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The Grey Man Of Ben Macdhui

Melf

Gone But Not Forgotten
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has any one managed to photograph the grey man?
or is this a silly question?

(i did look at other threads. couldnt find anything so i put it here)
 
Not a silly question.
I've never heard an account of anyone who admits to meeting up with him that was able to stand their ground. They always have the overwhelming urge to flee, don't they?:eek!!!!:
 
thats what puzzles me?
i think thats theres a legend/tale. thats says if you spend the night on the mountain youll either wake up mad or dead (sic)

isnt the "shadow" always "seen" as a one legged, one eyed shaped?

or am i thinking of nother scottish ben (mountain)?

i think theres something similar on mount snowdon?
except that you either wake up a poet or mad
 
:laughing: I do remember reading about Mt. Snowden, but naturally I've forgotten the details. I'll google that.
I must not be as familiar with this as you are Melf, because I don't remember a description of the Shadow. All I remember is everyone who comes in contact with it runs in panic.
 
Actually, the reference to the 'man' is a bit misleading - often as not, what is experienced is an overwhelming sense of panic which causes the witness to flee. IIRC, actual sightings are very rare, if not themselves optical illusions. The main theme of that area is it's ability to instill panic in some of those who visit it.
 
thanks jez, but its allways refered to as a man in ghost books :D

so does anyone think it would be possible to record the sounds of footsteps and/or the sounds of breathing?
has anyone even bothered to try and record the sounds then?
 
I've read the grey man as respresented anywhere from an ethereal sensation that causes fear and panic (something watching/stalking you) to a corporeal being, a large ogre or sorts. But I don't think anyone has got in on tape or video. it's not something you want to go looking for since it appears out of fog and is quite frightening by all accounts.
 
Well, I've often seen it described as more a BHM (Big Hairy Monster) a-la Bigfoot than an apparition, but the terror it engenders is often emphasised: experienced mountaineers fleeing, too frightened to look back.

In "Alien Animals" Janet & Colin Bord classified it as a cryptid more than a ghost, though they do often discuss the frequent apparent non-material quality of various cryptids (eg some Bigfeet's ability to pass through a barbed wire fence, invulnerability to gunfire, etc, a theory upon which Beckjord has leapt and run a very, very long way :rolleyes: )..

Anyway, back to Ben MacDhui - ghost-story.co.uk gives a good chronological precis of 20th Century cases: TBH much of it reads like a classic Bigfoot report, especially the following, which could have been lifted straight from one of the "weird" 1960s Mid-West Bigfoot reports:
In the early 1990s a group of three men walked along a forestry plantation track in the countryside close to Aberdeen when one saw ahead a 'dark human-shaped' figure run from the left of the track to the right about 200 yards ahead. He felt a 'sense of terror and foreboding'. His friends had not seen the creature but when they looked ahead they saw a face looking at them from between the branches, a face which was 'human... but not human'. One man threw a stone at it and it disappeared into the trees.

A few weeks after this encounter the trio were driving towards Torphins near Aberdeen when their car was pursued by the very same type of creature. They reported this dark, tall being running alongside their car as they drove at close to 45 mph. Eventually it gave up the chase and simply stood in the middle of the road and peered after the car.

A female friend of one of the men later told him that while she had been staying in a cottage in the countryside near there, she had seen a 'dark, hairy figure' standing just inside the tree line nearby watching the building on two occasions. After a while, it moved off into the undergrowth.
Bearing this in mind, I have a theory :). Some aspects sound very similar to one of Lethbridge's "ghouls" - the sudden feeling of intense oppression and draining of one's energy. This site explores the possible links between Lethbridge and Nigel Kneale's "The Srone Tape":
The idea of the physical environment acting as a recording medium for primal emotions was, of course, postulated by the distinguished Cambridge archaeologist T.C. Lethbridge, who explored its possibilities in Ghost and Ghoul, among other books. Lethbridge not only speculated about the phenomenon, he claimed to have experienced it first-hand. Lethbridge's theory was circulating during the early seventies - indeed, he died the year before The Stone Tape was written - and it's tempting to assume that Kneale assimilated it.
Therefore, perhaps we can theorise that the Grey Man is a geological "recording" - and bearing in mind that the Highlands of Scotland are, geologically speaking, part of North America, perhaps there is some quality to that particular rock that produces these particular effects, demonstrable in very similar reports of a specific phenomenon from each side of the Atlantic.

