The Grim: Haunted Cemeteries & Graveyard Tales
Jun 16, 2026 · 22 min · 9 segments
The Grim is opening the gate and entering Canongate Kirkyard in Edinburgh, Scotland, one of the most storied burial grounds on the Royal Mile, where the dead have never quite stopped making noise. A…
No entities detected.
Halfway along its descent, tucked behind the sandstone walls of Canongate Kirk, is a place where some of the most consequential minds of the Enlightenment were laid quietly into the ground.
The Canongate Kirkyard has been receiving the dead since 1688, but it's not a grand Victorian acropolis.
What it holds instead are 62 tombs, 114 monuments, and 150 wall plaques pressed against the stone of the church itself.
A dense, compact city of the dead, squeezed against one of the most famous streets in Scotland, walked through its iron gates today, and you're stepping into a place where the stories of the dead have never stopped unfolding.
only to be mourned by the man who owed him everything, the father of modern economics, buried steps around the house where he spent his final years, his grave now a pilgrim's site for scholars from around the world.
Rows of anonymous soldiers lying beneath open grass, their names never carved into any stone at all, and somewhere in this kirkyard, or perhaps nowhere at all, rest a gravestone that's said to have inspired one of the most beloved characters in all of English literature.
But Canongate doesn't give up its dead easily, but it does give up their stories.
The Canongate was, until the 19th century, a separate parish from Edinburgh, a distinct borough with its own identity, pressed up against the city but never quite part of it.
When King James VII converted Holyrood Abbey into a royal chapel in 1687, the Canongate congregation suddenly found themselves without a church.
A new kirk was founded in 1688, completed in 1691, and a generous parcel of ground was purchased alongside of it.
and began receiving burials almost immediately, before the mortar of the church walls had even fully set.
But the parish boundaries that governed who could be buried here held a particular twist, one that would shape the character of this courtyard for nearly two centuries.
By an ancient charter linking Edinburgh Castle to the parish of Holyrood, the castle fell under Canongate jurisdiction rather than Edinburgh's.
What that meant in practice was that the soldiers who died while garrisoned at the castle, one of Scotland's most important military strongholds, were carried down the Royal Mile and laid to rest in the northern section of this kirkyard.
The soldiers, the scholars, the poets, and the powerful would all eventually find their way here.
Halfway along its descent, tucked behind the sandstone walls of Canongate Kirk, is a place where some of the most consequential minds of the Enlightenment were laid quietly into the ground.
The Canongate Kirkyard has been receiving the dead since 1688, but it's not a grand Victorian acropolis.
What it holds instead are 62 tombs, 114 monuments, and 150 wall plaques pressed against the stone of the church itself.
A dense, compact city of the dead, squeezed against one of the most famous streets in Scotland, walked through its iron gates today, and you're stepping into a place where the stories of the dead have never stopped unfolding.
only to be mourned by the man who owed him everything, the father of modern economics, buried steps around the house where he spent his final years, his grave now a pilgrim's site for scholars from around the world.
Rows of anonymous soldiers lying beneath open grass, their names never carved into any stone at all, and somewhere in this kirkyard, or perhaps nowhere at all, rest a gravestone that's said to have inspired one of the most beloved characters in all of English literature.
But Canongate doesn't give up its dead easily, but it does give up their stories.
The Canongate was, until the 19th century, a separate parish from Edinburgh, a distinct borough with its own identity, pressed up against the city but never quite part of it.
When King James VII converted Holyrood Abbey into a royal chapel in 1687, the Canongate congregation suddenly found themselves without a church.
A new kirk was founded in 1688, completed in 1691, and a generous parcel of ground was purchased alongside of it.
and began receiving burials almost immediately, before the mortar of the church walls had even fully set.
But the parish boundaries that governed who could be buried here held a particular twist, one that would shape the character of this courtyard for nearly two centuries.
By an ancient charter linking Edinburgh Castle to the parish of Holyrood, the castle fell under Canongate jurisdiction rather than Edinburgh's.
What that meant in practice was that the soldiers who died while garrisoned at the castle, one of Scotland's most important military strongholds, were carried down the Royal Mile and laid to rest in the northern section of this kirkyard.
The soldiers, the scholars, the poets, and the powerful would all eventually find their way here.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.