Scotland -- In The Dead Of Night Edinburgh Haunts Visitors

EDINBURGH, Scotland - Each night, when the powers of darkness abide, especially on a wild, moonless night, the great grey stones of old Edinburgh "speak."

Listen! And as they twist up toward the city's castle looming into the blackness, the stones shed dreadful secrets of bygone centuries.

And, if you dare, join Adam Lyal in shadowy alleys, in secluded courtyards. In the depth of night, he tells chilling tales of witches, hangings and plagues, of executions, body-snatchers and ghosts.

If his stories of Edinburgh's murky past don't set your flesh tingling, ghoulish encounters will.

There's not a stitch of plaid on this Scottish guide. Adam Lyal prefers a black cloak lined in red, a tuxedo and chalk-white gloves that match his chalked-white face and hair.

We met after dusk outside The Witchery, a supposedly haunted restaurant not far from the city's hilltop castle. All were forewarned: This walking tour is not for the faint-hearted.

Lyal contends he was once quite dead, having been hanged on the 27th of March, 1811 - "for the mere matter of highway robbery." On Halloween night, 1985, he suddenly reappeared, lantern in hand, to escort these spirited tours.

"My return is no accident, no quirk of time or of nature," says Lyal, who signs his name with the word (Deceased) after it.

"For I've been summoned from my penance to step with mortals into the darker side of this ancient city's history."

Some of Lyal's most gory stories involve witchcraft - not a healthy profession in centuries past. Between 1470 and 1722, more than 4,000 people were burned as witches in Scotland, and more than 300 were executed in Edinburgh.

The accused were usually poor, eccentric or unpopular. One way to identify a witch was to find the "Devil's Mark" - moles, scars or other blemishes - reputedly made by the Devil's teeth. Once charged, you were doomed.

Your fate began with torture. As thumb screws dug into bone, excruciating pain forced a confession. An executioner strangled you and crowds eagerly gathered on the esplanade leading to the castle to witness the burning of yet another witch.

"Can you hear the wails of those innocent souls?" Lyal asks as the wind moaned across the corner where we stood.

"One cry belongs to Elsie Peat, an elderly lady whose mutterings made people believe she was talking to the evil. `Let the Nor'Loch judge her,' decreed authorities in 1589."

Lyal explains that the Nor'Loch was a body of water which used to lay at the bottom of Castlehill. In Elsie's time, witches were considered lighter than normal people. So, if you threw them in, they would float. Only the innocent - those not under Satan's spell - would drown. We couldn't help chuckling at the logic of this medieval deduction.

Pity Elsie. Thumbs tied to her toes, the befuddled woman was tossed into the gloomy waters. She quickly bobbed to the surface, saved by air bubbles caught in her dress. Guilty! The old woman was carried back up the steep hill to meet her demise.

In the days when our "ghostly" guide was a young Adam Lyal, not yet deceased, Edinburgh was hemmed in by walls and the Nor'Loch. The town was densely populated - and smelly. About 40,000 lived in the same area - the Old Town - where 6,000 live today.

Beneath their towering castle, weaving among the tenements were more than 300 narrow lanes. Scots call them closes.

Today, about 40 still wind between the old buildings. Closes are not for the claustrophobic. Some, with ceilings of stone, resemble above-ground tunnels. They're so cramped you can stretch your arms to touch the facing walls.

As we followed Lyal into the closes, it was easy to imagine why so many ghost stories abound in the Old Town.

Suddenly, we let out a collective scream.

A swarthy and stocky man, dragging one leg, abruptly stalked from a darkened crease among the doorways.

Wordlessly, he jostled through our midst into the engulfing blackness. It was the tormented Angus Roy, Lyal said, a sailor who had died here in 1840, vowing revenge against those who taunted him for his infirmities.

The seafarer was one of several "jumper-ooters" who shocked us into shrieks.

Another was a skeleton, slinking along a coal-black alley. Quaking like an old man in fever, it sprang at us from behind a corner - just as Lyal was describing the sinister trade of body-snatching.

