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Speaker 2: for many years to hear stories about monsters, science facts,
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Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 4: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 2: A giant hairy creature park Ape part Mat.
Speaker 5: In Larkness, a twenty four a mile long bottomless lake
Speaker 5: in the highlands of Scotland. If a creature, there's the
Speaker 5: Luckless monster.
Speaker 1: Monstertall.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm
Speaker 2: Blake Smith.
Speaker 4: And I'm Karen Stoltner.
Speaker 2: Hey, their listeners. In this episode will be traveling to
Speaker 2: the remote mountains of Scotland, where, scattered across the landscape
Speaker 2: miles from the nearest roads, an affiliated network of rude
Speaker 2: lodgings provides shelter to the weary traveler need of a
Speaker 2: roof and fire. They're called Bothy's, and according to Lore,
Speaker 2: some of the occupants are staying well past their final
Speaker 2: checkout time. Let's take a quick dive into this Bothy
Speaker 2: sphere right now on Monstertall. Hey, now, I'm following your
Speaker 2: advice here. I have not opened up the doc to
Speaker 2: look at it, so I'm going in cold. This is
Speaker 2: basically an audio reaction video.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I think you have a little background knowledge
Speaker 1: on tonight's topic, today's topic, this week's topic, which is Bothy's.
Speaker 1: And so we're joined by Matt Baxter as well.
Speaker 3: Hello.
Speaker 1: I think the way that Matt and I found out
Speaker 1: about Bothy's was through YouTube. We it was recommended to
Speaker 1: us a video on Haunted Bothy. So I think that's
Speaker 1: but I had kind of heard of them before. And Blake,
Speaker 1: I think you found out about them through Unkenny, you said, Yeah.
Speaker 2: The BBC podcast Unkenny has covered a couple stories related
Speaker 2: to these.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I guess we should probably start this saying what is
Speaker 2: a Bothy?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Is it possible that it's both the I don't know,
Speaker 2: or is it both both and Bothy.
Speaker 1: Bothy Boffy is what I keep hearing? But both, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a kind of shelter, so little little house, very simple,
Speaker 1: free to use shelter, which is found in remote parts
Speaker 1: of the UK, so mostly in Scotland and the Scottish Highlands,
Speaker 1: and there are some in Wales and a number of
Speaker 1: them in England as well. So just little houses, very basic,
Speaker 1: often repurposed from other buildings, and they're unlocked and they're
Speaker 1: open free for anyone who needs shelter. So they're very
Speaker 1: popular with hikers and climbers and travelers and other outdoors people.
Speaker 2: And so these are rural, they're off the beaten.
Speaker 1: Path absolutely, I mean some of them are really many
Speaker 1: miles off the beaten path. And the word bothy itself
Speaker 1: is Gaelic. It comes from the word bothen, which means
Speaker 1: huts or cabin and a lot of them were former
Speaker 1: cottages which we used for state workers and shepherds who
Speaker 1: worked local farms, and some were used as lodges or
Speaker 1: schoolhouses and even Coastguard watch stations. And just over the
Speaker 1: years a lot of these have become deserted and so
Speaker 1: walkers began to use them instead, and bothy became a
Speaker 1: term for this kind of thing, a verb for this
Speaker 1: kind of activity. And there's a Mountain Bothy's Association, which
Speaker 1: was formed a couple of decades ago, and it was
Speaker 1: set up to save these bothies.
Speaker 4: From ruin, and some of them are ruins.
Speaker 1: I believe that the episode of I haven't listened to
Speaker 1: it yet, but the episode of Uncanny or the shows
Speaker 1: on Bothy's they're talking about ruins nowadays.
Speaker 2: A quick answer here. The BBC's Uncanny did two episodes
Speaker 2: dealing with a particular Bothy called Louis Belle In which
Speaker 2: contains stories a kinda work Karen and Matt will share
Speaker 2: later in this episode. I very much enjoy Uncanny because
Speaker 2: it maintains a pretty good balance of story, paranormal speculation
Speaker 2: and skeptical critique. Listeners of this show will recognize many
Speaker 2: of the skeptical voices who appear in that series, so
Speaker 2: links to two episodes dealing with Bothy's will be in
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 1: Notes this Mountain Bothy's Association will talk about them a
Speaker 1: little bit more.
Speaker 4: They've got about one hundred.
Speaker 1: Bothies across the UK that are in their care and
Speaker 1: they kind of work to maintain these places.
Speaker 4: And keep them up and running.
