REVIEW OF MERCAT TOURS OF EDINBURGH - MARY KINGS CLOSE TOUR
BY REBECCA TRIPP

BOOKINGS:
Mercat Tours holds the exclusive contract to conduct tours around Mary King's Close. They wander through the remains of the old houses, describe the living conditions, tell the horrific truth about the plague outbreak, and share one or two of the ghost stories with you. This is one part of Edinburgh not to be missed. The full history of Mary King's Close can also be found in our recent publication, Hidden and Haunted: Underground Edinburgh, cost £5.99 and available from Mercat Tours.

Mercat Tours run hour-long daily tours of Mary Kings Close at 11.30 am and (for the very brave) 9.30pm. The cost is £5 per person.
You will need to ring and book as this is a popular tour and meets at the Mercat Cross in the Royal Mile.

May I recommend you find a good pub, you'll need a stiff drink afterwards!

Mercat Tours:Phone: +44 131 557 6464.
For further information and online bookings we recommend you visit their website: http://www.mercat-tours.co.uk/
Email: info@mercat-tours.co.uk

It was the year of the worst visitation of the 'pestilence', which we know today as the Bubonic Plague, in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland.

In the 17th century, Edinburgh spread for only just over a mile, due to the walled fortifications around the city which protected it from invaders. The city could therefore not sprawl but instead it went 'up'; the first 'skyscrapers' of about seven storeys were constructed here, which is why it is sometimes called the 'Medieval Manhattan'. But let's remember this was the 17th century, long before such civilised inventions as bathrooms, toilets and plumbing. Medieval Scots would throw all their personal and kitchen waste straight out the window, directly into the street below, perhaps straight onto some unlucky punter.

RIGHT: This is the view you have when you first enter the Close from Cockburn Street. The rooms lead off this 'street' on the left hand side. Note how dark and unwelcoming it looks, completely covered over now by the City Chambers. Imagine this street in 1645, with hundreds of plague victims jammed in.

Picture if you can, this swill of raw sewage seeping down the steps of the city, imagine the smell. Rats inhabited this environment as well, enjoying the festering conditions and the tasty morsels, but these rats carried the fleas which carried the pestilence. The pestilence was not a nice disease, not pretty or pleasant by any stretch of the imagination. Sufferers would become very ill and huge pustules and boils would break out all over them and they would be racked with pains and vomiting until they died an agonising death, whereupon they would turn a purply black, hence it's other name 'The Black Death'.

The Government of Edinburgh decided in 1645 to quarantine all Edinburgh's plague victims into Mary Kings Close. A barbaric and ultimately futile measure, one third of the population of the city eventually died of the Plague that year. So into the Close they were herded, where they were locked in and left to die. For weeks their screams and cries for water and food and mercy could be heard, but gradually it grew quiet. The fouls smell of decaying corpses soon began to fill the streets of Edinburgh and two butchers who themselves had survived the Plague, were sent in to the Close to rid it of the bodies. These two clever butchers took those 400 corpses and cut them into sections, so that they could be neatly stacked into carts, sorted into arms, legs, torsos and heads. The Close had been cleaned up, but the souls of those 400 people were not at rest, and many maintain they still haunt the Close.

Reported to be so haunted that no-one dared to move into the street, the council City Chambers were built over Mary Kings Close in the 19th Century. During the second World War it was reopened and used as an airing shelter and thus renewed public interest in the street. Today, a tour of the Close is a popular Edinburgh tourist attraction and ever since first hearing the tragic and chilling story of the Close ten years ago, I've wanted to see it and finally did at Easter 2000. Our vivacious Mercat tour guide took us into the dimly lit passage with rooms running off it. She gave us graphic descriptions of medieval life in Edinburgh and told us the history of the Close and about the hauntings. The first couple to move in after the Close was reopened were the 'Coldharts' who eventually moved out after repeated nights of dismembered limbs and heads floating about their room. They were braver than most, the few others that did move in only lasted a night. But could these ghostly visitations in fact have been clouds of putrid marsh gas, otherwise known as methane, which rose off nearby Nor'Loch? "Marsh gas is lighter than air and hovers, with a slight luminous glow – it is not difficult to imagine the effects of wispy gas pockets collecting in the houses of the Close's nether regions–"

In two rooms during the tour, I felt an overwhelmingly claustrophobic presence, a growing feeling of oppressivness that grew heavier and heavier until my head was spinning and I felt quite ill. In the first of these, the guide lead us to the door of a small room with a small opening knocked into the side of the wall. She told us how several years ago a Japanese psychic walked through the Close, she'd been given no prior information about the Close or the hauntings. She had described a scene as she walked through the rooms; lots of people sitting and lying huddled in blankets looking ill and covered in red sores. When she came to this door, initially she refused to enter. She said she felt the most overwhelming sense of misery and despair coming from the room. She felt she might be able to help so she entered and had a conversation with a seven year old girl who had been taken away from her family and left in this room to die. Many others, myself included, have felt ill and a sense of great despair and unease outside the room. The room is now filled with toys and gifts that visitors have left for the little girl.

Anchor Close is just a few streets along from Mary Kings. It shows what Mary Kings Close may have looked like until the 19th Century. Note how narrow and claustrophobic these old closes are.

In another room, I felt the same sort of oppressive presence and it became suddenly icy cold. This room is the site of a recent haunting during a guided tour! A woman on a tour noticed a tall woman in a long brown dress standing behind the tour guide, she was sneering at the people on the tour. Then the apparition walked through the guide and through the crowd, and this woman realised she was the only one who had seen a ghost and ran screaming and panting from the room. Another chilling story was in what was an old butchers shop. Apparently some council members were in this room when the walls began to run with FRESH BLOOD!

I can highly recommend the tour, but make sure to prepare yourself for the sometimes overwhelming feeling of despair and claustrophobia. You'll have to go there and decide for yourself whether lost souls are still haunting the Close, and you'll get a lot out of the tour in terms of history. Leave a bit of love behind for the victims of Mary Kings Close, they need it.

Castle of Spirits would like to thank Rebecca Tripp,
Mercat Tours for the use of some of their images (follow link above to visit their website)
and also Mary King's Close Guided Tour website for some use of their images.