039: A Haunting in Scotland
*My* haunting in Scotland, to be more specific
Hey everyone,
It’s been a whirlwind time since I last wrote. Last week I released episode three of my new podcast, which covers one of my favorite historical figures: Anne Bonny. I have been overwhelmed by the positive response from everyone, and I’m so excited about where it’s going. If you’ve given it a listen or checked it out in any way, thank you!
And then (still somewhat unbelievably to me) three weeks ago I was interviewed by Substack about my podcast for their weekly What To Read feature, which recommends different writers across Substack who are doing interesting things. I am usually the one interviewing other people, so it felt absolutely surreal to be the one answering questions! It’s a short interview but pretty cool. If you’re interested in checking out, you can do that right here:
All that said, it feels really nice to be back here with you all.
It’s also ~spooky time~, which in my mind is the best time of the year. For me, at least, spooky season combines all the excitement and anticipation of Christmas with none of the financial anxiety or pressure to travel or buy the perfect gift. Before we get into today’s tale of a haunting, you can also check out last year’s story about a loser vampire just trying to make ends meet.
All righty, let’s hop in!
In October 2018, I did a 10-day road trip around Scotland with my friend Fiona.
Fiona’s a friend from graduate school, so we decided to begin our trip in London, where we saw some other friends from grad school then took the train up to Glasgow.
Our itinerary was Glasgow → Fort William → Harry Potter train to Mallaig → Isle of Skye → Inverness → Edinburgh → London. We planned the whole trip around two key points: The last day the Harry Potter train ran that year, and the Samhuinn Fire Festival on Halloween in Edinburgh.
Everything ran pretty smoothly, at first. None of the museums in Glasgow were open due to protests, but that was fine. We visited haunted graveyards and saw old cathedrals. On the Harry Potter train ride up from Fort William to Mallaig, we took a million photos and enjoyed the majesty of Scotland in the fall.
But on our second day on the Isle of Skye, things started to… shift. It was October 26th. One of the many things we wanted to do on Skye was see the Fairy Pools (pictured below). And it was there that our strange experiences began.
We walked out to the fairy pools under heavy cloud cover. The pools are situated in a valley surrounded by low mountains on three sides, with a forest on the fourth. It was cold but not bitter, so Fiona and I walked out with other tourists, skipping across frigid streams and admiring the landscape as we went.
After photographing the pools with a dozen other tourists, we decided to walk on to see what else was around. We were alone, walking toward the mountains in awed silence. The temperature was dropping, the wind picking up. I was maybe ten steps ahead of Fiona, when suddenly everything went silent.
I felt an oppressive force pushing me toward the ground, as if someone had just turned the gravity up 100%. It felt like all the oxygen had been sucked away, and I couldn’t take a breath.
I heard giggling all around me.
I stood still as a minute passed, then two.
Then, as suddenly as it came, it all disappeared. The wind rushed back into my ears and breath rushed back into my lungs. I whipped around to look at Fiona: She had her head down, looking at something on the ground.
“Were you just laughing?” I asked.
“What?” She called up, her voice nearly disappearing on the wind.
I looked at her then looked around. Suddenly I felt like I was in danger, about to do something I couldn’t take back. “Let’s go back,” I suggested. “It’s getting cold.”
A few days later, we were staying in at Melville Castle on the outskirts of Edinburgh. It’s rumored to be the main castle where Mary, Queen of Scots, had her affair with David Rizzio. Trees a few hundred years old line a boulevard leading up to the castle; it’s said Mary had them planted to show David how her love from him grew.
Though David was murdered at the nearby Palace of Holyroodhouse, rumor says that Mary’s ghosts haunts Melville Castle, searching for her murdered lover. She’s especially present in the library-turned-bar, where her spirit will wander through as if she’s scanning the room for him.
But several guest rooms are said to be places of high spirit activity, and we stayed in one of them. This wasn’t planned, mind you, but after we checked in we noticed that our room number was the one mentioned in many Yelp reviews as being a super haunted space. Even still, we left it to creep through the castle late at night, searching for ghosts or other things to spook us. I was a nervous mess the whole time, sure that every little creak of the building was a ghost or demon coming for us.
At some point, near the witching hour, I shot up from sleep, sure I was being watched. The room was empty save Fiona, who was sleeping soundly. I laid back down nervously and eventually drifted back to sleep.
