Five Macabre Haunts In Edinburgh

The Festival and the Castle, cashmere and kilts on the Royal Mile, a wee dram on route to Holyrood – you think Edinburgh is a jolly place to visit. Think again, says our travel editor, Neil Sowerby

Bodysnatchers branch out in Edinburgh

1 BURKE and Hare, the ultimate corpsing double act. They are celebrated in a lap dancing dive in the shadow of the Castle, but for a real feel of the chill the grave robbers brought to Edinburgh, go underground. Paul, right, our ebullient guide on one of the Auld Reekie Tours, regaled us with bloodcurdling tales, particularly in the firm’s museum of authentic torture instruments. Our walk culminated in underground vaults where Burke and Hare stored their victims’ bodies and even Britain’s Most Haunted investigators got the willies. The complex also houses a weird shrine belonging to the current Wiccan pagan cult. All tours depart from outside the Tron Church on the Royal Mile. Visit www.auldreekietours.com or ring 0131 557 4700. Our 75 minute Ghost and Torture Tour cost £10 (children £8 – if they’re not of a nervous disposition). 

Explaining How The Torture Implements Work; below, it gets scary

2 Curious to learn more about bodysnatching? A must visit is to the atmospheric Greyfriars Churchyard. Here you’ll find graves protected by a framework of iron bars called mortsafes. Iron coffins were also in common use to protect newly buried bodies from body snatchers. Most famous of these so-calledsurrection men” were Burke and Hare. Before the Anatomy Act of 1832 the only legal supply of corpses for anatomical purposes were those condemned to death and dissection by the judges. Many more cadavers were needed, which sparked a brisk trade for the medical schools. 

3 The most notorious purchaser of corpses was Dr Robert Knox, who acquired 16 cadavers from the deadly duo. Such was his notoriety he had to quit the city. To get a flavour of Edinburgh’s medical heritage visit The Surgeon’s Hall Museums in Nicolson Street, opposite the Festival Theatre. There you’ll see human anatomical and pathological specimens from the early 18th century, charting the development of surgery. www.museum.rcsed.ac.uk/ content/content.aspx. 

Real Mary King's Close; below, Dr George Rae

4 Time to go back underground.The true gem, helping you understand how folk existed in the tumbling tenements of the Old Town is The Real Mary King’s Close. It’s a secret warren of houses, part of a 10-storey deep tenement complex that was frozen in time when the Royal Exchange was constructed on top of it in the 1750s. Underground workshops lingered on there over the intervening centuries until it was reopened as a visitor attraction in 2003. Now guides in character as various inhabitants from the past cannily illuminate the uncomfortable life of real recorded inhabitants in 17th and 18th century Edinburgh, including the eponymous Mary King, a cloth entrepreneur. But it is the ghost tales and the recreation of the plague years that haunt you. In particular, an eerie memorial to the spectre of a child victim and the mannequin of plague doctor George Rae in his beaked costume to protect him from “contagious miasmas”. www.realmarykingsclose.com. 

Deacon Brodie and the Kilted Ones; below Dr J and Mr H

5 Finally Deacon Brodie’s Tavern on the Royal MiIe is superficially a jolly place, the outside thronged with tourists seeking photo opportunities with kilted passers-by. Cabinetmaker’s son and superficially solid citizen Brodie led a double life of murder and mayhem, whoring, gambling and robbing that inspired one Robert Louis Stevenson to create The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It all ended on the scaffold; later when his coffin was opened, guess what, it was empty. Edinburgh all over. Find out more about the great Robert Louis and other great Scots storytellers from Scott to Rankin at the nearby Writers’ Museum (www.cityofliterature.com). There’s a fascinating collection of RLS memorabilia and If that doesn’t sate you step into the lovely St Giles Cathedral and pay your respects at an odd low-relief bronze likeness of the author.

Robert Louis Stevenson in St Giles Cathedral

After all this stuff clear your head in one of Britain’s great green spaces, the Royal Botanic Garden (www.rbge.org.uk). If time is short, concentrate on the great glasshouses, which house one of the world’s great plant collections. Enjoy my floral gallery below...

Holyrood Palace and, below, the Abbey

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