Secret Edinburgh: Ghosts and ghouls with Catie Wilkins at Mary Kings Close

 

Like "The Chicken Man" in Breaking Bad, this place is not so much a secret, as hiding in plain sight. Though unlike Gus Fring, it does not lead a double life as a drugs baron. I assume.

 

I'm talking of course about the Ghost Tour at Mary Kings Close, just off of the Royal Mile, where you can go down into the tunnels that still run underneath Edinburgh and see where the ghosts of the past walked. I say 'see' it's actually very dark down there. But very worth doing.

 

When I went, we had a tour guide, dressed in medieval clothing who announced he knew 'nothing of our times' before then asking us to turn off our mobile phones. He also warned us that the ghosts would object to having their photographs taken. It's not everyday you get to come into contact with ghosts, let alone ones that have such a keen understanding of their legal rights. The living could learn a lot from them.

 

The tour itself is fascinating, and makes you forget you are in the middle of a hectic, international festival, with desperate flyerers vying for your attention at every turn. There is something weirdly calming about walking through these cool, dark passageways, retracing the steps of our forebears. And even though you are learning about how devastating and horrific the plague was to the people who once lived here, it does make you put your struggles to get an audience for your show into perspective.

 

It's definitely worth doing if you want to be taken out of yourself and transported out of the festival, to a simpler and more brutal time for a little while, and share in some of Edinburgh's rich history.