Mary King's Close · The Walled-Up Underground Street

Mary King's Close was a street of tall tenements in the middle of Edinburgh. When the city built its new Exchange on the site in the 1750s, the closes beneath it were closed off: upper floors demolished, lower floors left standing, and the whole thing built over.

Plague is the part the tours lead with — households shut in behind their own doors and left there. Some of that is documented and some of it is not. What is certain is that the street stayed dark and untouched for around two hundred and fifty years, until a section of it was reopened in 2003.

Visitors report being caught by the ankle or the hem of a coat, most often in one room, by a girl the guides call Annie. Staff left a doll there for her. Objects on the doll move and disappear; the doll itself has never moved.

Bureau note: the street below is real. The version on the tour is not entirely.

Historical Mysteries / Edinburgh · UK / 1645