Just an idea :).
 
Never heard of any stories connected with Snowdon before. Mind you I have camped on Snowdon a few times, and I didn't wake up a poet........:eek:

(Guess that explains a lot!)

I haven't heard of any recent encounters with the Fear Liath Mhor - perhaps all the noise from building the funicular railway up nearby Cairn Gorm has scared him off! Certainly never been any photos taken (that I'm aware of)

Best read on the subject is Affleck Gray's The Big Grey Man of Ben Macdui http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos...31235/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_0_2/202-1814034-2458260
 
melf said:
thats what puzzles me?
i think thats theres a legend/tale. thats says if you spend the night on the mountain youll either wake up mad or dead (sic)

isnt the "shadow" always "seen" as a one legged, one eyed shaped?

or am i thinking of nother scottish ben (mountain)?

i think theres something similar on mount snowdon?
except that you either wake up a poet or mad

You're thinking of Cader Idris, which is the second largest peak in Snowdonia.
Idris was a Giant and also an astronomer, it is said if you were to sleep overnight at the summit in Idris's Chair, a group of rocks, then by morning you would either be mad, a poet or a corpse.
I've camped over night on Cader Idris when I used to live in Bryncrug near Tywyn, all I came away with was 'flu. :cross eye
the one eyed- one legged reference might be something related to druidism, I aint that gen'd up on the subject but IIRC druids would foresee the future by standing on one leg and closing one eye
 
Am Fealach Mhor is one of my personal favourite legends as i grew up in Aviemore and have been on the hill many, many times.

The only first hand account i have ever heard about the Grey man was by one of my dad's old freinds- a mountaneer called Sid Scroggie who lost his eye sight in Italy during the war but in 1940 or 41 he encountered what he claimed was the big grey man at loch Avon at the base of Ben MacDhuie. at first he thought it ight have been a Nazi agent who had been parachuted in as that area was used to extensively train Commandos and would have previded much useful intelligence.

The account has been published a few times but i don't have access to it here. I don't think he had an overwhelming feeling of terror though. Sid, By all accounts, has a connection with the lanscape around him that many of us don't and if he felt there was somehting strange about it i would have to believe him - the guy, even now he is blind, seems to know the land better than anyone has a right too, if you know what i meen.

Stu's account there about the BHM neer Aberdeen is interesting but given the physical distance, ( about 100 hundred miles,) and the sheer volume of odd Scottish myths i would hesitate to take anything from it for the Grey man story.

Although i have never seen it myself, i have spent several nights on the hillside camping in bad weather and it certainly has an atmosphere all of its own. Because of the strange Meteological conditions it is possible to be standing on the summit in Bright sunligfht under clear skies only for the cloud and mist to drop visibility down to a few feet within half and hour. I have many theories on The effects 'raw' nature has on people who are not used to it( and even those who are,) and I think that 'Second Sight,' may also have a part to play. I don't think that photgraphs would ever be possible of it becuase i am certain that it is not 'physical' in any way. I bel;ieve that it has also been considered to be a Bhuddist Holy Being.

Quite the most unplesant thing that happened to me up there was when i found a belt buckle from the wreckage of an RAF trainer that crahsed there in bad weather at the end of the war. I spent several utterly terrified nights and cound't sleep with it in the room with me. A girlfreind had to throw it away for me - mainly because as scared of it as i was i couldn't get rid of it myself.
 
