When we where in Edinburgh we took a ghost tour called City of the Dead. I was done in the late evening and we truly enjoyed it. The guide was very entertaining and we where both scared and entertained which we paid for. We didn’t see any ghost or experienced any poltergeist phenomena although the guy on the tour that was a psychic didn’t look like he was feeling that well. I would recommend it for people visiting Edinburgh, as long as they are aware of the risks and there is few more risks than the commercial leaflets and paper adds suggests. Reading their homepage might be a good idea before. There is a warning in the ads that claims that “The Mackenzie Poltergeist can cause genuine physical and mental distress. You join the tour at your own risk!”
I read their homepage when I got home and it raised some concern. This is most well documented supernatural case in history. The reason for that is that they have been running these ghost tours 2-3 times every night since 1999 and the Mackenzie Poltergeist as the entity/entities is/are called is/are VERY active. The ideas of the tours are two as I have understood it. The first one is that if you bring in groups of people all the time they will se the haunting happening and that means that they will give witness reports that will document the case even further. The second one is that and I hope this is a gimmick to attract more people to the tour is that by bringing scared people in there to feed the entity who lives on peoples fear and thereby groves stronger so they can see what it does then. This is my main concern because this is not exactly a guardian angle that they are feeding. It’s a parapsychological experiment that could go wrong
The entity is question are actually hurting people and the worst thing that is have done is not written in the ads because it might scare people away from the tours, that’s just on their homepage. It’s not that bad as it sounds, on most tours absolutely nothing happens. The ads are filled with witness reports about the scary thing that have happened, not the really frightening ones.
So what happens on the tour that go bump in the night? Well so far 197 people have fainted, been knocked out, struck to the ground, gone down to their knees, puked, starting crying uncontrollably, possessed, invisible walls, hair pulled, choked and being temporarily paralyzed. The leaflet called it being knocked out without going into details. We also got the classical cold and hot spots. An investigative time recorded a temperature raise in the Black Mausoleum (the centre point of the haunting) of 20-25 Celsius degrees or as they put it, they where standing in a stone mausoleum in a night in April in Scotland and it suddenly became +35 C as a hot summer’s day. Cloaked figures moving around and disappearing, light phenomena, things falling to the ground from trees or buildings on and around the cemetery and not finding anything on the ground. People visiting the ghost tour get scrape marks, burn marks and bruises. Photographs taken on the scene might reveal light orbs, shadow figures, faces, demon heads, mysterious fogs and ectoplasm.
The leaflet also mentioned that exorcism rituals have been performed but failed. The guides also mentioned that none has been killed or badly hurt on the tours so they are perfectly safe. Now this is where the commercial ends at it really become frightening. One the people that tried to perform an exorcism died a weak later in a heart attack. The guy (a historian) that invented the tours had a house the overlooked the cemetery but it burned down and with that all the research material he had on the Mackenzie Poltergeist. He now lives elsewhere, I wonder why ;-).One guy that was knocked out inside the Black Mausoleum had to be dragged out by the tour group because an invisible force was pulling from inside the mausoleum, trying to keep him there. People had the entities follow them to their hotel rooms and wake them up in the middle of the night with a strong sensation of being watched. A few people have fainted on Parliament Square on the beginning of the tour, still being hundreds of meters from the cemetery and not yet visited it. A few visitors have brought these entities home and they do not leave, haunting them and the people around them. One guy who brought an entity home had also bought a book about the haunting “The Ghost That Haunted Itself”, a book that can be found in every tourist shop in Edinburgh for a few pounds. He didn’t want the book at home and when he told his mother about the experience she wanted to read the book. Well she got scratch marks on the same spot on her neck that her son had after receiving the book. The temporary paralyzes I mentioned usually lasts for a few seconds up to a minute. Well a woman found herself being unable to move the next morning and had to stay a week in the hospital. There are also a lot of dead birds and animals found on the prison part of the cemetery.
I guess that most people wouldn’t leave for ghost tour that stated: “Well we got one or a few malevolent entity/entities at this graveyard that we are trying to feed with your fears to make it/them stronger so we can see what it’s/they’re really capable of. We really don’t know what they are, the likeliest suggestion are elemental spirits although some psychics who have been here claims that there are demons present. They might be ghosts, poltergeists or some or all of the entities mentioned. What we do know is that there are many of them and that they are strong and active. We will look you in a haunted prison inside a locked haunted graveyard. If you are attacked it will likely knock you out or otherwise be uncomfortable and you might get injuries that usually disappear within the next few days, up to a few weeks. However since the entities possibly demons are not constricted to this cemetery although it’s their centre point of activity they have a tendency to follow you home to your hotel rooms and wake you up as they are watching you and you will know that they do. Some may stay for a few days and cause a few sleepless night. In a few causes they never leave, like a puppy that follows you around wherever you go but this entity is not cute or seeking your love, it’s possible that they will haunt you and everyone around you for the rest of your life. It’s even possible to become haunted just having a book about this haunting in your possession. No one has died on the tour yet but an exorcist died a week after his exorcism ritual here. But as it grows stronger thanks to your fear we will never know what it can do because a lot of animals and birds that enters this part of the cemetery are found dead.”
Probably wouldn’t be so popular then. But I guess people go on these tours for the same reason people go sky diving or do martial arts. It’s exiting, you might get injuries or even die but the adrenalin rush is worth it. So far it seams like a relatively safe tour but how strong will the Mackenzie Poltergeist be in 5 years from now or 10?
One thing happened that I’m not entirely sure of if it really did. It might very well be a constructed memory caused by my imagination running wild. I remember thinking something like “What if we see shadows on the graveyard.” So it might be my imagination and not having a photographic memory that caused this “memory”. I remember seeing a shadow figure kneeling in front of a grave. One knee on the ground and having the other foot placed on the ground knelling towards the grave. That’s a natural thing that people do in grave yards, mourn the dead. So I thought nothing of it and turned my attention towards the guide again. Until it occurred to my later, it’s a locked haunted graveyard in the middle of the night.
This is the stuff of nightmares and horror movies and it’s not even made up…
Too spooky for me!
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