Well, the third Edinburgh GhostFest is over. It was most definitely bigger than the previous two years’ events – but was it better? For the first GhostFest in 2005 I was pretty much able to go to everything – no clashes of programmes and not too many events spread out over the week. This year, it would have been impossible to see and participate in everything (even I need to sleep). With so many things happening and a number of events running as parallel threads, some choices had to be made.

For those who aren’t familiar with the GhostFest, it’s a series of events in the centre of Edinburgh, one of the worlds most haunted cities (but most places claim that, don’t they?). Set up by the owners of The Real Mary King’s Close attraction, it involves a number of ghost orientated groups with an interest in the city. I don’t know whether it’s the most haunted city in the world but Edinburgh definitely seems to have the greatest number of ghost tour companies of any place I’ve ever visited!

My first session involved two visits in one – The Real Mary King’s Close followed by the Blair Street Vaults. Both of these are billed as underground attractions, but this is mostly down to the peculiar building habits of previous Edinburgh town planners. Mary King’s Close was once a narrow street running down the side of a hill. Over the years, extra stories have been added and the original street was eventually roofed over; much of it is now under the City Chambers. The Blair Street Vaults are a similar set up, but in this case the greater part is built under the arches of a bridge (a very big bridge, I hasten to add).

In Mary King’s Close we were told the standard history along with a few ghost stories to put us in the mood and we were also shown Ciaran O’Keeffe and Steve Parson’s infrasound generator – more of which later. The session took place in the company of a researcher and psychic from Scottish Paranormal. Now, if paranormal events are happening I would prefer to experience them myself and not through a psychic. Last year we had the dreadful Ruth the Truth, but at least this evening’s psychic was happy to report on what she felt was there rather than embellish things, and she was quite willing to say that she was not feeling anything. And truth be told, nothing much was happening psychically that evening. We then moved to the Blair Street Vaults with only the Mercat Tours Guides to protect us. Again, we were told atmospheric stories and, again, nothing happened.

Next it was back to Mary King’s Close for a session of EVP, with Ghostfinders Scotland. Using digital dictaphones we went from room to room hoping for spirits to communicate with us. And sticking with the theme of little activity we did not get as much as in previous years, although som ematerial was picked up on the dictaphones. The original files can be found here - give them a listen and make up your own mind. An interesting experience.

Sticking with EVP, I soon found myself visiting the Covenanter’s Prison, site of the McKenzie Poltergeist incidents and available to visit through the City of the Dead Tours. Again, the original files from this session can be found online at here so you can make up your own minds about what you can hear. One interesting experiment was to use the dictaphone inside a Farady cage so as to exclude the possibility of picking up stray radio waves. The effectiveness of the cage was demonstrated by placing a mobile phone inside; the phone, which had been demonstrated to work in this location, resolutely refused to function when placed in the box. And indeed, material was recorded using this technique. Again, it was a slow night in the EVP stakes however.

Then I returned to Mary King’s Close for one of their regular tours. Or possibly not. Determined by the toss of a coin, this tour would have an infra sound generator operating throughout its whole length. At the end of the tour we were asked to fill in a questionnaire looking at our attitudes towards the paranormal and then, more specifically, what experiences we had had. I had no experiences to report but I felt that the infrasound was probably switched on; I subsequently found it was indeed on and due to the architecture of Mary King’s Close it sets up standing waves and nodes of positive and negative reinforcement. A bit of wandering around and you could indeed convince yourself that there were areas which felt different. We were promised a set of preliminary results at the end of the Festival – so you’ll have to wait a bit.

A quick rush from here to something called “Fully Conscious in the Realms of Comprehension”. The GhostFest brochure described it as: “The whys, wherefores and wherewiths of clairvoyance, divination, intuition and pre-cognition – a lecture by Audrey Yeardley, writer, poet and healer.” It sounded interesting and I gave up the chance to go on a Paranormal Investigation and a ghoulish pub quiz to attend.

Which turned out to be a mistake.

The audience members just managed to outnumber the presenter and her friend and the talk was a long, rambling set of anecdotes from Audrey Yeardley’s life, with very little about the promised topics. How I wished I had been at the paranormal workshop or the ghoulish pub quiz or somewhere having pieces of bamboo inserted under my fingernails. There is a market for this sort of thing, and while some of the attendees enjoyed it, I did not.

