22/09/2025
https://crosstheline1524.podbean.com/e/episode-275%e2%80%94labyrinth/
Episode #274—
The Banshee Labyrinth
Duane is on location in Scotland! Haunted-themed spot with bars, cinema, live bands and music nights from metal to punk and rave.
https://www.thebansheelabyrinth.com/
Spooky Beginnings
Our history is as old as Edinburgh itself.
Set in Edinburgh’s underground vaults beneath the bridges right in the heart of Old Town, these labyrinthine tunnels and arched vestiges connect The Southside and the volcanic slope running from Castle Rock to Holyrood Park that is now known as the Royal Mile. Only one of the 19 Arches that compose the bridge is still visible. The others compose the vaults – penetrating 22 feet down into the bedrock underlying the city. When the bridge was officially opened in 1788, a grand opening ceremony was arranged where a wealthy and important Edinburgh citizen, the elderly wife of a well respected local judge, was to be the first person to cross. As with many building projects however, delays and unexpected difficulties plagued the project, and she passed away just a few days before the grand opening. Money had been exchanged however, and contracts couldn’t be negated, so the first body to cross Edinburgh’s grand bridge crossed it in a coffin – something that many of the superstitious residents of the time believed rendered the bridge cursed.
Regardless, the bridge opened and the expansive vaulted arches were leased out to merchants, tradespeople and pub landlords. This was short-lived however. Due to the aforementioned time-constraints and funding issues during the construction, the surface of the bridge was never fully waterproofed, and the prolific Scottish rainfall seeped down into the unventilated internal caverns, which soon became waterlogged, dark and uninhabitable. The tradespeople and merchants vacated the premises and soon enough the vacant, dark, damp, cold, stone tunnels were adopted by those without anywhere else to go – but also those that were in need of dark, isolated places to evade the law. Illegal distilleries, brothels, and o***m houses permeated extensive, overcrowded underground slums. Crime was rife and living conditions were dank, with overcrowding and no access to sanitation meaning widespread disease and suffering. Rumour has it that unscrupulous characters who made a living selling fresh corpses to the city’s university medical department would target this area to murder those that wouldn’t be missed.
Between the 15th and 17th of November 1824, the Great Fire of Edinburgh broke out on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. Officially 10 people died in the inferno, but persistent local rumour has it that the raging fires in the Tron Kirk above the vaults essentially turned the underground stone vaults into a giant oven, spelling disaster for many of the destitute trapped inside. Eventually, many of the vaults were filled in with rubble, and lay disused for over a century until they were excavated in the 1980s and several of the more accessible passageways reopened to the public.
The Banshee Labyrinth seems to have a particularly strong concentration of regular supernatural activity, even by the standards of the vaults. Many suspect that the Banshee’s location and connection to Lord Nicol Edwards (after whom the previous pub on the site was named), the Lord Provst of Edinburgh during the Reign of King James VI/VII is to blame. Edwards not only purportedly severely abused his wife, but was rumoured to have built an underground cell below his house – near to where the vaults were eventually constructed – in which to personally torture women suspected of witchcraft before they stood trial.
Enjoy!
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Recorded with a Live Audience at “The Rusted Nail Speakeasy”!
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