OKAY, it's pretty powerful gear they serve in the howfs down the Royal Mile these days but, in all honesty, even after a skinful, have you stepped out on to the pavement to see the ``Death Coach'' hurtling by?

I suppose its modern equivalent must be the phantom double-decker bus, number 666 to Pilton, Morningside, or Nowhere, depending on which particular Hell you wish to be transported to.

The coach is just one of a bewildering selection of eerie aspects to Scotland's most famous street, a mile of spectral mayhem with hauntings, curses, premonitions, satanic activities, barbaric executions, and all sorts of unco goings-on, befitting a thoroughfare which has played such a central role in Scotland's story. It has, I think, a good claim to be the world's most haunted promenade.

Mary King's Close on its own would make it worth the entrance money. Located 60ft below the City Chambers it was sealed off in the mid-1600s because of a plague outbreak. Accommodation was scarce in Edinburgh and people began to move back into the houses only to be confronted with a series of apparitions, ghosts, disembodied limbs, headless dogs and cats, which all began to make themselves known.

Again the close was abandoned and swallowed up by building development. Mediums who have visited this strange place say the troubled spirits are still around.

In Edinburgh Castle, ghosts seem to be as numerous as tourists - the steward murdered by his master, a headless drummer, Bonnie Dundee, who appeared at the moment of his death to a noble prisoner in the castle. Then just a wee bit down the road around the Mercat Cross is the territory of the ghostly herald who listed the Scottish dead at Flodden - the night before the battle.

Almost every dark close and wynd has its own macabre tale. You can just believe the stories of the ashen-faced deceased in their grave clothes wandering the streets, peering through the windows and scaring the living half-witless. Little wonder that ghost tours have proved such a hit. There is such a timeless, terrifying attraction about the Royal Mile.

But to my mind, if you wish to find the most diabolic, spooky individual in this vicinity you must take a slight deviation off the Royal Mile towards the old West Bow which linked the Grassmarket to the Lawnmarket. This was the domain of Major Thomas Weir, a Carluke-born military man who behind a facade of sanctimony and public service lived the life of a pervert and wizard.

Out of the blue at a prayer meeting Weir admitted to a lifetime of fornication, bestiality, and incest, aided by his magic dancing staff which could summon up the dark ones.

His friends tried to cover up this confession but the authorities got to hear about ``Angelical Thomas'' and he and his sister were brought to trial, convicted and executed, surprisingly having been acquitted on the witchcraft charge.

But in the public mind the Major was forever associated with diablerie and on occasions, accompanied by his magic staff, he was seen careering up the High Street on a headless horse or arriving in a phantom coach.

This brings us rattling full circle to the Death Coach, which may or may not have been the Major's personal transport, but was often seen immediately prior to a national disaster, hurtling along the Royal Mile, drawn by headless horses, emitting flashes of fire.

That's it, if we're talking national disaster, I'm staying off the Eighty Shilling, at least until this afternoon's match is over. No point tempting fate.