There is a nagging unease when navigating Scotland’s capital. Roads transform into bridges dizzyingly high above the ground below, steep stairways and narrow alleys slash through the streets, cobbled stone demands careful footing. Concrete architectural truths seem to be in subtle flux, moving just beyond the periphery of one’s vision. Edinburgh likes to remind a wanderer that they are at its whim.
Rebuilt atop an ancient skeleton, Edinburgh is an undead city inhabiting its own graveyard. Old and new hatch and intersect at striking, awkward angles, the city formed of composite parts stitched together. It is certainly unsurprising that this is somewhere Victor Frankenstein may stop by when constructing his second monster. The very bones of Edinburgh set the stage for literary horror.
Growing up in Edinburgh, Robert Louis Stevenson was acutely aware of the darker character of the city. Although his famous novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1888) is famously set in Soho in London, one can’t help but conjure images of Edinburgh. Its labyrinthine structure could enable a double home where facades are deceptive; its wobbly, uneven streets could suddenly converge and produce violent chance encounters between unlikely companions. When a child is “trampled calmly” by Hyde on a street corner, it is simply a product of the city, the two running “into each other naturally enough.” Stevenson also weaves Edinburgh’s dark history into his Gothic tale, drawing influence from infamous grave robbers Burke and Hare to shape his central character.
In his Romantic triumph The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), James Hogg grants Edinburgh a larger role in constructing the horror. In an energetic scene, heaving crowds disappear into narrow lanes, shielded by vast stone walls, before “vomiting” suddenly into the streets. The most memorable passage, however, occurs atop Arthur’s Seat in which a devilish double emerges from the mist. The hill is essential to Edinburgh’s character, thrusting through the city with a wildness. Standing out against the sharp vertical lancets and spires that form the skyline, Arthur’s Seat rolls above like a dormant feline. Hogg notes its subtle threat as a place outside of human control, painting it in “wild shades,” perhaps with one eye on its volcanic past.
It is no coincidence that Edinburgh is often imagined through a Gothic lens; it has a natural capacity for horror.
Illustration by Katya Roberts, @katyaillustrates