Is There a British Bigfoot on Ben MacDhui?

Between Aberdeenshire and Moray, in the Scottish Cairngorms is Ben MacDhui.  It stands 1,309 meters (4,295ft) high. 

Snow and mist cover the wilderness of its peaks and summit.  But something else may lurk up there too.

It's variously called The Greyman or the Big, Grey Man of Ben MacDhui.  The locals know it by its Gaelic name, Am Fear Liath Mòr.

The creature looms up out of the mist, indistinct through poor visibility half the time, but huge.  Very huge.  Eyewitnesses have reported that it stands as much as twenty feet tall.  Those familiar with the area point out wryly that mist can exaggerate size as a kind of optical illusion.

It is there, and then it's gone.  A shape in the landscape, with loud, resounding footsteps.  Those encountering it most frequently add how their instinct rang into overdrive; a primal panic sending them hurtling down the mountainside, often too close to the cliff-edge for safety.

These are not just hiking tourists.  Ben MacDhui (pron. Ben Mack-Doo-ey) is not a mountain for amateurs.  People climb that with spikes and crampons, camping equipment and training behind them.  It's not a gentle environment, and it's way too easy to lose your way in those perilous conditions.

Yet the Grey Man chases them into the unknown; and those who have seen it know that it exists.  But what is it?

Professor John Norman Collie was a well respected scientist.  His great gifts to the world included the discovery of the first oxonium salt; as well as important research, which led to the first x-ray.

He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1896, in recognition of his contribution to Chemistry.

Professor Collie was also a mountaineer, climbing peaks in the Alps, Himalayas and the Caucasus.  He also climbed Ben MacDhui.

He kept silent about what he experienced up there for nearly thirty-five years. He thought that it would harm his career, if he spoke out about such things.

By 1925, he was close to retirement, and it didn't matter so much if his colleagues laughed.  He'd already impressed them enough in other ways.  They knew him to be a reliable witness, a detail oriented scientist, and an academic in his determination to uncover the truth.  Professor Collie was not a man to let his imagination and emotions dictate his conclusions.

The Annual General Meeting of the Cairngorm Club was where he recounted the events from 1891.  He'd been alone on the high slopes of Ben MacDhui, when he became aware that he was being followed.

"I began to think I heard something else than merely the noise of my own footsteps." The Professor told the assembled mountaineers.  "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."

He stopped and looked back, but visibility was so bad that nothing presented itself in the heavy mist.  Nor could he tell the direction of the sound.  The mist muffled that too.  Though a calm, rational man, he began to panic.

"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." 

Professor Collie didn't see the creature, but he heard it.  He could not discern, even after so many years of pondering upon it, what had caused those heavy footfalls.  He concluded his speech with the words, "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."

Amongst those who heard Professor Collie's tale was a mountaineer named Alexander Tewnion.  A local man, he was well acquainted with the Cairngorms and there is no record of his initial reaction to the story.

But it was certainly at the forefront of his mind, when he had his own encounter in 1943.

Tewnion was hunting on the slopes of Ben MacDhui.  It's home to large herds of reindeer, as well as other hardy, mountain animals.  If he fancied some nice venison for his pot, then it seemed that he was not alone in that.

Out of the mists, a large shape loomed.  It was huge and hairy, grey all over, and coming right for him.  In shock, Tewnion suddenly recalled all that Prof Collie had told them.  Close on that thought was a second memory.  He'd got a gun in his hand.

As the gigantic creature charged, Tewnion shot at it three times.  But it kept on coming! 

He didn't wait for more, but turned on his heel and hurtled down the mountainside.  It wasn't until he reached the lower peak of Glen Derry that he slowed his pace.  He'd finally noticed that the Grey Man hadn't followed him.  It had merely wanted to chase him away from the summit and the deer.

Tewnion concluded, "You may ask was it really the Fear Laith Mhor? Frankly I think it was."

Nor was he the only local expert to be scared off the mountain by something strange.  Peter Densham was a member of the Cairngorms Search and Rescue Team, during World War Two.  He knew Ben MacDhui as well as anyone could.  He was used to both climbing it and flying over it in a airplane.  He was the one who guided other people to safety!

Two years after Tewnion's terrifying encounter, Densham had one of his own. He was trudging along the slopes, when he heard the loud crunch, crunch of something incredibly large and heavy coming towards him.

Well aware of the earlier tales, he didn't wait to see it himself.  He fled down the mountainside, until the footsteps faded behind him.

The stories told above are by no means the only ones.  But they're very much indicative of all the rest.

Just last week, I was listening to a podcast (mp3), which was primarily telling ghost stories.  One slipped into the greater realm of the uncanny by relating the experiences of two women camping in the Cairngorms.

Overnight, something circled their tent.  It was large enough to vibrate the ground beneath them, as the petrified women lay huddled in their sleeping bags.

They were on the foothills of Ben MacDhui and this occurred quite recently.

Then there are others, like the account of an anonymous friend of author Richard Frere.  That gentleman witnessed a humanoid, bipedal figure meandering down the lower slopes of the mountain.  It was covered in brown fur.  By his reckoning, the creature was twenty feet tall!

Whenever it's stated that there are no Sasquatch in Britain, someone will always nod pointedly towards Ben MacDhui.  The description fits it well enough. If any one of those sightings had occurred in Bluff Creek or Washington State's Olympic Peninsula, then everyone would be screaming Bigfoot.  So why not Scotland?

For many Sasquatch experts, the desolation of Ben MacDhui's summit doesn't look very 'Squatchy.  There are no trees at all, let alone the vast forests so beloved of Bigfoot. But that's only the mountain slopes.  Down at the bottom are the remnants of the once all encompassing Caledonian forest. 

Over ten million trees are in Rothiemurchus Forest alone; and the rest of the National Park has trees covering 370,000 acres.  All accessible from Ben MacDhui, where the reindeer herds graze.

Could that be 'Squatchy enough terrain for a Bigfoot?