Eerie Edinburgh

A little while ago, I was chatting with Rob from How Haunted and Icy Sedgwick, and somewhere along the way we came up with an idea - why don't the three of us get together and have a proper chat about ghosts? Many of you will already know Icy from her brilliant Fabulous Folklore podcast and her work exploring folklore, history and the supernatural, while Rob is the man behind the excellent How Hau...

In 1859, Scottish writer Catherine Crowe published a remarkable story said to have been told to her by a sheep farmer named Sandy Shiels. Decades earlier, on an isolated farm in the Lammermuir Hills, a young farm servant named Rob set out through the winter landscape for the village of Gifford. He never came home. But in the months that followed, Rob’s disappearance became connected to the strange...

In 1835, Captain Molesworth and his family moved into a house in Trinity, Edinburgh. Not long afterwards, strange noises began to be heard around the property. Knocks, footsteps and other disturbances were reported, and before long the case had drawn in neighbours, military officers and the landlord himself. At the centre of it all was Molesworth’s daughter Jane, who was already seriously ill. Her...

The Canongate is one of the oldest parts of Edinburgh, a street with a history stretching back almost nine centuries. Behind its familiar buildings and closes lies a remarkable collection of ghost stories. In this episode of Eerie Edinburgh, I return to the place where the channel began almost three years ago: Bible Land, home to one of the Canongate’s strangest supernatural traditions. But that s...

Perched on a cliff at the northern edge of the Isle of Skye, the ruins of Duntulm Castle are home to some of the island's darkest ghost stories. Once a stronghold of the MacDonalds of Sleat, Duntulm's history is filled with clan rivalry, violence and tragedy.  There are tales of strange sounds, slamming doors, disembodied voices and figures moving through the castle - and an old tradition claiming...

Culross Palace is one of Scotland's most remarkable surviving buildings from the 17th century - but behind its distinctive yellow walls are stories that suggest some of its former occupants may never have entirely left. In this episode, we travel to the historic Fife village of Culross to explore the palace built by wealthy merchant Sir George Bruce and investigate the strange experiences reported...

What if one of Scotland's strangest ghost stories turned out to be more than just a legend? In this episode, we travel to the beautiful Glen Lyon in Highland Perthshire to explore the haunting of Meggernie Castle - a place where history, folklore and eyewitness testimony have become closely intertwined. According to local tradition, a jealous laird murdered and dismembered his wife, concealing par...

In 1953, a family moved into a remote Highland sporting lodge near Loch Ness, expecting nothing more than a fresh start. Within weeks, they began hearing footsteps crossing the landing above their heads. Then came the knocking. Always measured. Always deliberate. But the most disturbing encounter belonged to the housekeeper, Mrs MacDonald. Late one night she awoke to find an elderly woman crawling...

In 1954, on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland's Outer Hebrides, an ordinary croft became the centre of one of Britain's strangest alleged poltergeist cases. It began with peat moving beside the fire. Then glasses cracked without being touched. Crockery shattered, household objects floated from room to room. Was it an elaborate hoax? A rare psychological phenomenon? Or could there be another explanatio...

Deep within the woods near Edinburgh lie the forgotten ruins of Woodhouselee - a place haunted by one of Scotland's oldest and most tragic ghost stories. In this episode, we trace the legend of Anne Hamilton, a woman said to have been driven from her home during the Marian Civil War, before exploring more than four centuries of reported paranormal activity linked to the estate. From mysterious kno...

Castle Fraser is one of Scotland's most beautiful castles - and one of its most haunted. In this episode of Eerie Edinburgh, we explore the ghostly legends of Aberdeenshire's Castle Fraser, from the mysterious Lady Blanche Drummond and phantom footsteps in empty corridors to the chilling tale of the Green Room and the bloodstained spiral staircase. Are these simply stories passed down through gene...

For centuries, Edinburgh has been home to murderers, body snatchers, executioners, occultists, and some of Scotland's most famous ghost stories. Today, one figure dominates the city's paranormal tourism scene - Mr Boots. But long before Mr Boots became Edinburgh's unofficial ghostly mascot, there was another name people feared encountering after dark. This week, we're exploring the forgotten legen...

