Edinburgh is famous for its many haunted locations and ghost walks that guide tourists through spooky backdrops as they listen to scary stories. The unsettling atmosphere of the underground streets at Mary Kings Close, for example, sees visitors walk through the Blair Street Vaults in the eerie quiet which can leave anyone feeling jumpy.
While it's fun to tease and mock these tours and their tales, many have been passed down through generations and their unsolved mysteries reflect a much more sinister, bloodier Edinburgh. Indeed, past the Instagram-worthy cobbled streets and Georgian architecture we see today lie dark secrets that reflect Edinburgh’s grisly past.
Here are 13 creepy facts about Edinburgh that you (probably) didn’t know.
9. Edinburgh streets were lined with blood, faeces and corpses
People would dump their chamberpots on the streets of old Edinburgh and even dead or slaughtered animal parts, leaving massive amounts of faeces and blood all over the streets. Considering that this was in the era before indoor plumbing and that in poorer regions of the city it was rare for the streets to be cleaned you can begin to imagine how terrible the stench must have been. Photo: Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
10. There's an 'Island of the damned' near Edinburgh where people were sent to die
Inchkeith Island, along with Inchgarvie island, was used in 1497 to be the 'refuge' for victims of syphilis. An act was passed that year that ordered anyone with the condition to be forced onto a boat in Leith then taken to the island, it was essentially a death sentence for those people. Photo: Rob Burke via Wikimedia Commons
11. During the plague people were bricked into their homes and left to die
When Edinburgh was hit by the plague in 1645 around half of the city's population died and the streets were full of corpses. To stop the spread, the city mandated that infected people stay in their homes or banished them to quarantine huts outside of Edinburgh. However, they also experimented with other methods of enforcing quarantine like bricking people inside their homes and leaving them to die. Victims of this practice included those who were not even infected with the plague but unfortunately living in the wrong residence associated with it. Photo: Samuel Bough via Wikimedia Commons
12. A street fight saw the high street turned into a "river of blood"
A huge street fight occurred between men of the Hamilton and Douglas families in 1520 that resulted in the death of 80 men. This event became known as the 'Cleansing of the Causeway' after the reports of the "river of blood" that flowed down the High Street in the aftermath. Photo: urtimud.89 via Canva Pro