Ghosts of the Past

And that brings us nicely on to our final group of Edinburgh inhabitants, some of who are still around today - the ghosts. And there are plenty of them.

It is fitting that we should begin with a ghost, or rather an apparition that had a profound effect on the city itself. One Sunday in 1128, King David I was intent on hunting the slopes of Arthur's Seat, against religious advice to the contrary on the Sabbath day. While out, he was attacked by a marvellous stag and removed from his horse. The great stag was about to finish the job when David grabbed its horns and was amazed to see a large cross appear between them. Being a religious man, he grabbed for the cross to save him…and the stag disappeared. David vowed to build an Abbey of the Holy Rood (or Holy Cross) near to the site of the event, and so he did.

But most of our ghosts are of the human form, and few of them have such holy intentions as the mythical stag.

In 1688, John Chiesly wished to divorce his wife, but could not agree to a settlement that would care for her and their eleven children. He was bound to agree by the decision of the court. Said court, presided over by the Lord President Sir George Lockhart, decided that the family deserved £93 a year from John, a large increase on his preferred option of nothing at all. Feeling hard done by, Chiesly decided to take his revenge on Lockhart and so he did, shooting him through the chest in broad daylight after an Easter ceremony. The Edinburgh Mob came running and Chiesly was carted away to face justice. The justice he faced involved torture to discover any conspirators, and when these were ruled out, his right hand, which held the gun, was cut off and placed on a spike for all to see, while John himself was hung in chains from the Gallow Lee with the offending weapon around his neck. Up until now, this is no different from any other such story in Edinburgh's annals, but this was to have a more interesting denouement. Chiesly's body was removed by an unknown person and shortly after a ghost given the name of One Armed Johnny was found to be rampaging around Dalry, laughing, screeching and screaming. Johnny was seen again and again for three hundred years in the area, until, in 1965, workmen removing a hearthstone in Dalry found a skeleton with its right hand missing and a gun hung about its neck. Johnny's body was properly re-buried and the ghost of One Armed Johnny was never seen again.

Many of Edinburgh's ghost stories revolve around the forgotten passages of the underground city. One such legend centres on a little drummer boy. A passage was supposedly found underneath Edinburgh Castle and the City Council were concerned about the obvious security risk. The opening, however, was extremely small, and thus a young boy (probably used to climbing up and down chimneys, as boys in those days were) was sent into the tunnel to investigate where it led. The elders then followed the boy's drumming from above ground as it led them down the High Street. What they hadn't thought through was what exactly they intended to do if the drumming stopped, which it abruptly did just next to the Tron Kirk. Should they send another boy down to see what had become of the first? What if he met with the same fate? They didn't have an inexhaustible supply of boys to keep sacrificing down the tunnel. So the Councilmen, in their wisdom, decided just to block up the tunnel to prevent anything coming out of it, leaving the boy to his presumed fate. Apparently, to this day, on quiet nights, a feint drumming can be heard beneath the High Street just near the Tron, and one tourist in 1994 fainted on hearing the story when in the Kirk, having moments before been wondering what that funny drumming noise she kept hearing was!

During the Revolutionary War in America, one General Robertson of the British Army returned to Scotland with his servant, Tom, who, in less Politically Correct days, became known as "Black Tom". They stayed at an ancient house, called Wrychtishousis, as the General's house was being renovated. After their first night, Tom complained of being disturbed by a ghost in the night, specifically, a headless woman carrying a baby who would cross his room from the cupboard and then turn and return to it. Tom begged for another room, but the General, convinced this was the work of drink, refused and forced Tom to stay in his allocated room. For three months Tom begged the General to move him, but he still refused and, eventually, Tom gave in, but his health suffered and he became very thin. Finally, the renovations were finished and the General and his poor servant removed themselves back home.

Years later, after the General's death, his niece received a visit from a friend whose family now lived in Wrychtishousis. She compared notes with the servant, knowing he had once lived there, and sure enough they had the same story of the headless woman and her ghostly baby. When the building was being converted into a school and hospital years later, the built in cupboard in the room was removed to uncover boards which had clearly been raised at some stage and then re-laid. They lifted the boards to find a homemade coffin, containing the headless body of a woman and a small baby, inside a pillowcase, clutched to her chest. There was also a note from the murderer, explaining his guilt.

Apparently, many years before, the owner of the house had been sent to war and was killed, leaving his total inheritance to his infant son in the care of his young wife. The man's brother was outraged at this and in a fury, killed the mother and son so he could claim the inheritance for himself. In order to hide the evidence, he had made a coffin himself to bury them in, but his measurements were awry and the coffin was too short…so he cut off his sister in law's head to make her fit in the box!

In the area of the Botanic Gardens over a hundred years ago, a strange and solitary man lived at No.17 in a well-respected street. His only caller was a charwoman who would twice weekly come to his home to bring him his provisions. After his death, the charwoman locked the house tight and it lay empty for years, until stories began to circulate of late night parties on the upper floors, overheard by the residents of numbers 16 and 18. But no one was ever seen to enter or leave the house. The talk abated after a while, until it was mostly forgotten. Then, in the early throes of World War I, the house was completely gutted and converted into a guesthouse for an English couple, who then moved in to run the house.

The first signs that something was not right came when two different chambermaids claimed to hear voices from an attic bedroom, but upon entering, found the room empty. The room was generally not used, because of these unnatural occurrences, until the guesthouse came to be overbooked and a young married couple were given the keys for the attic room. On approaching the door, they heard voices and assumed they had been given the wrong room number, so rang the bell for service. An old woman by the name of Mary Brewster responded and entered the room to prove there was nobody in there at all. But as soon as she entered she let out a shattering scream, and it was the last sound she ever made. She was found rigidly clinging to the bedpost, staring straight at the ceiling in terror, and although she lived on, she never spoke another word.

News of this reached some local students and one, Andrew Muir, finding his curiosity overpowered his fears, determined to sit alone in the room one night, with two bells, one small and one large. The small bell was to signal anything unusual happening, while the large bell was to be a call for aid to the owner, who was sitting in the downstairs room. At 10:00 pm Muir entered the room. After only ten minutes, the small bell was rung vigorously, immediately followed by the panicked clanging of the larger bell. The owner flew up the stairs and flung open the door to find Muir literally frightened to death in his chair, staring up at the ceiling.

The owners decided to retire and the house was boarded up again for the rest of its days, before the entire street was eventually demolished, taking with it whatever terror had shown itself to Mary and Andrew.

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