There aren't a lot of trigger warnings for the stuff I'm going to talk about, it's just a poltergeist (so a really violent ghost) and all of the dead-bodies stuff that comes from graveyards.

I'm letting go of the pinglist (see my last plurk) but I still gotta ping gizmatico skorozima mackens ClaireKI77y randomtology and kawree because y'all have so much fun with these.

FUNNY ENOUGH, this story doesn't take place in the 18th century or even 19-somethingsomething.

(random lurker here. waves Gonna stalk this plurk like hell b/c I grew up with the heartwarmingish story of Greyfriar's Bobby in my childhood.)

This story starts... in good ol' 1998.

(oh gosh lurker, I hope I get my facts right! )

(Don't be worried. It's been forever and I think these plurks are amazing! waves )

SO, it's the December of '98, Edinburgh, Scotland.

It's cold as dicks. The weather is awful.

/settles in
Its dark and stormy here which is perfect

(also a random lurker - going to sit in this plurk because i've been there! it was beautiful and eerie but i did not run into any ghosts -- probably fortunate for me, given how this story's going to go...)

This homeless guy sneaks into Greyfriars Kirkyard, which is a cemetery.

He was looking for somewhere to sleep that wasn't, you know, open to the freezing wind and rain.

He comes across this mausoleum that's plenty big and totally enclosed, with a roof and everything, and breaks in to take shelter.

It's pitch black on the inside, but the guy takes out his lighter and starts looking around... and he notices that there's a grate on the floor, like the kind of cover you see over a storm drain.

Underneath that is a set of stairs that wind down.

So he lifts up the grate and goes down to the second level, though who knows if it was to check for safety or just out of curiosity.

At the bottom, there's a whole other room containing four, old wooden coffins.

/sits here and shares the popcorn

Like, really old. And I can't say for sure, but I figure the guy thought that maybe whoever was in those coffins had been buried with some valuables, like some jewelry he could sell, or something.

So he starts trying to break open one of the coffins.

(Also lurker so happy to have people on the ping list to replurk these. )

The coffins are surprisingly hard to pry open, so he starts trying to smash one of them open with his fists... until he takes one wrong step backwards.

The wooden floor under him suddenly collapses, and he falls into a third chamber of the mausoleum that no one even knew had been there.

As far as historians can guess... The room that he fell into had been an illegal dumping ground for plague victims.

And despite being hundreds of years old, the chamber had been extremely well-sealed. So the bodies were... surprisingly intact.

So this guy... falls into a pit full of dead bodies that are still all... fleshy... And their clothes and hair are still there... They're covered with this disgusting... green... slime...

And the smell was overwhelmingly awful.......

SO, UNDERSTANDABLY, he freaks the fuck out.

(why the slime I wonder? Tho my first thought was Slimer rofl)

He jumps up, clambers out of the pit, runs back up the stairs, and even trips and gashes his head on the way out the door.

He runs full-tilt out of the mausoleum because oh hell no.

Now, a security guard was patrolling around outside with his dog, and was on his way over to investigate all the sudden crashing noises...

When he sees this guy suddenly BUST OUT OF THE MOSOLEUM

Screaming and freaking out and covered with blood from the gash on his head...

Running like a bat out of hell...

The security guard ALSO panics, and runs the hell away from the crazy guy and the mausoleum and didn't come back to report it until the next morning.

(The slime was probably a combination of damp/mold/adipocere, I was listening to a sciencecast where this sort of thing came up)

This story in itself is amazing and pretty hilarious.

But unfortunately, the guy who broke into the mausoleum unwittingly picked the absolute worst one possible.

This, my friends, is the Black Mausoleum.

Doesn't look so bad from the outside.

( autumnleaving thanks science side of plurk XD)

This mausoleum houses the remains of a 17th century judge and Lord Advocate, Sir George MacKenzie. He's commonly known as just "Bluidy Mackenzie".

He was responsible for the deaths of a looooot of people.

/settles in

He organized a prosecution of Covenanters where some 3000 of them where brought back to Greyfriars as prisoners.

(where is this place anyway? Somewhere in the UK I assume?)

(scotland)

Edinburgh, Scotland.

(Thanks0

A bunch of them were hanged, some of them were beheaded--and their heads were mounted on walls around the city to make an example out of them.

Some of them were publicly tortured, some of them were sent to other prisons, and some of them were eventually set free.

The rest were detained what was essentially an open-air prison directly adjacent to Greyfriars Kirkyard, where over a thousand of them died of starvation and exposure by winter of that year.

This was in 1679, and one of my sources says it was the first recorded concentration camp.

The hundred or so prisoners who survived that winter were packed on a ship and sent to Australia.

All in all, historians have estimated that MacKenzie was responsible for the deaths of some 18,000 Covenanters.

And some guy just happened to go busting up his resting place.

as one does

Good job, homeless dude.

So, after that night, weird shit started happening.

Like, a lot of weird shit.

The very next day, a woman was walking through the cemetery and decided to peek into the mausoleum through the iron grate in the door.

