Ghost Tours

(Edinburgh, setting of the following tale)

I don't like horror movies. I tend to put down horror novels I'm reading after chapter 5 or 6, either because I'm too creeped out to keep going, or because I've become too bored by the writing style (sorry horror writers - I'm sure most of you are really good, it's just sometimes you stumble across those few uber-predictable authors...).
So why is it that I love ghost tours so much?
I pondered this question while my fiance, my friend Sarah and I scaled the cliffs of Edinburgh to follow not one but two ghost-tour-guides on Saturday night.

(some of the cliffs we scaled - admittedly not all the way. Yet...)

Our feet were already dead after dancing until 4 am the night before, and my fiance didn't bring a coat for the below-zero-Celcius Scottish evening. But still we labored onwards, determined to soak up as many tales of the town in its medieval days as we could.
One tour took us to parts of the underground city in Edinburgh, which is awesome enough even if you're not on a ghost tour.

(some images of the underground hallways, discovered when a college student noticed a hollow sound coming from his bedroom wall, and hacked through the plaster with a sledgehammer. Note: this is not recommended on rented properties, in general)

At first I thought perhaps that was the draw. But the second tour bypassed the underground altogether, and took us to a famous cemetery at the heart of town instead. So that couldn't be it.
The first tour guide told her stories in a deliciously creepy way. But the second put a humorous spin on the gruesome tales he shared, and I enjoyed both tours equally. So it couldn't be their style that drew me, either.
It could be the romantic European setting - but I'd been on a midnight ghost tour in Philadelphia, and loved that just as much.
Then, at the end of the night, one of the guides joked about how, after telling stories for sometimes eight hours a day, she would lapse into tour-guide mode when on the phone with her parents or when talking to friends. And that's when I realized what I loved so much about ghost tours: these guides got paid to tell stories. I've met guides on tours down in York whose full-time profession is story-telling. It's hard to find many positions where you can still make a living spinning yarns, nowadays, but ghost tours are one option.
Another, less surefire/lucrative option would be writing, I suppose.

In other news, proof that we made it at least part-way up the cliff that is King Arthur's seat:

(me with Her Majesty's swans in the background)

(the fiance standing in the door of 10th century chapel ruins)