·E190

Mary King's Close

September 16

1h 19m

View Transcript

Episode Description

Is Mary King’s Close Edinburgh’s Most Haunted Street?

Beneath a grand 18th-century stone building on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile — one that gives no hint of what’s underneath — sits an entire street frozen in time. Rooms, staircases, even fireplaces, sealed beneath the foundations when the Royal Exchange went up in 1753. Mary King’s Close was home to merchants, tradespeople, and, in 1645, some of the city’s worst plague victims. Today it’s one of the most investigated haunted sites in the UK, and almost every tour still ends in the same small stone room, in front of a pile of children’s toys.

This week, Rebecca walks through Wee Annie, the EVP session at Andrew Chesney’s house, the Coltheart family’s disembodied limbs, a namesake ghost caught on infrared, and a real University of Edinburgh study that found something genuinely hard to explain — while Pat digs into who Mary King actually was, what Edinburgh’s Old Town was really like, and why the close’s most famous “true story” doesn’t hold up to the historical record. Is Mary King’s Close genuinely haunted, or is four centuries of plague, poverty, and marketing doing a very convincing impression of one? You decide.

What We Cover in This Episode

The History (with Pat):

Who Mary King really was — a 1630s textile merchant and one of the few women in 17th-century Scotland to hold full burgess rights
What Edinburgh’s Old Town actually looked like: 8-to-12-story tenements, no sanitation, and a city crammed onto one narrow ridge
The 1645 plague outbreak that devastated the close — and why the popular “300 people sealed in with a named plague doctor” story doesn’t hold up against the historical record
How the Royal Exchange was built directly on top of the close in 1753, sealing it underground for 250 years
Andrew Chesney, the close’s last documented resident, forced out between 1897 and 1902
The Real Mary King’s Close opening to the public in 2003 after years of restoration

The Hauntings (with Rebecca):

Evidence #1 — Wee Annie: Japanese psychic Aiko Gibo’s 1990s encounter that turned one small room into the close’s signature haunting — and its ever-growing pile of donated dolls
Evidence #2 — Andrew Chesney’s House: an EVP session that allegedly caught his voice telling investigators to “just get out”
Evidence #3 — The Coltheart Family: a 17th-century lawyer’s household terrorized by a disembodied arm, a phantom child, and a vanishing dog
Evidence #4 — Mary King Herself: an infrared photograph said to show the close’s own namesake still walking her old street
Evidence #5 — The University of Edinburgh’s Haunting Experiment: a real 2001 academic study that found a statistically significant gap between “haunted” and “ordinary” sections of the close

Weigh the Evidence

As always, it’s not up to us, it’s up to YOU. After listening, text us the episode title, add YES if you’re a believer or NO if you’re a skeptic, and give it a haunting score from 1 to 10.

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Or head to our social pages and tell us which piece of evidence convinced you — and which one Pat managed to talk you out of.

Music Credits

Music for this episode was performed by Michael Rivers.

“Pat Facts” and “Ghost Story” themes by Mondo.

“Time for a Debate” theme by Gail Gallagher — gailgallaghermusic.com

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Sources for This Week’s Episode

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