• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Chapter 11: Spooks, Scares & Rides

457

Auld Reekie Terror Tour

Gloom & Doom All Around

Edinburgh, Scotland

If you’re among those who prefer their history served with a tinge of terror and a dash of the macabre, the Auld Reekie Terror Tour is just the thing for you. The city of Edinburgh is famous for its underground vaults, corridors, and buildings, and this tour highlights the places where torture, witchcraft, and crimes most foul were the norm.

Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland once known as Auld Reekie (the name translates as “old smoky” and referred to the smoke billowing out of coal chimneys), is rich with history going back to the prehistoric Stone Age settlements on the craggy hills that loom over the town. Not all of Edinburgh’s history, however, has been a tale of fair maidens and gallant knights. This is the home of Major Weir, who with his sister was executed for witchcraft in 1670. It’s also the town that inspired Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, based on the actual life of local socialite criminal Deacon Brodie.

There are a number of tours available, including the Ghost and Torture Tour, which takes visitors to a reputed witchcraft temple still in use today. Tours last about 75 minutes and are available during the day and into the night. Guides on the Terror Tour regale visitors with stories from the Black Plague, which swept across Scotland in the 14th century and caused many of Edinburgh’s citizens to be quarantined in horrific squalor. The tour, which is lit primarily by candles to heighten the effect, leads visitors through rooms and corridors where ghostly paranormal activity is reportedly high. If that doesn’t scare you, the grisly Torture Museum might; it features implements used to extract confessions from witches, warlocks, prisoners, and other undesirables.

The tour might not be for everyone—some visitors have referred to it as crowded and campy, with a none-too-frightening spook tacked on to the end, and the pub at the tour’s end is generally considered a tourist trap. But touristy or not, after reliving the tales of plague victims, witches, and murderers, you may need a drink. —ML

Auld Reekie Terror Tour, 45 Niddry St. ( 44/131/557-4700;www.auldreekietours.com).

When to Go: Year-round.

Edinburgh.

$$ Malmaison, 1 Tower Place ( 44/131/68-5000;www.malmaison.com). $$$ The Witchery by the Castle, The Royal Mile ( 44/131/225-5613;www.thewitchery.com).

458

Dracula Tours of Transylvania

Count Me In

Romania

The long, dark shadow of history casts a gloomy air across the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. In a country where the tyranny of Nicolae Ceau@escu is still a recent memory, an even more ominous legend has taken hold of the imagination—a legend that, like its namesake, refuses to die. Vlad III the Impaler, who inspired the legend of Count Dracula, was a murderous ruler famed for his bloody torture and executions; impaling his victims and displaying their bodies in public was his favorite method of planting terror in the minds of his numerous political enemies. The sites where Vlad was born, lived, and was buried are now open for visits.

Most tours of this ruggedly beautiful country begin and end in the capital city of Bucharest. Dracula tours to Transylvania (a region in west-central Romania) will usually include sites such as the citadel of Sighisoara, where Vlad was born, and the Snagov Monastery, where Vlad was buried after his assassination. Though some tours include stops at Bran Castle, an impressive medieval fortress, Dracula purists know that the ruins of the castle at Poienari are more likely to have been Vlad’s redoubt.

Separating historical fact from Hollywood-style vampire stories can be difficult, and some commercial tours seem to highlight the kitschier aspects of the Dracula legend. Vampire-themed hotel rooms with velvet-lined coffins, dinners with blood-wine drinks, and costumed entertainers driving stakes through an actor’s heart, however amusing, might not be suited to every visitor’s