Dark Celtic history -

2 years ago
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Ye Olde Scot - the Celtic culture channel.
Dark Celtic history - The Plague Phantoms Of Mary King’s Close
Wherever people die in large numbers, you’re bound to find a ghost story or two. Mary King’s Close in Edinburgh is no exception. The partially walled-up, claustrophobic alley area below the City Chambers used to be a place where the city’s poor lived and, when the bubonic plague arrived in the 17th century, died. As the city grew, the upper levels of the Close were eventually demolished, leaving only the creepy, narrow basement levels that you can still visit today.
As a frightening, claustrophobic place where people died en masse, the Close has long enjoyed a reputation as a site haunted by the plague victims. The most famous ghost here is a young girl known as “Annie.” In 1992, Annie thoroughly scared a Japanese psychic taking a guided tour: The Japanese psychic had been unimpressed by Edinburgh's Mary King’s Close until she stepped in a particularly dank eerie room. She was immediately overwhelmed by feelings of cold, hunger, and sickness, and then when she tried to stumble away from the room, a small, ghostly hand tried to grab her leg, causinig her to stumble and fall to the ground. Then an invisible hand held her there, unable to move for a few moments until she was helped up and got as far away from that place as possible.
Edinburgh history of the Mary King’s Close is as ruthless as you would believe. There are many stories that the plague-stricken poor tenants were walled up in their buildings and left to die, but for the most part plague carriers were actually moved to a quarantine zone outside the city walls, and the dead were properly disposed of by gravediggers. It’s still a fairly tragic fate, though.

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