Episode 33 - The Ghosts of Edinburgh

You walk the streets of Edinburgh’s Old Town. A place steeped in history. The long stretch of the Royal Mile lays before you. Behind you, Edinburgh Castle, and down the long road that runs the ridge-top, the Palace of Holyroodhouse. To either side, the remnants and foundations of the Old Town.

Glancing around, you can see the tourist-trap stores peddling the wares of Scotland. Their storefronts hiding some of the history. But it’s there. All it takes is a closer look. Some places show it with pride, others are hidden away in closes and courtyards.

Others wander the streets as well, they pop in and out of shops and attractions. They are not here for the same reasons as you.

You are here with purpose. You are here to find something.

Edinburgh is reportedly one of the most haunted cities in the world. You are here, to find their ghosts.

Edinburgh is full of hauntings. From taverns to castles to underground vaults, it seems like if you throw a stone in Edinburgh Old Town, you are likely to hit a building with at least one ghost story.

Hauntings are prolific, but not all ghost-stories are created equal. Some are simple things, simply providing a niche draw to those who appreciate such things. But some are stories full of dark history and restless spirits. They are stories that have spanned decades or centuries, and have grown to hold a fearsome reputation.

The Ghosts of Edinburgh are everywhere. Their stories can be terrifying and violent, with one causing such a response that for many years, the location was closed to the public as a means to protect people.

Today, I hope to share with you some of the most popular and most thrilling ghosts that are said to haunt the Old Town of Edinburgh. First we will visit the many spirits said to make their eternal home in the Vaults under South Bridge, then we will travel to Greyfriar’s Kirkyard, a hill-top cemetery haunted by one of the most violent ghosts, the Mackenzie Poltergeist.

I am Andrew Eagle, and I am excited to invite you to join me as I pass Through the Veil and meet some of Edinburgh’s ghosts.

You leave the Royal Mile through Old Fishmarket Close. Like any of the closes coming off the High Street, Old Fishmarket is narrow and sloped down and away from the business of the street behind you.

Of course, the street ahead of you is busy too. This is Cowgate. Once one of the city’s slums, Cowgate is a popular spot now. Restaurants, bars, and music venues line the street in both directions as you reach the end of the Close. To your left, you can see South Bridge. You make your way there, and passing under it, you find your way onto a side-street. Here, there is a door. A door into the dark vaults that are the foundations of the Bridge above.

Walking into the vaults you almost immediately find yourself in the pitch dark, a stark change from the daylight outside. Sound filters in from the buildings nearby, music from a nearby bar, maybe even the murmur of conversation.

Quickly, that fades away too, as you make your way through the strange spaces by the light of a flashlight.

The chambers are odd, some are far too small to stand in comfortably, while the one you have just entered stands twenty feet tall or more. The temperature is cool in here, far cooler than outside. And it’s to these quiet, damp places, that you were drawn by the stories. It’s then you hear the footsteps. The heavy and plodding steps echo through the quiet. It’s coming from above.

You quickly climb the stairs and enter another series of smaller vaults. Moving carefully, you follow the sounds of the footsteps.

You round a corner and stop, the sound is gone. You are left in the quiet and dark of a small vault.

You realize you are sweating, despite the temperature. And when you feel the quick, sharp tug on your sleeve, you jump slightly and spin to look.

Perhaps it was your imagination, or perhaps it really was one of the spiritual inhabitants of this place, but there was nobody there.

Realizing how alone you felt in this place of darkness and quiet, you quickly made your way back through the vaults and to the sunlight and noise of the city.

The South Bridge’s story truly begins in 1788 when its construction completed.

But the vaults beneath it is where our interest truly lies. The vaults are a series of chambers, some tiny and some large, that are built within the nineteen arches of the South Bridge. And their fearsome reputation began on the very first day it was in service. It was determined that a particular judge’s wife would be the first person to cross the bridge as part of the grand opening. However, just before the opening, she died.