Egan said:
Stu's account there about the BHM neer Aberdeen is interesting but given the physical distance, ( about 100 hundred miles,) and the sheer volume of odd Scottish myths i would hesitate to take anything from it for the Grey man story.
Indeed, especially about the area around Aberdeen. I suppose it is just right for that kind of legend, as it's within reach of a highly-populated area (Aberdeenshire/east coast), yet seems as remote as some Alaskan forest. I grew up in rural Aberdeenshire pretty much around where the Grampian mountain range starts rising up, and the dense forests around there can be beautiful and extremely creepy. Not a few times have me and my friends experienced sudden panic, seen strange things deep in the woods (not any bigfeet (?) though!) or camped out and had the full scary-things-outside-the-tent experience. :eek: :D
 
JerryB said:
Actually, the reference to the 'man' is a bit misleading - often as not, what is experienced is an overwhelming sense of panic which causes the witness to flee. IIRC, actual sightings are very rare, if not themselves optical illusions. The main theme of that area is it's ability to instill panic in some of those who visit it.

here's an idea! remember this research which has been connecting ghost sightings/feelings of dread with sonic frequencies? maybe there is something similar going on with the mountain - maybe its shape and the way the wind blows against it makes a certain frequency which terrifies people or something.
 
taras said:
Not a few times have me and my friends experienced sudden panic, seen strange things deep in the woods (not any bigfeet (?) though!) or camped out and had the full scary-things-outside-the-tent experience. :eek: :D
Quite literally, a 'Pan-ic'. Pan being the original spirit of the wild places, forest and hill and instiller of sudden and overwhelming terror upon the lonely traveller.

...

I remember getting freaked by a flock of sheep surrounding my tent, one night, on the Gower Peninsula. :eek:

Then there was a night I was sleeping rough in a small wooded stretch in the Borders and I heard this rustling noise coming towards me! :eek!!!!:

Boy! Did i give that hedgehog what for! :p
 
One-eyed and one-legged was the description given of the Fomori, the ancient enemies of the Tuatha De Danaan in Irish mythology.

I believe the equivalent figure in Welsh folklore may be the Grey King, who lends hist name to one of the Susan Cooper Dark is Rising sequence. I don't recall being able to find much mention online, but apparently he features quite strongly in welsh folklore.
 
Quixote said:
You're thinking of Cader Idris, which is the second largest peak in Snowdonia.
Idris was a Giant and also an astronomer, it is said if you were to sleep overnight at the summit in Idris's Chair, a group of rocks, then by morning you would either be mad, a poet or a corpse.
I've camped over night on Cader Idris when I used to live in Bryncrug near Tywyn, all I came away with was 'flu. :cross eye
the one eyed- one legged reference might be something related to druidism, I aint that gen'd up on the subject but IIRC druids would foresee the future by standing on one leg and closing one eye

im wrong then :D
 
Egan said:
Stu's account there about the BHM neer Aberdeen is interesting but given the physical distance, ( about 100 hundred miles,) and the sheer volume of odd Scottish myths i would hesitate to take anything from it for the Grey man story.
Mea Culpa - as I cut and pasted it directly from a page that was cataloguing Grey Man sightings, I didn't pay overmuch attention to the geography :).
 
Anyone who is interested in Spookiness in rural Scotland could do a lot worse than reading 'Magic Mountains,' By Rennie McOwan and published by Mainstream Publishing. Aside from accounts of the Gaelic and Norse myths that are so common in Northern Scotland it contains a lot of far more contemporary testimony from climbers and walkers who have encountered wierd goings on - including the overwhelming fear of certain places that some people have experieinced.

The 'Pan' idea is a very interesting one. I can think of a few places in Scotland where man really is still a stranger and doesn't really belong there. Ben Macdhui being one of them. I find it quite wonderful that on this little polluted and overcrowded island there are places like that. Might not be for two much longer if the Scottish Ski Mafia continue getting there way. Sorry my rant and i digress:)

Part of me wants to put the 'Pan Effect' down to people simply getting freaked out by the lack of any obvious human activity. We live in a vastly overcrowded island and most of us don't go longer than a few minutes or hours without human contact so when we are in a posistion where that can't happen we get a little (or a lot,) scared.

