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Greyfriars Kirkyard is the site of one of the most bloody religious persecutions carried out in the 17th century by King appointed Lord Advocate Sir George Mackenzie against the rebel.

The Mackenzie Poltergeist is one of the most famous attractions when taking the City of the Dead tour within the Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh as people who join the tour experience bruises, scratches, and some even faint as they enter and see the Black Mausoleum where Sir George Mackenzie lies. It all began fifty years after the “National Covenant” was signed, pledging to keep Scotland a Presbyterian country, when King Charles II ascended the throne and quickly disavowed the Covenanters right to freely practice their religion and demanded that all accept the new official state religion. On June 22, 1679, the king’s forces swept the last of the Presbyterian Covenanters away in a bloody yet decisive battle known as the Bothwell Brig.l.

PHOTO: EDINBURGHNEWS.SCOTSMAN.COM

Refusing to swear allegiance to the King, several thousand Presbyterian Covenanter rebels were rounded up and imprisoned in a section of the Greyfriars Kirkyard (the graveyard of the small Greyfriars Kirk parish, owned by The Church of Scotland), known as the Covenanters’ prison. Over the coming winter months, the Covenanter prisoners of war were branded dissidents and subjected to deportation, inhumane torture, starvation, exposure and beheadings at the hands of Lord Advocate Sir George Mackenzie. Nicknamed “Bluidy MacKenzie”, by his victims, this vile brute was in charge of the Presbyterian Covenanter persecution on behalf of Charles II. And, though his everyday life facade was that of loving husband and father, legal scholar, published author (it’s said he wrote the first Scottish novel) and well read man, the private business of persecution that he conducted on behalf of the king, was so well hidden that even his wife never saw this vicious and sadistic side.

PHOTO: EDINBURGHNEWS.SCOTSMAN.COM

The persecution was relentless and in the end, most if not all of the prisoners died and were buried in the Greyfriars Kirkyard cemetery where they had been held captive.
In all, Mackenzie was responsible for the deaths of 18,000 of his countrymen in pursuit of a unified religion, during a period that was labeled, ‘The Killing Time’. His bloody reign of terror came to an end in 1691 when he died and was ironically buried in a casket contained in the Black Mausoleum tomb, a building located on the GreyFriars Kirkyard a short distance from the scene of his gruesome war crimes and where his victims were laid to rest.

For 300 years, both victims and tormentor rested in an uneasy peace, just feet from each other. And, then one dark and stormy night in 1998, a homeless man, possibly wanting shelter from the rain or looking for something valuable to steal, broke into the ‘Black Mausoleum’, a vaulted and well fortified tomb, the final resting place of the infamous ‘Bluidy MacKensie’.