All guidesEdinburgh Ghost Tours: The Best Spooky Nights Out for Groups

Edinburgh Ghost Tours: The Best Spooky Nights Out for Groups

Edinburgh is one of the most haunted cities in Europe, and it leans into it. There is a whole underground of sealed streets and vaults beneath the Old Town, and a graveyard with a genuinely unnerving reputation. For a group, a ghost tour is a brilliant way to start an evening: a shared scare, a lot of nervous laughing, and you come out right in the middle of the bars. Here are the ones worth booking.

Start with our own tour

If you want it built into the weekend with no faff, our scariest ghost tour is the easy option. We book it, you turn up. Keep reading if you want to pick your own.

The underground vaults

The stone vaults under the South Bridge and Blair Street are the classic Edinburgh scare.

  • Mercat Tours runs the Blair Street Underground Vaults with exclusive access, and it takes group bookings well. More history and atmosphere than jump scares.
  • Auld Reekie Tours does the South Bridge vaults with a darker, more theatrical edge for thrill-seekers.

The buried streets

  • The Real Mary King's Close walks you through actual 17th-century closes sealed beneath the Royal Mile. It is more history-with-ghosts than horror, and it runs timed small-group departures, so book a slot.

The graveyard that means it

  • City of the Dead Tours takes you into the locked Covenanters' Prison in Greyfriars Kirkyard, home of the Mackenzie Poltergeist. This is the genuinely scary one. Do not book it for a squeamish group.

The ones that make you laugh

Not everyone wants to be terrified before dinner.

  • The Cadies & Witchery Tours run a theatrical "Ghosts and Gore" walk with costumed characters who jump out. Daft, interactive and the most stag and hen friendly.
  • The Ghost Bus Tours put the whole group on a vintage Routemaster for a comedy-horror show. Laughs over scares, and available for private hire.

Fit it into the night

A ghost tour lands you in the Old Town at the perfect time to roll into a pub crawl or the best bars. Let us build the whole evening: get a quote or talk to a planner.