The Greyfriars Poltergeist

It's a regrettable fact of life that the soft faces and tender hearts of youth are doomed to bloat and harden. Few lives illustrate this process of decline as aptly as that of Sir George Mackenzie. A thoughtful prose stylist, MacKenzie's early works Aretina, A Moral Paradox and The Religious Stoic, all written when he was in his mid-twenties, indicate a sensitivity belied by the reputation to which he has been condemned by posterity. He is now, sadly, better remembered as 'Bluidy George', the Lord Advocate whose prosecution of Covenanters seems, even by the standards of the age, brutal and vindictive.

It's fitting, perhaps, that the MacKenzie mausoleum, in Edinburgh's Greyfriars Kirkyard, is surrounded by Covenanters' graves. This might explain the evident bad-temper which, according to some accounts, has persisted more than three centuries after Sir George's death. Poltergeist activity in the churchyard, most virulent in the area around MacKenzie's tomb, has accounted for over 350 reported incidents since 1990. These psychic attacks are largely restricted to unexplained abrasions, though responsibility for the death of Edinburgh spiritualist Colin Grant, who suffered a heart attack weeks after attempting to perform an exorcism at the Mackenzie mausoleum, has also been attributed to Sir George.

It might be argued that MacKenzie's apparent irritation is justified: in 2004, teenagers were charged with the desecration of a grave after simulating sex acts with a skull found within his mausoleum. Organised ghost tours, meanwhile, cause a constant stream of visitors to trample over graves, video-cameras primed for the appearance of Sir George, for whom eternity must seem like a bedroom in the vicinity of a bothersome party. The scratches, bruises and hostile attention of unseen hands routinely reported by tourists seem a reasonable defence against this morbid and constant intrusion.

*Sir George's cruel streak might be explained by his descendency from the Seaforths, cursed to extinction by another MacKenzie - Kenneth, the Brahan Seer.


Sir George MacKenzie