Her past became my future
Wandering round the dark, dank and notoriously haunted Niddry Street Vaults in Edinburgh late one night in 2008, it wasn’t ghosts that were on my mind.
‘I can’t wait to get home and have a cup of tea,’ I thought.
You see, I’m a tour guide for ghost tour company Auld Reekie Tours, which holds regular ghost tours in the Vaults, a series of stone chambers built under the city’s South Bridge.
Back in the 1800s, the Vaults housed slum dwellings where violence and murders were rife. Since then, numerous chilling reports of paranormal activity have led to the Vaults gaining a reputation for being one of the most haunted places in the UK.
Strangely, though, I always felt safe and at home there. Well – most of the time!
On this occasion, I was closing up the Vaults after the sightseers had gone home. I walked round blowing out candles and checking doors were shut.
Who’sbehindyou?
Suddenly, I heard footsteps behind me. Thinking someone must have wandered in from the pub up the street, I turned around.
But it wasn’t a tipsy reveller standing there - it was the shadowy spirit of a young woman. She had long hair and was wearing a dark dress - and she was staring right at me.
I’d seen spirits since I was a child. But standing in the dark, face-to-face with a ghost, was too much even for me and I ran for it!
I’ve seen the same ghost in the Vaults again since. The spirit, who’s called Elizabeth, has also spoken to me through a medium attending a paranormal investigation there.
‘She was a prostitute murdered by one of her clients here in the Vaults in the 1800s,’ the medium explained to me. ‘That’s tragic,’ I said sadly. Fascinated by all things paranormal, I
love my job taking tourists around the Vaults and Edinburgh’s spooky Greyfriars graveyard. I tell them spine-tingling tales about the city’s dark history of ghosts, witchcraft, torture and murder. Apparitions
I often see ghostly shadows and apparitions in the Vaults. I believe spirits like Elizabeth come to me because they know I can see them. They want to talk to people, have their stories heard.
Growing up in Stornoway on the remote Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, I saw spirits including a little Chinese girl in the house belonging to my grandma, Florence, who was a medium.
But when I started school, the other kids picked on me because I wasn’t like them. Badly bullied for not fitting in, I was spat at, called names, even punched. The bullying happened day in,
Why did I feel so at home in Edinburgh’s haunted tunnels? Ewan Armstrong, 36, from Edinburgh
day out. It got so bad that I even contemplated suicide.
Vowing to be free to be myself, I moved to Edinburgh aged 25 with nothing but a suitcase and £230 in my bank account.
Tourguide
I became a ghost tour guide, started working in the Vaults. As soon as I set foot in the place I felt as if I belonged there.
‘I’ve come home,’ I told myself
It’s not just the paranormal that fascinates me. I’m passionate about history, too.
That’s why, in July 2017, I went online to research my mum Annie’s side of my family tree.
Scrolling down an ancestry website, my hand stopped dead as I stared in amazement at the handwritten, faded document on the screen...
It was a register of births from 1878. Edwin Townsley, I read, Niddry Street, Edinburgh.
Edwin Townsley was one of my ancestors - and, back when the Vaults were slum housing, he’d been born there!
That’s why I felt so at home in the Vaults. My relatives had lived in the same damp caverns I worked in every day. ‘That’s amazing!’ I gasped. I discovered I had lots of uncanny similarities with other ancestors, too.
One, a lady called Esther Mullen, was imprisoned for witchcraft in the 1830s. The gift must have come down through the family because as well as being a medium, I regularly do tarot and palm readings.
Another of my ancestors was a jazz singer in the 1920’s. That has been passed down too, because I love singing and regularly perform as drag queen Duchess in full Georgian costume, right down to authentic corsets, shoes, wigs and make-up.
In 2017, as Duchess, I even entered The X Factor. Judges Simon Cowell, Louis Walsh, Nicole Scherzinger and Sharon Osbourne put me through to Bootcamp, where I reached the final 50. It was such a huge thrill.
Now, I live a rich, fulfilled, happy life. I’m proof you can overcome bullying, and I go into schools to talk to pupils about the subject. If I can stop just one person from bullying someone else, that’s one less victim. Toughtimes
And I appreciate what I have even more when I think about the appalling conditions my ancestors were forced to live under in the Vaults. With poverty, crime and casual violence to contend with, as well as the dank and squalid living conditions of the underground tunnels themselves, their lives must have been so tough.
You never know what’s travelling with you genetically. It’s as if I’m honouring my ancestors with my life. So many things about them are still in me. It all fits into place. And who knows - because my ancestors lived there, I could even be related to some of the spirits in the Vaults! To find out more about Duchess, please go to Instagram @ theduchessoff
One of my ancestors was a singer - like me!