Scottish Folklore – Terror at the Haunted Bothy

The Haunted Bothy

Bothies are located throughout the United Kingdom, often in out-of-the-way wild places, but they are most commonly found in the Scottish Highlands. A bothy is a basic shelter, without gas or electricity. They are left open to the public and are intended to be used free of charge as a refuge for ramblers.

Most bothies are old cottages of either one or two storeys that have been repurposed to serve their new role. Because they are freely available to all, their continued existence relies on users helping to maintain them. Over the years, the Mountain Bothies Association has developed a code that sets out the main points users should respect. This includes leaving dry wood and kindling for future visitors and reporting any damage to the bothy’s owners.

As can be imagined, bothies are remote and lonely places, ripe for tales of mystery and the supernatural. There are probably as many of these strange stories as there are bothies, but today we will focus on one particular shelter – perhaps the loneliest of them all – Ben Alder Cottage.

Ben Alder Cottage is located in the heart of Scotland, on the edge of Loch Ericht. The closest village is Dalwhinnie, to the north-east of the loch.

The Tales

Undiscovered Scotland by W. H. Murray recounts several of the eerie tales associated with Ben Alder Cottage. In the first, a former officer of the Great War was walking from Rannoch to Dalwhinnie and decided to rest at Ben Alder Cottage for the night. At the time, the property was inhabited by a gamekeeper and his wife. As he tried to sleep, the walker reported hearing the sound of footsteps in the unoccupied adjoining room. When he mentioned this to the gamekeeper’s wife the next morning, she told him that a stag was in the habit of banging its antlers against the outer walls. However, she gave this explanation so unconvincingly, and “with such a look of guilt upon her face”, that the visitor was sure she was hiding the real truth.

The Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal tells another strange tale. A Second World War veteran, blinded in that terrible conflict, was out hill-walking with a companion. They unwisely decided to rest for the evening at the troubled bothy, where they reported tapping noises, low groans, and the sound of footsteps during the night. The following morning, the companion witnessed a packet of biscuits being flung across the room - without the aid of a human hand.

Two stories have been put forward to explain the origins of Ben Alder Cottage’s supernatural resident. The first claims that it was the spirit of a ghillie (the outdoor servant of a landowner) who hanged himself from the back of the front door.

The second is even more disturbing.

In this account, the ghost is said to be that of a woman who was forced to take shelter at the bothy with her baby during a storm. Trapped there for days, she gradually began to starve. Driven mad by hunger, she committed a terrible crime: she devoured her own child. She was last seen wandering Rannoch Moor, “so wild-eyed with despair that no one dared cross her path”, until finally she was “lost in the morasses of the place”.

Both stories are grim and raise the unsettling question: how desperate would a rambler have to be to rest within Ben Alder Cottage’s cold stone walls?

Many thanks for taking the time out of your day to read this blog. As ever, I hope you are able to sleep well tonight.

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Stay Spooky.

Sources:

Undiscovered Scotland by W. H. Murray 1951

Wikipedia