I hope all is well in your respective places. I have some serious news to report. I think I am being haunted. I know, I know... I can feel your incredulous eyebrows raising at this last statement. You are thinking to yourself, oh dear, perhaps the time has come for little miss crazy-kins to come home from abroad. Katie, you collectively cry, come back to us. Leave behind the town that spawned the wizarding world of Harry Potter and countless other stories of magic and the supernatural. Please regain a hold on reality, which I clearly have stopped dealing with. But hear me out dear readers, put aside your long cultivated skepticism and listen to my tale.
My friend Sarah and I have notoriously bad luck. Frequently we are forced to deplore the workings of Mr. McFate (who of course is the Scottish equivalent to the normal North American Fate). Unfortunately, our bad luck struck again when we booked flights to Dublin for St. Patrick's Day with Ryanair. I am still unsure of how this could possibly be, but there was some sort of screw up on their end and they managed to overbook the flight to Dublin. It being a very popular weekend to go, it was too expensive to rebook. So alas, I did not get to hang out with a bunch of green foreigners, as I am sure real Irish people would flee the downtown core, not wanting to associate with such a truly American holiday. Needless to say, we were flung into a deep dark depression. But we are resourceful girls so we quickly began planning an adventure to fill our young bodies once more with hope and love of life.
The cure we came up with: Amaretto Sours, Charles Dickens and Ghost tours. Wait, do these things even go together? Why would any sane and rational person want to combine them? Why was this the first thing that popped into our heads that sad afternoon? Well I do not have the answers to any of those questions. But I will tell you what went down that eerie Wednesday Night.
After dipping, rather copiously (sorry Mum, but c'mon it was a fairly rough day), into the Amaretto. We texted our friend Gaston to come collect us from Sarah's and take us on a ghost tour. But before he got there, we spied a little man siting on Sarah's desk, who looked rather lonely and in need of some cheering up. This man was of course Charles Dickens. He is a personal favorite of both Sarah and I (we had actually bonded over a shared nerdy love of English Literature). He had come into our lives when Sarah, for her 21st birthday, was given a Charles Dickens action figure to accompany her on her foreign adventure. So the four of us departed, fellow adventurers of the Night, two a little tipsy, one small and plastic, and one a little weirded out by the whole thing, but all equally ready to be told about the spooky side of this city we currently all live in.
The rest of the story is perhaps best told through photographs...
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| Charles and I were fast friends immediately. He was preparing me for the tour by telling me some of his own ghoulish tales. |
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| On the ghost tour, Charles was not paying attention clearly, he cannot resist a photo shoot! |
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| At this point we had entered the Calton Cemetery. Final resting place of the Scottish Philosopher David Hume. Sarah was unimpressed to say the least by this turn of the events. I am not exactly sure where she thought we were going to go on a ghost tour. But clearly not a cemetery. This is her in full on freak out mode. But I guess the events that followed justified her reaction. |
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| Gaston and Charles got off to a rough start. Charles was eager to befriend Gaston. Gaston was wondering what he had done to deserve such crazy friends. |
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| However, she eventually calmed down and shenanigans ensued. As we were being silly, slightly apart from the rest of the tour, we missed out on crucial words of warning! Beware of your photographs. Sometimes the supernatural and unexplainable show up in the photos, where they did not in real life! |
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| This is the proof that I am being haunted. As you have just heard, Sarah and I were off in our parallel reality that had little if anything to do with the what was happening around us. The rest of the tour were busy snapping photos of cool look graves and different monuments. One little lady took this gem of a photo. There is a blue ghost man directly in between Sarah and I. His mood is unreadable, he looks something like a fatter Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen or a grumpy Genie from Aladdin. Either way, I am not sure what he wants or what he is doing there, but I am sure it cannot be good. |
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| Despite our ghostly encounter we bravely soldiered on. Out of the Calton Cemetery and up Calton Hill. We had beautiful views of Edinburgh's New Town at night. Actually, in this spot every spring there is a pagan festival to celebrate springtime by burning things. As an existential paganist (and a lover of fire), I will of course be there! |
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| It was an awfully long journey for the little guy, he needed a rest in the rocks of the Hill. |
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| This was my desperate, if misguided, final attempt to get to Dublin: Trying to mail myself. Unfortunately, I could not get into the mailbox. Probably for the best, I probably did not have enough stamps. |
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| Throughoughly spooked, the four ghost busters headed to a nearby pub to calm our nerves. Charles, the old flirt, managed to get behind the bar by chatting up the bartender. |
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| Gaston and Charles finally made peace. Nothing like a pint to cure all animosity. |
So nothing is safe in Edinburgh. Although you are far less likely to get stabbed here than in Glasgow, ghosts could be waiting around any corner. So far I have not come across blue ghost man, but then again I have not been foolish enough to re-enter the cemetery to look for him.
Hope you enjoyed my story, and that it won't make any one lose too much sleep.
Good night!
Love,
The Sheepish Traveller.
DISCLAIMER: The phenomena of the ghost photo was probably caused because the photo was taken from a large lens camera. At night, the shutters are open longer to capture enough light to take the photo. During this time we probably moved. Also, Sarah has her blackberry in her hand. She probably looked down at her phone and was illuminated by a blue glow. Thus the picture captures both that image and the later one. Sorry for the anticlimactic ending!
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