Lore - Lore 282: Auld

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

Few cities in the world contain as much darkness, pain, and evil as the capital of Scotland. Join us for a chilling tour—but be careful where you step. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by GennaRose Nethercott, research by Jamie Vargas, and music by Chad Lawson. ————————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  Official Lore Merchandise: lorepodcast.com/shop All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com ————————— Sponsors: BetterHelp: Lore is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/LORE, and get on your way to being your best self. Squarespace: Head to Squarespace.com/lore to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code LORE. Acorns: Acorns helps you automatically save & invest for your future. Head to Acorns.com/LORE to sign up for Acorns to start saving and investing for your future today! SimpliSafe: Secure your home with 24/7 professional monitoring. Sign up today at SimpliSafe.com/Lore to get 20% off any new SimpliSafe system with Fast Protect Monitoring. ————————— To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to ads @ lorepodcast.com with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. ————————— To advertise on this podcast please email: [e-mail]. Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/lore ————————— ©2025 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

Picture this. You're halfway through a DIY car fix, tools scattered everywhere, and boom, you realize you're missing a part. It's okay, because you know whatever it is, it's on eBay. They've got everything. Brakes, headlights, cold air intakes, whatever you need. And it's guaranteed to fit, which means no more crossing your fingers and hoping you ordered the right thing. All the parts you need, at prices you'll love. Guaranteed to fit every time. eBay, things people love. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor,

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James had been murdered, that much was certain. He'd been found floating in the river, but it was clear that he hadn't merely drowned. There was the lack of water in the corpse's lungs, for one, plus the bruises around his face and neck. And finally most damning of all, the deep cut, grinning across the dead man's throat. Which all led to one very important question. If James Stansfield had been murdered, then who exactly had killed him? To answer that question, authorities gathered Stansfield's next of kin, and then the family was instructed to move the body into its coffin.

As Stansfield's son Philip attempted to lift him at the shoulders, something a little messy occurred. To quote a pamphlet from the time, and struck with terror and remorse, he cried out, Lord, have mercy upon me. Philip, you see, had reason to be frightened because he was immediately arrested and executed for the crime of his father's murder. Let me explain.

In 1688, they certainly lacked the forensic technology we have today, but authorities did have another way to identify a killer. It was called a beer right. And up until the 19th century, courts all over Europe relied on the practice to dole out justice. It went a little something like this. First, you forced a suspect to touch the corpse. Then you watched to see if the corpse starts to spontaneously bleed.

And, uh, that's it. That's the whole beer right. If the corpse doesn't bleed, then you're in the clear. But if it does, well then there's trouble, because a bleeding corpse means that a suspect is guilty, which, unfortunately for Philip Stansfield, is exactly what had happened. You see, it was believed at the time that a dead body could consciously make itself bleed as a means of communicating and thus pointing out the killer. Think the blinking Christmas lights in season one of Stranger Things, but with a bloody

corpse instead. It may seem bizarre to afford so much agency to a dead body, but then again, the lines between life and death have always been thin in the Stansfield family's neck of the woods. That is one of the most haunted cities in the world. Edinburgh, Scotland. I'm Aaron Manke and this is Lore. Edinburgh has always been a city of ghosts. It's impossible to take a step over the cobbled streets of the Scottish capital without walking over history. And I mean that literally.

If you've been around long enough to remember our previous Edinburgh episode, you'll know that this is an old city built atop an even older one. That is, there is a labyrinthine, shadowy version of the town hidden beneath the modern streets, sealed away in a series of underground vaults. But the truth is, you don't need to dig deep to find the dark and dastardly in Edinburgh's past. There is more than enough history above ground, looming in plain sight, starting, in fact, with the city's name.