The next night, October 30th, we moved to a hostel closer to the center of Edinburgh. We did a haunted tour of the city that night, and the next morning, the 31st, we did a Harry Potter tour. We visited a bunch of coffee shops, trying to keep warm in the cold rain.
In the afternoon, we did a tour of Edinburgh’s Vaults, which hold a fascinating history. The 120 chambers beneath the South Bridge were built as workshops and storage rooms for merchants whose shops were on the main street above. For thirty years they were used for their designed purpose, but eventually the design flaws in them became too big to ignore: They leaked in the rain and never fully dried. Because there was no ventilation, it was unsafe to build fires down there, and so in the winter the chambers were freezing.
The Vaults were abandoned in the 1820s and were taken over by less legitimate businesses. The chambers became illegal gambling dens, rooms for prostitution, illicit distilleries, secret taverns, and routes for body snatchers. Rumor has it that serial killers Burke and Hare might have used the Vaults to store their bodies in between murdering them and selling them to the medical college.
Obviously, they’re ridiculously haunted.
Our tour was for folks 18 and older. Our guide walked us through, telling us about the murders, mysteries, and mayhem that had been documented through 200 years of use. It was as promised: damp, dark, and dreadfully cold. I shivered through the dread and followed along, trying not to be too close to the guide nor at the back of the pack. (Ignore me right in the middle, please.)
About halfway through the tour, I felt a weird tingling on my hands. My first thought was that I had stepped in water and felt a small electrical current, but there was no water around. (Why this was my first thought is inexplicable.)
Next to me, Fiona started looked around wildly.
“What?” I asked.
“Is there a kid on this tour?” She whispered back.
“No, why?”
“I thought someone tugged on my clothes,” she said.
I shrugged in the dark. “Wasn’t me.”
In the next room, the guide stopped us. She had a few times to tell us about ghosts that were seen most often in various rooms, including The Gentleman, The Cobbler, and Mr. Boots.
She said, “Along this passage of rooms people report seeing The Child. He’s described as a little blond boy, around 6 or 7. We think he died coming down here looking for something—a parent, or maybe a ball that rolled away. Either he got lost and starved or fell on the slippery ladders and broke his neck. Now we wanders around looking for people to play with. If he likes you, he might grab your hand or tug on your clothes.”
I froze in my tracks. The strange tingling in my hands, I thought.
As we walked back to our hostel, Fiona and I compared our various experiences with The Child. “At least it was a nice ghost,” I offered at some point. But to be honest, I felt uneasy. While I believe that spirits exist, I’d never had even the slightest encounter with one before that. Part of my brain still rationalizes it away.
We were planning to go to the Samhuinn Fire Festival that night, and so we were changing into our costumes before going out. The hostel had private bedrooms but shared bathrooms, so after we changed we took our makeup bags to the bathroom to finish getting ready. Fiona brought her purse with her as well. Mere moments after arriving, she began freaking out that her wallet was missing from it.
“I think someone stole my wallet,” she said, looking through the purse and her makeup bag.
“No one else has been in here but us,” I said. “There’s no way…”
“It’s not here and I definitely put it in here!”
I started helping her look around for the wallet. I knew it was a bright red billfold with yellow markings on it. But it was nowhere to be found in the bathroom.
“Let’s go back to the room. Maybe you dropped it on the way?” I suggested, trying to be reassuring.
“How, my purse was latched,” she countered. I checked the trash cans on the way, somewhat darkly hoping that if someone had stolen her wallet, they had just taken the cash and abandoned the rest. But it wasn’t in any of the trash cans or under benches or dropped in shadowy corners.
Once in the room, Fiona and I began tearing through everything. She was rightfully panicking—she was in a foreign country and now all her cash and her credit cards were missing. She still had her passport, but losing your wallet while traveling instills a special kind of terror.
“It’s got to be in here, we’re going to find it,” I assured her.
But it wasn’t in her backpack or her suitcase. I checked the pockets of her coat. I checked the pockets of my coat. I looked in my purse, my backpack, my suitcase, though I wouldn’t have been able to explain how her wallet would have gotten in any of them. I stripped the bed and shook the sheets out, even though I knew I would have seen a red leather wallet against white sheets immediately. I checked inside the pillow cases. I looked under the bed. I checked all of her bags again. I pulled open every compartment and unzipped every zipper on her purse and turned it over, spilling the contents all over the bed. No wallet. I reached into the purse, practically turning the lining inside out looking for it. Nothing.
