What happened
Mary King's Close is a narrow, steep alley in the Old Town, named after the 17th-century merchant Mary King. In 1753 its upper part was demolished and the rest built over by the Royal Exchange – today's City Chambers – leaving the close underground. Its last resident left in 1902. Hauntings were reported as early as the 17th century. The oldest account was recorded in 1685 by George Sinclair: the lawyer Thomas Coltheart and his wife, who moved into the close after a plague outbreak, supposedly saw the floating head of an old man with a grey beard, then a child's head and a severed arm. There were also legends that during the plague of 1645 the sick were walled up in their homes. The most famous ghost, however, appeared in 1992, when the Japanese psychic Aiko Gibo sensed in one of the rooms the presence of a little girl named Annie, crying because she had lost her doll. Gibo left her a toy – and visitors now bring hundreds of dolls and soft toys to “Annie's room.”
Witnesses
Thomas Coltheart and his wife (according to George Sinclair's 1685 account), the Japanese psychic Aiko Gibo, guides and visitors.
Explanations and hypotheses
The Coltheart story comes from the work of Sinclair, a professor and demonologist who collected tales meant to prove the existence of the spirit world – it records the beliefs of the time rather than eyewitness testimony. The legend of the walled-up sick has no support in the sources. The close lay nearest to the polluted Nor Loch; escaping gases may have created strange lights and, some suggest, hallucinations. Annie's room is a modern tradition born of a single visit by a psychic.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
More: Wikipedia (en)