But i know people who have had those frights who have known the land almost spiritually. Something is going one but whether it is Supernatural or overtly natural I don't know.
 
As I understand it, there have not been any grey man sightings in recent years. I am keen to climb Ben MacDhui though and I'll let you know if I meet him!
 
My only possible experience of Pan was on a peak overlooking the Culloden valley. I was with a BF (boyfriend, not bigfoot) and my toddler son, and when on top of the mountain I just got an overwhelming fear and the need to GET DOWN NOW! The fear was somehow for my son, I felt I had to get him off the peak to protect him. I've taken him up mountains before and since and been fine. At the time I knew next to nothing about the battle of Culloden, but have since read that others feel uncomfortable in that area.
 
molga parrot said:
My only possible experience of Pan was on a peak overlooking the Culloden valley. I was with a BF (boyfriend, not bigfoot) and my toddler son, and when on top of the mountain I just got an overwhelming fear and the need to GET DOWN NOW! The fear was somehow for my son, I felt I had to get him off the peak to protect him. I've taken him up mountains before and since and been fine. At the time I knew next to nothing about the battle of Culloden, but have since read that others feel uncomfortable in that area.

Did you feel anything like an electrical charge perhaps? What sort of weather was it? I'm wondering whether it could be tied into weather - perhaps something that we can't really detect on the natural level.

Not that that is the only possibility. Culloden has a heavy atmosphere anyway for obvious reasons. Many of the ghost stories for miles around are connected with the battle and it's aftermath.

Min:

You are quite right, the stories about the grey man have dried up over the last few decades. I think the twenties were a high point for them. This being a time when walking in the Scottish mountains was beiggning to take off and there were still very few people doing it i wonder if the sense of lonliness up there was even more keenly felt than now - although it is still possible to go two or three days without seeing another person.

I love the stories of the Cairngorms. One that always sticks in my mind is when a couple of climbers in the Lahrieg Ghrui ( SP??) encountered a man in a pin stripe suit complete with a bowler hat and brief case! I'm sure that account is still around somewhere althoug i wouldn't even know where to begin looking for it. I had loads of books on Legends connected to the cairngorms but my mum gave them to a jumble sale after i moved out :mad: and i haven't been able to find any copies of them since...
 
melf said:
im wrong then :D

'ere sorry Melf mate :blush: ;) :)

Just to add oil to the water I have just found this reference in;
Whitlock, R. (1979) 'In Search of Lost Gods' a guide to British folklore. Phaidon Press: Oxford

Grey man of Macdhui

On the desolate heights of the Cairngorms, especially around a cairn on Ben Macdhui, a huge man in grey sometimes walks and terrifies climbers and ramblers who meet him. He is said to be nine or ten feet tall, to wear a high hat, and to have been seen in the present century.
~
I'm sure I have also read (but sadly can't back up this atm) that the Grey man has been seen to be wearing cavalier-type clothing in one sighting too.
~
edit
I posted this webpage on the sleep paralysis thread but I think the beginning has relevance to the Grey man and pan/ic & sensed presence that's being discussed. Hope it's of use! p.s you may have to scroll to the top of the page

http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/intruder.html#p&t
 
Having experienced both Panic Attacks and Panic I'd say that the experience of being on the inside is different...

So that I /think/ I'd say that Panic isn't a Panic Attack brought on by unaccustomed isolation. Although I can see that happening too :)

Kath
 
http://heritage.scotsman.com/myths.cfm?id=40002005

The Big Grey Man of Ben MacDui
DIANE MACLEAN

PROFESSOR Norman Collie was a man of science, a professor of chemistry at the University College London. He was also an avid hill-walker and the last man anyone expected to tell absurd stories of strange footsteps on a remote hill. Yet that was the tale he told at the annual general meeting of the Cairngorm Club in Aberdeen on a dark, winter night in December 1925.

Collie had been alone on Ben MacDui, the highest peak in the Cairngorms and the second highest in Scotland, in 1891 when he was became convinced that he was being stalked.