The city decided it would not change its plans, so the grand opening went along as planned with one notable exception. The first person across the bridge was carried in a coffin. The locals instantly believed the bridge was cursed, and for many years the majority of the townsfolk refused to walk across the bridge, preferring instead the long, and circuitous route through the closes and streets of the Cowgate district.

For about thirty years, the vaults were used as intended. They housed taverns, trade and craftspeople, and storage space. Over time it became common for smugglers and criminals to use the dark vaults as a hideout and storage space for their contraband. Although it’s never been proven, it is said that notorious serial killers Burke and Hare used the vaults to store bodies until they could deliver them to medical schools.

However, the vaults deteriorated quickly. They were not sealed properly, so they quickly became humid and damp, damaging goods and making them uncomfortable to spend long periods of time in. They were mostly abandoned until the space was filled by leasing it as housing to the poorest of Edinburgh’s people.

At some point, between 1835 and 1875, the Vaults were emptied of people, filled with rubble to make them inaccessible, and closed for more than a hundred years until they were reopened in the 1980s.

The South Bridge Vaults are, if you believe all the stories, filled with ghosts. Hundreds, if not thousands, died during the decades where the vaults were being used as housing for the poverty-stricken. Disease ran rampant, hygiene was non-existent. This left a place filled with death and misery, the perfect breeding-ground for ghost-stories.

One story is of a small boy who will occasionally tug at people’s pant legs or throw stones across the chambers, creating an echo as they clatter to a stop. Another, a ghost affectionately called Mr. Boots. The heavy footsteps heard throughout the Vaults and the occasional sighting of a man in a red coat and heavy boots have led people to believe that Mr. Boots was once a soldier, perhaps sent into the vaults to investigate or shutdown a criminal operation.

The most fearsome of all the reported spirits though goes by two names. The South Bridge Entity and The Watcher.

According to psychics and mediums, the Watcher is not a ghost at all, but instead some other kind of spirit. And it is aggressive.

Of all the spirits of South Bridge, the Watcher is the only one accused of assaulting visitors to the vaults. It is claimed that the Watcher follows groups through the vaults, occasionally escalating to shoving people, pulling hair, and in some cases people have claimed that they felt they couldn’t breathe, and have even collapsed. Particularly in a room where the Watcher is said to have the most strength, known as the White Room.

Other spirits have been seen or heard within the Vaults as well. The ghost of a pregnant woman, another of a lost child. Plenty more.

Done with the vaults, and calmed down in the daylight, you walk along Cowgate. Surrounded by people, it’s easy to forget the off-putting solitude of the vaults. Eventually, you find yourself heading back up hill. Not back to the Royal Mile, but near it. A small hilltop, capped with a walled cemetery.

This is Greyfriar’s Kirkyard.

The headstones, monuments, and gardens surround a central building of stone and stained glass.

It’s a beautiful place. Perfect for quiet contemplation and mourning.

You arrived there as evening fell around you. You begin to walk through the yard. The path wraps around the kirk in the center, with small legs and other loops that went out to explore the reset of the cemetery.

It was one of those small paths that carried you past a series of large mausoleums. One caught your eye. Not because it was more beautiful, or the architecture more fine, but because of the heavy iron chain that wrapped around the door and sealed it with a pad-lock.

You walked up to it and stood on tip-toes to look into the structure within. A set of coffins laid to rest in alcoves in the wall, a few artist decorations.

Something about it felt wrong, just looking inside gave you the chills with no evident explanation. So you continued on your way. Shortly after passing the mausoleum, you came across a walled section of the cemetery. With a barred gate, locked shut, you couldn’t go within. Within that gate lies the Covenanter's Prison. A section of the graveyard that was separated off to hold first the living, and eventually the dead of the Covenanter movement.

Even from outside the gate, it felt like you weren’t alone there. Standing looking into the Prison, you felt such a rage. Like something, or someone, didn’t want you there. When the wind picked up, blowing away from the Prison, and chilling you to your bones. Something here was wrong… You hurried away, back to the nightlife of Cowgate and the Royal Mile, away from where dead things lie.

Greyfriars Kirkyard surrounds Greyfriars Kirk. People have been buried there as early as the 1500s. The Kirkyard itself became involved in the Covenanters movement, who signed the National Covenant in Greyfriars Kirk in 1638. When they were defeated in 1679, 1200 Covenanter prisoners were brought to a field at the south end of the kirkyard and held there until their executions.

Conditions in the field were horrific. Many died simply of exposure and the elements. These conditions were maintained at the behest of Sir George Mackenzie. Mackenzie’s temperaments were so violent he became known as Bloody Mackenzie to his prisoners. It’s believed that over the course of his time as Lord’s Advocate, Mackenzie was responsible for 18,000 deaths, before being buried in the Black Mausoleum in the same Kirkyard where he had committed atrocities.

Later, in the 1700s, that field joined into the Kirkyard and became the Covenanter’s Prison, a walled area within the kirkyard lined with tombs.

The area was open to the public for more than 200 years, until the city council locked it. Now it is only accessible by participating on guided tours.

The most famous haunting in Greyfriar Kirkyard is the story of the Mackenzie Poltergeist. Said to be Bloody George Mackenzie’s ghost, the poltergeist began its reign of terror in 1998. The story goes that a homeless man came to the Kirkyard looking for shelter from a powerful storm. He was desperate and cold, and eventually decided to break the lock on one of the mausoleums and head inside out of the elements.

He happened to choose the Black Mausoleum of Bloody Mackenzie.

He broke in, investigated one of the coffins either from boredom, curiosity, or perhaps hoping to find some items to sell. As he cracked open the coffin, the floor of the mausoleum gave way, and he tumbled into the pit beneath the tomb, used to hold plague victims at one point.

He managed to pull himself free and escape back into the storm, but it is believed that this disturbed the spirit of George Mackenzie. For a few months after the mausoleum was disturbed, people reported strange happenings. Bruises, burn marks, and people being bodily dragged along the ground near the tomb were all reported. Then suddenly the Mausoleum went silent, and the happenings moved to the Covenanter’s Prison.

For those who believe, it is thought that George Mackenzie’s ghost decided to return to his old duties tormenting the people held within the Covenanter’s Prison.

There are plenty of other places in Edinburgh that claim hauntings.

The White Hart Inn for instance is a restaurant and pub along the Royal Mile that has claimed a haunting for many years. Although the stories vary, and the details change from telling to telling, visitors to the inn continue to report strange occurrences.

And of course, Edinburgh Castle is not without a suite of ghost stories. The most common stories are of the ghosts of one-time prisoners of the castle dungeons, now stuck wandering the subterranean cells that once held them. But the oldest is the story of the Headless Drummer, first sighted in 1650 just before Oliver Cromwell attacked. Some claim they can still hear his drums echoing down from the walls of the castle. Although seeing the drummer is rare, it is believed that such a sight is a warning of some danger to the castle and city of Edinburgh.

The Ghosts of Edinburgh are many. I suppose it’s to be expected in a city as full of history as it is.

From the strange appeal of ghosts like those in the White Hart Inn, to the terror of the Mackenzie Poltergeist, wherever you go, you can find the spirits and marks of those who came before us.

They are, perhaps fancifully told, the stories of the city itself. The most memorable citizens, both good and bad, represented across time. So regardless of whether ghosts are truly haunting the streets of Edinburgh or not, the people of these stories do find a way to make a difference after death.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of Through the Veil. I hope you enjoyed. I encourage you to subscribe to receive new episodes weekly wherever you listen as we continue our exploration of folklore, myth, and magic.

If you are enjoying the show, and have subjects you would like to hear covered, please email me at throughtheveilpodcast@gmail.com or reach out on Twitter, you can find me @ThroughVeil.

As always, thank you, for listening.