Edinburgh

his ghostly figure was known as 'Johnny One-Arm' to the people around Dairy in Edinburgh. He haunted the streets of the area, scaring grown-ups and children alike, for more than three hundred years.

John Chiesly lived in the middle of the sixteenth century, an unhappily married man until he finally sought a divorce from his wife in 1688. He then became an unhappily divorced man. The Lord President of the Court of Session, Sir George Lockhart, had pronounced that John Chiesly should pay his wife a substantial sum annually in settlement.

Feeling the sum awarded to be entirely unreasonable, being out of all proportion both to his wife's needs and his own means, John Chiesly decided to vent his anger upon Sir George. He followed him to church one Sunday morning and, catching up with him in Old Bank Close, he shot him. Sir George died, and the full weight of the law descended upon John Chiesly.

He was tortured cruelly to establish whether he had acted alone or with the help of others. Then his right arm was cut off while he was still alive as fitting punishment for its part in the crime his right hand had held the murder weapon. Finally, John Chiesly was taken to the gallows and hanged. His body was left hanging on the gallows as an example and a gruesome warning to all. Then someone -nobody knew who took the body down and secreted it away. Had it been buried? Nobody could, or would, tell.

Ghostly happenings began to be reported in Dairy Several people reported seeing the anguished figure of a man in the streets around the area. The ghost had one arm missing. It screamed. It laughed maniacally. It gave die neighbouring children nightmares. The ghost appeared, again and again, over the next three hundred years.

In 1965, builders started work in a cottage in Dairy. On removing part of the floor they were surprised to find the skeleton of a man. The skeleton was cracked and broken, as one would expect the skeleton of a tortured man to be. Most significantiy, however, the skeleton had only one hand. It could only be John Chicsly. The remains were removed from the house and re-intcrred in another place. The streets of Dairy are at peace now, for Johnny One-Arm no longer has cause to haunt them.

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