 On our last episode in the country of Scotland, we talked about Burke and Hare, the murderous pair who were finding bodies to bring to the medical school for cadaver work. We spoke about the phenomenon of resurrection men. Resurrection men in this time in Edinburgh were people, men who would go into graveyards and dig up dead bodies in order to again sell them to the medical schools. In that episode, we spoke about all the things the people of Edinburgh were doing to prevent these resurrection men from digging up their dead grandma or family member. One of the practices that the people of Edinburgh would do during this time in the 1800s would, they would build like a cage over the burial plot so that you couldn't get through to dig granny up. Well, there is one cemetery in particular that we're going to talk about today that you can find some of these cages, and this is the Grey Friars Kirkyard. However, the focus of our story today is not going to be on the resurrection men or these particular burial plots that have cages around them. Instead, we're going to talk about a really dark period of Edinburgh's history where Grey Friars Kirkyard was used as a prison. But before we go any further, you know what to do, hit that subscribe button and give us a like. Also again, as always, awesome shout out to our producer, Tiffany Monroe. She is a Reiki master here in Atlanta. If you would like to get in touch with Tiffany, her email address is listed down below. I also want to give a very special thank you to all of our patrons for helping us support this channel. We could not do this without you. So thank you very, very much. Welcome to us with Tara Atlanta. My name is Bryce, and today we're going to talk about Bloody Mackenzie. Ken of European descent. The Protestant Reformation is something that's very important to me. A lot of us can trace our ancestry back to certain communities in Europe that we're going through a Reformation. Now, because our ancestors were pulling away from the traditions of the Catholic Church, they were persecuted. A lot of our ancestors came over to the New World, America, in this time period in order to have religious freedom. Now, I've spoken about on this channel how I do have an ancestor that was born into the English royal family. But like everybody, we have multiple ancestors. And I have another group of ancestors that came over here to the New World to America in 1648 from Northern Germany. They were Protestant. And they were escaping Germany again to seek a new life. They landed in what was then Charles Town, South Carolina. It's now Charleston today because it was a Protestant stronghold. They felt safe going there. Now, it is written that my German line that came over in 1648 was not originally taken in the senses in Charleston because they did not speak English. They were poor peasants who really just wanted a new life and a new shot at freedom. This German line is the Strom family. This was my maternal grandmother's family. She was born Maxine Strom. Her cousin is the late Strom Thurman. You see in the South, it's common for people to get their mother's maiden name. Again, Bryce is my mother's maiden name. So Strom Thurman carried a maiden name. Now Strom Thurman is the United States longest running senator. So you can see this true story of the American dream, a poor German family giving all they could to come to the New World to have some taste of freedom. And about 300 years after they settled here, one of their descendants became a senator. So you see, the Protestant Reformation, everything that happened holds a lot of weight to us Americans. I know it does for Europeans as well. But again, for us Americans, this is what determined our future. And as an American kid, I know that if one person did not get on the boat when he or she did, I would not be here today. I am the culmination of all of my ancestors dreams. My ancestors who gave up everything, again, for that small taste of freedom or so that their descendants, me, could have freedom. So this story of Gray Friars Kirkyard in the prison that happened there during the Reformation is a really important story that needs to be told. Again, Gray Friars Kirkyard is located in Edinburgh, Scotland. Now we say Kirkyard because Kirk is the Scottish word for church. So a church yard. Originally, this property was that of a monastery. And at first in the year 1561, the town of Edinburgh was in need for more land for their burials. Honestly, this reminds me a lot of Oakland Cemetery here in Atlanta. And if you've missed that video in Oakland Cemetery, it was one of our first, I will put a link to it in the description box below. And in 1562, Mary Queen of Scots allowed the city to use this church, this Kirk for the city burials. Now again, this also coincides with the Scottish Reformation. Mary Queen of Scots was a staunch Catholic. She herself deserves her own story because her life was truly very interesting. And I am actually one of her descendants. And those that are