The Real Mary King's Close (The Ghost Walk)

We had a lot of expectations before visiting Mary King’s Close. What could we expect? Many of us shivered by the thought of walking around in narrow passages, beneath the streets of Edinburgh. Would it be a horrifying experience? Or a cozy street-walk like when one visit The Old Village in Aarhus.

Mary King’s close is located in the heart of Edinburgh, in the part called Old Town by the Old Mile. We arrived and were divided in to two groups. We waited for our guide. He arrived, dressed in what looked like a sack, an attempt to look like he lived back 1600’s. He later told us that he was dressed as a ‘Foul Clenger’, a person hired to clean houses infected by the plague. The other group was guided by a man dressed in more fancy clothes; he was supposed to look like Robert Ferguson, a very well known poet who use to come in the close.

And now our tour began. We moved down some stairs, and walked around. There wasn’t much space. Everything was very well preserved, and you could really imagine how awful it must have been living like that. We saw both the part of the close where the poor people lived and the part where the more wealthy people lived. Like Mary King, who must have been a very important woman, since the close was named after her.

Our guide talked with a thick Scottish accent, and at times he was a bit hard to understand, but very entertaining. He showed us a part of the close were a family of approximately twelve people lived together, and it was much smaller than your average living room. He also showed us a small stable were they used to have cattle. Very impressive.

It was a nice experience, but maybe it is a bit misleading to call it a ‘Ghost Walk’, because there was nothing scary about it.

By Regitze, Sofie and Ida.