[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent August 2003]
EDINBURGH
I see the city through new eyes as Caroline discovers it. It’s beautiful, that old town skyline across Princes St like nothing else on earth. The Museum of Edinburgh has some good maps and models of what the town was once like, and suddenly it snaps into place, the way the old structure of the town lies beneath the new, the simple logic of two parallel streets, one leading up to the castle, one to the market below the castle, and a loch on the other side. It’s a logic that’s still working itself out, an invisible strata woven through a city’s life. Edinburgh’s beating heart is the Castle and the old town beside it, and the new town and other expansions are simply branches reaching out for more sun. Everyone who lives in Edinburgh understands this, and everyone who visits senses it on some level. Part of understanding Edinburgh is seeing how the past silently manifests in the present – it’s no wonder Edinburgh’s famed for its ghosts.
The two best spooky tours in the city are the Mary Kings Close and the City of the Dead. (This is their reputation, anyway – I haven’t been on any others.) Mary Kings Close is an old street that once ran down from the High Street, up towards the Castle, down the hillside to the Loch. The bottom two thirds were demolished at various times, but the top third was built over the top of and remains to this day – an entire street in the cellar of one of Edinburgh’s largest buildings. The tour winds you down into the dark, through reconstructions of the living conditions of Edinburgh’s citizens and featured oddities that have given this Close its sinister reputation – plague-troubled, site of a celebrated murder, and site of at least three significant ghost stories. But it’s walking up the Close at the end of the tour that has the most impact, laundry hung plaintively between the narrow buildings, steep and slippery stone underfoot, and a heavy stone darkness above like a night that has forgotten how to dawn, a street unchanged, an alley that is the opposite of modernity. Then out on to the spine of the city, the Castle waiting just beyond, and the feeling that the city knows its past, even if those who walk across it don’t.
City of the Dead is less worried about imparting knowledge and more about sharing an experience. It’s the only night tour that takes in Greyfriar’s Kirkyard, where Edinburgh has buried tens of thousands of its dead in unmarked graves, where the seeds of the Civil War were sown by signatories to the National Covenant, where a little dog became famous for its loyalty to its dead master. Greyfriar’s Kirkyard has another claim to renown as well, as the site of one of the better documented hauntings you’re ever going to come across.
The story goes that in 1998 the mausoleum of “Bloody” MacKenzie, vicious persecutor of the Covenanters, was desecrated by a homeless man; since then the kirkyard has been a site of strange supernatural activity, most notably in the Covenanter’s Prison, a long aisle of mausoleums concealed behind the Kirk. Here, in the Black Mausoleum, hundreds of tour parties have experienced inexplicable occurrences, being pinched or pushed or breathed on or even collapsing unconscious.
Sounded cool to me.
The guide led us on a somewhat elaborate route around the Old Town, down narrow wynds and along the cowgate, cheerily telling of the tortures and atrocities in the city’s medieval past. Then into the Kirkyard itself, dark and only a little bit spooky (I had come here to sit in the sun and eat sandwiches many times, so I suppose my defences were strengthened). We heard of those who had died and been buried here, or indeed those who had graverobbed.
Finally, past the Mackenzie tomb and into the Covenanter’s Prison and, finally, the ominous Black Mausoleum…
I don’t believe in ghosts. However, I also don’t *not* believe in ghosts. I’ve heard about, and even experienced, enough strange stuff to at least have an open mind.
But that doesn’t even matter, because visiting the Black Mausoleum didn’t have anything to do with whether or not I thought ghosts were a real phenomenon. Really, I just wanted to have a bit of a scare. I like watching scary movies and I particularly like it when they scare me.
We’re herded into the Black Mausoleum. It’s basically a big stone chamber, featureless. I end up right at the back. Right in the corner at the back. It’s a bit cold. And dark – it’s dark. The only light comes from the
entrance – from the tour leader in the doorway. He has us all packed in and he starts to explain about poltergeists, how they work, what it feels like when you’re in a cold spot… he keeps things moving, but there’s a lot to get through, and I’m stuck in there at the back in the darkness, the wall is right behind me… and I’m reminded by one of the testimonies I’d read before coming, from the guy who was standing right at the back when he heard scratching on the stone right behind him…
The infamous Todman Street flat was haunted, of course, and not just by the ghost of decades of parties. At least, that was its reputation. Sometimes, when I’d walk up the stairs late at night, the place where the ghost was supposed to appear, I’d be chilled, and I’d hurry up to my room as fast as I could. Because it’s fun to be spooked.
When I signed Cal and I up for the tour, I wanted the same kind of spooky. And I got it. In spades. Stuck at the back, in the dark… my legs kept feeling extremely cold, which is how a supernatural ‘cold spot’ starts, so I hopped from one to the other and tried not to look over my shoulder…
I had spent all day hoping that someone would faint (over 100 have done so on the tour so far), that scratches would be found on someone’s arms, that *something* weird would happen in the Black Mausoleum. But when I was in there at midnight, stuck at the back in the corner, I feel no shame in
telling you I was desperately hoping the opposite. I was spooked. And that’s the name of the game.
It’s a good piece of fun. The guys taking the tour know how to work human suggestibility to their advantage and are good at drawing out moments to set your nerves on edge – but don’t worry, they’re not in the business of giving heart attacks and they crack a lot of jokes to break the tension. The
nerves end up on edge anyway, because the place has a reputation, and maybe all those faintings and scratches aren’t just co-incidences or accidental self-hypnosis or hysteria… maybe…
Curious ghosthunters can read more at http://www.blackhart.uk.com/cod_old/eyewitness.html
NOSTALGIALICIOUS
Before leaving Edinburgh for London to pick up Cal, I hooked up briefly with Maryanne Garry, a Psychology professor from my student days who was in town for a conference with students in tow. In one of those typical every-Kiwi-is-only-two-degrees from-any-other-Kiwi things, friend Alastair was in town and catching up with one of his friends who was one of Maryanne’s students and in town with her. Anyway, I turned up and we caught up. I got to update her on the whereabouts of many of her ‘98 class, some of whom are reading this. (You know who you are. How could you forget?) And all was sweetness and light and utterly nostalgialicious. Snappy.
Take care everyone.
morgue