On-scream: Edinburgh tour guide moves ghost walks online

Christina Evener takes both locals and tourists on spooky city tours while they are comfortably seated at home.

An Edinburgh tour guide whose business has stopped due to the Covid-19 outbreak has decided to move her tours online.

The pandemic has changed the life of many workers in the last few months.

While many have been able to continue working from home, others unfortunately have had to put their careers on hold.

Christina Evener, entertainer and tour guide at Edinburgh Walking Tours told STV News: “You can either sit and think, oh my goodness I’ve got no job, or you can do something about it”.

She decided to post an advert in an Edinburgh Facebook group to see if people were interested in joining her for an online ghost tour and she received more than 100 replies in one evening.

‘I think it just gives people another thing to do, morale is low because people are not getting out and doing things.’

Christina Evener

“I think it just gives people another thing to do, morale is low because people are not getting out and doing things,” she said.

Christina said bringing the tours online is not only good financially but, is giving her the opportunity to still interact with people while telling the stories about the city she loves.

She added: “I think it’s harder to do a tour online because I love having people in front of me, I love seeing their reactions.

“I have to work hard and I have to be able to look at the pictures and just remember how good the story is to then be able to tell it with the same intensity.”

The tours are targeted at both locals, who maybe do not know the city as well as they think they do, and also tourists who may have had to cancel their trip to Edinburgh this summer.

STV News tuned into one of Christina’s tours to see what it is really like to embark on a ghost walk while being comfortably seated at home.