The World Famous Underground Ghost Tour

Explore the darker side of Scotland’s capital on this 75 minute early evening walking tour led by one of our enthusiastic guides dressed in period costume. Traverse the narrow, winding closes and eighteenth-century bridges lying just off the stately Royal Mile and discover their gruesome past; take a wander through the historic, but also haunted, Greyfriars Kirkyard and conclude your evening with a trip to our famous underground vaults where your guide will show you through the creepy chambers and share its secrets.

Outside our ticket office on the Royal Mile your entertaining, charismatic guide and storyteller will start by welcoming you on the tour and introducing their historical character. Learn cooking skills from Cassandra Bean or surgical ethics from Dr Knox. Once you’re acquainted they will lead you through the upper half of the Old Town, around St Giles Cathedral, showing the sites of the city’s former parliament and infamous jail.

After crossing George IV Bridge the next part of the tour takes place in Greyfriars Kirkyard. Inside this decidedly sinister, 400 year old cemetery you will hear of its famously loyal dog, petrifying poltergeists as well as the notorious bodysnatchers and serial killers – Burke and Hare.

For the last part of the tour follow your guide to the underground, a section of a former seventeenth-century close absorbed into South Bridge when it was constructed. See bridge arches from the 1700s, walls and doorways from former houses and the modern pavement (with people walking over you) through our skylight. This old street has had many inhabitants through the centuries but some have not seen their own deaths as a reason to depart… The tour ends with your guide leading you out of the underground and back to our ticket office.