Speaker 1: Although a lot of them don't have plumbing. They don't
Speaker 1: have running water. They don't have electricity, so they don't
Speaker 1: have really basic facilities.
Speaker 6: You were looking to have a room, We used to
Speaker 6: have to live in the corridor.
Speaker 5: Oh, we used to dream of living in a cotidor.
Speaker 1: It's just a very short term stay for people who
Speaker 1: are hiking in these remote areas.
Speaker 2: This is really interesting to me that the idea that,
Speaker 2: first of all, I guess that there's enough hospitality in
Speaker 2: the region to try to take care of, you know, wanderers.
Speaker 2: That's really nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's something kind of charming about it
Speaker 1: and about them. And I don't know how much they
Speaker 1: are maintained. I think that's going to talk about this
Speaker 1: a little bit later. But they often get filled with
Speaker 1: dunk and rubbish, and I don't think they cleaned out
Speaker 1: terribly often.
Speaker 3: One of the interesting things about it is that most
Speaker 3: of these Bothy's are on private land. And it's true it,
Speaker 3: you know, so you really have to respect the land
Speaker 3: owner and the owner of the bothy. And I think
Speaker 3: it's great that this Mountain Bothy's Association comes in and
Speaker 3: tries to keep these things as maintained as possible. Because
Speaker 3: it is completely volunteer run for the most part, so
Speaker 3: it's it's a pretty cool thing. But I think a
Speaker 3: lot of people forget that they're on somebody's land, you know,
Speaker 3: when they're they're staying in these places. So we'll keep
Speaker 3: that in mind if you plan on bothying anytime in
Speaker 3: the near future, that you want to have as much
Speaker 3: respect for all of it as you can. But I
Speaker 3: think the history of the bothies is really interesting and why,
Speaker 3: you know, I think it feeds into why these places
Speaker 3: would be haunted in the first place. And part of
Speaker 3: that is, you know, like Karen was saying, these were
Speaker 3: kind of for workers on farms and things like that,
Speaker 3: and they would have to stay pretty much six months
Speaker 3: at a time in these tiny little structures, and it
Speaker 3: could be quite a few people, you know, staying in
Speaker 3: there at once. So they became viewed as a very
Speaker 3: evil place because they were kind of off the grid.
Speaker 3: They these people really weren't going to church. They you know,
Speaker 3: it was they could drink and curse and all kinds
Speaker 3: of things. So these were looked at as a place
Speaker 3: of evil by people more in the towns and cities.
Speaker 3: So you got to stay away from the b And
Speaker 3: then with the boffies come to boffy ballads.
Speaker 7: F my first feetim maien's eye wisbearely sixteen medjo wishday.
Speaker 3: Work and all mere the card queen.
Speaker 7: I card off the weeds and I sprayed them manure
Speaker 7: and care that toot mock at the man's drum your.
Speaker 8: Atim mertemis and the grief of the drum tappet me
Speaker 8: and the shooter and speared the netcom table works first
Speaker 8: pair for the winter half year. We have a big
Speaker 8: clicket horse.
Speaker 6: In our all eaten mere m my large it fuller
Speaker 6: the blue a story I will tell ted you or
Speaker 6: some of the own young's we gang through its sleepy
Speaker 6: tune and armor and.
Speaker 3: Market and wealthy.
Speaker 2: Lu.
Speaker 3: Now a lot of those were pretty blue as well.
Speaker 3: But uh, the interesting thing about the Bothy ballads is
Speaker 3: they were kind of like, in a sense, reading a
Speaker 3: newspaper about you know, u the people that stayed there.
Speaker 3: Because every six months there would be like these fairs,
Speaker 3: employment fairs that you could go to and get picked
Speaker 3: up by an employer for a six month contract. So
Speaker 3: these Bathi ballads would often be designed to warn people
Speaker 3: which farmers to stay away from, you know, which ones
Speaker 3: were cruel and didn't pay well or made really terrible oatmeal,
Speaker 3: or whatever the problem was, it would be in the
Speaker 3: Boffy ballad.
Speaker 1: That was actually, yeah, in one of the ballads that
Speaker 1: we heard about that they didn't make terribly good oatmeal,
Speaker 1: so it was a strike against them. Wow. But yeah,
Speaker 1: these Boffy ballads are really important. They do document and
Speaker 1: preserve the oral tradition of these farm workers and gives
Speaker 1: us a lot of insight into the lives that they led.
Speaker 1: And these stories were just passed down through generations, and
Speaker 1: as Matt said, they would warn people against unscrupulous employers.