She reports that she was suddenly hit with a cold wind that blasted out of the mausoleum, and it was so strong that it knocked her on her back.

as you do |

The day after that, they found another woman unconscious outside of the mausoleum. When she woke up, she told them that when she'd approached the structure, "invisible hands tried to strangle her".

And when she pulled back her collar, there was heavy bruising ringing her neck.

Later they found another person, a man this time, unconscious on the opposite side of the mausoleum--with similar injuries.

/cue Twilight Zone theme

And it has... kind of just continued like that.

Mostly, it seems, because idiots kept going in there

if it was a ghost cannibal it'd be like a buffett

( Voltaire-Cannibal Buffet Sorry, couldn't resist)

You aren't the only one to think that! After weird shit kept happening, the city locked up the mausoleum to try and keep people from going there and getting mysteriously injured.

But a local author, Jan-Andrew Henderson, asked for permission to llet controlled tours into the mausoleum, and the city agreed.

(Algae growth probably)

why do people keep going there? i mean haunted things are cool, but when a ghost is actually hurting people... i would stay the fuck away, personally

i'll take photos from a distance, i'm cool really

This is now known as the The City of the Dead Tour, and they're pretty much the only ones allowed to go in there. The group is very much committed to figuring out what the hell is going on.

Well you have skeptics I imagine. And some people just like the thrill

They carefully record and document everything they can get about the place.

i suppose...

And since they've been doing tours for over a decade, they've got a lot of records of weird things happening.

It's not rocket science, there's not much to figure out. You have a poltergeist, it needs to be cleansed/exorcised.

There have been over 450 reported attacks around the mausoleum. What's now known as the MacKenzie Poltergeist has been known to break people's fingers, pull their hair, trip them, punch them

People will walk away with mysterious scratches on their arms, or on their neck, or suddenly find burn marks or bruising.

Some 180 of those people have lost consciousness.

Chillax, ghost.

People who go in will also report all sorts of other activity, like cold spots, overwhelming feelings of dread, unexplained nausea, spreading numbness, and so on.

-- yes another one /sits

Many of these reports are actually recounting things that happen after they go home, or back to their hotels, or whatever.

I have to wonder whose energy the poltergeist is manifesting. It's either one or more of the corpses in the 3rd chamber, or it's whoever is in the coffin he tried to break into.

They'll find injuries they couldn't have possibly gotten, things will fall off their walls, there've been a few bursting lightbulbs, that kind of thing.

A couple years back, one policeman took the tour and went back to his hotel that night.

He was looking through his stuff and picked up the little booklet all about the haunting and tour information, and felt a sudden burning sensation.

He went to the mirror and saw that he suddenly had five scratches along his neck, under his chin.

He was so freaked out that when he went to go visit his mother, he left the booklet with her. He didn't want anything to do with it anymore.

so give it to your mom XD nice

He called her up a while later and, according to his story, he happened to catch her while she was in the bathroom, looking in a mirror...

Because she suddenly had five scratches in the exact same place on her neck.

TO THEIR CREDIT, they have tried an exorcism.

Twice.

The first was attempted by a local spiritualist minister, and the second was attempted by his son.

Have they tried bringing a medium in to assess the situation?

(they need the seventh son of a seventh son. Or... maybe a daughter)

I think I'd worry about the Medium's health >.>

((to me this sounds more and more like the grudge-based Yuurei in Japanese supernatural history. Read up on Oiwa for example))

(They might want to go for a tall /shot)

The second exorcist wasn't able to finish; he says that when he attempted it, he was struck with an overwhelming fear and dread, and it felt as though the souls of thousands were swirling around him

trying to break through into the mortal world.

Are there any records of disturbances/oddness prior to the break-in?

He had to stop and walked away from the site, and no one has tried since.

I don't know if there were any records previous to the break in! Though I haven't heard of any.

I would too, but having one evaluate the energy to pinpoint what exact emotions are fueling it and maybe who they originated from. Those can help specify an exorcism.

There's some other weird stuff that's happened around the area as well...

((sounds like they have an onryo https://en.wikipedia.org...

If we go with the 2nd exorcist's account, I bet the poltergeist is the collective negativity of those plague victims.

Cameras and electronic equipment tend to break or malfunction more than usual around there, which you'd expect.

Delicate stuff like plates and picture frames sometimes just fall off of shelves and break in the houses adjacent to the cemetery.

I was taking a shower, but oh hey! I went on that tour once. They only let you stay in the area for a certain period of time before hustling you the hell out

People hear weird noises a lot, a few ghostly apparitions have been spotted.

Fires tend to just. Break out for no reason.

Speaking of which and tying this all together, that tour...

Their main office, where they keep all of their evidence?

Incinerated in 2003.

A fire swept through the tour's office, as well as the home of Jan-Andrew Henderson himself, destroying five years worth of letters, photographs, statements, and other records.

As well as pretty much every other wordly possession that Henderson owned.

omd D:

None of the surrounding properties were damaged.

