Am Fear Liath Mòr

Am Fear Liath Mòr — the Big Grey Man — is the eerie presence said to haunt Ben Macdui, the highest peak of the Cairngorms and the second-highest mountain in Britain. Climbers have long reported a creeping sense of dread near the summit, the sound of slow, heavy footsteps crunching behind them in the mist, and an overwhelming urge to flee downhill in panic. A few have glimpsed a vast grey figure, many feet tall, looming in the cloud.

The phenomenon gained fame when the respected mountaineer and scientist Professor Norman Collie described, before the Cairngorm Club in 1925, his own terrified flight from the mountain years earlier. Sceptics point to the Brocken spectre — a climber's own shadow cast huge upon the mist — and to the disorienting effects of altitude and solitude; believers hold that something truly walks the heights of Ben Macdui. Either way, it is the most famous mountain haunting in Britain.