The kirkyard looks, at first, like any other historic Scottish churchyard — leaning headstones, Greyfriars Bobby’s statue worn smooth at the gate. Come at dusk in November, when the Edinburgh wind has actual cold in it and the sky closes down early. Iron mortsafes clamp over the older tombs. In the southwest corner, behind a locked iron gate, sits the Black Mausoleum: rectangular, dark with age, sealed with a heavy padlock. The padlock is not there for show.
The mausoleum holds Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh — Lord Advocate under Charles II and James VII, buried here in 1691. History named him Bluidy Mackenzie for his prosecution of Scottish Covenanters during the Killing Time of the 1680s, a campaign of Crown suppression estimated to have killed 18,000. In 1679, following the Battle of Bothwell Bridge, approximately 1,200 Covenanting prisoners were marched to Edinburgh and confined in this kirkyard’s southwest enclosure — an open-air prison with no roof and minimal provisions. By the early 2000s, reports of visitors leaving the Black Mausoleum with unexplained marks on their bodies had accumulated enough that Edinburgh Council commissioned two formal exorcisms, both conducted by minister Colin Grant. Over 180 people have collapsed at this single location. The activity continued after both.
Researchers cite infrasound, electromagnetic fluctuations, and the amplifying effect of suggestion. None fully accounts for the physical marks or the sustained collapse rate. The mausoleum now anchors nightly ghost tours; the guide relocks the padlock when each group exits. Whatever continues to happen inside to those who enter skeptical and leave marked — the walk out always feels shorter than the walk in. It always does.
Story Source: www.scotsman.com