Their insurance companies never found the cause of the fire.

Pretty sure the answer is "spontaneous combustion"

damn someone hates to be bothered

Aside from bothering humans, there have also been an unusual number of dead animals found in the area.

I'm not sure how many dead animals it takes to make the number "unusual", but there you go.

A lot of people have tried to figure out what's happening... Everything from "it's an angry poltergeist fueled by the souls of the thousands of tortured victims"

to "the sandstone underneath it soaks up electromagnetic energy and releases it in bursts that cause unusual activity".

I am sure that everything they could try has pretty much been attempted, and they're still at it... So who knows.

BUT, I recently learned some fascinating things about cemeteries that make Greyfriars Kirkyard an even creepier place to visit.

DO TELL.

please do share

I will because I am so excited and I had no idea.

oh man I went to Edinbrugh two years back and remember seeing posters for those ghost tours

we weren't staying in the city overnight so we didn't go on them but still wooow

Aw... Well, on the bright side, at least you weren't ghost strangled? c:

And now that my phone has stopped ringing--CEMETERIES.

There are a lot of exceptions to this, but from like 7th to 17th century Europe, most people wanted to be buried near the church.

Which in itself is kind of fascinating because of how people would be divided up according to rank, belief, wealth, etc.

But around the 18th century, Europe had... a lot of dead people...

The population was expanding, which meant there were more people eventually needing burial. Cities and towns were also busier and tighter-packed around the churches.

Meaning that many churches couldn't expand their graveyards outward...

To their credit, they tried their best to accommodate anyway, and one of their methods was to stack the graves on top of each other.

So basically... Burying people on top of other already-buried people.

They also tried smushing the graves closer together, hoping they could squeeze in a few more burials.

But this caused a lot of structural problems. Some graveyards were packed so tightly and so tall that the ground would eventually burst out of the containing walls of the churchyard and onto the street.

Understandably, people got really upset when human remains were spilling out onto the street they frequently walked down.

This became such a big problem in Paris, for example, that the government had to step in and move all the overcrowded bodies into what are now famously known as the Catacombs of Paris.

Basically, "we don't have enough room for our dead people so we're going to just stuff these down here". For about six million people.

But some churchyards never had their dead moved, and just kept building upwards.

In some cases, the churchyards would rise anywhere from 10 to 15 feet above the level of the street surrounding them.

So... Greyfriars used to be much larger than it is now.

Topographically, it used to be on a depression that sank some 20 feet below street level.

These days, it's... more of a hill...

With, I believe, the highest point being about 15 feet above the street.

So just... consider that, for a moment.

nothing screams hauntings like a hill made outta dead bodies

There are around 500,000 recorded burials down there.

Also, when it rains a bunch, bones just kinda.

Float to the surface.

Sometimes.

Which happens in a lot of densely-packed graveyards like that.

So it's not unusual for people to actually see bones sticking out of the ground in the middle of the graveyard.

OH!

I hadn't made the connection! My housemate visited Greyfriars Kirkyard when she visited Scotland a year or two ago. I remember that description of ground level/grave-packing.

Supposedly J.K. Rowling used names from some of the graves in Harry Potter. There's a Tom Riddell buried there, for instance.

Oh man this is WICKED CREEPY

from the wiki page on covenanters, because i was curious

I WANNA GO

BUCKET LIST

wow

Friend of mine lives in a flat overlooking Greyfriars and yep, swears her place is haunted. Fortunately not that badly, just mischevious poltergesists, but still.

My father-in-law is an elder at the kirk and will tell all the stories, including JKR ones, if you take the tour. (yes, she took a bunch of names from there)

(I got married in Greyfriars. No ghosts showed up that I know of, though)

A person up the plurk mentioned it, but adipocere, or soap mummies, is often what would happen in these densely packed cemeteries. c: /goes back to lurking

I was freaked out and then I saw "dead animals" and now I've got someone to talk the fuck down in Scotland, fuck this ghost in particular

also they wanted to be buried close to the churches because it was considered 'hallowed ground' and the people who were buried outside of that ground were like... suicides or witches or traitors

and being buried in unconsecrated ground was Bad News and you would not go to heaven

I don't know if this makes me not want to go on the tour or book it asap

oh my god that's a hella creepy story

Did you get that info about the cemetaries from Lore? I started listening to it on your recommendation and i highly encourage other people to listen to it, too

But it sounded very familiar so i was just wondering

This is really cool. I'm not sure if I'd want to go but it's fascinating!

Just dropping a note in here to find this plurk again quicker~

this place sounds terrifying and cool

chocoballs: I sure did! Lore is where I've started learning about a ton of my stuff, and then I try to do some research on top of it... YOU WILL HEAR ABOUT GREYFRIARS SOON...

And dang, I'm so excited that people here have actually seen it or know people who live nearby, that's really neat! Even if nothing spooky happens, it's neat to visit...

I like hearing about people's experiences and I probably won't get to visit myself for quite some time.

yeah, i want to go myself now. Super cool