If I had any doubt before going on this City of Edinburgh Underground Vault tour, I don’t anymore. This was the first paranormal experience of my life!

We missed the last tour by 15 minutes, but the guy at the City of Edinburgh Tour stand on The Royal Mile said we could try to catch up. He walked us all around The Royal Mile trying to find the group, but we couldn’t find them. We asked if he could take us to the vaults, and he said we could wait for the rest of the tour there.

We follow this guy down a few streets, and he takes us to this very bizarre door that’s full of graffiti. He had to unlock it.

That’s when we started getting nervous. My friend (Gill) looked at me with wide eyes, and I’m sure I looked at her as well. Still, like two fools in a horror film, we followed this short man in a powdered wig inside.

On the other side of the graffiti door, there is a stone hallway with another door and the stone steps spiraling down. He had to unlock that door, too. Still, we followed him down the spiral stone steps, and he leads us through a third door into the vaults.

It’s very dark down there, very few lights for mood only. He pointed to a bench in the adjacent room and told us to sit and wait. The tour would be around 10 minutes or so.

We didn’t sit.

Gill and I just stood there in disbelief.

He was going to leave us down in the vault alone in the dark? He said not to worry and that the tour would be there soon. We stood there is some kind of shock, and he shut the door behind him as he leaves.

That’s when I noticed the bloody handprints on the inside of the door. Obviously red paint and not real blood, but it was damn creepy. Gill and I laughed nervously at our own stupidity. She joked about how she had seen this movie and it didn’t end well while I prayed that we weren’t locked inside.

Just then there were loud footsteps on the wooden floor in the adjacent room inside the vault.

I screamed!

There was no one there.

Gill said it must’ve been the guy leaving upstairs. She looked scared, and I was scared. I told her we didn’t have to stay down there, so the next thing I did was try the door to make sure we weren’t locked inside.

Thankfully, it opened.

Needless to say, we went up the stairs to wait.

When we got back to the top level, we saw that it was a concrete floor, not a wooden floor.

So those footsteps did not come from above. They were in the room next to us.

We waited there on the steps laughing about our little paranormal experience, and about five or six minutes later the tour arrived. We told him about our experience briefly, laughing about it, then all went back down into the vault.

There, we found out that this is the most haunted vault in all of Edinburgh. Apparently, no one goes on this tour without at least one person in the group having a paranormal experience, hearing or seeing or smelling something strange and unexplainable.

Cassandra, the tour guide, went on to tell us some pretty horrific stories of things that happened down there, like torture and murder, and about a woman that is often seen crouching and crying in the corner. Her name is Annie, and she weeps into her hands. Fortunately I did not see Annie, nor did anyone in our group, but other people have seen her following a smell of burning hair.

Cassandra also told us that in a side room, people often heard a door opening and closing when it was obvious the door wasn’t moving at all.

We went on the rest of the tour, and by the time we got back to that room I had forgotten about the door sound. Cassandra was wrapping up the tour when I distinctly heard a creaking door opening and closing behind me. I was nowhere near the door, which wasn’t behind me anyway, but I looked over my shoulder to see where the sound was coming from.

There was nothing there but a stone wall.

My friend also heard the creaking door, as did the two guys in front of us.

There was no door. There was no one there when we heard loud footsteps on the wooden floor.

Before tonight, I had never had a paranormal experience in my life, at least not one that couldn’t be explained by something else, so this was the first.

Under Edinburgh.

It was creeeeeeepy.

Best £6 I ever spent.