Not Far From Aviemore

by Michael Reuel

III

  The Big Grey Man

  Hold that thought for a moment (or a chapter). Can you seriously not have heard of the Fear Liath Mòr? I had begun this tale presuming we were on firm ground but now learn that I must backtrack in order to fill readers in on the reputation of the world’s most notorious mountain ghost. One can’t help wonder what they teach children to be afraid of these days.

  In order to explain I must presume you have heard of some basic mysteries. I trust that even the most atheistic household will not see their children grow up without the occasional ghost story, or speculation upon the existence of the Loch Ness Monster and the Yeti. There are a whole host of additional spooks and cryptozoological curiosities that a twenty-first century adult living in the Western world will have had to bury their head in the sand to not have heard of; vampires and werewolves have been in stories for years of course, but these days there are also alien abductions, mysterious cat sightings and crop circles that I don’t suppose I should have to educate you on.

  But there are more obscure and peculiar tales as well that are not driven with great regularity through the public consciousness. In most times this in itself would not be a reason to be ignorant of them, but if the habit of the human race to position its gaze at a TV or computer screen more often than at the window or the sky is more than just a fad, then perhaps stories such as Adam Forrester’s will only be remembered upon such devices… and so it falls to me to fill you in.

  Am Fear Liath Mòr in the Scottish Gaelic is loosely translated as ‘The Big Grey Man’. Stories recall a numerous and diverse range of experiences upon Ben Macdui, with witnesses reporting psychological effects as well as visual and aural disturbances, resulting in a phenomenon that offers a great depth of material for paranormal debate. Yet, despite vivid accounts and links to Celtic myth and folklore, views remain sketchy in terms of what actually exists, or has existed, upon the slopes of Scotland’s second highest peak.

  The tallest of the Cairngorm range, second in the British Isles only to Ben Nevis that lies one hundred kilometres to the south-west, Ben Macdui is not only one of Britain’s most majestic mountains, but its very character is tied like no other to mystery and otherworldly affairs. For those whose sentiments drive them to eremitic pursuits on cold and lonely heights, Ben Macdui offers a sensual gateway that cannot be scaled by mental endeavour alone and cannot be touched by the most uncompromising submersion in imaginative reverie.

  Compete it may well do for the affections of naturalists and landscape lovers as fiercely as any other Highland peak, but there are other factors to take onboard when considering the fame of Ben Macdui; that of its Big Grey Man.

  In order to truly appreciate this notorious presence, it is practical to return to the very earliest recorded encounters, leaving out the many oral folk tales unfortunately never recorded, which takes us back to the 1890s, since when even the most remote Highland regions have not avoided moving with the times.

  In doing so I must first introduce you to Professor Norman Collie, whose story of encountering something ethereal upon Ben Macdui caused Adam Forrester, more than a century later, to sit up and take note, not just for the incredible content but also for the manner in which it came to be told and the authenticity it boasted.

  Professor Norman Collie (1859–1942) was a highly-respected climber amongst mountaineering enthusiasts and himself a scientist, being a professor of Organic Chemistry at the University College London. It might be relatively safe in this instance to suppose that a man of such a profession and expertise would not need to seek fame through the fabrication of eerie stories; indeed the process by which the account came to reach the public domain seems to have little to do with Collie himself, having been overheard by a journalist, a Mr Ronald Clark, during a social event in New Zealand attended by mountaineering enthusiasts. No record of this first telling now remains, but Collie later confirmed what he had experienced to the Cairngorm Club in Aberdeen in 1925, though the experience he spoke of occurred back in 1891.

  The thirty-four years that Collie lived before relating his terror on the mountain only came to an end due to the casual request of an acquaintance expressing an interest in his experiences as a climber – a chance conversation that would give way to decades of debate and further accounts that would otherwise be slight at best had he not relented to relate a memory he himself was wary of. Countless climbers have no doubt been pressed in a similar fashion to recount times of risk or danger upon treacherous heights in hostile conditions, but Collie’s response would best most mountaineering stories. Asked to speak of the time when he had experienced the most fear on a mountain, his response was not to speak of an expedition in the Alps or Himalayas, for he had climbed on some of world’s most revered mountain ranges, but on the misty heights of Scotland’s Ben Macdui, and was something he did not claim to understand himself.

  The account is best related by giving Collie’s own words, or at least how they were recorded at the time:

  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 Macdui and I will not go back there again by myself I know.

  Understandably this account was met with a great deal of scepticism, regardless of the esteem in which its teller was held. A certain dose of disbelief can always be respected of course and it is never difficult to imagine a single individual might be unhinged regardless of his status (consider many world leaders of history and indeed the present day). Cynicism becomes less convenient to maintain, however, when an unrelated party corroborates those apparent lunacies.

  In truth, Adam would have found reason to think more on Collie’s tale anyway, having spent a great deal of time researching paranormal accounts by then and feeling by that point he was well-versed in spotting fabrication, fantasy and basic foolishness. The majority of stories came under these brackets sooner or later, with only a handful of genuinely interesting sources left untarnished for the serious paranormal investigator to consider upholding.

  No one had given Collie’s tale the ‘one-legged badger treatment’ (to be explained later), but perhaps the reticence of the teller said something for his integrity. Taken by itself the only real dynamic of the story was that he had felt scared, by no means too far fetched to doubt its authenticity – particularly for those accustomed to lonely heights. Reading the account decades later, it remains devoid of any superstition or ignorance that twenty-first century minds might assume people of bygone days liked to fondle.

  Adam was intrigued, but there was more to come.

  Among those who came across the published story of Professor Collie was a man named Dr AM Kellas, himself a widely respected and pioneering mountaineer who would later lose his life in the first Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition, in 1921. Kellas had cause to be more affected by the article than most because of his own memories of Ben Macdui. Neither did his response, as Collie before him, appear to suggest a desire for public attention, writing first of all to Collie himself and in fact never even recording his own version of events or being tempted to mention it before he discovered his own nervousness towards the mountain was shared by another.

  Unhappily his own words cannot be given, but numerous sources confirm Kellas’s account, within which there was one startling difference: not only did his experience have similar eerie qualities to Collie’s, but he claimed to have actually laid eyes on the Big Grey Man himse
lf.

  On a clear summer night – seeming to have been one of the few times the Grey Man was seen without being accompanied by the unpredictable mists those who know the mountain well can confirm – Kellas was on the summit of Ben Macdui accompanied by his brother. At the time of the sighting Kellas was looking out over the Lairig Ghru pass, his brother resting nearby, when a large figure appeared from the pass and walked round the base of the cairn above which they were positioned before disappearing from view. It would have been surprising to see anyone at all on the mountain at that time of night and in such conditions, but what disturbed Kellas was that the person he saw appeared to be at least the height of the cairn itself, estimating the being’s stature to be a minimum of ten feet.

  If Collie’s account alone was impressive, this further revelation ensured the name of Ben Macdui would always hold an impression of fear and mystery. Kellas’s brother claimed to have seen nothing and so a dual witness could not be boasted, but those already curious began to consider that something other than an outright telltale had occurred. Two men of repute had now claimed eerie but unique experiences on the same heights and the suggestion of a presence on the mountain would, from then on, prove difficult to dismiss; climbers who wondered alone or let their guard down did so at their own peril.

  For several decades, no doubt on the lookout for any further sightings or strange incidents, local newspapers would often report accounts of climbers encountering similar experiences. Although it often seemed unclear as to whether there was physical or spiritual activity on the mountain, the reports contained enough commonalities to suggest they all belonged to the same phenomenon, even if its essence was difficult to define. Rarely has the Grey Man actually been seen, but the sound of footsteps or even the idea that some presence might emanate from the Ben Macdui mists seems to have proven potent enough to put many a climber to flight.

  Numerous are the accounts that can be gathered from over a century of ambiguous disturbances and it is not a misleading observation that the stories eventually became repetitious and eventually journalists stopped reporting them. In this the Grey Man himself must also be to blame for seldom turning up to his own drama, there being a limit to how many times the story of folk scared witless for no clear reason can make it into print.

  For the sake of intimacy, however, there are other accounts that need to be mentioned here in order for us to appreciate the phenomenon of Fear Liath Mòr in all its richness.

