There are more things...

The famous Shakespearean quote was put to practice yesterday when I went with Simon to visit infamous Edinburgh's vaults under The South Bridge. One of Simon's aquaintances is a medium and we were invited to take part in an open Paranormal Investigation. He stated beforehand that we were both sceptical but we were invited nevertheless. The group was full of young women in their mid thirties with spiritual expressions on their faces, armed with measuring equipment and the whole experience was meticulously documented with video and temperature and electrical meters readings. The group was accompanied by a Merkat Tours guide, Liz (who won a title of the best Edinburgh guide of all times) who was filling in with the history of the place and the Old Town.

The vaults used to be a shopping and trading area after the Bridge was built but after a while they became too damp for the bussinesses which moved somewhere else and some other type of clientele moved in. Apparently it was a chief place for Edinburgh's Hell Fire Club meetings but also for the poorest of the poor place to work, live and die in an overcrowded slum. Authorities left these people to sort their things for themselves and simply later sealed up some of the vaults, which consequently laid undisturbed for last 170 years.

There were many unexplained occurences happening to guides and visitors but I would say (well, I am sceptical, non?) that majority of them could be blaimed on drafts (vaults have the same temperature of +8 all the year around) and ladies reacitng way too emotionally in the darkness. However at some point of the visit I SMELLED a very strong smell of port in one of the chambers - the waft dissapeared immediately when I got slightly scared at this sudden experience. It might have been one of the lady visitors passing by (wearing a strong perfume) but I am pretty much sure that by that time everybody moved on to another vault. Later Liz mentioned that some of the vaults were used to store wine and port by Edinburgh wine merchants.

So Hamlet speaking to Horatio was after all right?
I must admit I felt more scared when my driving instructor told me today to drive in an afternoon Edinburgh traffic...

Some more vaults and special 'trigger objects' - a dog biscuit for a ghost of a dog which can be sometimes felt  by mediums in the vaults: