Do you ever tell someone a funny story and their response is ... a little below what you hoped? An anecdote going down like a lead balloon often initiates the phrase, "You had to be there". This blog may have to end with those words, as it contains anecdotes relating to our evening ghostly walking tours with "jumper-ooters". We think the stories are amusing, but you'll need to be the judge of that.
A jumper-ooter, for those who came in late, is a person in period costume jumping out of doorways on our evening ghostly walking tours to surprise our visitors. The term was invented by our co-founders Robin Mitchell and Colin Macphail in 1984. If you need further clarification watch the following short video; otherwise, read on.
WATCH: What is a jumper-ooter?
When we started our walking tours in the 1980s, our lead tour guide was a character taken from the city records named Adam Lyal (Deceased). He was dressed as a pale-faced ghost in a large black flowing cloak. Envisage Dracula wandering through the streets of Edinburgh, if you will. Meanwhile, lying in wait in a dimly-lit nearby doorway was the jumper-ooter in the guise of The Mad Monk of the Cowgate: a dark hooded monastic gown topped off with a grisly skeletal mask. What you must appreciate is that such sights were a total novelty at the time, even in the Old Town! As if to prove it, the jumper-ooter's lurking was interrupted as a police car stopped on the road nearby, and two policemen stepped out of the car and started to question the Mad Monk. His explanation that he was about to jump out and scare some tourists did little to reassure Lothian & Borders Constabulary's finest. Nor did his next tactic of gesturing along the road at the ashen-faced "vampire" by now bearing down on the scene, and declaring: "It's ok. I'm with him." Thankfully, after this initial scrape with the law, the local patrols were all dutifully informed of our after-hours eerie activities.
This was not the only incident which involved law enforcement. We had a phone call from the police to say that an actual murder had occurred near one of the locations visited on the tour. They asked us if we'd seen anything (we hadn't). The forensic team had gathered blood from the scene and were mightily perplexed when the lab report confirmed the blood was not real blood! It hadn't crossed our minds to explain to the Police the Mad Monk used theatrical blood on the tour and over the months the fake blood had gathered on the wall nearby. Oops...
On another occasion Adam Lyal (deceased) was walking up the Lawnmarket with a tour group when a car approached, from which four teenagers launched a sailor's thesaurus of four-letter words at the bemused guide, who did his best to ignore the salty tirade. As the car drove several times around the mini-roundabout just below Castlehill, the barrage of bad language continued unabated until the driver, clearly not watching what he was doing, crashed into a street bollard! The tour group (some probably wondering if this was part of the show) burst into fits of laughter, which didn't really help the situation, so Mr Lyal ushered them hastily onward past the scene. We'd forgotten about this incident until an insurance claim arrived at our office. The driver was blaming Adam Lyal (deceased) for the accident. His claim was laughable as he innocently stated on the form, "Dracula appeared suddenly from an alleyway, I got such a fright and drove into a bollard." His description of the incident was accompanied with a hand-drawn map showing the car, the bollard and of course "Dracula" himself! Of course, after the Insurance Company heard the real story, nothing ever happened (to us).
Our most ingenious and effective regular "jump-oot" was one that involved hiding in plain sight: At a secluded loading-bay just off the Cowgate, the jumper-ooter (in skeleton costume and gruesome mask) would hide behind an innocuous wooden board propped on a raised gantry, before the guide brought the group to stand directly facing the spot. The skeleton's surprise appearance always caused shrieks, but this set-piece was also a bit of a magnet for mishaps.
One night, Adam Lyal (deceased) was telling the story of the bodysnatchers Burke and Hare, when the wooden board blew down in a heavy wind and the skeleton was revealed to all the group - smoking a cigarette. A little embarrassing, although not as embarrassing as the night the skeleton did not appear at all because of the extra-loud music coming from the nightclub behind him. When eventually he jumped out ... the group had already gone. One of our jumper-ooters forgot his skeleton mask one night, so he jumped out with a bin-bag on his head with two holes for eyes. Nothing like thinking on your feet. Surprisingly, he seemed to get away with it. The skeleton, after initially appearing, would run through the group and dance at the main Cowgate road. One night a car stopped, the back door opened, and a large Alsatian dog jumped out. The skeleton was chased the full length of the street. We've often wondered what would go through the mind of someone driving along the Cowgate at this precise moment in time. Is that how ghost stories start?
On a busy Halloween night, one of our jumper-ooters dressed as an Egyptian mummy, spent the whole evening hiding in an industrial-sized metal wheelie bin. His job was to pop his head out of the top of the bin throughout the evening to give our tour groups a fright. Things were going swimmingly when the brake on the bin broke and the bin started to roll down the hill. The mummy managed to clamber out of the bin and stop it before it reached the main road. Later that evening, after securing the bin, a passer-by came up and decided to have a pee beside the bin. The mummy, hearing what was going on, couldn't resist rattling the bin violently and the "Phantom Piddler of Old Edinburgh Town" briskly took to his heels.
Our tour guide was in Riddle's Court telling the story of Major Thomas Weir, the "wizard of the West Bow". Part of the story relates to a ghostly carriage, pulled by six black horses, rattling up the Lawnmarket. On this particular evening, as soon as the word "carriage" was mentioned, the group started to hear the sound of wheels approaching them through the narrow alleyway. The sound was getting louder and louder. The group froze. You've never seen people go so quiet so quickly in your life (including the equally bemused guide). There was an audible gasp -- and then -- laughter, when a figure appeared around the corner pushing a trolley: The Satanic coachman was in fact a Tesco delivery man! The very next night, after the guide recounted the previous evening's amusing incident, a man attending the tour revealed that he himself was a Tesco delivery man.
... Wait for it ...
You had to be there.