Haunted places · Cemeteries, crypts and ossuaries

The Mackenzie Poltergeist of Greyfriars Kirkyard

When: since c. 1998 date reconstructed from later accounts · first known record: 1999
Where: Greyfriars Kirkyard, Old Town, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Verdict: Disputed

Since someone broke into “Bloody” Mackenzie's tomb in the late 1990s, people on night tours of this Edinburgh graveyard have reported scratches and fainting.

Show on the timeline

55.95°, -3.19° · dimmed: other phenomena within 1,500 km

What happened

Greyfriars Kirkyard in the heart of Edinburgh is steeped in history: the National Covenant was signed in its church in 1638, and after the Battle of Bothwell Brig in 1679 hundreds of defeated Covenanters were held in a neighbouring field. The man responsible was the Lord Advocate, Sir George Mackenzie, nicknamed “Bloody Mackenzie” for his persecution of Presbyterians. Ironically, in 1691 he was laid to rest a few steps from where his victims suffered – in an imposing domed tomb known as the Black Mausoleum. According to the most common version, in the late 1990s a homeless man broke into the tomb seeking shelter from the rain and fell into a crypt full of remains. From then on, incidents began in the adjoining, locked “Covenanters' Prison”: night-tour visitors reported sudden cold, blows, scratches, bruises and even fainting. Hundreds of such reports were recorded. In 2000 a spiritualist minister tried to cleanse the site – he died a few weeks later, which only strengthened the legend.

Witnesses

Participants in the “City of the Dead” night tours and guides, including Jan-Andrew Henderson, who collected the accounts in his books.

Explanations and hypotheses

The story of Mackenzie and the Covenanters is real, but reports of a “poltergeist” appeared only with night tours of the locked part of the graveyard. Psychologists point to the power of suggestion, the expectation of fear, hyperventilation and the chill of stone vaults; Richard Wiseman's studies in Edinburgh's underground showed that knowing a place is “haunted” shapes what people feel. Henderson himself, in “The Ghost That Haunted Itself,” described how the legend grew as it was told. The minister died of natural causes.

Disputed A likely explanation exists, but some of the facts are still disputed.

Sources

More: Wikipedia (en)