Am Fear Liath Mòr, the Grey Man of Ben Macdui
In 1925 the eminent chemist and climber Norman Collie told the Cairngorm Club that years earlier he had fled in terror from Ben Macdui after hearing great crunching footsteps following him in the mist.
1925 CE · 57.07, -3.67 · status: account
The account
Collie said he was descending from the summit in 1890 when he heard a footstep for every few of his own, and ran for miles down towards Rothiemurchus Forest, vowing never to return. Other climbers then came forward with similar stories of a towering grey figure or an overwhelming dread. The poet James Hogg had seen a giant figure there in 1791.
The sceptical view
Hogg's figure, and probably others, was a Brocken spectre: a climber's own magnified shadow on mist. Exhaustion, isolation and panic explain the sense of being followed.