The Vaults
By far the most haunted place in Edinburgh's Underworld though, has turned
out to be the Vaults underneath South Bridge. There are so many different
tales of ghosts and hauntings in these vaults that they would probably
sustain a book on their own. For example, there's the story of the two
adventurous Canadian backpackers who found an uncovered old vent leading
into one vault from Niddry Street. They decided to climb down and investigate,
but once down there, both of their flashlights went out and they were
lost in the dark for some hours, screaming for help and trying to find
their way back to the vent. They eventually found it, only to discover
it had been covered up from above. More screaming ensued until someone
above heard them and removed the cover. They scrambled back up the shaft
and onto the street, only to discover, to their horror, that despite neither
of them feeling anything while they were down there, both of their faces
were covered in bloody claw marks.
Two buildings on either side of the Bridge have been particularly famous
for ghostly sightings. The fist is the old Scotsman building, now the
Scotsman Hotel, which is technically on the North Bridge, but not terribly
far away. Years ago, an employee of the paper was down underneath the
Bridge in one of the old vaults, which contained a lot of disused printing
presses, when he came across a door he couldn't remember seeing before.
Curious, he opened it and found a set of stairs stretching down below
him. Halfway down, he saw one of his colleagues crossing the floor, but
dressed in slightly outdated clothing. Suddenly, he had a terrifying realisation:
the other printer was not making any sound. No footfalls, no breathing,
not a single noise emanated from him. The employee raced back up the stairs
to find his colleagues and tried in vain to explain what he'd seen. Dragging
them back down to the vault for confirmation, they found only one door
in the room, and it was soundly locked tight. Other encounters in the
old building have included a security guard coming across an employee
working late, literally, since he had died some time before, and a regular
visitor - a woman in black who frequented the reception area, irritating
the staff.
The other building which has seen a fair amount of haunting is Whistle
Binkie's, the pub that is set in the vaults just down on the east side
of South Bridge. There were two ghosts that were known to frequent this
pub: the Imp and the Watcher. The Imp was never actually seen, but had
a terribly mischievous sense of humour. For example, one barmaid was frightened
by him one night when collecting up glasses after closing time. She had
taken out an orange to have as a snack and then spotted some glasses on
a windowsill that she had missed. Leaving the orange on the counter, she
crossed the bar to get them and turned to see her orange had been completely
peeled and segmented for her. Another barmaid, Kate Sinclair, found herself
locked in the cellar of the bar, despite the door being unlocked. The
Imp held the door shut against her, until she sat down and cried at her
predicament, at which time the door swung open and allowed her to leave.
He also took to regularly stopping the pub clock at 4:15 in the morning
as well as moving things around and generally being a nuisance, but the
Imp was never one for hurting anybody.
The Watcher was much the same, but had less direct interaction with people.
But while nobody ever saw the Imp, many people saw the Watcher. He was
described as tall, with long hair and wearing a long, heavy gentleman's
coat of 17th Century style. One of the first to see him was a builder
when Whistle Binkie's was first being built in the vaults not long ago.
Coming into the pub, he saw what he thought was a woman in a heavy dress
descending a set of stairs across the room. Chasing her, he found the
stairs and the room below empty. The builder described the sight to a
local historian, even drawing the figure's clothing, the historian pointed
out that this was in fact a man's coat, not a dress. He had seen the Watcher.
Both the Watcher and The Imp were known to also visit the rest of the
South Bridge Vaults, with The Watcher even being mistaken for a tour guide
by one group, who followed him into a room and then found it utterly empty.
But neither of them made their home for long down there, because even
they did not wish to stay around once the most frightening and malicious
of Edinburgh's ghosts took up residence: the Mackenzie Poltergeist.
This presence has never been seen but manifests itself in many unpleasant
and threatening ways. Since the occurrences attributed to it have come
predominantly in two places, the vaults here and Greyfriars Kirkyard,
it is believed to be the spirit of "Bloody" Mackenzie, a vicious
judge who worked for Charles II, ruthlessly pursuing and murdering a Protestant
religious group known as The Covenanters. Mackenzie's house was opposite
the vaults in his lifetime, and his body now lies in the Kirkyard. He
also had the personality to match the feeling that everyone who has encountered
this spirit has attributed to it: pure evil.
