We’re featuring a guest writer (or ghost writer. ha.) on the blog tonight. Milagran Becky is an actual real life professional writer. One time she complimented my writing and made my day week month. Here she is telling a ghost story about why she values Milagro-time.
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I recently visited Edinburgh. If you’ve never been, I highly recommend it. Scotland is lovely, and Edinburgh is a remarkable, very historic city.
It’s also supposedly one of the most haunted cities in Europe.
Now, in our travels, my husband and I took many walking tours. They were good exercise and educational. They enabled us to learn stuff without having our noses shoved in some nerdy guidebook or facing the shame of taking bus tours. We’re uncool, but we’re not that uncool, you know?
So, we took a walking ghost tour of Edinburgh. And our tour included the infamous Edinburgh vaults.
The vaults are a series of enclosed rooms under a bridge. They were originally intended for use as storerooms for the businesses at the bridge’s street level. However, the dark, windowless spaces quickly became tenements and then a red-light district. Bad stuff went down there.
Today, the vaults are haunted by a number of ghosts, including one super-bad spirit who has been reported to scratch, push, and terrorize visitors.
Did I mention we did this tour by candlelight? And it was mildly terrifying?
It was mildly terrifying except for one area of the vaults called The Cobbler’s Room. The space had been the workshop of a cobbler, back when legit businesses still used the vaults. The ghost of the cobbler is said to work there still. This space is also where many children’s spirits have been detected.
The cobbler welcomes visitors. He’s created a tranquil, welcoming space. It’s so peaceful that the bad ghost won’t cross the threshold.
It was about this point in the tour when our guide “accidently” blew out her candle and a couple of people gasped. But I gasped because whether you believe in ghosts or not, it was a pretty powerful lesson.
Create a space so peaceful that the bad won’t even look your way.
It’s easy to think about creating a peaceful home, a physical space so tranquil that the mean girl from high school would never deign to stop by – even if she knew what “deign” meant.
But no. Creating that peaceful, impenetrable space is about fortifying not your environment, but yourself. It’s about being centered, aware of yourself and accepting. It’s about being so comfortable in your own skin that no ghost or mean girl can hurt you.
Easier said than done.
But for me, a path to finding my center is to actually take time for myself, to spend that precious resource on activities that nurture my body and soul. It’s standing in the sunshine for an extra minute, or getting a much-needed massage. It’s surrounding myself with people, animals, and items that bring me joy and connect me with the real me – not the me who worries about that mean girl and what she said about how I rolled my jeans in 1990.
It’s a journey. And sometimes a massage table is actually the fast lane toward inner harmony.
Becky Brown is a Kansas City-based writer who loves dogs and massage. If she could train her dogs to massage, she would never leave her house. You can find her at
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