  Peter Densham and Richard Frere are two later climbers that too found their way into the canon of Ben Macdui paranormal activity. Densham himself having attested to twice having unexplained experiences on the mountain when stationed in the Cairngorms for aeroplane rescue work during World War II.

  The first happening was a lone one; stopping for a rest above Lurchar’s Crag to eat his sandwiches when a clear day was suddenly interrupted by a descending mist. Again this was not unusual and Densham continued eating his lunch untroubled, despite being aware of the reputation of the mountain. Neither did Densham claim to be troubled by the noises about him, knowing that rock and stone have a tendency to respond noisily to temperature as often do the walls of a house, or indeed by the impression that someone was nearby, being familiar with a sense of paranoia that many climbers testify to having felt.

  What followed, according to Densham, was a crunching sound from the direction of the cairn and, rather than flee as Collie had, he remained untroubled but was no longer indifferent and went to investigate. He was therefore at something of a loss to explain what happened next when, nearing what he felt to be the source of the noise, a sudden and overwhelming apprehension tore through his curiosity and gripped him. Nothing was seen, but it seemed that a psychological barrier had been breached and Densham found himself in flight, describing an ‘overpowering wish to be off the mountain’.

  If his account is to be believed, on running back down the misty slopes Densham narrowly avoided a fall from Lurcher’s Crag after barely collecting his wits and forcing his legs to change direction, despite feeling that someone was pushing him. He also maintained that he did not stop running even until reaching the other side of Loch Coire an Lochain.

  Densham’s second account can be corroborated by a third party as, on the night in question, he was accompanied by his friend Richard Frere. The pair were involved in the search for a plane that was reported to have crashed in the area – a plane that was never found. Having become convinced during the course of their search that the reported crash was a mistake, Densham and Frere split from the search group and made their way to the Ben Macdui summit instead.

  Once again Densham was at a loss to fully explain his experience, but it began when he discovered Frere having a conversation with someone who did not appear to be there. As bizarre as this might sound, Densham’s contribution made even less sense by his claiming to have joined in with the conversation himself, in a dialogue he describes as going on for some time until they both realised no one was there. Afterwards, both men were unable to even say what the conversation had been about – Frere, in fact, having no memory of it occurring.

  A regular visitor to the mountain, Densham never boasted of any further experiences but was reported to believe that Ben Macdui had some kind of atmospheric anomaly that caused a psychological effect on visitors. This speculation leads conveniently to Frere’s own (remembered) account, which was published in a 1948 edition of Open Air.

  On approaching the pass of Lairig Ghru one day, the matter of the mountain’s eerie legends came to play on Frere’s mind and he wrote of his experience as follows:

  I have felt alone in the mountains and have loved it. Even in storms, with sky and mountains raving, there has been no fear of rejection; the upland night has fastened round me like a protecting cloak. Now, however, I was not alone. Very close to me, permeating the air which moved so softly in the summer’s wind, there was a Presence, utterly abstract but intensely real.

  Crossing the shattered rocks that lie in awful confusion around the Pools [o’Dee] I commenced to accost the steep slope down which the March Burn falls. Not for one moment did my unseen companion leave me!

  High above the Pass, just below the crinkled lip over which the Burn tumbles something else became evident to my senses. I had probably been aware of it for some time, but since it appeared to hold no diabolical significance it had been pressed into the background of consciousness. Pausing to draw breath, I was struck motionless; the silence of the mountain was violated by an intensely high singing note, a sound that was just within the aural capacity, which never rose or fell. At first I attributed it to the lowered atmospheric pressure on my eardrums, but a few simple tests soon denied me this theory. The sound it seemed was coming from the very soil of the mountains.

  Frere insisted that the sound pursued him as far as the Rothiemurchus Forest far from the summit, disappearing suddenly once the mountain paths were behind him.

  More amazing is the correspondence Frere had on the matter with another Cairngorm enthusiast, Affleck Gray who, due to old age, could no longer walk the mountains he loved and so spent his time collecting stories on the Fear Liath Mòr, having had no encounters with the mystery himself.

  Frere told Gray of an account related to him by a friend which, if true, might be the most startling experience of terror upon Ben Macdui ever related. Unfortunately, from a chronicler’s perspective, the account risks being overlooked because Frere did not feel he could reveal his friend’s identity and, subsequently, he remains unnamed to this day. With only a second-hand perspective to vouch for this man’s character and level-headedness, it is perhaps only among those swayed by the Fear Liath Mòr’s reputation that the story holds weight.