Next to me, Fiona logged into her online banking platforms and froze all her cards. She panicked about losing her parents’ credit card for emergencies and called them to tell them to cancel it. She tried to take deep breaths but was panicking.
I tried to soothe her but truthfully, I was starting to get a little worried. All of our major travel was paid for in advance, and the trip was almost over, but what if some unexpected expense came up?
At the same time, I noticed my A&M class ring was missing. I take it off a lot, so I wasn’t immediately worried, but I wondered if there was a thief in the hostel, and if they snatched my ring while I put lotion on my hands in the bathroom. In addition to Fiona’s missing wallet, I began to keep an eye out for any glint of gold.
Nothing.
Finally, after checking everything in our room that I could think of twice, I admitted defeat. “Let’s check the bathroom one more time, and report it at the front desk,” I told Fiona.
She nodded. We checked the bathrooms, looking in every stall and even checking the showers and the dirty towel bin. Her wallet wasn’t there, and neither was my ring.
We reported Fiona’s missing wallet to the folks at the front desk, and they apologized but explained they didn’t have cameras in every hallway. They promised to let us know if the wallet turned up though. We went back upstairs and sat heavily on the bed.
“Listen, I know this sucks and you’re upset, but we can’t let this ruin out night,” I said after a minute. “We planned our whole trip around tonight. So let’s finish getting ready and go out. I have enough room on my credit card to cover us both for the rest of the trip, and you can always Venmo me for anything.”
She sighed and nodded. “You’re right.”
Quickly, we finished getting ready. While she put on makeup, I remade the bed, secretly checking through the bedclothes one last time for the missing wallet. I put everything back in her purse for her and waited.
When she came back, she flipped open the main flap on her purse and gasped.
I turned and looked. There, on top of the purse’s main compartment, not even inside a pocket , was Fiona’s red wallet.
The wallet had been gone, it had definitely been gone, and now it was back.
“How…?” She asked. “You didn’t…!”
“No way, this is not the sort of prank I would ever pull. I definitely wouldn’t have let you cancel your credit cards and call your parents,” I insisted.
She nodded. “I didn’t do it either,” she said.
“I know. That wallet was not in that purse.”
She nodded. We stared at it a moment longer, then every spooky podcast I’ve ever listened to came screaming back to me.
They say that if you welcome a spirit by interacting with it, you have close the connection. That’s why ouija boards have HELLO and BYE options. If you don’t, a spirit could attach and follow you.
The strange interactions I’d had flashed through my head. The giggling in Skye. The vulnerable feeling at Melville. The Child’s touch. Could I have invited a spirit in?
I cleared my throat and said out loud, “Okay, that was a very funny prank. Thank you for visiting on Halloween, we appreciate it. But it’s time for you to go now. Goodbye.”
For one second everything was still.
Then the windows banged like something was trying to yank one open. The lights flickered. I heard nails scratching down the walls.
Then everything was still again.
“Let’s get a drink,” I said wearily.
The next morning, my ring still hadn’t turned up. I did the whole rigamarole I’d done looking for Fiona’s wallet—I checked every pocket of our clothes. I looked under the bed. I shook out the sheets. I triple-checked the windowsill. I looked anywhere that any human has ever feasibly put a ring. It was nowhere, and it was time for our train back to London.
As we checked out, I showed them a picture of a standard A&M ring and asked them to let me know if they found it. I was convinced it wouldn’t turn up though.
I didn’t have access to the internet during our train ride. When we arrived at King’s Cross, I connected to the public WiFi and immediately received an email from our hostel saying they’d found my ring. I called from a local pay phone and they told me it had been found on the coat hook on the back of the door.
I was baffled. The coat hook? On the coat hook? Why would I have ever put the ring there? I wondered.
And then realized: I probably didn’t put the ring there. Our ghostly friend had.
And that’s the story of the time I encountered a ghost in Edinburgh, the most haunted city in Europe. Sorry it was quite long, I did try to cut it down!
Want to read more about Edinburgh’s Samhuinn Fire Festival? I wrote about it for Culture Trip! I also wrote the definitive Edinburgh Coffee Guide for Sprudge!
Want to tell me the tale of your own haunting? I’d love to hear it! Send me an email at valorieclark@substack.com or drop your tale in the comments below.