Advertisement
Published: August 15th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Hi guys,
Big day today.
It seems there's so much to do here than its hard to fit everything in.
I started off the day early, up at 7ish with brekkie in the bar downstairs. Then i headed into the Royal Mile for a stroll. I wanted to do the tour of the underground city. Not sure if you guys know this but in Edinburgh there is a city underneath the city. This was only discovered in the mid 70's when a group of uni student were doing some handy work with a sledge hammer in their flat in the hope to find a fireplace or bit of extra storage room behind a wall... what they actually found was a vault.
It turns out that in the 1820's there were rules that if you wanted to leave the city you had to pay a fairly large sum of money and obviously the poor couldn't afford this and if you were found living on the street then you were flogged and if you were caught a second time you were hanged. The city at this time was about one mile by half a mile and there was about
40000 people living here, so obviously the poor needed somewhere to go and they went undeground.
So these underground vault were made of limestone so all the water, filth and excretion from the city above dripped through into these vaults. This caused heaps of disease carried by water. Because of this, the authorities refused to go down there in fear of catching it so now all the criminals moved down here too as they knew they wouldn't get caught. The only problem was that the life expectancy down there was between 1 and 2 years.
So we had a wander through these vaults and some of these rooms were really creapy. You could just feel that there was something in there with you. We were told stories of a few of the known ghosts in there. There was a small child who is still looking for his mum in there, then there was this one room were there's an evil ghost that has attacked quite a few visitors. They did a ritual to confine the spirit to within a stone circle and whenever anyone steps inside this circle something bad happens to them. There was one guy that
was down there (i saw this on you tube too) and he step into the circle and receive 3 scratches down his back and he needed 18 stitches. Other people have received burns or blasters or pass out or just start vomitting. I believe it too, coz i felt really sick as soon as i stepped into the room. It was creepy.
The next room we visited was a vault that is still used be the Edinburgh pagans for regular rituals. The Pagans used to use the room with the evil spirit, but they had to move because there was so many bad stuff happening to the people in there. So they performed a ritual to trap it within the circle and room down the corridor a bit.
The last room we visited was also a bit creepy. This was the room with the most paranormal activity. It was owned by a fabric merchant who used to kidnap red headed girls, bring them down there to torture them before killing them. One girl was taken and her brother saw it happen and followed him down there and beat him to death. So all in all this crazy guy
killed 17 girls down there and then he died in there as well. So they reckon there was so much paranormality (did i just make up a word) because there was so much suffering down there.
It was really interesting down there... but fairly scary at the same time.
So after this i wanted to see the opening match of the Scottosh Premier League season. So i walked down to Hibernian Stadium (about 10 kms from town) but when i got there i was a bit disappointed to find there was only cash sales at the gate. I found out today my Visa is only good for purchases and not taking cash out so i couldn't get in. I was a bit disappointed.
Si just headed back to the Walkabout (Aussie Pub in UK) to watch the game. It turned out to be a cracker so that sucked that i missed it.
Its funny that i've really struggled to find any Scots in town... it just seems to be aussies everywhere. Everytime i go into a pub i just want to be served by a local and i'm always greeted with a "G'day Mate!!" But today
when i went into the Walkie there were Scots everywhere... quite ironic.
So after a few pints i was just about ready to call it a day. Had my usual baked spud for dinner and that was me for the day.
Tomorrow i'll be heading up to the castle i think. Looking forward to that.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.238s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0414s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb