Witch Trip Edinburgh is a unique and captivating experience that takes participants on a journey through the dark and mysterious history of Edinburgh's witches. Led by knowledgeable and engaging guides, this walking tour is a must-do for anyone interested in the occult, witchcraft, and the paranormal. The tour begins in Edinburgh's Old Town, where participants gather to hear stories and legends surrounding the city's infamous witch trials. These trials took place in the 16th and 17th centuries and resulted in the execution of countless women accused of witchcraft. As the guides recount the tales of these persecuted women, participants are transported back in time, able to imagine the fear, superstition, and hysteria that surrounded the witch trials. As the tour progresses, participants visit key locations associated with the city's witchcraft history.
As the tour progresses, participants visit key locations associated with the city's witchcraft history. From the Mercat Cross, where public shaming and punishments were carried out, to the ancient graveyards where witches were buried, each stop on the tour reveals a different aspect of Edinburgh's dark past. The guides weave together historical facts, local folklore, and personal anecdotes to create a truly immersive and spine-chilling experience.
Witch Houses of the Hudson Valley
Walter R. Wheeler, known as Wally, is an architectural historian in the Hudson Valley. He works for a firm called Hartgen Archeological Associates—“Breaking Old Ground Every Day”—which is based in a restored eighteenth-century farmhouse across the river from Albany. Fifty-five years old, with a cheerful, open face and small, oval eyeglasses, Wheeler has been inside, behind, and under churches, barns, homes, and temples in cities and towns throughout New York State.
Several years ago, he began to notice a pattern. Many of his elderly colleagues—contractors, carpenters, historians—told him that, while renovating or dismantling older houses in the region, they had found strange, unsettling things hidden in the walls: dead animals, dismembered dolls, children’s shoes, broken knife blades, and also bottles filled with human hair, bent nails, or pins. Some of these objects were secreted behind old planks and floorboards. Others were concealed in nooks and voids that would have been inaccessible if not for the intrusive work of restoration—suggesting that they had been placed there deliberately, as permanent parts of the building.
Objects were only part of the pattern. There were symbols, too. Wheeler’s colleagues found them carved into woodwork, on beams, lintels, and hearths. Some of these marks, upon closer inspection, turned out to be family graffiti, or dates marking the start and end of construction. But others resembled runes, astrological diagrams, or alchemical signs. Oftentimes, the marks could be seen only by shining a light across the wood at an oblique angle, creating deeper, elongated shadows, revealing the faintest traces of lost inscriptions.
Many of the people who told Wheeler these stories were approaching retirement, or something even more permanent. “I realized it was my last, best chance to collect information from them, to make a concerted effort to contact people and locate additional examples, creating a large-enough data set to be able to see some patterns,” he recalled, when we met, earlier this fall. He began cataloguing the objects and symbols in a database, in which each individual find was associated with a street address and location inside the house. In 2017, Wheeler summarized his research in a paper titled “Magical Dwelling: Apotropaic Building Practices in the New World Dutch Cultural Hearth,” published in an edited volume on rural religious folk practices. (The homes in which these objects and inscriptions had been found tended to be quite old, dating from as early as the sixteen-hundreds, when their owners would have been culturally Dutch.) The word “apotropaic,” which derives from a Greek word meaning “to turn away,” refers to ritual practices intended to deflect malignant influences. The concealed artifacts, Wheeler had concluded, were a form of spatial magic. They were “protection strategies” meant to shield their residents from supernatural harm.
After spending the afternoon with me, showing me dozens of files, photos, and the occasional artifact, Wheeler recommended that I stop by a nearby house to see some apotropaic magic of my own. The house had been constructed in 1788. It is currently owned by a land trust; the president and secretary of the trust took me down into the basement stairwell. I clicked on my flashlight, holding it horizontally against the wooden planks, and we all bent to look closer. Alongside clearly accidental dents and scratch marks, we began to see regular geometric forms—stars and crosses carved beneath the dark paint. My companions seemed astonished. They hadn’t known that some of these symbols were there.
Last year, Wheeler travelled to Salisbury, England, to present his findings at Hidden Charms, a biannual conference on “the magical protection of buildings.” The conference took place in the Medieval Hall of Salisbury Cathedral and featured nine speakers, on subjects ranging from “construction rites” in Romania to dead animals found inside manor houses in the British Midlands. The Hidden Charms events are organized by Brian Hoggard, a British historian and musician with a particular interest in the archeology of witchcraft. In his book “Magical House Protection,” published earlier this year, Hoggard describes a scenario not unlike Wheeler’s own. “I have spoken to many archaeologists who have told me anecdotes of finding bottles, shoes and cats which did not find their way into archives or dig reports,” Hoggard writes. He suggests that, although he has documented such objects by the hundreds, many more may have been destroyed or remain undiscovered. As Hoggard later said to me, “There will be as many things as I have found, found again.”
Hoggard’s own interest in the material culture of witchcraft was sparked by a now-canonical text in the field, “The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic,” by Ralph Merrifield, a curator and archeologist primarily known for his work on Roman London. Merrifield’s book, published in 1987, approached the archeology of magic in a new way. In describing witchcraft, historians had often relied on condemnatory accounts written by judges or members of the clergy. Merrifield sought instead to explore folk magic through the material objects that the practitioners themselves had left behind. Because seventeenth-century witches were more likely to be executed than to publish memoirs or manuals, Merrifield relied on rigorous archeological field work, analyzing artifacts and sites throughout the British Isles.
Hoggard began his research two decades ago, by sending surveys to museums, archives, and other historical collections, asking if they had, in their possession, any of the key artifact types described in Merrifield’s book. These included so-called witch bottles, preserved animal corpses, and many of the other objects that Wheeler and his colleagues would later find across the Atlantic. Hoggard received a blizzard of affirmative replies. Since then, he has been developing his own hypotheses about what exactly these objects were and how they were believed to have functioned.
Central to Hoggard’s interpretation is the idea of architectural protection. He writes that concealed objects are nearly always found close to openings and portals: doors, windows, and, in particular, chimneys—a chimney, Hoggard told me, being an unnervingly open “passageway from the sky.” (Wheeler’s database shows that objects were hidden in similar places in Hudson Valley homes.) These openings presented vulnerabilities not just to burglary but to magical intrusions, such as hauntings, curses, and possessions. Addressing these “supernatural security issues,” Hoggard told me, required something stronger than locks and shutters. “When we find these objects,” he said, “we can normally tell straight away if someone was protecting the perimeter of their home by shoving things into walls and into roof spaces and marking all these entrances, or if there’s a concentration of things about the hearth. It’s pretty clear that people believed magic could come into their homes through those points and that they were trying to thwart it.”
One protective object architectural historians often uncover is the witch bottle. In the British context, the earliest witch bottles were usually curvaceous ceramic vessels—vaguely humanoid Germanic jars known as bellarmines—that had been filled with human urine and hair, along with a mix of bent iron nails and deformed pins. (Some contain fingernail clippings, as well.) The deliberately damaged ingredients, Hoggard believes, were a sign that those objects had been “killed,” allowing them to cross over to the spiritual world, where dead and evil things lurk. The logic is straightforward: break or “kill” an object in our world, and it crosses over into the next, where it is able to affect supernatural beings. Hoggard surmises that the bottles were meant to act as decoys. The spells of witches and other malevolent beings could be deflected to target a witch bottle, rather than a person, by the human elements stored within it (urine, fingernails, and hair); once the evil spirit was inside the bottle, the bent nails and pins, given new life on the other side, would wound or kill it.
The logic of substitution is common to folk magic around the world and might have been central to apotropaic magic, too. Wheeler and Hoggard have found that, in both Britain and the Hudson Valley, children’s shoes were often packed into peripheral voids around a house—the artifacts may also have been intended as targets for witches, in lieu of a home’s living residents. Such voids could also contain “curse dolls,” miniature human forms intended to stand in for the objects of spells.
Recently, however, another interpretation of these objects has been gaining ground. In April, 2019, the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA), launched a three-year initiative, “Bottles Concealed and Revealed,” with the goal of analyzing witch bottles in collections throughout the United Kingdom. In the course of the initiative, Nigel Jeffries, MOLA’s ceramics specialist, has come to believe that witch bottles may have not only been miscategorized but misnamed: these bottles were likely medical objects, rather than magical ones. Indeed, Jeffries said, as more contemporary descriptions found in historical records and medical books have come to light, this context has become increasingly clear. Witch bottles, with their unusual mix of bodily fluids, hair clippings, and metallic substances combined, according to principles drawn from medicine, astrology, and sympathetic magic, may have been thought to act as curatives that could bring a home’s residents longevity and health.
Ceri Houlbrook, a co-organizer of the MOLA project and a lecturer in history and folklore at the University of Hertfordshire, agrees with Jeffries’s view of the bottles. In fact, she is reassessing all the artifacts discovered within the walls and voids of historic houses. “I’d argue that we can’t lump any concealed objects together,” she said. “I see shoes very differently to how I see mummified cats, for example. I don’t think we can interpret them in the same way at all.”
The Albertus Van Loon House is located about thirty-five miles south of Wheeler’s office, in the town of Athens, New York. The house has stood since 1724, its back yard sloping directly into the swollen waters of the Hudson River. When its current owners, Randall Evans and Carrie Feder, bought it, in 1997, it was uninhabitable. Its walls and ceilings were unstable, and entire rooms had been dismantled, their boards and beams stacked in no discernible order. As soon as the couple started their reconstruction of the house, which is still ongoing, they began finding concealed objects and other artifacts—a dozen, then another, then another.
For Evans and Feder, the Van Loon House is something of a final project. The couple are retired home designers and restorers; Feder is also an artist and curator. Earlier this month, when I visited them and stepped into the house, I felt as if I were passing through a portal. The clear blue autumn sky was occluded by low ceilings and heavy beams; in places, early evening sunlight shone between the unplastered laths of the home’s interior walls, travelling from one room to the next. The couple seemed intrigued, even faintly amused, by my interest in their house. They hadn’t yet read Wheeler’s paper, but they had arrived at their own interpretation of the objects they’d found inside their home. These included a rust-encrusted revolver, children’s shoes, pieces of quartz, a device that appeared to be an impression mold for counterfeiting coins, and the eyeless face of a decapitated doll. Nearly all of the objects were on display inside a glass cabinet near the fireplace. “It really is amazing how much stuff you find in the walls of a house like this,” Feder, who tends to listen with a still, skeptical expression, said. “We kind of live in it as an archeological site.”
We entered a small study behind a guest bedroom. Evans, slender and with a slight goatee, pushed on a panel in the wall. It swung open, revealing a hidden staircase leading up to what he called “the puzzle room.” The couple had pieced the space back together, board by board, until a small sleeping quarters emerged.
Through examination of family life, architecture and furniture of the seventeenth century, visitors gain a deeper comprehension of the people involved in the Witch Trials and an enriched
understanding of America's colonial heritage.
One of the highlights of the Witch Trip Edinburgh is a visit to the notorious Edinburgh Castle. The castle, perched atop Castle Rock, has a long and fascinating history that includes its fair share of witchcraft. Participants hear tales of witches imprisoned within its walls and the supernatural occurrences that have been reported over the years. Standing in the shadow of this iconic fortress, it's easy to imagine the haunting presence of the witches who once resided there. Throughout the tour, participants are encouraged to engage with the guides, ask questions, and share their own stories or experiences. This interactive element adds a personal touch to the Witch Trip Edinburgh and creates a sense of community among those participating. By the end of the tour, participants will have gained a deeper understanding of Edinburgh's witchcraft history and its lasting impact on the city's culture and folklore. They will have walked in the footsteps of the accused witches, heard their stories, and perhaps even felt a connection to the supernatural world. Overall, Witch Trip Edinburgh offers a fascinating and immersive experience that combines history, storytelling, and the paranormal. Whether you're a history buff, a fan of the occult, or simply curious about Edinburgh's dark past, this tour is sure to leave a lasting impression. Don't miss the opportunity to delve into the realm of witches and uncover the secrets that lie beneath the surface of this enchanting city..
Reviews for "Witchcraft Lore and Legends: Uncovering the Mystical Side of Edinburgh"
1. Jane - 1 star - I was really excited to go on the Witch trip in Edinburgh, but it turned out to be a complete disappointment. The tour guide seemed more interested in telling fictional stories rather than providing accurate historical information. The whole experience felt like a cheap attempt to make money off of tourists' fascination with witches. I would not recommend this tour to anyone looking for a genuine historical experience.
2. Mike - 2 stars - While the concept of a Witch trip in Edinburgh is intriguing, I found this particular tour to be lacking in substance. The guide barely touched on the actual history of witch trials and the role of witches in Scottish culture. Instead, we spent most of our time visiting generic tourist spots that had little relevance to witches or witchcraft. Overall, I felt like I didn't learn anything new or interesting about the topic, and I was left disappointed with the experience.
3. Sarah - 2 stars - I had high expectations for the Witch trip in Edinburgh, but sadly it fell short. The tour felt rushed and disorganized, with the guide trying to fit too much information in a short amount of time. Additionally, the stories shared were more fictionalized accounts rather than genuine historical facts. I was hoping for a more in-depth exploration of the topic, but instead, I felt like I just scratched the surface. I would recommend looking for other tours that offer a more comprehensive and accurate experience.
4. Mark - 3 stars - The Witch trip in Edinburgh offered some interesting insights into the history of witchcraft, but overall it was underwhelming. The guide seemed knowledgeable, but their delivery was monotonous and lacked enthusiasm. Additionally, the tour group was large, making it difficult to hear and follow along. While it was an okay experience, I expected more engaging storytelling and interaction. If you're passionate about witches and their history, I recommend seeking a different tour that offers a more immersive experience.