The occurrences started in 1995, the year after the Vaults were first
opened to tour parties. The first signs were the well-known phenomena
of "cold spots", where one place in a room would be incongruously
cold compared with the rest of it. Two Australian girls, Susan Harvey
and Susan Douglas, were the first to encounter this when on a tour. They
stood in a doorway to a vault and became suddenly cold. One of the girls
felt nauseous and almost fell, but for her friend catching her. Then the
other girl let out a terrible scream and backed into the vault, away from
the door. As many others then checked and verified, despite the temperatures
in the vault and the corridor being fine, the doorway's air was so cold
as to be painful to the skin.
Many others were to experience similar occurrences in the coming months.
Pole Maja Szeresewska, Canadian Jodi Stone and Americans Maggie Baker
and Betsy Denton all had similar experiences, several of them fainting
from the fright. Whatever was happening, it was only attacking women.
In June 1996, the attacks got worse, as two different women, three days
apart, found themselves suddenly cold and then having an unseen hand forcing
their heads down to the floor. In September of that year, a young boy
was carried from the vaults unconscious and later explained that something
freezing cold had been holding on to his head: the spirit had taken to
including children amongst its victims.
What did become clear, though, was that the attacks seemed to be centred
around one vault, and one corner in particular: the left. This became
known as "The Haunted Vault". This vault, it turned out, had
quite a history of nasty occurrences, dating back to times when bands
were briefly allowed to practice in them. Many electrical cables had to
be run in, but the Haunted Vault was having none of it. No band ever wanted
to work in there and eventually it became so damp, that the wiring had
to be removed and the enterprise abandoned. Once the bands were gone,
the moisture went too. This same phenomenon was also known to affect a
White Witches Coven, who were given permission to use one of the vaults
for a temple. They placed a mirror in the room, as was standard. Despite
their room having been dry and warm on entering, it quickly became so
wet as to be uninhabitable. More frighteningly, it appeared that the mirror
became not just a mirror, but as one visiting psychic described it "a
door, letting in evil". Many children complained of being frightened
by "The Man from the Mirror" in other parts of the vault and
so the temple was eventually abandoned and the mirror disposed of.
Anyway, back to the Haunted Vault. It transpired on further investigation
that even more disturbing events had taken place, with people sighting
strange lights in the chambers, including several instances of a cross-shaped
light that faded or changed shape as it was approached. One light seemed
to be particularly attracted to a young Scottish girl, who came back again
days later to see the light. The light, very agreeably, also came back
to welcome her. Many other such incidents occurred including more attacks
on children and even the occasional man. A small dog was once allowed
to accompany his master underground but would absolutely not suffer to
be taken into the Haunted Vault, howling and wailing as his master tried
to take him in. Pets were thereafter banned from the tours.
One particularly chilling experience happened to Marion Duffy and her
six-year-old daughter Claire. Claire had heard about the vaults and was
keen to visit them, so her mother reluctantly agreed to take her down
to see them. The tour guide took them into the Haunted Vault and, to make
the tales more eerie, asked them all to turn off their flashlights. Marion
immediately heard Claire gasp and then grab her hand in the dark. Just
as the story came to an end, Claire's grip tightened on Marion's hand,
so much so as to be painful and Marion cried out. Then the lights came
on and Marion looked down at her daughter…who wasn't there. She
was standing a good 15 feet away. She then explained that when the lights
went out she had reached for her mother's hand, and the hand she found
had slowly led her through the dark to where she stood, before disappearing
when the lights came on. Claire was standing exactly in the left hand
corner of the vault.
Figuring out the pattern that Mackenzie was only attacking women on the
left side of the vault, the tour guides started to organise them so that
all the men were on the left and women on the right. The attacks stopped.
On the tourists. And started on the guides - the female ones anyway, who
were punched and knocked to the ground in the vault. They quickly went
back to letting people stand wherever they liked.
These days the sightings are less frequent and tend to be spread between
both the vaults and Greyfriars Kirkyard. Perhaps Old Mackenzie got bored
of attacking women and children, or perhaps he's just having a rest, before
coming back with a vengeance. Either way, you could count yourself unlucky
to experience his icy touch these days. Less common as the attacks may
be though, they still happen and the vaults still carry their eerie atmosphere.
A few years ago, a group of students were led into the vaults for an experiment,
which was later televised. Each of them was asked to spend the night alone
in the dark in one of the vaults, while night vision cameras watched them.
They were not told which vault was which. If memory serves, the girl in
the Haunted Vault spent most of her time agitated and scared and later
claimed she was absolutely certain there had been someone else sitting
in the dark with her. So if you're looking for an extra normal experience,
the Haunted Vault is still probably the best place to start… |
Click on image to visit this web page |