Speaker 1: But it's just interesting with these ballads and with the
Speaker 1: legends that are around. I think they're all the most remote,
Speaker 1: and they're all considered to be the most haunted.
Speaker 2: That's with the story of bad oats and ghosts and
Speaker 2: people sleeping over I wonder if this is maybe a
Speaker 2: case of old Hagis syndrome.
Speaker 1: I was bracing myself for a pun there. I bet
Speaker 1: plenty of Hagis was eaten coffees over the decades. But
Speaker 1: as Matt said, why would these places be haunted? And
Speaker 1: we've found throughout many years of podcasting that history is
Speaker 1: often said to be haunted. And so these places contain
Speaker 1: a lot of history, a lot of legends. And as
Speaker 1: we keep saying, they're terribly remote, we can't stress that enough.
Speaker 1: They are in the middle of nowhere. We'd say, out
Speaker 1: in Coui in Australia.
Speaker 3: Oh sorry, Karen, but there's always a storm coming.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that's why you have to seek shelter in
Speaker 2: the ruin both bathy right.
Speaker 3: Always never fails.
Speaker 1: Well, these areas are a really subject to very unpredictable weather,
Speaker 1: so lots of rain and cold and snow and very
Speaker 1: severe storms. And they're often nestled in the mountains and
Speaker 1: in the valleys and glens and by locks.
Speaker 4: And by the sea as well.
Speaker 1: But they can be very treacherous to access and people
Speaker 1: need to hike through bogs and streams and crossing many miles,
Speaker 1: a lot of things that are creepy about them.
Speaker 3: Well, and then you get there and there may be
Speaker 3: people already in there that you have to share with,
Speaker 3: or you may get there and there's no one there,
Speaker 3: And then you get nice and comfortable and more people
Speaker 3: show up that you now have to share with. So
Speaker 3: you never know what you're going to get, and you
Speaker 3: don't know for one, if the people that you're sharing
Speaker 3: with are real or ghosts, or if they're if they're
Speaker 3: complete creeps, you you don't know what you're going to get.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of I think tension, and just
Speaker 3: with the isolation of it, there's a lot of creep
Speaker 3: factor there as well.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, we want to be skeptics about the things
Speaker 1: that people are experiencing. They'll hear a lot of strange
Speaker 1: sounds from the weather and from animals, deer and mice.
Speaker 1: There problems with mice droppings in a lot of these bodies,
Speaker 1: so I think it could be pretty dangerous of a
Speaker 1: health perspective too. But I think that these shows like
Speaker 1: Uncanny and all the YouTube bios and podcasters are sharing
Speaker 1: a lot of stories and legends that are associated with
Speaker 1: these bothies. And also when you stay there, they have
Speaker 1: each place has its own Bothy book, So this is
Speaker 1: a kind of visitors book.
Speaker 4: For people to write about their experiences.
Speaker 1: And just from examples that Matt and I have seen
Speaker 1: a lot of claims of ghostly activity and even aliens, UFOs,
Speaker 1: people seeing all kinds of strange things, and so I
Speaker 1: think a lot of it can be explained from a
Speaker 1: natural perspective obviously, but certainly there are a lot of
Speaker 1: legends that we're going to go into a couple of them.
Speaker 3: I want you to picture this just a little bit.
Speaker 3: They call the fireplace BOTHYTV. Okay, because what you generally
Speaker 3: do is you come men, you start reading the Bothy
Speaker 3: book and all of the crazy stories in it and everything,
Speaker 3: and then you get your fire going and you sit
Speaker 3: down and you watch the fire very hypnotic, and you've
Speaker 3: just read all these creepy stories.
Speaker 4: You're always drinking.
Speaker 3: It is by law, you are drinking.
Speaker 1: Similar yep, and uh, it's it is just a recipe
Speaker 1: for the paranormal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it reminds me of that. This culture
Speaker 2: around upkeep and sharing stories reminds me a lot of
Speaker 2: shelters on the AT on the Appalachian Trail, and I'm
Speaker 2: sure they have something similar out west on the Pacific coast.
Speaker 2: But the on the AT, there's there's shelters, and there's
Speaker 2: organizations that maintain them and you know people, it's communal space.
