Camp Monsters - Mini Monster Episode: Am Fear Liath Mor
Episode Date: March 6, 2020We'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 seas...on 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?
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This is an REI Co-op Studios production.
We're back.
Well, sort of.
The full 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 be bringing you our very first
mini-monster episode.
These short monthly 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,
up mountains, down dark trails,
and into frightening places all over the world.
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.
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.
That way you can enjoy the full-length spookiness
that you deserve.
And remember, these stories are just stories.
The choice is yours, what to believe and how to explain away what you don't.
This is just a taste of what's to come this September when we release our second season
of Camp Monsters.
So gather round, and welcome to the eastern highlands of Scotland.
Cairngorm's 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 peaks 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, isolated.
Ben McDoway 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 McDoway, 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 sound of footsteps behind you,
right behind you,
you'll certainly take notice.
Stories of something eerie on Ben McDoway date back to at least 1791, when a poet and sometime shepherd 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 a slope,
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 face his fears and to retrieve his livestock.
To convince himself that monsters aren't real, he decided to conduct a little experiment. When he once again came upon that 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?
Well, in the same moment that Hogg removed his hat. Why, you might ask? Well, 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 Amthir Lathmor,
Scotch Gaelic for a 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 a hundred years later, in 1891, to a man named J. Norman Colley.
Colley was an English scientist, a mountaineer, an explorer.
When he wasn't teaching organic chemistry, Colley was climbing mountains.
On a solo trip to the summit of Ben McDoway,
he started to feel that sense of dread that comes over you
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 headed 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 more times until he became certain that something was
following him.
Unable to shake the sound or make out the source of the noise, Kali quickened his pace.
The footsteps continued.
They drew closer. The panic rose in Kali'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. Kali 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 their stories had similar elements.
A feeling of being followed,
growing gradually stronger until the feeling turned
into fear, growing stronger until the fear became uncontrollable, the panic complete,
and always there was that ominous sound of footsteps, just out of sight in the fog.
Then, in 1943, naturalist and mountaineer Alexander Tunian had a run-in that gave some shape to the creature.
His experience was later printed in the Scots magazine.
In 1943, I spent a ten-day leave climbing alone in the Cairngorms.
One afternoon, just as I reached the summit cairn of Ben McDway,
mist swirled across and enveloped the mountain.
The atmosphere became dark and oppressive.
A fierce, bitter wind whipped among the boulders and...
and an odd sound echoed through the mist.
A footstep, it seemed.
Then another, and another.
A strange shape loomed up, receded,
and 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 Glendary in time that I have never bettered.
You may ask, was it really the Amphir Lathmore?
Frankly, I think it was.
So what is the Amphir Lathmore?
The Yeti of the Highlands?
The Sasquatch of Scotland, Bigfoot on Ben McDway.
Of course, some say it isn't a creature of flesh and bone at all,
but a ghost of someone or something that haunts the summit of the mountain.
The only physical evidence of the monster are alleged footprints,
pictured in a book called Romantic Strathspey by one James A. Rennie, who claimed to have seen is that the sightings could be caused by an atmospheric
phenomenon known as a
Brocken specter, which occurs
when the sun is at a low angle
and casts a person's own shadow
on low-lying clouds or mist.
But
that doesn't explain
the sound of lonely footsteps
just behind you in the fog.
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. the very talented Nick Patri from Cloud Studios in Seattle. Our executive producers are Paolo Motilla and Joe Crosby.
We were kept up long into the night with our Amphir Lathmore 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 of Camp Monsters 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 Central Africa.
I'm Weston Davis. Thank you.