"I began to think I heard something else than merely the noise of my own footsteps," he said. "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."

Overwhelmed by a sudden and fierce terror he ran four or five miles down the mountain as "the eerie crunch, crunch sounded behind".

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

This was the first official record of a strange presence on the hilltops high up in the Cairngorms, but it was not the last. A number of experienced climbers - rational men and women - have since given accounts of encountering Am Fear Liath Mor (The Big Grey Man) on the mountain.

Physical descriptions agree that the figure is hairy, huge - about 10 feet tall - with pointed ears, long legs and finger-like talons on his feet. So far so yeti, but descriptions of the Grey Man don’t stop there.

Rather bizarrely, a couple of witnesses claim the creature wears a top hat and whenever he appears, the sound of loud, crunching footsteps echo across the mountain. Some hear singing, others ghostly laughter.

The Grey Man is apparently more often felt than physically seen. Climbers experience uncontrolled terror, deep despair and huge negative energy. Not surprisingly many walkers feel an overwhelming desire to run away. Some have felt themselves pursued by echoing footsteps. Others are hypnotically drawn to the edge of cliffs.
The Cairngorms: home of Scotland's Yeti?

The Cairngorms: home of Scotland's Yeti?

There have been a number of explanations put forward to explain the Grey Man, from the reasonable to the surreal. Among the favourites is that the beast is some type of big-foot species long thought extinct. If this sounds too plausible, then you may choose to believe that he is some mystical holy man or even an extraterrestrial. More recently it has been suggested that Ben MacDhui is a "window" area – an interface between two worlds. Could the Grey Man be the portal guardian, placed among the high Scottish hills to deter intruders?

More sensible suggestions consider that the Grey Man is a geological holograph, an optical illusion or perhaps a hallucination brought about by oxygen starvation.

If you prefer your explanations totally down-to-earth then consider this. A similar phenomenon was witnessed in Germany’s Black Forest. People were terrified, claiming to witness misty grey men following them and hearing the echoing of footsteps. Scientific enquiries found a startling conclusion. The German Grey Man? These German climbers were being spooked by nothing more sinister than their own shadows.

This article: http://heritage.scotsman.com/myths.cfm?id=40002005

Last updated: 07-Mar-05
 
This could have gone in our Wodewose thread but I thought this ancient thread deserved to be bumped and revived after all these years, and I think the article is relevant enough to The Big Grey Man phenomenon to fit here.

Arran mountaineer captures stunning photo of a Brocken Spectre
Published: 15:58 Monday 24 October 2016

Deputy team leader Ewan McKinnon captured the picture of the incredible spectre whilst looking from the ridge down towards Glen Sannox and posted it on the team’s Facebook page. A Brocken spectre, or mountain spectre, is the magnified shadow of the person observing, projected onto a bank of mist or fog by strong sunlight. The ‘spectre’ appears when the sun shines from behind the observer, who is looking down from a ridge or peak. The light then projects their shadow through the mist, often in a triangular shape due to perspective, and surrounds it in a halo of light known as a ‘glory’.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/odd/ar...stunning-photo-of-a-brocken-spectre-1-4267149
 
Cornish writer Colin Wilson goes into the Grey Man in one of his books.
 
thats what puzzles me?
i think thats theres a legend/tale. thats says if you spend the night on the mountain youll either wake up mad or dead (sic)

isnt the "shadow" always "seen" as a one legged, one eyed shaped?

or am i thinking of nother scottish ben (mountain)?

i think theres something similar on mount snowdon?
except that you either wake up a poet or mad

How can anyone know. In your post you claim that the witnesses are always mad or dead?
 
How can anyone know. In your post you claim that the witnesses are always mad or dead?

Maybe the witness hasn't spent the night on the mountain? I'm sure the "shadow" must occasionally be seen by someone up there for an afternoon...
 
(Transferred here from the British Bigfoot thread)

A screenshot of related images, with source links.

I have never previously seen this phenomenon photographed and WOW!!!

Screenshot_20200801_181908_resize_42.jpg
 
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