Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Scotland's Big Grey Man

Over at the main blog of Jon Downes' Center for Fortean Zoology, Lindsay Selby has an excellent (and lengthy!) post on Scotland's most famous man-beast (or Fortean phantom), the Big Grey Man of Ben Macdhui.

In part, Lindsay says:

"The big grey man is often said to be Scotland’s Bigfoot and the stories go back hundreds of years.In the 17th Century, a man of the clan Murray was reported as having captured a wild man in Craigiebarns Rocks and a chained wildman still appears in his family's heraldic shield. The next written report I could find was in 1791.

"Poet James Hogg, known as the `Ettrick Shepherd`, described seeing a huge figure on Ben Macdhui whilst tending his sheep. As he watched the halo, which had formed around him due to the combination of sunshine and the mist, he looked up and saw a huge, looming figure. He fled, not stopping until he reached some of his fellow shepherds. Hogg later said he believed that the phenomenon, which had so frightened him was, in fact, an uncommon natural phenomena known as the ‘Brocken Spectre’ and was a reflection of himself caused by the weather conditions - so could the grey man be just an effect of climatic conditions?"

And, here's the rest of Lindsay's illuminating post.

1 comment:

cryptidsrus said...

Hogg would go on to pen Confessions of a Justified and Sinner, one of the great horror novels of all time, BTW.
Who knows??? Maybe the thing will show itself one day fully.