Jan-Andrew Henderson - The Ghost That Haunted Itself: The Story of the Mackenzie Poltergeist--The Infamous Ghoul of Greyfriars Graveyard

Contents

Edinburgh Evening News, The Sun, the Daily Record, Sunday Telegraph, Dundee Courier, Daily Mirror, Radio Scotland, Radio 1, Polish National Television, GMTV, BBC 1 Heaven and Earth Show, Discovery Channel, History Channel, Learning Channel, Fox Family Channel.

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Epub ISBN: 9781780574387

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Copyright Jan-Andrew Henderson, 2001

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

First published in Great Britain in 2001 by

MAINSTREAM PUBLISHING COMPANY (EDINBURGH) LTD

7 Albany Street

Edinburgh EH1 3UG

ISBN 1 84018 482 5

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for insertion in a newspaper, magazine or broadcast

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Thanks to Claire and Sarah for all the invaluable work they did. Also Katherine, Kate, Cara, Andrew, Duncan, David, Derek, Joy and Gillian. Each helped in their own unique way.

What do people need to believe? Now, theres a question that can be taken more than one way. One might say that all we need to believe is the capacity for abstract thought it often seems we need precious little else. People have believed in fairies, Valhalla and the necessity of the Berlin wall. Sometimes what once seemed obvious to us all turns out to be completely wrong. People believed the world was flat. It was a good guess. Seemed right. It wasnt until science built up enough evidence to the contrary that everyone came to accept the world was round. Yet there are still many who cant really understand why we dont fall off.

In the end, it doesnt matter. We accept the world is round. We dont fall off.

So. What do we need to believe?

Do we need to believe that we are not alone? No. There are lonely people. They live. They may not live happily, but they live.

Do we need to believe there is a point to life? Do we need to believe there is something for us after we die?

Again, no, though it is certainly depressing to hold such points of view.

But perhaps we want to believe. We want very much to believe that there is something greater than us. Something we dont understand. A point that nobody gets, not even the geniuses. Something that science cant pick apart and make us feel like children. For that we have faith, a belief so strong that it doesnt need evidence. Faith in astrology. Faith in reincarnation. Faith in God.

It is hard to have faith. Scientists tell us we do need evidence, that we are fooling ourselves and we have faith in science, so we are dispirited and torn. So we look for evidence of the existence of something, anything, that science and the rational mind are at a loss to explain.

We look for ghosts.

If you say you have been reincarnated you are treated like an idiot; nobody accepts you were really abducted by aliens and only psychopaths believe they have talked to God. But ghosts? So many people claim to have seen one. Can they all be deluded? Perhaps. There are precious few photographs of spectres that dont look as though someone inadvertently put their thumb in front of the camera. It could be that eighteenth-century highwayman you saw outside the window was on his way to a fancy-dress party. Its easy to doubt your own mind in the cold light of day.

A poltergeist is a different matter. Poltergeists move things. They are physical. There may be a scientific explanation for this phenomenon but that discipline, for all its doggedness, has so far failed to come up with a satisfactory one. Maybe scientists arent trying hard enough. Perhaps they dont believe enough to really explore the phenomenon. If so, shame on them, for there are few unexplained things left to explore. The defence of the rational mind is that historical poltergeists are the product of ignorance and modern cases are hoaxes. They cite the Amityville or Enfield poltergeists two of the best-documented cases in history as proof. Both turned out to be fakes. The witnesses were misrepresented, or had something to gain. Evidence turned out to be manufactured. Its hard to argue with that.

In the two years between 1999 and 2001 there have been over 70 recorded sightings of the entity named the Mackenzie Poltergeist. Witnesses to its attacks ran into the hundreds. They were observers who just happened to be there and they had nothing to gain.

If there is an explanation for the Mackenzie Poltergeist, didnt really happen isnt one of them.

This is its story.

Cauld blaws the nippin north wi angry south

And showers his hailstanes frae the Castle Cleugh

Owr the Greyfriars, whare at mirkest hour

Bogles and spectres wont to take their tour

FROM THE GHAISTS: A KIRKYARD EPILOGUE BY ROBERT FERGUSSON (175074) (DIED AT 24 IN BEDLAM ASYLUM JUST OUTSIDE GREYFRIARS GATES)

Two weeks ago Lisa Allen from Boston visited the Graveyard on the tour. She said, There was no doubt this was real. I felt it and I never want to feel it again.

Is this graveyard the home of Edinburghs scariest poltergeist?

EDINBURGH EVENING NEWS, 3 JULY 1999

On the day after Christmas, Ben Scott came home from a party to find blood running down his apartment walls.

This would have been traumatic enough under normal circumstances, but Ben Scotts circumstances were not exactly normal. His house was in Greyfriars cemetery a graveyard that had long been regarded in Edinburgh lore as home to an impressive variety of ghosts and spectres. A cemetery that had, in recent years, become famous as the site of a supernatural entity known as the Mackenzie Poltergeist. To make matters worse, Ben Scotts job involved taking nightly tours round the graveyard to show visitors The Covenanters Prison a locked section of the cemetery. In that section was a tomb nicknamed The Black Mausoleum and this, supposedly, was where the Mackenzie Poltergeist could be found.

If Ben Scott had been a believer in the paranormal he might have wondered if the Mackenzie Poltergeist hadnt just paid him a visit in return. But he didnt believe in that kind of thing.

He took off his coat and put it on a coat hook. Then he got a chair, pushed it against the wall, stood on it and looked carefully at the red stains. The substance had dried but it certainly looked like blood. Ben licked his finger, ran it down a discoloured patch of wall and was about to put it to his lips when he thought better of it. He really didnt want to know what this stuff tasted like.

He considered the possibilities. The whole thing could be a practical joke by his friends, though he couldnt begin to imagine them playing a prank this elaborate. Even so, he got off the stool and checked his windows. Outside in the graveyard, tombstones poked granite heads through pristine snow, each ancient marker topped with a frosty halo. Even the trees were crowned with thorns of ice. It was the first white Christmas Ben could remember for years. He looked down. The snow was unbroken below both windows and the windows themselves were still fastened shut.