Trifter

Meet Ghouls and Ghosts at the Mercat Cross.

EDINBURGH is a real Jekyll and Hyde city. It has long been a bustling capital in the daytime. However the old buildings and narrow closes take on a different, darker and more sinister character during the hours of night. Mercat Tours run four distinct tours of the more sombre side of Scotland’s capital city. This walks are not for the fainthearted.

There is the Ghosts and Ghouls Tour, which exhumes the city’s gruesome and often bloody past. It has a long history of murders, hangings, tortures and body-snatching, which has left the old town with a haunting legacy. Many ghostly apparitions now stalk these gloomy closes and BBC news once described as the most haunted place in Britain.

A cloaked guide will bring the dead dramatically back to life on this spine-chilling walk. Visitors next enter the underground vaults whose walls are believed to have absorbed the emotions of all the people who have ever lived there. This tour ends with the walkers enjoying? a drink in a candle-lit tavern where the ghost stories continue unabated well into the night.

The Ghosts and Ghouls Tour, which last one and a half hours start at 19:00, 20:00 and 21:00 from April until September and 19:00 and 20:00 between October and March.

Secrets of the Royal Mile reveals the heart of the old town. It is a treasure-chest of historic gems that is just crying out to be opened. Expert guides take visitors back through the centuries so that they can learn about Scotland’s cultural, political and even criminal past.

They can marvel at the magnificent Parliament Hall and learn how Scotland gained a throne but ultimately was still to lose its sovereignty.

Visitors are able to meet Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped and the Strange Story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.  They will learn why the Scots spit on a stoney heart to this day and discover what it was about Britain’s oldest equestrian statue that so shocked the ladies.

This 90 minute tour starts at 20:30 throughout the year.

Citizens of Edinburgh would gather at the Mercat Cross to enjoy hangings, floggings and other gruesome and bloody entertainment throughout the ages. Mecat Tours carry on this tradition with their Ghosthunter Trail, a terrifying stroll through a deserted moonlit cemetery and into the haunted underground vaults.

They can feast their ears on the tales of the macabre that are theatrically told by the cloaked guide.

Visitors will find out what it is that gives off that foul stench that greeted the Duke at his Edinburgh town house. They can discover why voices can been heard in an empty boarding-house room to this very day.

Another 90 minute tour, the Ghosthunter Trail sets off at 21:30 and 10:30 from April until September and 21:30 between October and March.

The one hour Vaults Tour takes visitors into a catacomb of underground chambers. A large bridge was built to span a deep valley lying south of the Royal Mile. Its 19 massive arches created the environment that enabled a sub-culture to develop and thrive. Both legal and illicit trades began to flourish. They were extremely hard times and there was nothing that could not be bought or sold for a purse of gold.

Visitors can journey back to those lawless times with the help of a guide who is a university trained historian. He will show them how life was lived during the 19th Century in these recently uncovered vaults. They will also learn hy copses were once stored there.

The walls of this mysterious labyrinth would be able to tell some stories if only they could talk. This tour begins at 12:00, 14:00, 15:00 and 16:00 from April until September and 14:00 and 16:00 from October to May.

Mercat Tours run trails every day of the year with the exceptions of December 24, 25, 26 and 31.

Walkers are asked to meet their guides at the Mercat Cross, near St Giles Cathedral on High Street 15 minutes before the start of their tour. Customised and themed tours can be arranged. Teacher guidelines and pupil worksheets, covering the five to 14 curriculum are available for school parties.

Children under the age of eight are welcome free of charge on these tours, Mercat Tours request that their parents withdraw them if they become distressed.

All these tours have been throughly researched by professional historians and presented by the guides with passion, flair and humour. They are only short distance routes but people are asked to wear sturdy footwear, due to the steep slopes and uneven surfaces of the old part of the city.

Mercat Tours can supply more information on 0131 557 6464.