Ben MacDhui - Fear liath [View all]

[MichaelMcGuire]

Am Fear Liath Mòr

It is December 1925 and the highly respected scientist Professor Norman Collie is in Aberdeen to talk to his peers at the 27th Annual General Meeting of the Cairngorm Club. What his audience doesn’t know is the Professor is about to send a shock wave through the mountaineering world with his speech an a personal experience he had 35 years ago…

“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. Every few steps I took I heard a crunch, 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 will not go back there again by myself I know.”

Professor Collie’s outburst was unexpected to say the least, he was described as an unshakable man certainly not given to flights of fancy. He was an experienced mountaineer, in fact ‘Mount Collie’ in Canada and the ‘Sgurr Thermaid’ (Norman’s Peak) on Skye were both named after the prominent Professor.

After the Professer spoke about his terrifying experience during that fateful Cairngorn Club it didn’t take very long for other mountain climbers to start talking about their own strange experiences but had previously to embarrassed and worried that they would not be taken seriously so had kept silent. Collie received a letter from an Dr A. M. Kellas telling the Professor of his own experience on Ben MacDhui. He and his brother had just reached the top when they saw in the distance a strange man walking towards them. This in itself may not be too frightening, but the height of the creature and the determined strides it was making towards the brothers certainly was. Scared witless they fled as soon as it disappeared down into a dip, not waiting to see it reappear.