Edinburgh, you see, comes from the ancient Gaelic din-eddin, which translates to fort on the hill. Because that plot of land was once indeed a fort. Multiple forts, actually, for when the first crumbled of land was once indeed a fort, multiple forts actually, for when the first crumbled another was built in its place, and centuries after that, when the second fort had fallen to time, a castle rose in its stead. With the castle came further development and lo and behold, by 1329, Edinburgh was awarded a royal charter, a city was officially born. And with it came art, music, culture, but also

suffering. Like any city, there were the haves and the have-nots. The have-nots struggled to eat, to live, to escape disease. They often lost their homes in fires, and a growing population made finding a new home next to impossible. All of which, well, grossed out the upper class. And so, Edinburgh's elite built a new part of the city just for themselves. Now they could live in clean, bright, fresh neighborhoods where they wouldn't have to, God forbid, look at a poor person. And thus, Newtown and Oldtown were born. By the 1800s, the Old Town became known as Ald-Reiki for the smoky pollution stinking up the Old City. Meanwhile, the New Town, which had become a philosophy hub as Athens once had been, became known as Ald-Greeky. Yeah, the pun is rough, even

by my standards. New and old, above and below, rich and poor, Edinburgh had become a city of contrasts, of polar opposites, existing uneasily side by side, and that includes the living and the dead. Take, for example, the story of Lauriston Castle. Squatting on 30 acres of parks and gardens, Lauriston began as a lavish medieval building belonging to a man named William Lauriston. Over the years, it changed hands again and again, and with each new era, the building shape shifted as well. The castle might be destroyed or worn down, only to be built up again anew until finally the property settled into the form of a sprawling stone manor house. Now it's hard to describe just how Count-or-luck-worthy this place looks without

seeing it for yourself, but let's just say the gray rock and austere angular turrets make the building resemble some kind of severe boarding school for troubled schoolboys, from which they would never return. It's not exactly inviting. But the most unnerving feature of the house isn't its looks at all. It's actually a secret room. It's known as the Prophet's Chamber, and it can only be found by those who know where to look. First, you have to swing open an otherwise ordinary looking window shutter in an old hall. This reveals a hidden stairway so narrow, stepping into it feels like climbing down a monster's throat. Eventually, this stairway leads to an empty stone chamber. Or, well, almost empty. It contains a stone platform, a tiny window, and most notably, a spy hole.

Through this spy hole, anyone in the prophet's chamber could hear and see directly into the castle's main apartment. And to this day, no one knows exactly what was being watched, or even worse, who was doing the watching. Today, Lauriston Castle is owned by the city of Edinburgh itself and serves as a museum rather than a residence. Or rather, there are no living residents, but if the stories are true, there are plenty of dead ones. Visitors to the castle have heard rustling silk and phantom footsteps, objects move on their own, and finally,

a mysterious human figure has been heard shuffling around the castle in a pair of slippers, allegedly the restless spirit of a former butler. One of the most detailed accounts of this particular ghost comes from a man named John Fairley. Fairley was the curator of the castle during the early 1900s, and lived in a detached house elsewhere on the property.

But one night, the housekeeper happened to be away, and so Fairly decided to spend a night within the castle walls instead. At first, all was well. Fairly got into his night clothes, climbed into bed, and drifted off to sleep. But then, just after midnight, he awoke with a start. Although he was supposed to be the only person in the house, he distinctly heard the sound of footsteps. And not just any footsteps, but the distinct noise of someone shuffling around in a loose pair of slippers. And to make matters worse, the footsteps were heading his way.

And soon enough, the intruder was right outside his door, fairly held his breath. Stealing himself, he grabbed a flashlight from under his pillow, flicked it on, and shined it at… nothing. There was no one there at all. Writing it off as the groaning of an old house, Fairly went back to sleep, but it wasn't long before he was awoken again, this time to a very different sound. He described it to a chronicler as, and I quote, the most appalling crash he had ever heard in his life, as if a bomb had struck the

roof and exploded close to his bedside. This time he lay perfectly still. He didn't dare move, at least not until he had come up with a plan. Finally, he gathered his courage and he sat up, shining his flashlight around the room once more. The beam struck on something in the plan. Finally, he gathered his courage and he sat up. Shining his flashlight around the room once more, the beam struck on something in the darkness. It was a heavy picture, and it had fallen off the wall, crashing to the floor below. Satisfied with this explanation, Fairly rolled over once more and went back to sleep. He wasn't interrupted again. Later when asked if he thought the picture had fallen due to supernatural interference, Fairley adamantly denied it. It was only a nail, he insisted, rusted through with age. But as for the fellow in the slippers, well,

even John Fairley himself had no explanation. In a city as old as Edinburgh, almost every building contains a secret former life. Perhaps that apartment on the corner was once a plague hospital. Or maybe the local Sainsbury's with its glassy grocery store windows once served as a gathering place for philosophers. Yes, we expect castles and dungeons to be full of stories, but sometimes the most extraordinary tales are hiding in the most ordinary of places.

