3 ways to make your trip to Edinburgh more spooky

Visit the vaults

Deep beneath (or above depending on where you are) the streets of the city hide the Edinburgh Vaults. Are they spooky? Yes. Are they dark and dank? Yes. Filled with torture devices? Yes. Are they haunted? Probably definitely.

The vaults began life as the arches of a high stone bridge, but as the city grew more built-up around them and the bridge slowly just became a street, the vaults were walled off and forgotten about. But not by everyone. Initially they were used as storage by local business owners, but since they weren't built with insulation in mind, the stock was almost always ruined by water damage.

After that, the vaults became a hideaway for the city's homeless who would gather for shelter in the pitch-black, damp surroundings along with criminals who would use the vaults for their nefarious activities.

At one point witches even set up shop down there, painting pentacles on the floor and conducting their Wiccan rituals away from the judgemental eyes above. Apparently a demon also moved in at one point, but was contained inside a circle of stones that still remains. Bad fortune supposedly befalls anyone who steps into the circle – are you brave enough?

Get cursed at the Black Mausoleum

Does it get spookier than a graveyard? Greyfriars Kirkyard is the place to be for above-ground chills. For a bit of context, let's have a brief history lesson on George Mackenzie, a 17th-century lawyer and minister who was responsible for persecuting around 1,200 religious and political criminals.

It's thought that 1,000 of these died from the torture they endured as a result of their incarceration, with their heads ending up decorating the spiked gate of the 'Covenenters Prison', also in the Kirkyard. This earned George the nickname Bloody Mackenzie.

When he died he was buried in a mausoleum in the same kirkyard as the prisoners he had tortured, and it still stands today. Over the years the mausoleum has suffered a little bit of damage. A homeless person fell through the floor during a nap in 1999 and in 2004 a couple of teenagers broke into the tomb and removed some of the remains, for reasons.

All this kerfuffle may or may not have woken up the angry spirit of Bloody Mackenzie who's been causing mischief at the mausoleum ever since. Visitors have reported being scratched, bitten and bruised when visiting the tomb – good job it's all chained up now then.

Free things you need to do when visiting Edinburgh

In Edinburgh on a budget? Try out some of these free things that will give you a real feel for this fascinating city.

Find out more

Scare yourself tipsy

Because what's a night out in spooky season without B-movie animatronics hanging from the ceiling? Not spooky at all, that's what. Any connoisseur of spook would happily be seen dead at Frankenstein's – a multi-level bar themed around those classic Hammer horror films that gave us such iconic versions of characters like Frankenstein's monster, his bride, Dracula and the Mummy.

It's camp and kitsch in all the right ways and every hour there's a *ahem* show featuring an animatronic puppet that descends from the ceiling. The good news is it gets better the more drinks you have. Speaking of, there are plenty of fun cocktails on offer from a whole spectrum of different coloured monster martinis and variations on the classics. There's also one called the Black Death, which looks and tastes as good as it sounds.