Chester then back to Edinburgh

Last weekend, that of the 20th/21st, I went to Chester, England. It's a rather small town about an hour train-ride south of Liverpool. Chester is well known because it used to be a Roman fort way back when Romans settled in Britannia. I really enjoyed all of the architecture and the history of this place. We walked along the wall, went to the amphitheatre, saw a midsummer festival (a pagan tradition celebrating the summer equinox), and so on. There is a castle there but unfortunately it was closed down due to health reasons. Perhaps because of swine flu but honestly I don't know. Either way, it was a fun day trip. The rest of the weekend we just hung out. It was a nice break

This past weekend I went back to Edinburgh for what was suppose to be just one night. I will explain in a bit. We left Friday morning and had an awful train trip. We missed our first train, the earlier train, and so had to take a later one. Then all the way there, people keep reserving seats so we had to get up and move around constantly and a lot of the time we had to stand. Then we all had to switch to another train because the air conditioning unit in the driver's car was broken and so he couldn't stand the 70 degree heat. Hah! So we switched to another train and thankfully got to sit down the rest of the way. We got to Edinburgh, checked into our hostel (which was a nice place, conveniently located), and went to the museum. It's huge and has lots of history in it, including the stuffed remains of Dolly the first cloned sheep. From there we did a little shopping and then went on a graveyard tour. This particular tour takes you to a locked part of Greyfriar's Cemetery called the Covenanter's Prison.

Let me give you a quick history lesson. Way back when in, I believe, the 1700's, Reformation swept across Britain. The king wanted to establish a united church and so wanted to convert all of the churches to this one religion. However, there were many who resisted and gathered within Greyfriar's Church to sign a covenant, some say they signed in blood, to God that they would keep with their current religion until death. Well the king didn't like this very much so he rounded up all these guys and threw them in the prison there in graveyard. They were forced to live in this outside prison through the Scottish winter with little food and practically no shelter. Many, many died terrible deaths from starvation or just frostbite and hypothermia. That is why it is called the Covenanter's Prison.

The reason this place is locked it because there have been hundreds of reports of supernatural activity in the prison. People have claimed to feel nausea, feel ice cold on their bodies, bruises and scratched the appear as if out of nowhere, and over two hundred people have just been knocked out by something unseen. Most believe it is something supernatural. All of this started in 1998, although there have been reports of ghostly encounters in the area for a long time.

The man wholly responsible for the imprisonments and deaths of the Covenanters was a man by the name of "Bloody" George Mackenzie. He has a mausoleum about twenty yards away from the prison. In 1998, a homeless man broke into the mausoleum and disturbed the burial site. He broke into the coffins of Makenzie, his wife, and his daughter, looking for jewels or anything that he could sell. In doing so, he unleashed something. This something is believed not to be Makenzie himself but some poltergeist that was unleashed from the mausoleum and so it was named after the mausoleum and not the man, thus named the Makenzie Poltergeist. Said poltergeist is said to inhabit the Covenanter's Prison, along with hundreds of ghosts of tortured souls.

So we took a tour through their. Unfortunately, I did not experience anything. But I did have a sense of uneasiness throughout the whole tour, perhaps it was just psychological. I am definitely a skeptic but I have heard and seen enough to believe that there are many unexplainable, supernatural things out there.

After the tour we went back to our hostel and watched Michael Jackson videos all night. We had a TV in our room and the channel was playing them as a tribute to the king of pop.

The following day we went to the art museum, which was wonderful (lots of Monet, Degas, and some Van Gogh and Raphael, among others). I climbed the Scott Monument which is a very tall monument in tribute to Sir Walter Scott, one of the most famous literary persons to come out of Edinburgh. There are a total of 287 steps. I climbed 287 steps to the top and then 287 back down to the bottom. The stairs were narrow, as was the staircase itself. I have many pictures to post from this as well as all the other things I've done.

Then after some shopping, seeing St. Giles Cathedral, and lunch with our professor who was there this weekend as well, we went to the Rosslyn Chapel. If you have seen the movie or read the book the Da Vinci Code, this is the chapel that is featured at the end. It is a little different in real life but still wonderful to see. The family that owns it is part of the free masons, so that part is true. They also have ties to Knights Templar. Supposedly the holy grail or King Solomon's gold or the arc of the covenant or many other holy relics are buried beneath the church. It is possible in a way. Underneath is a tomb the same size as the church above. In this tomb is buried the past family members of those who owned the church as well as their families. In fact, they are not buried, they are set out on stone tables, decorated in their armor. This tomb has been sealed for 300 years and no one knows for sure what else is down there. The chapel is currently undergoing renovations to preserve it because it was not built well enough to last, however the architecture inside and out is wonderful. A five minute walk away is the ruins of the Rosslyn Castle. So we hiked down and took some pictures of it. Very nice.

Then we get back to Edinburgh, have dinner, and get to the train station to find out that we missed the last train back to Liverpool for the night by about twenty minutes. So we panicked for awhile, then we went all over town trying to get into hostels and even hotels but everything was booked, typical for a Saturday night in Edinburgh. Finally, we remembered we still had the number to the guy we couch surfed with the last time we were in Edinburgh so we called him up and begged him to let us stay. He did already have two couchsurfers staying but fortunately we got a room and had a safe, quite night in which to rest.

We made it back safe and sound in Liverpool and that is where I am writing this. All's well that ends well. So no worries.