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Edinburgh Vaults

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Edinburgh Underground

One of the most unsettling experiences I have ever had was in the Edinburgh vaults on our latest trip to Scotland.  Being guests of the Scottish Tourist Board certainly opened the doors to many things we would not have experienced otherwise, but what we saw in the vaults was especially unique.

There are several tour companies that invite you to meet the ghosts and ghouls of the night in both Edinburgh and Glasgow.  We joined Mercat Tours in Edinburgh and our guide, Fran, for a walking tour of the Royal Mile and the vaults by night.  In addition to seeing such historic sites as the Heart of Midlothian, a heart shaped configuration of stones in the sidewalk near Mercat Cross; we also saw the marker for John Knox's grave.  In themselves, maybe not all that was interesting, except that one does not walk on the Heart of Midlothian.  Bad luck you ask?  No.  Everyone spits on it.  Good luck?  No.  They are spitting on the condemned man who sat in a cell in the old jail on the same site hundreds of years ago.  Oh, and John Knox's grave is marked by a small pinkish rectangular stone on the ground.  It is easily seen by night, but harder to find during the day.  Why?  Because a car is usually parked on it.  The graveyard was paved over and is actually in lot #44 behind St. Giles Cathedral.

The height of the night was our tour of the vaults.  In the 16th Century, the Cowgate area was a very fashionable place just outside the city gates.  Today it is a forlorn underpass as the South Bridge, built in the 1780s, towers over it.  At the time the bridge was built, the land under it was excavated for several floors of rooms and underground chambers, virtually forgotten until recently.  The vaults contained families of 7-10 people in rooms the size of a small bedroom with no ventilation or windows and a fireplace that provided some form of heat.  The vaults were lighted with fish oil lamps, which combined with stale waste from garbage and chamber pots which were emptied into the streets after the 10pm curfew each night, must had made the area barely habitable.  Apparently merchants flocked to be there.  Shops contained the businesses of cobblers and watchmakers and acted as storage for wine and other products, which were guarded by underground caretakers.

Norrie Rowan bought the site in Niddry Street in 1995 and started the excavations of the vaults.  The entrance was through a door on Niddry Street and after unlocking the creaky thing with a large skeleton key, our guide took us down several flights of stone stairs into a dimly lit hallway.  The rooms, numbering some 20 that have currently been excavated, were dank, dark and damp.  The area had been filled in about 100 years ago as disease flourished and as it became more and more wet.  You could still see the trickling of water from the ceilings in areas.  What a job it must have been to dig it all out.  An even bigger job to fill in the rooms or collapse ceilings 100 years ago.

Our guide, Fran, was a wonderful storyteller.  She explained life in the rooms, what business had taken place and what articles were found after the excavation started.  She also noted several spirits were frequently reported by visitors, but declined specifics at that point in order not to slant our experience.  In one room she note a cobbler was often reported in one corner working and watching.  I noticed it was the same corner where my husband had just moved to.  Not a malevolent ghost apparently and while my husband did not feel or see anything, another woman in our party did have a particular feeling of a presence.  You can imagine our shock after we took a look at the digital pictures he shot from the other side of the room! Originally the object had been to capture the guide telling the story of the room with the others looking on.  His photo showed the whitish form of the cobbler, seated with arm outstretched as if reclining and listening to the stories! No matter how he attempted to touch up the picture, as if to remove a reflection or motion, it just sharpened the image.  It had depth, especially near the ground and wall and could not be a shadow.  The facial features are generally clear.  There was no movement of air in the room, no strange markings on the wall.  What else could it be?

The photo of the cobbler plus our experience in another room has made me a believer in the world of the spirits in the vaults.

We continued our tour until we came to the last room.  Fairly large in size, there were two church pews at the longest ends of the rooms facing each other.  I was one of the first in the room and headed to the opposite side near the doorway.  I was drawn to that corner and kept looking for something to appear in it.  I thought that maybe another member of the tour company would be waiting to jump out and scare us.  No such luck.  Instead, I turned my attention toward Fran who was telling a very engrossing ghost tale.  Occasionally I turned and looked toward the corner.  Suddenly, as the tale became longer, I felt an intensely cold feeling come over and through my right shoulder.  It traveled up my neck to my face, but not to my left side which remained warm.  I looked to the corner again.  Nothing.  This happened several times and I became more uncomfortable and quietly traded places with my husband to my left without saying anything to him.  I watched his reaction.  He almost immediately looked at me and said, "He's pacing".  He then told me about the same cold sensation, although I had said nothing to him.  Our sense was one of irritation, as if the spirit had had enough and preferred peace and quiet.  I interrupted the guide, told her what we were feeling and she immediately cleared the room.  Once outside in the corridor, the coldness left.

