I know exactly which company you work for and do agree that you and your company are very good and accurate historically. Yours is always the company I recommend if people want to do a ghost tour.

However, I do find the abundance of the ghost tours in Edinburgh unsettling. One or two is fair enough, but including the variations that exist with styles and content the above blog is a little shy when they mention there is just six.

You cannot walk down the Royal Mile without being accosted by various students and resting actors trying to sell you their tour- be it spooky graveyards or The Underground City (which you and I both know is not a city, and for the most part is not underground, in fact on one tour you go UP a flight of stairs)

Edinburgh is home to the Enlightenment, a critical thinking capital, and now, thanks to the ghost tour market it has become synonymous with ghosts and ghouls destroying a historically important city and turning it into Disney’s Haunted Mansion.

I agree that your company does a lot to promote the accurate history of the city, but others are not so caring. If you include the paranormal as a side story to the main event there is no problem, but the supernatural has become the big selling point.

I have worked for some of the Ghost tour companies and find what they do to be distasteful- I see little difference between them and the fraudulent mediums out there. Both make money from peoples beliefs and fears. You know as well as I do that many of the people paying as much as £12 to come on these tours believe the supernatural stories they are being told and these stories are either complete fabrications or there is no non-supernatural explanation offered for the occurrences (with one or two minor exceptions).

The city needs a bit of skepticism. I applaud you and your company for their devotion to historical accuracy, however, one good point does not cover up the bad.

While I totally agree that respect for the graves you stand above should be foremost in an operators concerns; not all tours are the same. In my own company we are very clear that we use the word ghost to describe a phenomonon that we have no other word for – and it does not necessarily imply ‘the soul of a dead person’ or anything else – we try to be as open minded as possible as to what causes ‘paranormal’ events – but if wierd things keep happening in a particular place it is worthy of interest.

At the same time we like to think we are in our own small way seeking to document and record a very unusual sequence of events that I’ll spare you the details of – since I ain’t trying to sell our tour here.

As storytellers we feel a strong sense that the stories we tell are either the accepted history as recorded by official sources; or else a suggestion of something different which we, and our boss, research and have been able to defend using genuine historical sources and the rich story telling culture we have here.

These stories are in all cases, important: as stated earlier; something which should not necessarily be revered, but certainly remembered. In all cases these stories (a christian concentration camp, an abandoned poulation at the mercy of the criminal underworld, us burning Rome that one time, social darwinism and indeed – religeous intolerance) have been ‘glossed over’ or forgotten by most people living in the places where they actually happened just a few hundred years ago.

All these problems seem to remain with our country in some form or another, and paranormal activity is reputed all over.

The ‘paranormal’ events: whatever their cause: never mystify me – in some form or another ‘damaged’ places echo with a sense that affects people in different ways – and some people call it ‘haunted’; others just ‘moving’ or ‘eerie’.

I’d also point out that we work very closely with our City council and the Kirk of Scotland to keep the graveyard secure, tidy, locked and maintained. We are always mindful that we stand on soil that holds great meaning to some, and the ancestors of others.

Personally I strongly doubt anyone in socltand would do a ghost tour into a cemetery currently in use!

Storytellers (as opposed to historians) have a tough job – while the historical facts are vital to our tales, the tales have a point, or a purpose, or an issue that is the more important thing to communicate.

You will get charlatans who would literally dig up the dead for a quick buck; but you also get people who care greatly about the lives and deaths that shaped the present.

Some tours use capes and costumes, and do indeed offer refreshments (lots of haunted bars all of a sudden), because there is an entertainment industry too and some people just want to be scared. Other tours do focus on the historacy and the story itself and leave the spooky stuff up to the location. Sometimes nothing happens, and people complain. Sometimes something happens, and people complain.

You can’t please everyone; and you can’t convince everyone – and if you try to do either you’ll become either a stand up comedian or a gothic wierdo.

Unfortunately, there is room for both types along side the few that simply tell the tale; take people there and see what happens, and (hopefully) work with mediums, scientists and (oddly) the military to try and figure it out.

Best suggestion so far is low frequency sound waves – but no luck picking them up when we actually look for them. Then again we never have conclusively ‘found’ a black hole either.

Skeptics should be encouraged because best case scenario they are right; and it’s just a cheap fright for people who want that; and worst case scenario the dead have some power over us – and they shouldn’t. Bloody parents, eh? Never letting go.

Long post, sorry.

Eh, it’s cheaper to buy a movie ticket, a large popcorn, pepsi and choc-top (mint). You walk in expecting fiction and walk away reasonably entertained depending on the movie. Even if the movie was half arsed, you still get the popcorn, pepsi and choc-top combo meal. If there’s a promo deal, you get a toy. A junky toy, but a toy nonetheless.

Why don’t ghost tours offer combo meals and toys?

Yes, ghost tours are entertainment, but they are also purveyors of bad history, bad science, and bad judgement, all in the name of expanding the wallets of hauntrepreneurs.

Mark – I did get your point, but thankyou for clarifying. I do agree, respect for the dead is a touchy subject. Enjoy Lynn!

The exact lure of this macabre tourist activity has always alluded me despite my leanings towards the darker sides of entertainment.

Auug. Please, ‘eluded’, not ‘alluded’. When in doubt check the dictionary.

The stately homes of England
though rather in the lurch,
supply a lot of chances
for psychical research.

There’s the ghost of a crazy younger son
who murdered, in 1351,
an extremely rowdy nun!
Who resented it,
now people who come to call
meet her in the hall.

The baby in the guest wing
who crouches by the grate,
was walled up in the West wing
in 1428.
If anyone spots the Queen of Scots
in her hand-embroidered shroud,
we’re proud
of the stately homes of England.

Personally – I don’t believe in ghosts, but I have been on a ghost tour. My wife, her cousins, their friends all love ghost stories and spooking each other. I don’t see anything wrong with this. The tour I went on was entertaining, and I got a bit of a history lesson while I was on it.

Like magic shows, ghost tours are a form of entertainment. I hold disdain for musicals, but I wouldn’t lobby to have them stopped, because they are a popular form of entertainment. Can the skeptologists go to a musical and shed the light of reason on them, and show people that they’re idiots for finding stories sung at them silly? I’d watch that ep, for sure.