The Big Grey Man of Ben MacDhui – Britain’s Very Own Bigfoot?

Ben MacDhui’s principal claim to fame is that, at 4296 ft (1309 m), it is the highest mountain in the Cairngorms range and is second only to Ben Nevis throughout Scotland. However, it is also famous – indeed, infamous – as Scotland’s ‘haunted mountain’, thanks to the sinister entity known as Am Fear Liath Mor, the Big Grey Man (BGM), said to haunt its lofty peak and considered by some to be Britain’s very own bigfoot. Others, conversely, deem it to be a malign supernatural being, a bizarre meteorlogical phenomenon, an optical illusion, or even the guardian of an interdimensional ‘window area’ located on Ben MacDhui.

What is particularly remarkable about the Big Grey Man case is the extraordinary range of mysterious phenomena associated with it, and which are every bit as dramatic as they are diverse. Take, for instance, various reports of irrational panic linked to its forbiding presence…

Karl Shuker About Karl Shuker
My name is Dr Karl P.N. Shuker. I am a zoologist (BSc & PhD), media consultant, and the author of 25 books and hundreds of articles, specialising in cryptozoology and animal mythology. I have a BSc (Honours) degree in pure zoology from the University of Leeds (U.K.), and a PhD in zoology and comparative physiology from the University of Birmingham (U.K.). I have acted jointly as consultant and major contributor to three multi-author volumes on cryptozoology and other mysterious phenomena. I am the Life Sciences Consultant to The Guinness Book of Records/Guinness World Records (Guinness: London, 1997-present day), and was consultant to Monsters (Lorenz Books: London, 2001), as well as a contributor to Mysteries of the Deep (Llewellyn: St Paul, 1998), Guinness Amazing Future (Guinness: London, 1999), The Earth (Channel 4 Books: London, 2000), and Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained (Chambers: London, 2007). I appear regularly on television & radio, was a consultant for the Discovery TV series Into the Unknown, and a question setter for the BBC's quiz show Mastermind. I am a Scientific Fellow of the Zoological Society of London, a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, a Member of the Society of Authors, and the Cryptozoology Consultant for the Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ). I have written articles for numerous publications, including Fortean Times, The X Factor, Paranormal Magazine, FATE, Strange Magazine, Prediction, Beyond, Uri Geller's Encounters, Phenomena, Alien Encounters, Wild About Animals, All About Cats, All About Dogs, Cat World, etc. In 2005, I was honoured by the naming of a new species of loriciferan invertebrate after me - Pliciloricus shukeri.

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