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The Ghosts and Ghouls of Edinburgh

Edinburgh is famed for its spooky past, accounted for by its rich and tumultuous history. Here is a selection of the more famous ghost tales.

The Ghostly Piper of Edinburgh Castle, Castle Rock
In the late eighteenth century during the French Revolutionary Wars, work was underway to construct a modern military barracks. The entrance to a small tunnel was discovered. No one was aware of the presence of the tunnel from old records and it was unknown to what location the tunnel led.

The entrance was small and it was decided to send a young boy along the tunnel to learn more. The workmen and officers wished to follow where the child went, so had him play bagpipes as he went so that they could hear him from above ground. The adults followed the sound down toward the Royal Mile and suddenly stopped at the Tron Kirk. The boy did not emerge in the kirk, nor again at the other end in the castle grounds.

They discussed whether to send another boy into the tunnel, but this was quickly overruled. Superstition dictated that a tunnel without a known destination could not be left open, especially with so much war raging across the continent. The castle authorities decided to brick up the tunnel, forever sealing the wee laddie in the tunnel. It is said that, when all is quiet along the Royal Mile, and the busking pipers have long gone home, the sound of distant pipes can be heard playing below ground as the young boy seeks his way out of the tunnel.

Major Thomas Weir, a Wizard on West Bow, Old Town
In the seventeenth century, West Bow was a cramped place to live. He was the son of the Laird of Kirkton. In 1650 he was appointed as commander of the Edinburgh Town Guard and promoted to the rank of major. Weir retired in 1670 and fell ill. On his sick-bed, to everyone’s surprise, he confessed to a secret life of crime and vice as well as to incest with his sister Jean.

Eventually, the lord provost, who at first dismissed Weir’s stories as fantasy, ordered that Weir and his sister be taken to Edinburgh Tolbooth for questioning. They confessed to witchcraft and sorcery. They were tried on 9 April 1670 and quickly found guilty. They were sentenced to death and confined to the leper colony at Greenside, below Calton Hill. Weir was hanged at Gallowlee, “gallows field,” that stood between Edinburgh and Leith. His last words were, “I have lived as a beast, and I must die as a beast.”

Reportedly, he declared that the source of his evil powers was his walking stick, which the authorities ensured was burned in a fire beside him as he was hanged. Locals avoided the Weirs’ house until it was demolished and rebuilt. However, it is still said that Weir’s ghost can be seen on Victoria Street. It is thought that the famous Edinburgh novelist Robert Louis Stevenson was influenced by the story of Weir when he wrote Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Johnny One Arm, cobbled streets of Old and New Towns
In the seventeenth century, a man called John Chiesley was ordered to pay a large sum of money in child maintenance. Outraged, he threatened the judge Sir George Lockhart. Lockhart was accustomed to such anger and ignored it. One Sunday, Lockhart attended a service at St. Giles Kirk and decided to walk home. He felt that someone was following him, turned and was greeted with the sight of Chiesley holding a pistol to his head. Chiesley fired and instantly killed Lockhart.

The authorities caught Chiesley and as punishment broke both his legs, cut off the arm that fired the pistol, and then hanged him. Rumours soon spread of a one-armed man who hid in the shadows – but did Johnny One Arm exist at all? In 1965, renovations in Dalry (pronounced dall-rye), close to the West End, unearthed a skeleton with one arm together with a rusty pistol.

Mackenzie Poltergeist, Greyfriars Kirkyard, Old Town
Sir George Mackenzie, born in Dundee and educated in Aberdeen, became Lord Advocate and King James II’s minister who executed his policy to persecute the Presbyterian Covenanters. Most famously, after the Battle of Bothwell Bridge in 1679, Mackenzie imprisoned 400 Covenanters in a field next to Greyfriars Kirkyard where most died of exposure. As a result, he became known as “Bluidy Mackenzie.”

He lived on Rosehaugh Close (later re-named as Melrose Close) off the Royal Mile close to the Law Courts. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, he retired to Oxford but was buried in Edinburgh. It is possible to visit his mausoleum in Greyfriars Kirkyard. This mausoleum backs onto the same field where he caused the death of hundreds of people. As a result, it is said that his soul could not rest. Local residents complained of banging noises and strange occurrences.

There is an old Edinburgh children’s rhyme that goes: Bluidy Mackenzie, come oot if ye daur; lift the sneck and draw the bar.

The Haunted South Bridge Vaults
The South Bridge Vaults were built in the late 18th century within the arches of a new bridge. It was intended that the vaults be used as workshops and shop stores, but the bridge was not waterproofed and merchants declined to move in. Given this, illegitimate businesses began to arrive, including gambling dens, brothels, illicit stills and as a safe haven for murderers and thieves.

In recent times, Edinburgh Council resolved to clear out the vaults. The work team discovered an old entrance and found a modern witches coven. The witches had set the room up with candles to perform rituals and used a mirror attached to a wardrobe to connect with the spirit world. The witches themselves later reported feeling a presence in the room. The wall where the mirror stood started to turn foul. When the mirror was moved to another wall, the damp wall dried up and the new one became affected.
A senior witch later remarked that although a mirror offers a window into another dimension, the fact they had used a mirror attached to a wardrobe door meant that the presence of spirits could also access that door and pass through. It appeared that something had already come through to make its home in the South Bridge Vaults.

Abandoned Annie in Mary King’s Close
As the hilly Old Town expanded in the eighteenth century, new buildings began to be built on top of existing streets. A key construction project of 1753 saw the construction of the City Chambers. The project entailed part demolishing three closes, of which Mary King’s Close was one, the location for one of the saddest ghost stories.

In 1992, a psychic called Aiko Gibo met Annie for the first time, the ghost of an abandoned girl who had lost her doll hundreds of years before. The psychic left the Close and bought a doll for the girl on the Royal Mile. She left it in the room where she had felt that presence and the tradition was born. Every year, people bring presents for wee Annie and add them to her shrine.

Green Lady of Morningside
Elizabeth Pittendale was a young woman from a well-to-do Edinburgh family. She fell in love with a sailor called Jack Courage, who was obliged to return to the sea. They enjoyed a whirlwind romance, but her family insisted that she marry the much older Sir Thomas Elphinstone. The marriage went ahead and she soon moved into a beautiful home in Morningside. One day, Sir Thomas informed Elizabeth that his eldest son from a previous marriage was coming to visit. The day arrived, and Elizabeth was amazed to discover that it was none other than Jack.

They could not help but pick up their romance where they had left off. One night, Sir Thomas caught them and, in a fit of rage, hit Elizabeth so violently that it killed her. Shocked with shame, Thomas took his own life and they were buried together as husband and wife. Jack inherited the house from his father but could not bear to live there. He rented the house out, but soon received reports of strange sobbing noises, objects moving of their own accord, and sightings of a woman dressed in green. On one occasion, someone confronted the Green Lady of Morningside, and Elizabeth’s ghost explained that her soul was not laid to rest because she was buried beside her murderer. Jack arranged to have her body exhumed and reinterred in a new plot with space for him beside her. The ghostly sightings ceased from that day.

The Guilty Ghost Sailor of Dean Village
In the nineteenth century, a mother, Mrs Gordon, and her daughter moved into a flat by the bridge. Mrs Gordon was delighted with her new home, especially because the flat above her was empty apart from some old furniture. She hoped for some peace and quiet. On the first night, she awoke with a start hearing shuffling and banging noises from the flat above. As the first week progressed, she was disturbed to feel a presence in her bedroom. She heard footsteps on the stairs followed by more shuffling noises.

Mrs Gordon’s daughter decided to find out what was going on. Her mother agreed that she could sleep in her bed. Sure enough, when the daughter retired for the night, she felt something move past her towards the stairs. She set off to follow the ghost. At the top of the landing, she looked around the door and saw a dark figure crouching by a grandfather clock. It turned and looked at her. The mother and daughter were petrified.

The Gordons moved out quickly and researched the building’s history. It turned out that an old drunkard sea captain had once lived there. One night, he had heard a baby crying above his room, which disturbed his sleep. He stormed upstairs in a drunken rage and, before he knew it, had shaken the child to death. Afraid of his crime being discovered, he hid the body in the grandfather clock. It is clear that the soul of the sea captain is not at rest.