Speaker 2: It it really reminds me of a lot. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's it's rural. It's very rural. I know when
Speaker 2: I was kind of prepping for this, I did try
Speaker 2: to see if I could find any historical records of
Speaker 2: murderers or anything like why ghosts in these places in particular,
Speaker 2: And I didn't find any murders, but a lot of
Speaker 2: people have been killed. You're cruel, No, no, but seriously,
Speaker 2: I didn't find many references to murders. In fact, the
Speaker 2: oldest thing I found was what You're in the eighteen eighties,
Speaker 2: a distillery guy that mentions a haunted both the situated
Speaker 2: near a rock cavern, and that was basically it. So
Speaker 2: it seems like the ghost stories have not shockingly. I
Speaker 2: guess I've sort of increased in numbers since the Internet,
Speaker 2: you know, so I'm not sure if that's the main
Speaker 2: mechanism by which they spread, but it seems like, I guess,
Speaker 2: how would you know?
Speaker 8: Though?
Speaker 2: You know, if before that, where would it have been captured?
Speaker 2: These are local phenomena slash legends, slash whatever.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm not aware of any Bothy ballads that tell
Speaker 1: of ghosts, but I mean there are a couple of
Speaker 1: Australian songs that I can think of told during the
Speaker 1: days of the when the country was colonized. Ghost stories
Speaker 1: and legends and things like that so there might have
Speaker 1: risen in those.
Speaker 4: Have you come across any note.
Speaker 3: Ghosts, not specifically. I'm trying to think if I heard
Speaker 3: any heard any about even like, you know, murders that
Speaker 3: had taken place that you know, that would be the
Speaker 3: next step. You know, a record of a murder in
Speaker 3: a song, could you know carry right into a legend?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I guess we'll go into a couple of
Speaker 1: the more famous bothies. So again yeah, yeah, the legends
Speaker 1: are that whichever bothy you're talking about, it tends to
Speaker 1: be the most remote, it tends to be the most haunted.
Speaker 1: So one of the more famous bothis is the White
Speaker 1: Lagan Bothy and it's located in Galloway Forest Park, So
Speaker 1: this is in southwest Scotland and it used to be
Speaker 1: one of those shepherd's houses. So White Lagan is said
Speaker 1: to be haunted by the ghost of a woman who
Speaker 1: once lived in the area, and the details are very vague.
Speaker 1: It said that she lived during the eighteenth or the
Speaker 1: nineteenth centuries. We don't know what her name is, we
Speaker 1: don't know any details about her or what she looks like,
Speaker 1: but some people say that she died tragically, that this
Speaker 1: was either from illness or exposure to the elements, or
Speaker 1: that she'd been ostracized by the nearby communities at the time,
Speaker 1: and she was known for being a recluse. So again
Speaker 1: with these stories, we get a lot of kind of lapping.
Speaker 1: They'll say one thing and then they'll say the complete opposite,
Speaker 1: so we just don't have any details.
Speaker 4: But they said that.
Speaker 1: After her death, very strange occurrences began to be reported
Speaker 1: in the Bothy and around that area. So you'll hear
Speaker 1: stories of hauntings that include things like footsteps. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just a good kind of solid ghost legend. I
Speaker 1: think to hear fansom footsteps, which people hear outside at
Speaker 1: night when there's no one else there. You can imagine
Speaker 1: being alone in a bothy and just wondering if someone
Speaker 1: else is going to be joining you, and hearing that,
Speaker 1: you know, it could be the sounds of animals, And
Speaker 1: I guess we don't need to dissect all of this,
Speaker 1: but these are the stories and the legends. Some people
Speaker 1: claim that they hear a woman sobbing, or they hear
Speaker 1: her singing softly, or again that complete opposite, she's screaming,
Speaker 1: so they hear her yelling or screaming, and other people
Speaker 1: report doors closing by themselves and chairs moving. Matt and
Speaker 1: I have watched a ton of these videos, and in
Speaker 1: many of them you do hear doors being slammed, and
Speaker 1: often it's just an open plan kind of thing, but
Speaker 1: maybe the front door is slammed or chairs move, and
Speaker 1: from watching these, if you want to be a skeptic
Speaker 1: about it, it does seem like they're there's trickery involved.
Speaker 1: Perhaps they're using string, or there's someone off camera's who's
Speaker 1: closing the door or moving the chairs or doing something.
Speaker 1: So it just seems to be a very common thing
Speaker 1: that we see in these videos. People also talk about
Speaker 1: sudden drops in temperature, particularly in one corner of the
Speaker 1: White Lag and Bothy, and my favorite one is that
Speaker 1: people say the Bothy is colder inside than outside. That's fun,
Speaker 1: but obviously you're going to have cold spots and a
Speaker 1: little boffy like this with the there.
Speaker 4: Unless you have.
