Britain's own Bigfoot?

Raymond · Britain's own Bigfoot?

Ben Macdhui is the second highest peak in the UK, a huge mountain with deep corries, situated in the Cairngorms: one of Scotland's finest mountain ranges, and a magnet for walkers, climbers and other outdoor enthusiasts. Ben Machdhui is also reputed to be haunted by something that is popularly known as the 'Grey Man' or 'Fear Liath Mhor' in Gaelic.

Strange experiences have been recorded on the mountain from at least the turn of the twentieth century. Various witness sightings and experiences have amalgamated into a popular image of a huge ape-like misty figure that has the malign power to send people into a blind panic. In an attempt - as some writers have speculated - to push them over the steep cliffs of Lurcher's crag.

The Fear Liath Mhor first came to general public attention when the respected mountaineer Professor Norman Collie addressed the Annual General Meeting of the Cairngorm club in 1925. His experience dated from 1891 when he was climbing the mountain alone. He reported:
"I was returning from a cairn on the summit in the mist when I began to think I heard something else other than 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 footsteps 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 at the top of Ben Macdhui and I will not go there again by myself I know."

This is the first recorded encounter of the Grey Man and caused something of a sensation at the time, creating a lot of interest in the mountain and its possible other-world denizen.

A second hand account exists that the mountaineer Henry Kellas, and his brother witnessed a giant figure on the mountain around the turn of the 20th Century, which caused them to flee down Corrie Etchachan. This has never been verified as Henry Kellas died on the Everest reconnaissance mission of 1921, before Norman Collie's speech to the Cairngorm Club.

In 1945 a climber called Peter Densham reported hearing footsteps and fleeing the mountain in panic. Peter was part of the team that was responsible for aeroplane rescue in the Cairngorms during the war.

Another experience on the mountain by Alexander Tewnion appeared in 'The Scots Magazine', in June 1958. It took place in 1943 when he was climbing Ben Macdhui armed with a loaded revolver in search of game for the pot. He was returning from the mountain by the Corrie Etchachnan track in fear of getting caught in a storm, here is his account of the event:

"I am not unduly imaginative, but my thought flew instantly to the well known story of professor Collie and the Fear Liath Mhor. Then I felt the reassuring weight of the loaded revolver in my pocket. Grasping the butt, I peered about in the mist here rent and tattered by the eddies of wind. A strange shape loomed up, receded, came charging at me! Without hesitation I whipped out the revolver and fired three times at the figure. 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. Many times since then I have traversed MacDhui in the mist, bivouacked out in the open, camped on its summit for days on end on different occasions - often alone, and always with an easy mind. For on that day I am convinced I shot the only Fear Liath Mhor my imagination will ever see."

Another witness encounter involved a one Richard Frere. He was camping on top of the mountain when he saw a large brown creature swaggering away down the mountainside in the moonlight. He estimated the size of the figure at around twenty feet tall.
Author Wendy Wood heard footsteps following her in the vicinity of the mountain, after hearing Gaelic music, and there have been other reports of phenomena on the mountain, from ghostly music, feelings of panic to the discovery of huge footprints in the 1940's.

Ben Machdui is a marvellous mountain in a stunning and prestigious wild area, whether haunted or not the mountain will hopefully remain an unspoiled wild part of Britain into the future.