'Auld Reekie' Ghost and Torture Tours

My Birthday brought me into Edinburgh-to endure the cold rain and wind of a Scottish winter. I walked up the Royal Mile, stopped at the Jolly Judge for a pint and to read a fun book. I moved along down the Royal Mile toward North Bridge, and headed for the ‘The Street’ to continue a leisurely day of reading and imbibing. Around 600pm, Tim met me at the Blue Moon, probably our favorite little café, for dinner. We enjoyed our typically great service, chomped up our sandwiches, Chicken & pesto baguette for me, a BLT for him, and headed into the cold to the Tron Kirk, for an “Auld Reekie” ghost and torture tour. Our animated guide, Champagne, started us off with gruesome stories, above ground.

A ‘tron’ is a long white stick used for measuring, sort of like a scale. It is used to make sure that the merchant isn’t over charging or under-weighing goods to the citizens of Edinburgh. Those merchants who are caught misusing or not using a tron are taken by the ear, and nailed to the front door of the tron kirk (kirk is a word for church). The dishonest merchant must remain there for three days, and endure the spitting, heckling and throwing of objects by passers by; or, they could run, ripping off part or all of their ear, and be marked for life, never to be a merchant again. Note to self, when selling items, use a TRON!

We headed down narrow streets, through dim wynds and scary closes as the tour progressed. We heard about Burke and Hare, Edinburgh’s, if not Scotland’s most infamous body snatchers come serial killers. Body Snatching in Edinburgh was so frequent that certain graveyards had large walls, railings and watchtowers erected. Anatomy schools had difficulty in obtaining freshly interred cadavers, because they were only allowed one per year (a criminal, who had died, usually). People would dig up graves and bring the bodies to the local hospitals, and claim £10 for their work. Burke and Hare, devised their own methods of getting victims drunk, at places like the White Hart Inn, in Grassmarket, and suffocating them. It proved easier than digging up graves.

Apparently, on a side story, a group of grave robbers had waited until a funeral procession had left, dug up the grave and found an old woman in the coffin, with all of her jewelry still on. They decided to pull off the rings and sell them for extra money. Due to her aged and knotted fingers, they didn’t come off, and so they began to cut her fingers off with a knife. After the cutting began, the woman screamed out in agony, and, behold, she was not dead!! (Turns out, she may have ‘seemed dead’ or perhaps been in a coma, and thus, they buried her.) Well, to avoid burying near dead folks in the future, little bells were installed in coffins, on the off chance, you woke up to find yourself buried alive, you could try your chances at ringing the bell and hope someone hears you.

Oh, Burke was betrayed by Herr, who turned King's evidence on Burke, as they were eventually caught ( a medical student recognised the usually LIVE and chipper prostitute on the table in front of him--as he was with her the night before) and Burke was hung; ironic has it sounds, his body was donated to the hospitals for science, and his bones still hang in a museum today. Herr moved to London, was trapped in a limestone mine by locals who discovered his sordid past, escaped, now blind and severely burned by the corrosive and abrasive mineral, he died a blind and penniless on the streets of London.

We moved out of the wind and cold and into the underground chambers of South Bridge Street. We moved through a museum-like room, with the largest collection of actual torture devices in Europe. I don’t even want to get into the horrific things that did to alleged witches—lets just say there was some serious blood, pain and toture, involved ALL parts of the body. Those witch-hunting bastards were creative with their madness… makes me wonder WHO should have been the ones being tortured.

The chambers, being very dark and cold, were scary in and of themselves. We got to see where a real witch’s coven still meets, 21 days a year (usually around the cycle of the moon). Apparently, they were in one chamber, that was deemed to haunted and evil, and they had instances of beasts appearing and coming out of the a mirror, in the late 90’s, as it served as some kind of portal. The mirror cracked and, at one meeting, a small piece flew off into one of the witch’s face. They left the chamber to disuse, leaving a hole of evil, where their pentagram of protection once lay, to scare the shit out of future tourists, like Tim and I. We ended in the darkest and most haunted of chambers, where the emergency light never works, no matter how many times the bulb is replaced. It was the site where upwards of 150 indigent and impoverished people died, literally baking to death, in a brutal fire that ripped through the streets of Edinburgh, and the Tron Kirk, in the early 1800’s.

£7, some good stories, no ghost sightings, 2 out of a possible 5 stars (go on a warm night too!).