There is a legend of a giant that lives on Ben Macdui in Scotland. The mountain is said to be home to many eerie experiences for those who dare to climb.
What appears to be the first recorded story took place in 1791. James Hogg, a poet, was tending his sheep up on the mountain when he became startled by a creature appearing before him.
"It was a giant blackamoor, at least thirty feet high, and equally proportioned, and very near me. I was actually struck powerless with astonishment and terror."
He was so frightened that he fled down the mountain. He finally returned the next day to look for and gather his sheep, only to once again be confronted by the creature. As he reached up to remove his hat, he discovered the creature seemed to mimic him. That was then he realized that he was seeing his shadow in the fog. He had been a victim of "brocken specter" or "mountain specter", which occurs in foggy conditions when the sun is at a particular angle. A person's shadow is cast onto the fog creating the illusion of a large shadowy figure.
In 1891 Professor J. Norman Collie had a strange experience on Ben Macdui, although he did not speak of it until years later.
“I was returning from the cairn on the summit in a mist when I began to think I heard something else than merely the noise of my own footsteps. For every few steps I took I heard a crunch, and then another crunch as if someone was walking after me but taking steps three or four times the length of my own. I said to myself, "This is all nonsense". I listened and heard it again, but could see nothing in the mist. As I walked on and the eerie crunch, crunch, sounded behind me, I was seized with terror and took to my heels, staggering blindly among the boulders for four or five miles nearly down to Rothiemurchus Forest. Whatever you make of it, I do not know, but there is something very queer about the top of Ben MacDhui and I will not go back there again by myself I know.”
His story sparked an interest in strange encounters on the mountain and more hikers began to talk of similar experiences. They had been reluctant to speak about them prior to this, afraid of being ridiculed. These experiences included feelings of being followed, sounds of footsteps following, feelings of dread and panic, and other strange sounds.
Norman G. Forbes claimed to have heard a mysterious clanking noise while hiking on the mountain one summer. He later attributed the sound to be coming from two deer.
In 1904 Hugh D. Welsh, climber, heard a sound of "slurring footsteps" and had "an eerie feeling of apprehension" while on the mountain.
In the 1920s, while on another nearby mountain, Tom Crowley, an experienced mountaineer, reported that he heard footsteps coming up behind him. When he turned around, he saw a huge grey mist shrouded figure with pointed ears, long legs and finger-like talons on its feet. He fled down the mountain.
A 1943 experience was published in 1958 in The Scots magazine by Alexander Tewnion, naturalist and mountaineer :
"...In October 1943 I spent a ten day leave climbing alone in the Cairngorms... One afternoon, just as I reached the summit cairn of Ben MacDhui, mist swirled across the Lairig Ghru and enveloped the mountain. The atmosphere became dark and oppressive, a fierce, bitter wind whisked among the boulders, and... an odd sound echoed through the mist – a loud footstep, it seemed. Then another, and another... A strange shape loomed up, receded, came charging at me! . . . When it still came on I turned and hared down the path, reaching Glen Derry in a time that I have never bettered. You may ask was it really the Fear Laith Mhor? Frankly, I think it was."
1945 saw more reports. Peter Densham, mountaineer and rescue worker, heard a "crunching noise" near him and was "overcome by a feeling of apprehension."
Richard Frere, author and climber, talked of a friend who was camping on top of Ben Macdui. He claimed to see a large brown creature, at least 20 feet tall, going down the mountain.
In 1948 Frere also wrote about his experience on the mountain. He was overcome by a sense of "a Presence, utterly abstract but intensely real" and that he heard "an intensely high singing note."
Wendy Wood, author, claims to have heard footsteps following her when she was in the area near the mountain.
Huge footprints were also found in the area during the 1940s.
The 1939 book "Always a Little Further" by Alastair Borthwick, contained two accounts of experiences by climbers.
'The first was alone, heading over MacDhui for Corrour on a night when the snow had a hard, crisp crust through which his boots broke at every step. He reached the summit and it was while he was descending the slopes which fall towards the Larig that he heard footsteps behind him, footsteps not in the rhythm of his own, but occurring only once for every three steps he took.
"I felt a queer crinkly feeling in the back of my neck," he told me, "but I said to myself, 'This is silly, there must be a reason for it.' So I stopped, and the footsteps stopped, and I sat down and tried to reason it out. I could see nothing. There was a moon about somewhere, but the mist was fairly thick. The only thing I could make of it was that when my boots broke through the snow-crust they made some sort of echo. But then every step should have echoed, and not just this regular one-in-three. I was scared stiff. I got up, and walked on, trying hard not to look behind me. I got down all right - the footsteps stopped a thousand feet above the Larig - and I didn't run. But if anything had so much as said 'Boo!' behind me, I'd have been down to Corrour like a streak of lightning!"
The second man's experience was roughly similar. He was on MacDhui, and alone. He heard footsteps. He was climbing in daylight, in summer; but so dense was the mist that he was working by compass, and visibility was almost as poor as it would have been at night. The footsteps he heard were made by something or someone trudging up the fine screes which decorate the upper parts of the mountain, a thing not extraordinary in itself, though the steps were only a few yards behind him, but exceedingly odd when the mist suddenly cleared and he could see no living thing on the mountain, at that point devoid of cover of any kind.
"Did the steps follow yours exactly?" I asked him. "No," he said. "That was the funny thing. They didn't. They were regular all right; but the queer thing was that they seemed to come once for every two and a half steps I took." He thought it queerer still when I told him the other man's story. You see, he was long-legged and six feet tall, and the first man was only five-feet-seven.
Once I was out with a search-party on MacDhui; and on the way down after an unsuccessful day I asked some of the gamekeepers and stalkers who were with us what they though of it all. They worked on MacDhui, so they should know. Had they seen Ferlas Mor? Did he exist, or was it just a silly story? They looked at me for a few seconds, and then one said: "We do not talk about that." '
Sasquatch? Ghost? Monster? Imagination?
Who knows. As the gamekeepers and stalkers say :
"We do not talk about that."
Nancy
"I'll spark the thought; what you do with it is up to you."
 |
| Ben Macdui |
Very good
ReplyDelete