And what could be more ordinary than that place where so many land at the end of a long day to chat with friends, to have a drink and shirk off the burdens of the day, your friendly neighborhood bar? If you happen to live in the area of Edinburgh called Cannon Gate, your local watering hole might be a spot called the Tollbooth Tavern. And the Tollbooth Tavern earned its name because centuries before it was a pub, it was, you guessed it, a tollbooth. Now as much as it would delight me to describe some sort of 15th century easy pass glued

to a horse's forehead, that is not what we're dealing with here. The word tollbooth in medieval Scotland referred to the civic buildings where your taxes would go. They also hosted council meetings, served as courthouses, and even transformed into prisons when the need arose. And it's this last usage that would earn the tollbooth tavern a rather unseemly reputation. You see, normally the ground floor of the Cannon Gate tollbooth would only house minor criminals, people who failed to pay their taxes, that sort of thing.

But sometimes they would catch a bigger fish. And at least once, that fish was a witch. According to local records, a man accused of witchcraft was being held in the tollbooth jails when the area's justice clerk had an idea. This clerk, a man named Sir Lewis Bellenden, was determined to cure the prisoner of his demonic ways. How? Why, with an exorcism, of course.

And so one gloomy Scottish day, Sir Bellenden got to work. Now, maybe it involved torture. Perhaps he forced the prisoner to live out his worst nightmares. In truth, we don't know what methods were used, but they couldn't have been pretty. Because it's said that the experience terrified the accused so much that he died. That's right. In the very room where today you might down a pint, a city justice clerk literally scared a man to death. And then there's the Banshee Labyrinth, named of course for the screeching female spirit who, in Irish and Scottish lore, appears as an omen of death. This spot bills itself as being the most haunted pub in all of Scotland, and based on its past,

it's easy to see why. Located on Nidri Street in the center of Old Town, the tavern sits right next door to the former home of one of the wealthiest men in 16th century Edinburgh, Lord Nicol Edwards. Edwards was Lord Provost of Edinburgh during the reign of King James VI, and as such, lived a life of absolute luxury. His home was as opulent as you might expect for a man of his status. He loved to play host, even welcoming royalty to visit.

In fact, in 1591, King James himself came there to stay. But this house also had a secret, because hidden in the back of a remote little closet was a hidden trap door. Lifting that trap door, you would find a staircase leading deep beneath the house. And after descending those stairs, you would find yourself in a dungeon. You see, Lord Edwards and King James had a shared interest. Both of them not only believed in witches, but they absolutely despised them. There were rumors that Lord Edwards imprisoned innocent women in his dungeon and tortured

them for the alleged crime of being a witch. And when the king came to call, well, some accounts claim that the king himself may have used the cellar dungeon as a base for interrogating accused witches so far beneath the surface of the earth that no one would ever hear their screams. Edwards died in 1610, and in 1785, the entire neighborhood was demolished to make way for the construction of South Bridge. What had once been Edinburgh's richest neighborhood was now one of the poorest, and as South Bridge rose, new shops and businesses opened alongside it, including the Banshee Labyrinth, right against the former residence of Lord Edwards.

I can't tell you which came first. Maybe the pub got its name and the visitor came second. Or maybe the Banshee appeared first and the tavern owners couldn't help but name the place in her honor. Whatever the case, a Banshee is indeed said to haunt the former grounds of Edwards' home, comprised of the discontented ghosts of the many women he tortured beneath the ground. In one tale, the pub was being renovated when one of the workmen spotted a woman in a gray

dress weeping into her hands. When he drew near to her, she raised her head revealing not a woman's face, but that of an eyeless, toothless corpse, and then she screamed. Or perhaps it wasn't a scream at all, but a telephone ring. Because just then a call came in announcing that one of the workman's family members had died. And there are other ghosts as well that plague the Banshee Labyrinth.

A little girl, a faceless black cloaked man, a creep named Old Jock who slams doors in the women's restroom. But I'll save their legends for another time because we still have one more accursed pub to visit. A spot that happened to be a hunting ground for famed murderers, Burke and Hare. We've told their story in full before, but as a brief recap, William Burke and William Hare were Irish immigrants who came to Edinburgh to find work at the canals, only to start

a body-snatching racket instead. Over a single year, the duo murdered 16 people and sold their bodies to an anatomy professor at the University of Edinburgh. They preyed on the elderly, the homeless, immigrants, anyone who would vanish without a trace. In other words, the kind of folks who hung out at the White Hart Inn. In operation since 1516, the White Hart is located in Edinburgh's Grass Market, and unsurprisingly hosts a bunch of uneasy spirits.

There is the woman in the red dress, said to be a former sex worker and pub regular while alive. Whether or not she was a victim of Birkin hair though, no one seems to know. There's also a specter that appears only as a shadowy form behind the bar. Sometimes it trails down toward the cellar, but when the bartenders have followed it, the figure vanishes, leaving the cellar empty.

Doors have been known to slam by themselves, and barrels sometimes roll from one end of the room to the other. Beer taps turn on unprompted, much to the bartender's chagrin. But my favorite has to be a ghost that dwells in the cellar. Or, well, half a ghost. You see, this one takes the form of nothing more than a pair of legs. In the central part of Edinburgh's Old Town lies West Bow Street, one of the most picturesque spots in the whole city. From its cobbled stones to its colorful shop fronts punctuated by arched windows, this winding narrow road practically screams whimsy.

But there was a time when Bow Street echoed a very different kind of screaming. The year was 1670, and as a woman and her maid walked home along Bow Street, they saw something rather strange. In one home, then another, then another, women stood at the windows laughing and shouting with manic glee. Some of them were clapping. Finally, the travelers arrived at the home of a well-respected general named Thomas Weir, and there a final woman appeared. She was a giant, twice the size of a human being,

and no matter how fast the travelers fled, the figure was somehow always one step ahead, cackling. At last, the spectre turned down an alley, and there was swallowed by the wild lights of countless flaming torches. At the time, the woman and her maid could make no sense of the vision. But little did they know they had just witnessed a premonition of a fiery downfall of none other than Major Thomas Weir himself. You see, while all of this had been going on outside his house, Major Thomas Weir lay on his bed within, deathly ill. Through his labored breaths, he looked back over his life, a full seventy years on planet

Earth, and what a life it had been. He'd been a loyal military man, fighting on behalf of the Covenanters to defend the Presbyterians' religious freedom. He'd been a friend, a soldier, a dedicated member of the church, which was all the more selfless given that he'd been born into wealth and could easily have kicked off this moral calling

for a life of leisure and luxury. Instead of frivolous pleasures, Thomas had chosen to dedicate his life to the people of Scotland. Townsfolk frequently went to his house just to hear the man pray. Clutching the walking stick that he was never seen without, Thomas would slip into a fervid state of prayer,

so pure that many considered him, to quote one scholar, more angel than man. Heck, he'd become such a pillar in the community he even earned the nickname Angelical Thomas. In other words, by the time Thomas Weir reached the end of his life, he had become one of the most beloved and respected men in all of Edinburgh.

But that was all about to change because only days after the traveling women saw the flaming vision outside his home as he arrived on his sickbed, Thomas began to confess. At first, witnesses thought that it must be his illness talking. Surely it had affected his mind because the sins he was confessing to, they were too horrible, too shocking to possibly be true.

And yet, when physicians were frantically called to examine him, they found him to be chillingly damningly sane. It seems that for all those decades, the pious Thomas Weir had been living a double life. Weir insisted that, although he had never married, he had committed countless acts of adultery and even bestiality with a mare and a cow. Worst of all, he'd been sexually abusing his own sister for years, with whom he had lived most of his life.