Back on safer ground with more EVP, this time at the Blair Street Vaults with Ghostfinders Scotland (and again the tapes are online here). One of the beauties of these sessions is the sheer amount of time you get to spend in these fascinating locations and the freedom which is not normally experienced on the standard tours. Again, it wasn’t the most active visit, but to be honest the failures impress me almost as much as the successes. After all, if fakery were involved, surely EVP would work every time; by the same token, if the explanation is mundane then presumably Evp would still work very time. It may be real, it may be the audio version of a Rorschach ink-blot test, but it is certainly fun – and if you don’t look you don’t find!

The proposed Paranormal Investigators Workshop was cancelled; but at least it meant I didn’t have to run to make it to yet another EVP event at the Camera Obscura. As usual we met with mixed success; the files are online here.

A different experience was promised by the Scottish Storytelling Centre offering something called Through the Veil at John Knox’s House. Edinburgh’s oldest house played host to a historical re-enactment of John Knox and his contemporaries in a promenade style. It was very well put together but I do question it’s inclusion in a ghost festival – it was pure history with not a single ghostly happening throughout; had I gone to it with this in mind I probably would have enjoyed it more.

After this, I was ready for another visit to Greyfriars Kirk for a late night vigil with Richard Felix. The first thing to note is that Richard didn’t seem to have a clue as to what was happening – even though it was very clearly advertised as his event! A series of workshops in different tombs was the order of the night. We divided into groups, intending to spend time at each area checking out what was happening. Richard would move around in the opposite direction to us, ensuring that he also saw everything on offer and that every group had a session with him. Firstly, a quick EVP Session. Unlike previous sessions we would not be analysing the sound files on site, as logistics dictated otherwise. Again, the sound files are online, and again the most noticeable thing is the lack of much happening.

Richard Felix, who sells himself as a paranormal investigator, clearly had not come across EVP before and he seemed to be continuing to cater for the Most Haunted market. We moved to another vault where mediums would be describing the spirits they could detect and someone using an identikit software would produce a ghostly representation. Except they hadn’t bargained for the batteries on the laptop running out. No spare battery, not battery on charge, and without the computer it just wasn’t going to happen. So we stood around in the rain, listening to Richard talk about things he knew nothing about, a fact which was made painfully obvious when Ciaran O’Keeffe and Steve Parsons got into discussion with him. The event then sort of drifted off into something approaching an end. Apparently, there was one other group to show us things, but for some reason we didn’t see them. I’m afraid this was not City of the Dead’s finest event, and it had gone wrong from the point where people had been told to meet at two entirely different locations for the start of it. A bit better communication is in order, I feel, but it was a nice try at using a wide range of techniques.

The final event of GhostFest was a preliminary report on the infrasound experiments – Ghostly Vibrations, at Mary King’s Close. The preliminary results can be viewed in more detail online. Now, the title can be read in two ways: either the ghostly vibrations were being discussed at Mary King’s Close or the happenings at Mary King’s Close were being talked about – not necessarily in the same place! I didn’t read the programme properly and turned up at Mary King’s Close only to find that the actual event was on the other side of town and it was due to start in ten minutes time. Well, only missed the first couple of minutes.

Firstly, there is already infrasound present in Mary King’s Close, caused by traffic, cooling units and just the everyday things that occur around Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. So any infrasound added by the investigators was additional infrasound. Of 439 responses, 249 people had the generator on and 190 did not. Approximately one third in each reported some sort of experience but twice as many people in the augmented infrasound group reported multiple experiences (36% compared to 16.4%), similarly this group was four times as likely to report a feeling of a temperature rise (20% and 5%). Other experiences included a feeling of being watched, nausea and anxiety. So it seems that with added infrasound there are more multiple experiences along with a perceived increase in temperature. A more complete analysis of the results will be written up and published in due course but a tentative conclusion does seem to be that infrasound is having an effect – lots more work still to be done though!

So that was it. I missed a series of talks with various paranormal writers, some sessions on how not to investigate the paranormal and some good old traditional ghost tales. The range of events on offer was far superior to previous years, though I had found one event very poor and another hampered by a lack of communication and inadequate organisation. But, overall, standards were very high, and whilst we weren’t treated to incontrovertible evidence of ghostly happenings, that’s just the nature of the beast.

So, based on the first three years of the Edinburgh GhostFest I predict the event will go from strength to strength and I’m already looking forward to next years offerings.