Edinburgh vaults

My Experience in The Cauldron – Edinburgh Vaults

I was on a guided tour through the Edinburgh Vaults, specifically in the area known as The Cauldron, when I had an experience I still can’t fully explain.

We were walking with a guide and using headsets, the kind that help you hear in echoey or noisy environments. As we entered The Cauldron, I suddenly started hearing something strange: voices. A lot of them. It sounded like another tour group was walking nearby—there was talking, laughing, and most notably, I heard the voices of children shouting and laughing loudly.

It went on long enough and sounded so real that I actually started getting irritated. I even “shushed” the sound, thinking someone was being inconsiderate during our tour. But as we moved on, I asked the guide if they were using any kind of ambient audio or sound effects to enhance the atmosphere. She looked at me seriously and said, “Absolutely not. We never use sound effects in the vaults.”

It turned out I wasn’t the only one who heard it. Three others in our group confirmed they also heard the same voices and children laughing.

The whole thing felt incredibly intense—almost like stepping into a different layer of reality. It was so vivid, so real, and yet there was no explanation for it.

Afterwards, I looked up other people’s experiences in The Cauldron, and it was oddly comforting to find that many others have reported similar things. But to this day, I still can’t explain what i heard