And all of this, Weir claimed, represented not even a hundredth of the crimes he had committed. Thomas' sister Jean corroborated his confessions, admitting that she had been a victim of incest from the age of sixteen all the way to the age of fifty, when the pious Major grew tired of her. But not all of Thomas' crimes were quite so human. He also admitted to being a witch and a necromancer. Jean attested to this too. That walking stick that he was never seen without, which sported an eerie human face by the way, Jean claimed that it was a gift

from the devil himself and it was no ordinary cane. No, it had magical powers. Take this quote from Sir Walter Scott, which I particularly love. He wrote, It was noticed that when the stick was taken from him, his wit and talent appeared to forsake him. And it didn't end there. Jean said that their mother had also been a witch and had trained them both in the dark arts. She described rides in a flaming demonic coach and even told of having a spirit as a familiar.

Although, I have to say this last detail doesn't seem too sinister because according to Jean, her familiar mostly spent its time being helpful, spinning, and I quote, a prodigious amount of yarn. But suffice to say, 17th century Scotland wasn't stoked about this litany of sins, and so Thomas and his sister were both arrested. Their trial began on April 9th of 1670, and ultimately he was condemned as a devil worshiper, while his sister Jean was convicted of incest and sorcery.

In mid-April of 1670, the Weir siblings were executed. Jean was simply hanged. Thomas was hanged and then burned at once. When Thomas ascended the gallows, he was told to beg the Lord for mercy, but he refused. Let me alone, he said. I will not. I have lived as a beast, and I must die as a beast. As fire rose around his body, his walking stick was flung into the flames beside him. There, doomed with its master, it seemed to twist and writhe in pain, as if it too were alive. For a century after his death, Major Weir's Bow Street home lay abandoned, at least abandoned by the living.

Ghosts, on the other hand, seemed to fill every nook and cranny. Passersby often saw the home full of lights and revelry, howling ebbed through the cracked windows. The Major himself had been seen wandering the midnight streets and even galloping on a black, headless horse engulfed in fire. Others have seen Thomas and his sister board a spectral coach, which, according to legend, carries them down to hell.

Of course, sneaking up to the house was a common dare among local children. Sir Walter Scott himself wrote, bold was the urchin from the high school who dared approach the gloomy ruin at the risk of seeing the major's enchanted staff parading through the old apartments. In other words, the once-angelical Thomas Weir would be forever known as the Devil. There's something eternally fascinating about double lives. It's why creatures like werewolves and shapeshifters entice us, why we pore over news articles in which seemingly ordinary men turn out to have bodies hidden

beneath their floorboards. And that's why cities like Edinburgh, a city of opposites, will always keep us coming back for more. We can't walk away from the possibility that everything we thought we knew might just be a lie. Setting aside the claims of witchcraft, Thomas Weir was, without a doubt, a monster. He spent a lifetime abusing his own sister, not to mention animals, maids, and more. And whether you believe in the supernatural or simply the cruelties of humankind, that house on Bow Street surely held its fair share of evil. that house on Bow Street surely held its fair share of evil. In 1830, Major Weir's house was finally demolished. At last, the people of Edinburgh would be able to move on from the crimes that had shocked an entire city.

Or at least they thought the house had been demolished. But it seems that, just like its former owner, the Weir house had a secret life of its own. Because, you see, unbeknownst to the residents of Bow Street, the home actually wasn't torn down completely. Instead, a new building rose up around it, obscuring it from view. It seems that for decades, Weir's House of Horrors hid silently within the walls

of a modern Quaker meeting house. Worshippers gathered for prayer and reflection, unaware of the once loathed residents hiding in their midst. In fact, it wasn't until recently that researchers discovered the old house. But luckily, the Quakers seemed to be treating it with the respect it was due. That is, not very much. In the words of Anthony Buxton, the meeting house's manager,

Weir's house is in our toilet, which seems appropriate. Oh, and by the way, Major Weir's double life ended up immortalized in more than just architecture, because his tale is believed to have made an impression on a particular Scottish writer, Robert Louis Stevenson, the author called The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I hope you've enjoyed this wander through the cobbled streets of one of the most beautiful cities in the world. You might not have been able to see it, but the stories we've covered today still paint a powerful and haunting picture. Our tour isn't over yet, though. If having a Scottish pub named after you sounds like a dream come true, think again, because

there's one Edinburgh pub where the trouble might not be worth it. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Men today face immense pressure to perform, to provide, and to keep it all together. So it's no wonder that six million men in the U.S. suffer from depression every year, and it's often undiagnosed. It's okay to struggle, but if you're a man and you're feeling the weight of the world, talk to someone, a friend, a loved one, a therapist.