  On this occasion the unnamed individual was not a regular climber, only being on the summit due to having accepted a bet that he could not endure the cold and lonely heights of Cairngorm’s highest mountain for one night. In this he succeeded, but it cannot be certain he would have accepted the wager had
he known what would occur on that infamous peak.

  The nightly hours were uncomfortable, the gentleman being unaccustomed to being alone on the mountain as with the other climbers whose accounts we have so far heard. It is safe to conclude that he did not take to the serenity of the experience. If he fell asleep at all it was very brief and he remained alert and paranoid of every sigh and shriek of the wind, of every creek or whisper he heard outside of his one-man tent. Nevertheless, throughout the night he remained, seeing through his bet in an uncomfortable and unconvincing manner, but nevertheless completing the wager he had accepted.

  Unfortunately, for those who might like to expound on the pleasures of climbing, it is not likely that Frere’s friend was left with any such affectionate memories, for if his own imagination did not cause him enough anxiety then an experience the bravest of us would find genuinely traumatic was still to come. The sense of apprehension that had tormented him throughout the night gave him no respite, instead manifesting itself in the presence of someone, or something, standing outside his tent. Moonlight still hung in the sky, a stream of which came clear through the material but suddenly obscured by a presence he in no way felt comfortable with. Sheer panic found him, gripping so intensely that he was unable to move or attempt to escape what he believed to be a very real life-threatening situation.

  So, a person’s mind can play tricks on them, might be the conjecture. This man’s imagination got the better of him and he was convinced of a ghostly presence that might merely have been a cloud obscuring the moonlight. This interpretation would suit many of us I’m sure were it not for the bold claim that followed. How long he lay terrified at the lingering presence we cannot be sure, except it must have been far shorter than it felt. When suddenly the presence moved away, relieving the anxiety his senses were drowning in, the unhappy camper was able to gather himself in time to creep towards the tent flaps and look out on who or what was making the footprints heading back down the mountain.

  And there he was – to tell it plain and simple – the Big Grey Man had indeed been obscuring the moonlight and Frere’s friend claimed to unmistakably witness the hulking entity known in the Scottish Gaelic as the Fear Liath Mòr. Further to this, the man insisted he had relative objects in close proximity that allowed him to make an estimate of height, claiming the figure he witnessed to be between twenty-four and thirty feet tall. According to Frere, the teller always left this estimate to the end of his story, no doubt embarrassed by the expressions of bewilderment he received and soon refusing to repeat the story at all. Because of his own experiences and respect for his friend, however, Frere could not believe the facts had just been made up.

  Make of it all what you will – these are not my stories. I have no reason for asking you to believe in anything you might suppose ridiculous by whatever life you have led but, for our scientist Adam Forrester’s sake, it is important to note that these accounts are what stood out to him most amidst the pantheons of paranormal activity that he had immersed himself in to find out more on his own. The tales of the Fear Liath Mòr have not been embraced by tourism or Hollywood movies, unlike the Loch Ness Monster, but are found only in old periodicals or newspaper cuttings, debated by academics no longer alive. Paranormal websites predictably have pages on the matter, but they are largely rehashed content and offer no fresh surprises; certainly Adam didn’t feel he was pursuing some kind of online hysteria. Any hysteria was purely his own, therefore, and that was perfectly okay with him; his expedition had practical motivations, he was not anticipating explaining his thinking to anyone, and any ‘assignment’ he did end up writing would be speculative and impersonal.

  To the Cairngorms and the heights of Grey Man territory he is scheduled and already packed, decidedly logged as his expedition’s first destination – but for what purpose?

  The purpose itself can only be elaborated upon by returning to Adam in his Islington flat, now that any ignorant readers are up to date on the Fear Liath Mòr.

  Adam’s own trail did not begin on snowy heights or ghostly pursuits, but with a photo that linked his fate to a destination on the southern coasts of these Isles that Brits carve up for their own identities; South Devon in the year of 1855 and the mystery that was the Devil’s Footprints.