On the street, Fran gave us more details of the spirit we had experienced and others we had not directly met.  She said that Mercat Tours keeps a record of sightings and experiences and that they have documented several specific spirits in addition to the cobbler and ours.  I won't go into detail so as not to prejudice you should you happen to visit the vaults.  You can find your own ghosts and spirits.  It certainly gave me an experience to remember! Details of the Mercat Tours with times and rates can be found at their web site.

Slainte

Deborah

From: Strdst1
Newsgroups: news:alt.scottish.clans
Subject: The Edinburgh Vaults
Date: 21 Oct 1998
Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com
[Capital Scot advisory: The author's e-mail address and link to photos are no longer active on 3/5/04]

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Edinburgh Underground - More Recent History

Regarding the vaults, I was resposible in the early 1980s for knocking the wall through between Blair St. and Niddrey St. which was a floor down prior to the sauna opening.  It was an amazing place and had two entrances on Niddrey street that were connected inside via walkthrough tunnels and one on Blair street which eventually we connected one day by while we were removing a wall on the lower levels.  I remember one wall being at least six feet thick!  And we had huge metal struts holding it up.  Some of the corridors were extremely narrow, and some of the floors were connected by temporary wooden staircases.  We used to play all night down there in those dark and smelling of damp rooms.  The weekends used to be a riot with so many different bands playing at the same time.  These rooms in the vaults were used for years as reahearsal rooms for bands such as The Exploited and the another Scottish band The Ramones.  Even Jules Holland from the Channel 4 program The Tube visited for a live program around 1983.

There were around 70 bands playing in these vaults at the time but I cannot see any mention of this history from anyone.  Will it be lost forever?  I have spoken to tour companies but there seems to be a lack of interest in this part of the vaults' history.  There were a few sitings of ghosts certainly even in the 1980's.  I know for sure that one night a girl was heard screaming and we rushed out to see what the commotion was about, and found this girl sobbing her eyes out, explaining she has seen a figure walk through a wall!  There was a serious fire, too, but no one was hurt.  The rooms that we opened up were in fact full of old bottles and rubbish, and unfortunately we never really found anything useful or historic.  I hope that someone can write this use of the vaults into the history books one day.

From:
A Scottish Capital Scot reader from Holland.

Edinburgh Vaults History

Welcome to Underground Edinburgh tells that:  Far below the bustling streets of Edinburgh lies a secret, hidden world. Undisturbed for over 200 years, the magnificent underground vaults of this ancient city have been laid open to reveal three venues that are both charming and chilling.

Among the articles with interesting hostorical notes on the historical value of visiting the vaults is Haunted Underground Vaults in Edinburgh.  A visitor also provided some ghostly photos.

Mary King's Close

Although Mary King's Close may be considered apart from the Edinburgh Vaults, it was once the shopping street in Edinburgh.  Beneath the Royal Mile and the City Chambers lie a few closes, narrow streets packed with tenement buildings, originally seven stories high.  In 1753 the council decided to build the Royal Exchange (the City Chambers), knocking down the top houses and using the lower buildings as the foundations. ... Mary King herself ran a market stall selling fine lace amongst other things.  There was also a saw maker's business that did very well, running for 150 years.  There was even an urban cow shed, where cows were stored (in terrible conditions) before being taken to Fleshmarket Close to be slaughtered.  You can stand in it today - it still smells. ... Most of Mary King's Close is still intact. ... It runs from the High Street, and before Cockburn Street was built it ran all the way to Market Street.  The close was opened to the public in 2003.  Mary King's Close was officially declared one of the world's most haunted places. Mary King moved here with her four children in 1629 after her husband died. Her living room is recreated with items listed in her actual will ... One of the most important - and saddest - among a multitude of rooms that witnessed much sadness is one in which eight-year-old Annie died of the plague in 1645.  A Japanese psychic, visiting in 1992 ... claimed to feel a tug at her leg.  Annie, in rags with long dirty hair, was standing by the window, crying because she had lost her family, her dog and her doll.  The psychic brought Annie a doll to comfort her - and people from around the world have been leaving trinkets and toys ever since.

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