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But not by her husband. No, the innkeeper's son was to blame. And so, fearing the stigma that would come from such a pregnancy, Maggie kept it hidden. Now, to be fair, she didn't do a great job of that. It was pretty obvious to just about everyone around her that she was very, very pregnant. But still, Maggie denied it, all the way up until the very moment she went into labor. The truth is, we don't know exactly what happened next. Perhaps the baby was stillborn, perhaps it died of natural causes shortly after birth,

or perhaps Maggie herself, wred with shame and fear, ended the child's life herself. Whatever the case, we do know this. After giving birth, young Maggie Dixon ran to the River Tweed, intent on letting the current take a tiny corpse away, but she lost her nerve and instead left the infant on the riverbank, where it was soon discovered. It was obvious to everyone who the baby belonged to, and so Maggie was arrested and taken to the toll booth in Edinburgh to await her trial. Her child was sent to a surgeon for autopsy, and after placing its lungs in water, it was determined that the baby had indeed taken a breath, meaning that it was born alive.

That was everything the all-male jury needed to hear. Maggie was convicted of murder. On September 2nd of 1724, Maggie Dixon was hanged at the Grassmarket Gallows. She was only 22 years old. Now, you might think that this is the end of Maggie's story, but it's not. Apparently, there was something of a scuffle between her friends and some local medical students. Her friends wanted to take her home and bury her. The students wanted to dissect the poor girl for their studies. Ultimately, her friends won out, and it's lucky they did too, because as her coffin was conveyed to her hometown of Musselburgh, Maggie came back from the dead.

As the story goes, the men who were in charge of transporting her stopped along the way for a drink. As they sipped their libations, one of them stood up with a start. He could have sworn that he saw, but no, it was impossible. Still to be safe, the man approached the coffin, lifted its covering, and sure enough, the lid moved. Suddenly Maggie Dixon's corpse sat up and climbed out of the coffin. Apparently, the hangman hadn't done such a thorough job after all.

Inconveniently for her, the whole rising from the dead thing scared off her carriage drivers. But that wouldn't stop Maggie. She got dressed, laced up her shoes, and walked the rest of the way home. Suffice to say, the authorities were stymied. For one, no one knew how she survived. Some rumors swirled, claiming that she had seduced the hangman into loosening the rope, but there's no evidence for that. All that was certain was that Maggie, who was supposed to be dead, was very much alive, and since a physician had pronounced her dead after the execution, her sentence had technically been carried out. According to Scottish

law, Maggie was free to go. Maggie Dixon went on to live another 40 years. The only lingering evidence of her strange ordeal was a lifelong stiff neck and a new nickname, Half-Hang-It Maggie. Oh, and if you're wondering what happened when her husband finally got back, things were a little, well, complicated. But not because of the affair and the baby. No, it turns out Maggie Dine had legally dissolved their marriage, and so the two had to get married again. So if you ever stop for a drink at Maggie Dixon's pub, raise a glass in her honor.

And then, of course, raise it again. This episode of Lore was produced by me, Aaron Manke, and was written by Jenna Rose Nethercott with research by Jamie Vargas and music by Chad Lawson. Don't like hearing the ads? I've got a solution for you. There is a paid version of Lore available on Apple podcasts or Patreon that is 100% ad free. Plus, subscribers get weekly mini episodes called Lore Bites.

It's a bargain for all of that ad free storytelling and a great way to support this show and the team behind it. Lore is, of that ad free storytelling and a great way to support this show and the team behind it. Lore is of course more than just a podcast. There's the book series available in bookstores and online and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime. Information about all of that and more is available over at lorepodcast.com. And you can also follow the show on platforms like Blue Sky and YouTube. Just search for Lore podcast, All One Word,

and click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening. ["All One Word"]