghost-story collections, TV features and YouTube ghost hunts, and in films including Anna and the King (1999). The nearby Hindu temple with the figure of Kellie-Smith is part of the story told to visitors.