well versed in their history of the United Kingdom know that Mary Queen of Scots was part of the English royal family through Margaret Tudor. Margaret Tudor was Henry VIII's sister. Now Henry VIII, as we all know, was famously the English king who had a lot of wives, killed a few of them, and broke away from the Catholic church so that he could marry his second wife Anne Boilene. There was a lot of strife within the Tudor dynasty. And with his children first, it was his son Edward, who was a staunch Protestant, who died young. He then bequeathed his crown to his cousin, Lady Jane Gray, because she was a Protestant. And then his older sister, Mary came in and executed them and became the queen. And she became Bloody Mary because she wanted to bring the English throne back to the Catholic church. And then she died. And Elizabeth I then became the monarch. And she brought England back to a Protestant realm. The pendulum was just basically swinging back and forth. Well, Mary Queen of Scots was Queen of Scotland while Elizabeth I was on the throne. And there was a lot of competition between the two because a lot of people believed that Mary Queen of Scots was the proper monarch and should have been on the English throne because Elizabeth I, mother was Anne Boilene, and people didn't recognize Anne Boilene as a legitimate wife of Henry VIII. Anyway, it would come to pass that Mary Queen of Scots would eventually end up being executed by Queen Elizabeth, her cousin. It was her son, James VI of Scotland, who would then take the throne of England becoming James I after Elizabeth I died, leaving no heirs. Now, the steward line, again, that's where my ancestry comes through in the English family as well as the royal family that's on the throne now. King James I is also the person responsible for the King James Bible. Now, there's almost like a second Reformation, again, happening in Scotland. So not only is there this huge massive split between diehard Catholics and people who want to experiment with this new Protestant faith, but once James is on the throne and his son Charles is born, there becomes this need for the people of Scotland to now fall in line, not only with King Charles I of England swearing loyalty to him, but to also follow the Church of England, which King Charles was the head of. This all came to a head by 1638 when there was the signing of the National Covenant. However, a year before in 1637, Alexander Henderson became the leader of the Covenant movement. Now, the Scottish Covenant are what we call Presbyterians today, and I grew up a Presbyterian. So again, there's all this turmoil between the people and the government. In 1679, we begun the wars of the Covenant in Scotland. Now, two years prior to 1679 and 1677, a man named George McKenzie became Lord Advocate to serve King Charles II. George McKenzie's main job was to punish anybody in Scotland who went against loyalty to the King of England and loyalty to the Church of England. And by the time the War of the Covenant was in full force, George McKenzie had rounded up 1200 Presbyterians and imprisoned them. Now, unfortunately for the prisoners, there was not enough room in the prisons to hold them all. And so Grey Friars' Kirkyard became a temporary prison for 400 people. These are men, women, and children, all who just want to worship God in their own Presbyterian way. Grey Friars' Kirkyard, the temporary prison, became called Covenor's Prison. And the people who were put into Grey Friars were treated extremely inhumane. It seems that George McKenzie really liked torture people. We know that winters in Scotland can be brutal. Scotland is quite up there in the Northern Hemisphere. And so during these cold winter months, George McKenzie would force the prisoners to be exposed to the conditions and the elements of the winter. He would also practice starvation tactics and just general torture. Some of these prisoners were lucky enough to deported. I know that sounds weird to say lucky enough to be deported. Basically they were sent over either to the New World, America, or eventually that would turn into criminals, prisoners being sent down to Australia once America wanted independence. So for a lot of people watching who are of Scottish descent to live here in America, it could be that maybe one of your ancestors was deported over here from Scotland just for being a Presbyterian. Now for the prisoners who were not deported and did not die in starvation or any of the torture tactics, they were eventually executed and buried at Grey Friars. All in all, while George McKenzie was Lord Advocate of Scotland, he was responsible for the death of around 18,000 people. The Scottish people refer to this time as the killing time. Now in Grey Friars Kirkyard today, there is a monument dedicated to all the martyrs who were a part of Covenant's prison. However, when George McKenzie himself passed away, this is where he was buried too. George McKenzie, who was then given the nickname Bloody McKenzie because of his psychotic need to torture people and kill them, eventually died in 1691. And in the Kirkyard, he has his own mausoleum. Now about 300 years after the death of George McKenzie, a homeless man made his way into George McKenzie's mausoleum either looking for shelter from the cold or perhaps grave robbing. Regardless of why he ended up in the mausoleum, it seemed to have woken up Bloody McKenzie's poltergeist. And Bloody McKenzie's or George McKenzie's poltergeist has now made Grey Friars Kirkyard one of the most famous attractions in Edinburgh. Since the homeless man broke into the mausoleum, there have been reports of at least 500 people being brutally and aggressively attacked by this ghost. And I'm talking physically attacked. There was one story of a woman who was found unconscious by the mausoleum with bruises around her neck. She could not remember what had happened. Other people experienced scratches and burns. They walk out bleeding from this horrific poltergeist still living in the Kirkyard. It appears that George McKenzie's poltergeist is even more vicious in death where there are no boundaries than he was in life. Either that or hell rejected him because he was just too evil to be even in the likes of hell. In the year 2000, a man named Colin Grant tried to do an exorcism on the mausoleum. He said that he experienced over 100 souls that were trapped within the Kirkyard as well as one very evil spirit. Unfortunately, Colin Grant was unable to exercise the Kirkyard. And again, unfortunately, about a week after he attempted to exercise the Kirkyard, he himself died of a heart attack. Now, if you're in Edinburgh and you go to Greyfriars Kirkyard, yes, of course, the main attraction is the poltergeist of George McKenzie or Bloody McKenzie. There are some other famous graves as well. One happens to be my favorite, which is the grave of Bobby. Bobby is a dog who died on the 14th of January in 1872. He got a special place in the cemetery because it appears that his owner died of tuberculosis about 12 years prior to Bobby's own death. Legend has it that Bobby would go over to his owner's grave every day within loyalty to be with his owner. There's also the grave of James Douglas. Now, James Douglas was a nobleman from Scotland from the 1500s. This nobleman got his head chopped off in 1581. Now, they say after his beheading that his body was buried, but they left his head on a spike until they actually asked for it to be taken down, and they ended up burying the head with the body. Humanity was a lot more gruesome back then. You also have the grave of George Buchanan, who was one of Scottish historians. Legend also has it that J.K. Rowling herself wrote the Harry Potter series in a cafe very close to the cemetery. Now, I'm not a Harry Potter fan. I've never read any of Harry Potter's books, but apparently a lot of the names that she used for her characters are names that can be found in the cemetery. Grave Ryer's Courtyard is definitely another location on my list of things to see when I'm able to get back to Scotland. I would love to know if you yourself have been to Grave Ryer's or if you've experienced any of this poltergeist activity while you were there, or in any other famous cemetery around the world. I would also love to know if you are a descendant of any of the prisoners who were held in Grave Ryer's, whether you're an American and you know you have an ancestor that was sent over here, or whether your ancestors survived or went elsewhere. Let me know because that is a very important story. Now, coming up next week, I am going to try to give you a couple more videos for the Christmas holiday. There is some whispering about the possibility of something happening this weekend that might delay our videos. I have to be careful about what I say because of the algorithms on YouTube. We have a huge eclipse coming up on the 21st. Apparently, we're going to be able to see the Star of Bethlehem, which is pretty much the alignment of these planets like Saturn and Jupiter. Now, again, this did happen in like 7 BC at zero degrees Pisces. And again, that was the Star of Bethlehem. And now we're going to be at zero degrees Aquarius, which is pretty cool because that means we're really going into the Golden Age or the Age of Aquarius. So please, please, please make sure you take care of yourself and you take care of your family and your neighbors and your friends. And hopefully I will see you back here on Monday. I am going to go ahead and film Monday's episode and next week's episodes today and tomorrow with the hopes that they will be released to you. But if for some reason they're not, just know you'll have some videos waiting for you when all of this is over. All right, guys, I hope you have a wonderful day. If you would like to purchase our opening song, there's a link in the description box below. Again, thank you so much to Todd Roderick for helping me get this video out once again, have a wonderful day. And thank you guys all for being here. Bye.