Haunted place · Scotland, United Kingdom

The Witchery

Updated November 20269 sources How to visit

A restaurant in a 1595 house by Edinburgh Castle, named for witches burned on Castlehill. Folklore says one haunts it; the restaurant makes no such claim.

The story

Known in full as the Witchery by the Castle, this restaurant with suites sits at the very top of Edinburgh's Royal Mile, right beside the esplanade in front of Edinburgh Castle. The short stretch of street here is called Castlehill.

The main building is Boswell's Court, a tenement put up in 1595 for a merchant named Thomas Lowthian. His initials and a pious motto, "O Lord in thee is all my traist", are still carved over the doorway. The court later took its name from Dr John Boswell, a physician with a reputation for eccentricity, who made his home there and received visits from his nephew James Boswell and from Dr Samuel Johnson, the subject of James Boswell's famous biography. (The restaurant's own website calls the physician "James Boswell", which appears to be a slip.) In later centuries the Church of Scotland used the building for offices and as a rectory. It is listed at Category A, Scotland's highest grade for historic buildings.

By the late 1970s the tenement was run-down and the Royal Mile had a poor reputation. In 1979 a 20-year-old chef bought the site and opened a restaurant, becoming the youngest licensee in Scotland. It started with three employees; today it employs more than 70. The restaurant is generally credited with helping revive Edinburgh's Old Town as a destination. Around 1989 to 1990 (sources differ) it expanded into part of the old Castlehill School playground to the south, creating a second dining room called the Secret Garden, and the upper floors were turned into suites. Further suites were later added in the neighboring 17th-century Jollie's Close. In 2024, for its 45th anniversary, the business opened a luxury goods shop in a Georgian building on Castlehill.

The name is the darkest thing about the place. Castlehill was where people convicted of witchcraft were burned in the 16th and 17th centuries. The restaurant's own history page speaks of "many hundreds" of victims and says that more people were put to death there during the reign of James VI than anywhere else in Scotland. A small fountain known as the Witches' Well, at the top of Castlehill opposite the restaurant, commemorates them.

The legend

Local folklore says that the restaurant is haunted by one of the people burned as a witch on Castlehill. That is essentially the whole story. Some travel guides speak of women burned at the stake under James VI, others more vaguely of the ghosts of former inhabitants. No source we found gives the ghost a name, a date, a description or a specific sighting.

The earliest mention of the building as haunted found in our research is a Seattle Times travel article of November 1991, which calls it "a supposedly haunted restaurant" and leaves it at that. The restaurant itself does not make ghost claims on its official history page. No paranormal investigation or television episode about the Witchery was found.

What the Witchery does have is a real and well-documented link with Edinburgh's ghost-tour industry. In 1984 Robin Mitchell and Colin Macphail founded a walking-tour company called The Cadies. The restaurant's founder saw them on television and suggested a themed walk beginning at his door, in keeping with the restaurant's gothic style. According to the tour company's own history, the first Witchery Murder and Mystery Tour ran on Halloween 1985 (Wikipedia gives 1984, the year the company was founded). The business became The Cadies and Witchery Tours.

The tours are theater, not investigation. The 1991 Seattle Times article describes a guide called "Adam Lyal (Deceased)", played by Robin Mitchell, who introduced himself as a highwayman hanged on 27 March 1811. Lyal is a costumed character invented for the walk, not a ghost of the restaurant, though the two are easy to confuse in online retellings.

In short, the Witchery's haunted reputation rests on its name, its grim location and the ghost walks that start outside, rather than on any recorded experience inside the building. The executions on Castlehill, on the other hand, are history, and the Witches' Well is a sober reminder of them.

What remains today

Boswell's Court survives with its 1595 doorway, initials and carved motto, and the official site calls its suites "fabulously theatrical." The Secret Garden dining room occupies the former school playground behind. Suites are spread across Boswell's Court and Jollie's Close, and the restaurant keeps a guestbook signed by famous visitors such as Jack Nicholson and Margot Robbie. The Witches' Well memorial stands across the street.

Visiting

The Witchery is an open, working restaurant and small hotel, so the legal way in is simply to book a table or a suite; it is popular, so reserve ahead. We found no ghost-themed visits run by the restaurant itself.

For the spooky side, The Cadies and Witchery Tours still runs evening walks, such as the "Ghost and Gore" and "Murder and Mystery" tours, which leave from outside the restaurant and last about 80 minutes, led by a costumed "deceased" guide. These are entertainment with real Old Town history woven in.

Take a moment at the Witches' Well opposite, which is free to see at any time, and remember that it honors real people executed after accusations of witchcraft.

The ghosts

Spirit

The burned witch of Castlehill

Said to be Said to be one of the people burned for witchcraft on Castlehill in the 16th-17th centuries; never named

Local folklore holds that a person executed for witchcraft on Castlehill haunts the restaurant. No name, description, date or specific sighting is recorded, and the restaurant itself makes no ghost claims.

First reported: Haunted label found in print by 1991 (Seattle Times). Reported by: Local folklore; Wikipedia; travel guides