Having conducted outdoor ghostly themed walking tours in Edinburgh for over 40 years we've encountered a number of unusual incidents which we'd like to share with you. Some of those incidents may be described as co-incidental while others verge on the unexplained.
Our first ever Murder & Mystery walking tour was conducted on the 26th October 1985. Nothing unusual about this, I hear you shout, but read on. From the City Records we chose a real historical character, Adam Lyal (deceased), to lead our tours. Adam had been executed in 1811 for the crime of highway robbery. A number of months later we discovered that Adam Lyal was first imprisoned on 26th October 1810; exactly 175 years to the day of our first Murder & Mystery walking tour! What are the odds?
In the early days of the Murder & Mystery tour, we would visit Victoria Terrace to relate the ghost story of Angus Roy. Angus was a merchant seaman sailing all over the world from the port of Leith. Sadly, on one of his return journeys he had a nasty accident, falling from the ship's rigging. Due to his injuries, Angus was forced to retire and moved to the Old Town of Edinburgh, to what is now Victoria Terrace. He cut a distinctive figure: short and stocky with a great bushy beard. His fall had left him with a pronounced limp and the Old Town children, true to form, would tease him remorselessly. On his death bed, Angus Roy vowed to return to the area to seek revenge on the children. And sure enough, after his death a loud scraping sound, similar to someone dragging their leg, was heard by a number of locals. In the late 1980s, we invited a member of the Scottish Society for Psychical Research (SSPR) to visit the area and report back any unusual incidents. It so happened this member of the SSPR had lived in the area as a child, and claimed not only to have heard Angus Roy but to have seen him too. Spooky!
A ninja will always use the environment to their advantage, and this is true of tour guides as well. One night, during the Angus Roy story, the guide spotted a passerby who happened to resemble Angus himself: a stocky man with a large bushy beard. Seizing the moment the guide jokingly said: "Ah, a relation of Angus -- but you've not got a limp." At this the man turned, and his walking stick came into view. Oops.
Some years later, a family joined our Ghosts & Gore tour accompanied by their dog. At Wardrop's Court, the dog began shaking and howling as if in terror. The owner said that the only other time the dog had behaved like this was when a relative in the next town had died. Slightly alarming hearing this in the middle of a tour! Was the dog sensing something? Possibly. Many dog owners say their dogs behave differently when someone has died or is about to die. We never did find out if this family had lost another relative; hopefully, it was just a random case of the collie-wobbles.
Nor are unexplained frissons on the tour limited to its canine guests. There once was a woman on the tour who felt very uncomfortable in Fisher's Close, saying she sensed a strange presence and was not happy. She couldn't wait to leave the tour at its conclusion (nothing to do with the performance of the guide, honest). Two weeks later in Fisher's Close, there were two different customers on two consecutive nights feeling faint and uneasy. Thankfully the incidence then went back down to zero rather than up to four, eight, sixteen...
Back in the 1980s, after conducting an evening tour, our co-founder Robin Mitchell arrived at The Witchery restaurant for an après tour drink with restaurateur James Thomson, the chef, and a friend named Marc. While they chatted, a chair nearby abruptly moved, making a loud scraping sound on the stone floor. They all saw it, yet none could explain it. Thirty-five years later, Marc returned with his son to join Robin's Greyfriars Cemetery Tour. At the end of the tour, Robin reminded Marc of the chair incident and he replied: "I'm glad you mentioned this, as my son here has never believed me!"
Robin's spooky happenings even followed him beyond our shores. In 1999 he was invited to a Tourism Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. As requested, he arrived at the conference dressed as our pale-faced ghost Adam Lyal (deceased). After the conference event, as the still fiendishly-attired Robin stalked up the hotel corridor towards his room, a woman walking ahead of him turned and got the fright of her life. Hardly surprising if you suddenly see a Dracula lookalike following you down a corridor. She jokingly said, "Are you looking for blood?" Robin light-heartedly replied, "Yes, indeed." The woman pointed to what so happened to be Robin's room and in jest said, "Try in there for blood." Robin took out his key, opened the door and said, "This will do nicely."
Meanwhile back in Edinburgh, one night Mr Lyal was travelling by taxi to the Bruntsfield Hotel, having been invited to talk at a local conference. As was to be expected, his ghostly attire immediately provoked a spirited conversation with the cab driver about all things otherworldly. As the taxi pulled up at the hotel, the driver asked: "Do you really believe in ghosts?" When the word 'ghosts' was mentioned the small light inside the cab shattered, sprung off the wall and landed beside our guide. Mr Lyal, feeling that no further response was required, melted into the night.
Sometimes the Universe seems to know what we're doing before we do. In 1990, with Adam Lyal (deceased) having owned the night in the Old Town for five years, we decided to find him a counterpart to take on the twilight hours for our new Ghosts & Gore Tour. That quest culminated in our unearthing of another real character from the city records: Cemetery Director, Alexander Clapperton (deceased). But let us jump further back in time for a moment: in the 1970s, over a decade before the Ghosts & Gore Tour's inception and before the founders had even met each other, the mother of a boy destined to be one of our inaugural Mr Clappertons wrote her thesis at the University of Edinburgh on Victorian graveyards, which included references to our chosen historical character Mr Alexander Clapperton. Unbeknownst to our tour guide at the time, he would many years later conduct the Witchery Ghosts & Gore Tour in the guise of the same historical character his mother had researched - Mr Alexander Clapperton (deceased). Coincidence, or uncanny mother's intiution?
Talking of cemeteries, Robin shares a quirky tale which took place on one of his Greyfriars Cemetery Tours. A member of his tour group was a Canadian visitor who was married to a Scot from Dundee. She was putting on a Scottish accent and mentioned our national soft drink, Irn Bru. At this exact moment, a passerby suddenly handed her a can of Irn Bru. This person had overheard our Canadian visitor and, having been given a free can of Irn Bru as part of a promotion at their hotel, decided to hand over the can to our visitor. What are the chances?
We purchased our shop at 84 West Bow, in Edinburgh's Old Town, in 2003. Being nosy types we checked the old postal directories to see who had occupied the shop prior to us. Now, bear in mind that the main character we'd chosen to lead our evening tours at the time was the historical character Adam Lyal (deceased). The Edinburgh & Leith Postal Directory (1905 Edition) showed that 84 West Bow was once occupied by Lyall & Sons (Sanitary Engineers, Plumbers and Gas Fitters). OK, not a 100% match; but considering the spelling L-Y-A-L is not nearly as common as L-Y-L-E, we've placed this information in the downright spooky coincidence column.
Now we're not sure if this constitutes an inordinate quantity of brushes with the Weird and Inexplicable for a company that's four decades young and happens to specialise in the darker side of life (and death). Judged against what? All we can say for sure, and we always impress this on new recruits, is that over the course of a tenure with The Cadies & Witchery Tours you're likely to experience at least one occurrence that will leave you bemused, aghast and possibly rattled. It'll be for you to decide whether unknowable sinister forces reached out from the aether to twang the threads of probability and causality and drive you to the very cliff-edge of sanity ... or that dog just had a bit of a dicky tummy. Anyway, can you start Monday?
Don't have nightmares!