West Bow / Old Town area, Edinburgh, Scotland
Incident period: Trial and executions in 1670; later haunting traditions collected in the nineteenth century
A black staff which runs errands, a coach heard thundering through sleeping Edinburgh and a calf-like figure standing at a couple’s bed: the haunting of Major Weir’s house grew far beyond the seventeenth-century trial. Robert Chambers preserved the layers together, giving a disturbing portrait of how a public scandal became part of the Old Town’s supernatural geography.
The respected man and the staff
Chambers places Thomas Weir in the religious community around the West Bow. Before the scandal, he had a formidable reputation for devotion and compelling prayer. The older description reproduced in Traditions of Edinburgh presents a dark cloak, a downcast manner and a black staff upon which he leaned while speaking.
The staff later acquires a life of its own. In local stories it can answer the door, carry a message to a shop or go ahead of Weir like a servant carrying a light. These are not practical abilities established in a courtroom examination of the object. They are part of the folklore which made a recognisable possession into a supposed source of power.
Confession, custody and punishment
Weir became ill and made confessions which horrified those who had regarded him as exemplary. Chambers says the provost initially found the allegations difficult to believe. Weir, his sister Grizel and the staff were eventually taken into custody, together with money found hidden in scraps of cloth around the house.
The account dates the trial to 9 April 1670 and Weir’s execution to 14 April. He was sentenced to strangling and burning, while his sister was condemned to hanging in the Grassmarket. Their alleged offences and the punishments belong to a real historical prosecution. The later supernatural explanation of everything they did is another layer, shaped by the beliefs and fears of the period.
The sister’s coach and the news from Worcester
Chambers reproduces Grizel’s story of a fiery coach coming to the door and taking brother and sister towards Dalkeith. During the journey, another person supposedly passed news of the Scottish defeat at Worcester before it could have arrived by ordinary means. The episode joins an extraordinary vehicle with a claim to distant knowledge.
He also records stories about her spinning and a mark on the forehead. The collector comments critically on the confessions and the mental state of the accused. His account is therefore more complicated than a celebratory tale of two people openly practising magic: it includes punishment, illness, confession and the later writer’s discomfort with what had happened.
The tall woman and the laughing close
An older printed narrative quoted by Chambers describes a gentlewoman and her maid walking near the Bow around midnight. Women appear at windows, laughing and clapping. Then a figure about twice a woman’s ordinary height moves ahead of the pair, always keeping in front as they try to examine it by lantern light.
The apparition turns into a narrow close, where lights and loud laughter seem to fill the space. The women hurry home. In this tradition the street itself becomes an uncanny stage: a normal walk between households changes into a sequence of impossible proportions, elusive movement and noise issuing from a place which should be quiet.
A house which stayed alive in people’s stories
Chambers says the house remained feared and unoccupied for a long period. It was said to shine with lights and emit dancing, howling and spinning sounds despite its apparent desertion. Weir could be imagined riding out on a headless black horse or receiving a coach-and-six which rattled along the Lawnmarket and down the Bow.
Those sounds give an absent household a kind of continuing routine. The coach arrives, waits and departs; the spinning resumes; occupants who should be dead appear to spend another night at home. The narrative does not supply a roll of named witnesses for every occurrence, so these episodes are presented as the traditions collected by Chambers.
William Patullo’s first and last night
A later attempt to let the house brings in William Patullo and his wife. The source presents him as a former soldier and traveller prepared to take a cheap home despite its reputation. Their arrival attracts considerable local interest, as if they are about to reclaim a place which everyone else has abandoned.
On the first night, while they lie awake by the dim remains of the fire, a calf-like form approaches the bed. It puts its forefeet on the bed frame and looks at them, then withdraws and disappears. They leave the following morning. Chambers relates this as the failure of the letting experiment, without providing a precise calendar date for the encounter.
The map uses the West Bow area rather than claiming to identify an unchanged haunted room in a modern building. Old Town streets and structures have changed, and the source’s present tense belongs to its own publication history. Major Weir’s enduring case is the accumulation itself: a recognisable man and staff, a terrible prosecution, and generations of stories through which the neighbourhood continued to imagine his return.
Timeline
9 April 1670 — trial date in Chambers’s account.
14 April 1670 — Weir’s execution in the collected chronology.
Following generations — staff, coach, horse and deserted-house traditions develop.
Undated later letting — William Patullo and his wife’s reported calf encounter.
1825 onwards — Chambers’s Traditions of Edinburgh carries the stories into print and later editions.
Sources & further reading
Robert Chambers, Traditions of Edinburgh, Major Weir section — Public-domain historical and folklore account, read in full; distinguishes the prosecution from the house’s later traditions.
Related case files
Mary King’s Close: the Coltheart apparitions, Annie’s doll and Edinburgh’s hidden rooms
Gill Hall and the Beresford apparition: the black ribbon, the death pact and the family manuscript
Location note: Broad West Bow / Old Town reference, not a claim that a particular modern private room is Weir’s unchanged dwelling.
UKPX historical case file. Researched and checked 4 November 2026. Explore the UK case map · Links & Sources.