In the yesteryears of the 1700s and early 1800s, many of Edinburgh's dead were yanked from their quiet graveyards to be dissected on the slabs of medical schools. One corpse alone brought 10 pounds back then - nearly $700 in today's dollars.

In Adam Lyal's past life, the most common form of death penalty was hanging.

Back in 1789, when he was three, long before he became a thief, a hangman made a good living, not only receiving a considerable salary, but a free house with two acres of ground.

There were other perks too - if a man could bear society's scorn. At Sunday services you had a church pew all to yourself. And, the parson held private communion for you - when the congregation had gone.

Most hangings occurred in the Grassmarket, a square below the castle.

Standing on Victoria Terrace, high above the square, we looked at this arena ringed by buildings, now still and stoic in the night air. It was here that Lyal climbed the scaffold's steps nearly 200 years ago.

"Alas, I was but 25," he lamented. "I would describe my own launch into eternity but the memory is too horrible. Instead, witness the execution of Mary MacKinnon."

We watched the Grassmarket apprehensively, as Lyal bewitched us back to the year 1823 - to the morning of April 16.

"See the crowd," Lyal begins. "More than 20,000 packed like raisins on every rooftop, in every window. Yet quiet prevails.

"You have slept overnight on the Grassmarket to be near the hangman's scaffold. Here comes Mary MacKinnon. She's dressed plainly . . . black silk gown, colored shawl, black straw bonnet and black veil.

"What a deadly paleness on her countenance. The linen cap is being drawn over her features." Lyal shudders momentarily as he recalls the finality of that black hood.

"It won't be long now. The rope is being adjusted around her neck. Wait - she's withdrawing the cap. She wishes to wave goodbye and shake hands with those about her. They're slipping on the cap again and adjusting the rope.

"Here comes the fatal signal! It's over in seconds - only two sharp tugs. Everyone pities the woman, but cannot forgive the crime.

"Imagine, murdering a fellow servant in a drunken squabble at that disreputable tavern," exclaim the beholders of Mary's execution.

"Spiritous liquors respect not persons," they insist.

"Rather, they heighten the folly of the foolish and deprive the rational of reason," we hear.

We night treaders ended our walk beneath the brooding castle.

This giant of stone, caster of shadows for nine centuries, is said to harbor an unusual occupant - a headless drummer.

A sentry first spotted the strange figure in 1650.

Even Colonel Walter Dundas, commander of the castle's soldiers, heard the grim intruder's clank of armor, tramp of feet and slow beat of a drum - a sure sign of impending war.

The prediction proved accurate. English forces surrounded the castle in September, 1650. After three months of siege, on Christmas Eve, the colonel surrendered.

On the night we stood before the castle, no drummer - with or without a head - interrupted Lyal's tale.

However, the mysterious Adam Lyal at last revealed his own secret: In this century, he was born Robin Mitchell and first appeared under Scottish skies about 30 years ago on a sunlit morn.

IF YOU DARE GO:

-- Robin Mitchell's nightly "Murder and Mustery" tour requires advance booking and costs 4 pounds a person (about $7). Meet him at 10 p.m. in front of The Witchery restaurant, 325 Castlehill. Wear comfortable shoes.

-- The tour is run by The Cadies, men and women who bring a touch of theater to jaunts of Old Town. Their stories were gleaned from Edinburgh's records. In the 1700s, cadies were a society of trusted boys who took messages, ran errands and acted as guides. They knew short cuts, the taverns, whereabouts of Lords and Ladies and lots of "wee gossip."

From May through September, The Cadies also offer a "Ghosts and Gore" tour, daily at 7 and 8 p.m., and an "Old Town/Graveyard" tour at 11 a.m.

To contact The Cadies, write 1 Upper Bow, Royal Mile, Edinburgh, Scotland.

-- For more information about Edinburgh, contact the British Tourist Authority, World Trade Center, 350 S. Figueroa St., Suite 450, Los Angeles, CA 90071. 1-213-628-3525.

Joy Schaleben Lewis is a free-lance writer who lives in Milwaukee.