Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh, Scotland

All stories have a past, present, and future. Where a storyteller starts, and ends, is a window into their soul. As you know, I like to begin in a graveyard.

A cemetery certainly sets a tone, and maybe it’s an apt atmosphere for my travel tales. But I didn’t go to Greyfriars Kirkyard for dramatic effect, even if it is listed as one of the most haunted burial spots in the world. I needed a place to launch my quest, somewhere familiar, a place where timelines intersect.

As my shoes crunched along the gravel path, future, past, and present blended together. Above me, looming high on volcanic rock, sat Edinburgh Castle, where I planned to go in the near future. Surrounding me on all sides, graves dating back to the 16th century. Before me, endless paths and possibilities. Where would this adventure take me?

First, the Kirkyard. I ventured deep into the oldest parts, visited the section knowns as the Covenanters’ Prison, and stood in the doorway of the Black Mausoleum of Bloody MacKensie, where a poltergeist is said to live. I expected something dark and scary, but it was a lovely place filled with birdsong, a swath of green in the ancient heart of a city.

If anything, I was drawn to an unmarked corner where tree limbs swayed with no wind, moss clung to grey stone, and a skull and crossbones stared at me, unadorned. I didn’t know who was buried there. I simply payed my respects and moved on. That’s when I noticed the doorways.

Ever since my strange encounter with the green doors in Portugal, I pay attention when I see them. Here in Scotland, among the dead, the doors bore no color. Locked up tight, they remained as dark and elusive as the castle in my dreams that brought me there. That castle–I needed to find it. The vision refused to leave me. But all I had was a hand full of puzzle pieces from my research, my burning desire, and the name, Mary, ringing in my ears.

“I pause here in my history–I will pursue it no further. A sailor without rudder or compass, tossed on a stormy sea–a traveller lost on a wide-spread heath, without landmark or star to him–such have I been.” –Mary Shelley, The Mortal Immortal

~Dawn B