Holiday Photos #26

It's been months since I have posted holiday photos, you probably thought I'd given up and moved on. Nope, just keep forgetting. But it's perfect timing for the next set of photos as they are from our two visits to Greyfriars Cemetery in Edinburgh, one of them while on a ghost tour. It was a place of interesting contrasts being a very peaceful place and yet having the spookiest crypts and masoleums we saw on the entire trip. William really liked the place and took dozens of photos trying to capture a ghost on camera. He didn't get anything visual but he did get an unexplained bruise on his shoulder in the shape of a hand after being chosen to stand in the spookiest corner of the spookiest crypt in the entire cemetery. Brrrrrrrr-rrr-rrr!



Here's William in front of one of the dark stone..... they're too big to be called gravestones but you couldn't go inside some of them. Not sure what they would be called.

A close up of one of the columns above.

This guy was the creepiest thing in the entire. You could walk in and around this fellow and it was very unsettling. I was torn between wanting to take photos and wanting to put some distance between us and him. If you recall, I was having trouble with my camera focus. I have a photo with better focus but I can't find it. Hmmmm.

And yet, look how pretty it is with the shady trees, the green grass, the apple blossoms carpeting the cobblestones.

Another creepy display of skulls and cherubs and that screaming guy.

William's just being silly - it was far too heavy to lift.

Another one with skull and crossbones and ...... you'll have to click to enlarge it to see what that is up on top. I like the ivy coming in over the top of it.

And if there weren't enough skulls on the tombs and gravestones, this guy was set into one of the stone retaining walls.

Yet another, can we say ostentatious, display of cemetery.... er.... art?

This gentleman in the long leather duster was our ghost tour guide. Doesn't he fit the part? He was both educational and entertaining. It was a twilight tour and his company was the only one allowed to take us through a chained and locked gate into the Coventers Prison.



This was a prison for thousands of Scots who, after the British invaded (apparently, yet AGAIN) refused to give up their church and pledge allegiance to the Church of England. They were imprisoned for years and most of them died here from starvation and exposure. A few hundred survived and were finally allowed the relative freedom of being put on a ship to the New World to become indentured servants, only to have the ship sink at sea with no survivors.


Here's another photo of it from through the gates. The evening before at twilight our tour group was allowed to actually enter the prison and go into the most haunted of the crypts you see lining the left wall.



The person in charge of holding the prisoners was an official by the name of MacKenzie. He had the audacity to build himself this fancy tomb and be laid to rest in the very same cemetery as the prison where he had been responsible for so many people's misery and deaths. The story goes, since a homeless person accidentally fell through the floor of the tomb, disturbing his bones, MacKenzie no longer rests very peacefully.

Here ya go, just one more photo before we go find ourselves a warm, well lit pub to have a pint and take the chill out of our bones.

Here is the sign at the office of the ghost tour company. You might enjoy visiting their website. But if you'd prefer something a little less spooky, you can head on over to Laume's Studio to see a whole bunch of goodies that came my way today.