In Which We Did Not See Anything.

The journey to Edinburgh was short and picturesque - the train went up the coast and there were views of a wild sea and small medieval style towns on the right.

Edinburgh itself painted a very different picture. The city itself is beautiful and the old and new parts of town are separated by the gardens in the centre. The old town is situated atop the hill, just outside the castle, which overlooks the new town with the presence of a watchful elder. The old town whispers its history from cracks in the pavement and in the creaking of old doors.

We went on a ghost tour called City of the Dead, which involved a guided tour underneath and inside one of Edinburgh's ancient bridges that straddles the old and new towns. There are tiny vaults and extended caverns that used to be home to the poorest of the poor, the criminal and on one occasion, the rich (but only because they fled the fires of the burning city and even then they suffocated in these caverns). Policemen wouldn't enter these places, and rightly so, becausse they were packed with disease, danger and dodgy individuals. The vaults under the bridge did not adhere to the laws of the world above.

People lived, slept and died in spaces no bigger than your living room. Rats and faeces covered the dank, damp floors. Disease was rife and bodily fluids could easily end up in the small corner that you considered your bed. The days and nights were indistinguishable and screams echoed unceasingly down the halls. And then the plague hit. Boils popped and festered. Self control of bodily functions was lost and all manner of smells permeated the air. Your home became a rank pit filled with living, dead and dying alike. Families watched as their loved ones shuffled off the mortal coil, screaming bloody murder the entire way.

It wouldn't surprise me if there were still some poor souls clinging to scraps of life down here.

So we were taken to investigate. A group of about twenty of us walked into these dark caverns. The first room was used to house cows that would then be killed for their meat. It is highly likely that they never saw the light of day. Another room featured an ancient doorway, above which were carved the words, "God is my refuge and my helper." Each vault is dark except for some atmospheric candles placed at intervals. Our guide was an Australian woman with long, black hair and an oversized leather coat. She stopped at various intervals in order to explain the history of the place and the supposed inhabitants that remain.

The haunting spirit in question is called The South Bridge Entity and has its own ghost story (which I have rewritten and embellished).

There were two backpackers in town, around the end of the 1980s, and they were exploring the city. They came to an alcove that was covered by rotting boards and cobwebs. Peering through the gaps in the planks, the two men saw a tunnel that seemed to lead directly below the city. They left the spot but made a note of where it was and some time later that day, they returned with heavy duty flashlights. Prying off the boards, they let themselves into the tunnel behind. At the end of the tunnel, the first man shone his torch upon an old wooden door. He paused for a moment to show his friend, and then pulled at the door handle. It came away easily and the pair slipped inside.

They were faced with darkness, a clammy air and the dank stench of mould and rot. Unbeknownst to them, they were the first two people to venture here in centuries, aside from the Hellfire Club of old. They began to explore the vaults before them, the ancient city streets of Edinburgh. They had gone quite deep into the tunnels, exploring for a little under an hour, when they came to a room that was colder than any other. As they entered, the cold air seemed to gather around them, pressing close to the warmth of their bodies.
And then both torches went out.

Panic crept into the edges of their minds and their breathing became harsh and shallow. They felt as though they were choking and fear took them. They grabbed each other's wrist and stumbling, they fled back the way they had come. The darkness grew around them. It seemed as though their eyes could not adjust to the pitch dark and they groped the walls, hoping for the familiar feeling of the wooden door underneath their fingers. But they were lost. The tunnels seemed to move, to snake in different directions by a will of their own. The two men imagined sounds about them - cries of pain, gurgles, moans, even childish laughter. They felt like something was watching them, following them, as though the vaults held an audience they had not noticed before.
God is my refuge and my helper.
The words came unbidden to their minds and they shivered in the cold air. God was not here. He had long since forsaken this place and the people who lived under the ground had forsaken his light. The two men ran on.

Finally one of the men foun the familiar texture of damp wood. He pulled his friend close and the two of them pushed the door open. They pulled themselves through the door, slammed it closed behind them and darted down the tunnel, towards the alcove at the end and the fresh air outside. But no air was to be theirs, as the gap through which they had broken had since been boarded up! The men cried out in fear and frustration, banging their hands on the fresh boards and trying desperately to revive their torches. Something knocked against the wooden door at the other end of the tunnel. The two men screamed.

Luckily for them a passerby heard their cries and followed the sounds to the boarded alcove. He broke away the new boards and let the two men out into the cool night air. Both men took deep breaths and tried to slow their racing hearts. They were out. They were safe. As they turned to thank their rescuer, they saw that he was staring at them in horror. Turning to each other in confusion, the men saw that the other had been scratched. Not on their hands or arms, which they had used to feel their way along darkened stone halls. These scratches were not random cuts of stones or scrapes of walls.

Each man bore long, evenly spaced scratches down his face, deep and bleeding.
But neither had felt a thing.
The South Bridge Entity has awakened.

Or so the story goes. I did not end up on mysterious scratches on me - which is a good thing because that would have been the end of sleep for me. No ghosts were seen or felt, but the stories were cool and I learned a lot about the history of Edinburgh. We also got to see a place that would have been inaccessible otherwise.
Onwards to Greyfriar's Cemetery - home to the bodies of around 400,000 plague victims.