Our monthly mini-monster series will keep you properly spooked until our new, full-length season launches this September. To kick things off, we're introducing you to the Am Fear Liath Mor, something that lurks in the Scottish Highlands.
We're back! Well sort of. Because we know monsters are an all year interest, we're bringing you our mini-monster series; a new story every month that'll keep you spooked until our new full-length season launches in September.
This month's monster is something that calls the Scottish Highlands home. Something that makes a lonesome mountain in the mist of Scotland feel all the more ominous. Do you hear those footsteps behind you?
We’re back… well, sort of. The full second season of Camp Monsters will be coming to your ears in September of 2020, but because we know that monsters are a year-round interest, we’re excited to bring you our very first mini-monster episode.
If this is your first time listening to Camp Monsters, welcome! For the best experience, we recommend diving into our first season before you start on these mini monster episodes, so you can enjoy the full-length spookiness that you deserve.
These short monthly mini-monster stories will introduce you to mysterious creatures from around the world. Most of our full length episodes feature monsters who call the United States their home, so we decided to stretch our legs a bit and see what might be lurking in the lonely parts of other countries. These mini-monster stories will take you across oceans and up mountains, down dark trails and into frightening places all over the world.
And remember, these stories are just… stories. The choice is yours: what to believe… and how to explain away what you don’t.
From the big grey man of Scotland to a half-goat, half-demon that’ll make you question what you know about the holidays, these creatures are worth knowing… and worthy of fearing.
This is just a taste of what’s to come this September when we release our second season of Camp Monsters.
So gather ‘round -- welcome to our mini monster series.
Ben MacDui mountain towers four thousand feet above the eastern highlands of Scotland. Cairngorms National Park, the largest national park in the UK, surrounds it. If you’ve never been to the Scottish highlands: picture deep, crystal blue lakes unmarred by boats or houses or people; jagged mountains climbing out of rolling hills; and stretches of empty green fields. The highlands are one of the least populated areas in Europe. Sure, the place is an attraction for tourists and lovers of the outdoors, but make no mistake: this part of Scotland is wild, rugged, and isolated.
Ben MacDui mountain, where our story takes place, has drawn people from around the world for centuries. It has a stark, harsh beauty— even royalty made time for it. Queen Victoria climbed to the summit back in 1859, stating that the mountain “had a sublime and solemn effect. So wild, so solitary -- no one but ourselves and our little party there…” If she had any strange encounters at the top of Ben MacDui, she didn’t write them down.
The mountain is an idyllic place… and quiet. Very, very quiet. A lonely kind of quiet. So noiseless that if all of a sudden you hear the distinct sounds of footsteps behind you… right behind you... you’ll certainly take notice.
Stories of something eerie on Ben MacDui date back to at least 1791, when a poet by the name of James Hogg was tending his sheep on the mountain. According to his account, he was walking slowly through a thick fog on the slope of the mountain when he suddenly saw a creature loom out of the mist in front of him:
“a giant black figure, at least 30 feet high, and equally proportioned… I was actually struck powerless with astonishment and terror.”
As most people would do when faced with a 30 foot tall monster in their path, Hogg turned on his heels and ran home, leaving his sheep to fend for themselves. Once he had calmed his nerves, Hogg returned to the mountain to retrieve his livestock. And, to convince himself that monsters aren’t real, he decided to conduct an experiment. When he once again came upon the dark figure looming out of the fog, he stared it straight in the eye (or where he thought its eye might be) and took off his hat… that’s right, he simply removed his hat. Why, you might ask? In the same moment that Hogg removed his hat, the monster appeared to remove its own hat as well, confirming Hogg’s theory that the “monster” was just his own shadow in the fog.
But... he couldn’t so easily explain those footsteps he kept hearing in the mist behind him as he made his way back down the mountain. He quickened his pace, trying to forget the ludicrous stories he’d heard of an “am fear liath mor”— Scotch Gaelic for “big grey man”— that lived in the mists on the mountain. He made it safely back to his cottage… but he found other pastures for his sheep.
The most well known encounter happened 100 years later, in 1891, to a man named J. Norman Collie. Collie was an English scientist, mountaineer and explorer. When he wasn’t teaching organic chemistry, Collie was climbing mountains. On a solo trip to summit Ben MacDui, he started to feel that sense of dread that comes when you should be alone, but aren’t. He began to believe he heard footsteps in the fog behind him. He stopped— and after another step or two the sounds behind him stopped as well. He started off again, and at first his steps were the only sound in the silent mist— until the shamble of feet on loose stones started up, just behind the veil of fog. He stopped and started several times, until he became certain that something was following him..
Unable to shake the sound, or make out the source of the noise, Collie quickened his pace. But the footsteps continued. They drew closer. The panic rose in Collie’s chest until — as he later put it— he was “seized with terror and took to my heels, staggering blindly among the boulders for four or five miles.” And all the while hearing those footsteps behind him, keeping pace with his harried descent.
Collie shared the details of his encounter at the 27th Annual General Meeting of the Cairngorm Club, in Aberdeen. His story caused a sensation. Soon other hikers and climbers were reporting similar experiences. All of their stories had similar elements: a feeling of being followed, growing gradually stronger until the feeling turned into fear, growing stronger still until the fear became uncontrollable, the panic complete— and always there was the ominous sound of footsteps, just out of sight in the fog.
Then, in 1958, naturalist and mountaineer Alexander Tewnion had a run-in that gave some shape to the creature. His experience was printed in The Scots magazine in 1958:
“... In October 1943 I spent a 10 day leave climbing alone in the Cairngorms… One afternoon, just as I reached the summit cairn of Ben MacDui, mist swirled across and enveloped the mountain. The atmosphere became dark and oppressive. A fierce, bitter wind whipped among the boulders, and … an odd sound echoed through the mist. A footstep, it seemed. Then another, and another… A strange shape loomed up, receded, came charging at me! Without hesitation, I whipped out my revolver and fired three times at the figure. When it still came on, I turned and ran down the path, reaching Glen Derry in time that I have never bettered. You may ask: was it really the Fear Laith Mor? Frankly, I think it was.”
So what is the Am Fear Laith Mor? The yeti of the Highlands? The Sasquatch of Scotland? Bigfoot on Ben Macdui? Of course some say it isn’t a creature of flesh and bone at all, but a ghost -- of someone or some thing that haunts the summit of the mountain. The only physical evidence of the monster are alleged footprints captured in a book called Romantic Strathspey by one James A. Rennie, who claimed to have seen and photographed large footprints in the snow about 15 miles from Ben MacDui mountain. People who want to settle their unease and explain the unexplainable dismiss Rennie’s photographs, and point to theories that the sightings could be caused by an atmospheric phenomenon known as a “Brocken Spectre” which occurs when the sun is at a low angle and casts a person’s shadow on low lying clouds or mist. But that doesn’t explain the sound of lonely footsteps just behind you... or that deep, pit-of-your-stomach feeling of dread.
You should go to the Scottish Highlands. They are very beautiful. You should go to Ben Macdui, you should even go to its summit, just… don’t go alone.
Thanks for listening to this month’s mini-monster episode. We were kept up long into the night with our Am Fear Liath Mor research thanks to the websites: Wikipedia, Ancient Origins and Scots Clans. Remember to listen to our first season of episodes and subscribe, rate, and share. Season Two will begin this September. In the meantime, we’ll be back next month, on the trail of a primordial creature that haunts the swamps of Africa…
Our mini-monster series is written and produced by Chelsea Davis. These sounds are engineered by the very talented Nick Patri from Cloud Studios. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby.