MOUNTAIN SPECTRE

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 119, 13 February 1926, Page 22

MOUNTAIN SPECTRE

PROFESSOR’S QUEER EXPERIENCE Stories of a giant ghost, said to haunt Ben Macdhui, Aberdeenshire, the second highest mountain in Scotland, were told by Professor J. Norman Collie, lecturer in Organic Chemistry, of London University. Professor Collie, who has done much exploration and climbing in the Himalayas, Caucasus, Alps, Canadian Rockies, and the Black Coolins of Skye, confessed to members of the Cairngorm Club, of which he is lion, president, that he had experienced the most intense fear of his lifetime while climbing Ben Macdhui alone, 35 years ago. He was returning from the cairn upon the summit (4296 feet) in a mist when he heard a big crunch, and, then another crunch, as if someone was walking after him, but taking steps three or four times the length of his own. “This is all nonsense,” he said to himself. He listened, and heard the sound again, but could see nothing in the mist. As he walked on, and the ceric “crunch, crunch” sounded behind him, he was seized with terror. Why he did not know, for he did not mind being alone on the hills; but the uncanny something which he sensed caused fear to seize him bv the throat. He took to liis heels and ran, staggering blindly among the boulders for four or five miles. About 12 vears later he told this store to the’late Dr. Kellas, and found that lie had had a weird experience at the top of the same mountain. About midnight one June Dr. Kellas saw a man come up out of the Larig Ghru (Gloomy Pass)’ and wander, round the cairn near by which Dr. Kcllas's brother was sitting. The “nipn” was practically the same height as the cairn, which was at least 10 feet high. The vision passed into the Larig again, when Dr. Kellas asked his brother: “What on earth was that man doing walking round the cairn?” The brother replied: “I never saw anv man.”

A good manv years after that Mr. Colin Phillip met an old man living on the edge of Rothicmurchas Forest who knew the Cairngorms very well. When Mr. Phillip told this man Dr. Kcllas’s storv, he was riot the least surprised, but simply remarked: “Oil, ave, that would have been the. big grey man he would have been seeing.” "’There is something very queer about the top of Ben Mahdhui,” concluded Professor Collie, and I will never go back there again by myself.”