The case of Lurancy Vennum is often described as America’s strangest possession case. In 1877, in the small town of Watseka, Illinois, a young girl began falling into violent trances. She spoke in unfamiliar voices, claimed to see dead people standing in her room, and seemed to lose awareness of the world around her. What followed drew physicians, spiritualists, sceptics, and newspaper reporters f...

It was meant to be empty. After closing time, with the doors locked and the building cleared, staff began noticing things that didn’t quite fit. A face appearing briefly above the bar, as if someone had lifted themselves just enough to look over before dropping back out of sight. A glass shelf, fixed securely in place, shifting in a way that didn’t make sense. Nothing dramatic. Nothing that could...

Scotland is home to more than two thousand recorded castles. Some are well known. Others are easy to miss - broken walls in the landscape, visited by only a handful of people at a time. In this episode, we’re focusing on three of those lesser-known sites: Auchindoun, Drumin, and Kildrummy. All within the same part of the country. All tied to the same stretch of history. And all connected to experi...

When people think of Scotland’s major battles, places like Bannockburn or Culloden usually come to mind. But just outside the town of Crieff, there’s another battlefield that doesn’t get the same attention - Sheriffmuir. In 1715, two armies met there during the Jacobite rising. By the end of the day, neither side had won. Both claimed victory, but the outcome settled nothing. The campaign stalled,...

In 1878, in the small town of Amherst, Nova Scotia, a series of strange events began inside the home of a young woman named Esther Cox. At first, it was the sound of knocking. Then objects started to move. Fires broke out without warning. What began as a private disturbance quickly became something much larger, drawing in neighbours, reporters, and even men described at the time as “scientific gen...

Hospitals are built around routine, vigilance, and care. By day they are busy, practical places filled with staff, patients, and visitors moving constantly through corridors and wards. But the atmosphere can change after midnight. Lights are dimmed. Visiting hours end. Activity narrows to smaller teams carrying out the steady work of monitoring, observation, and care through the night. It’s during...

In this episode, we look at the 1897 Greenbrier Ghost case - the only known instance where a mother’s account of her daughter’s haunting helped reopen a murder investigation - and the 1925 Chaffin Will incident, where a family dispute took an unexpected turn after a son claimed his late father had returned with instructions. These aren’t the usual stories about figures in corridors or unexplained...

This episode is an original fictional ghost story written for Icy Sedgwick’s Christmas podcast. You can find Icy Sedgwick’s podcast, Fabulous Folklore with Icy Sedgwick, here: https://www.icysedgwick.com https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/fabulous-folklore-with-icy/id1450546036   https://open.spotify.com/show/3ayMEjrJuqkkSwk4pQF3aQ?si=2dd0f22c01724b5d   If you enjoyed this original story, you c...

Hidden in what is now one of Edinburgh’s most genteel neighbourhoods once stood a house that few people today remember - and fewer still ever saw. Grange House was demolished in 1936, but long before that it had acquired a reputation that set it apart from other old Edinburgh estates. Built on the site of a medieval monastic grange, expanded over centuries, and eventually used as both a private ho...

On the southern edge of Edinburgh, Comiston looks like any other quiet residential suburb. But beneath its pavements, paths, and housing estates lies a much older story - one filled with prehistoric burial sites, lost landscapes, folklore, and a figure that has been reported for over a century. The White Lady of Comiston is a woman in pale clothing, seen along the same route, across different gene...

Tucked away in a remote village in Jämtland, Borgvattnet Vicarage has been linked to unexplained activity for nearly a century. From ghostly figures and sudden chills to diary entries from clergy who lived there and couldn’t explain what they saw. In this episode, I explore the history behind one of Sweden’s most well known hauntings. From phantom footsteps to attacks on Priests, in this episode y...

Not all Christmas ghost stories have frightening apparitions or ghostly chaints rattling. Sometimes these stories begin with something simpler — a sound beneath a room, figures moving across a field, or a moment that only makes sense later on. In this Christmas episode, I explore two Scottish Midwinter hauntings recorded in the nineteenth century, both linked to Christmas and both rooted in firsth...

Peggy the Doll isn’t an old legend pulled from folklore, or a relic tied to some distant tragedy. She’s a modern case - one that unfolded in real time, among investigators, witnesses, and viewers who found themselves reacting in ways they couldn’t easily explain. First brought to wider attention in 2015, Peggy became associated with reports of physical and emotional reactions - headaches, nausea,...