Speaker 1: Wood and something to burn, it's going to be terribly
Speaker 1: cold in those places. Colder outside obviously, but certainly cold
Speaker 1: in there. And often with the bad weather, it's very
Speaker 1: difficult to find wood. They won't let you cut from
Speaker 1: live trees, so you can only take firewood from from
Speaker 1: dead trees or from just twigs and sticks and things
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: And if it weren't for those Bothy books, how would
Speaker 2: you even get the fire started?
Speaker 1: And there's that too, right, I'm sure mouse drop its.
Speaker 1: But so other people complain about the feeling of being
Speaker 1: watched while they're inside the bothy or around the Bothy,
Speaker 1: and I can imagine that kind of thing happening too.
Speaker 1: I think at any given time we can have that
Speaker 1: kind of sensation if we're out of our own homes.
Speaker 1: So another story I came across too was that of
Speaker 1: night stalkers. And it seems like it depends who you
Speaker 1: talk to as to what this means, because when I
Speaker 1: thought night stalker, I started thinking serial killer, right ah,
Speaker 1: And then I started thinking Matt and I watched a
Speaker 1: few episodes and they talked about stalkers, and so it
Speaker 1: seemed to be hunters deer stalkers.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, that's a phrase, yeah exactly. They used
Speaker 2: deer stalker to meet someone who hunts deer exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And a deer stalker is a particular type of
Speaker 1: hat as well. But how do you know about them?
Speaker 5: And I mentioned my dear Watson, this man has been
Speaker 5: dead for at least two hours, and so fear hunters.
Speaker 1: But it seems really interesting because I think that this
Speaker 1: has evolved off the back of the idea of the
Speaker 1: skin walker in American crypti folklore that people are now faming.
Speaker 1: They've seen these see these humanoid cryptids, and sometimes they're
Speaker 1: wearing hoods, or they're just strange, tall, gangly looking creatures.
Speaker 4: That walk the moors and the.
Speaker 1: Hills, and so I think that there's some conflation of
Speaker 1: folklore here, and people are seeing things that they think
Speaker 1: they might see in or have heard about from American folklore.
Speaker 1: But I think this is a real mishmash. Whatever the
Speaker 1: going cryptids are, I guess of the day people will
Speaker 1: incorporate into modern boffy folklore. But you know, you hear
Speaker 1: of lots of stories of people just saying they had
Speaker 1: such unsettling experiences when they were staying overnight that they
Speaker 1: packed up and they left before morning, just saying that
Speaker 1: the atmosphere was too oppressive, they were unable to sleep
Speaker 1: because of all of the creepy noises and our normal
Speaker 1: activity that was going on. So that's the white Lag
Speaker 1: and Boffy anyway, and definitely one of the more famous ones,
Speaker 1: and I think it's one of the more accessible ones.
Speaker 1: But yeah, a lot of stories surrounding that, and Matt
Speaker 1: looked into a different Bothy.
Speaker 3: The two most popular that we were seeing on YouTube
Speaker 3: was the White Lagen Bothy and the Ben Alder Bothy
Speaker 3: or they've been Alder Cottage. Now. Ben Alder's a mountain
Speaker 3: in the Scottish Highlands. It's about three thousand, seven hundred
Speaker 3: and sixty six feet at its highest point. Now, so
Speaker 3: we'll start this one talking a little bit about this mountain.
Speaker 3: So recently, we're talking nineteen ninety six there a body
Speaker 3: was found on the mountain at the edge of a
Speaker 3: cliff face, and they called it the Man with No
Speaker 3: Name because it took a full year for them to
Speaker 3: discover who it was. But the weird thing was to
Speaker 3: say his heart was pierced with an old fashioned lead
Speaker 3: ball bullet, and all the labels had been like.
Speaker 2: A musket ball, like a musketball, so it's like a
Speaker 2: like not a bullet like you would buy at the store,
Speaker 2: but like a black powder ball.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, not familiar with this stuff.
Speaker 3: I have some questions about this whole thing. But I'll
Speaker 3: go a little further. The labels have been cut from
Speaker 3: his clothing. All forms of identification like credit cards were missing.
Speaker 3: He had a replica Remington forty four with him. Unsuitable
Speaker 3: slip on shoes. I like that they brought in the
Speaker 3: fact that they were unsuitable.
Speaker 2: Unsuitable it needs crocs, but.
Speaker 4: Those are always unsuitable.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, unfashionable slip on shoes. And he had three
Speaker 3: bottles of water and about twenty one pounds of cash.
Speaker 3: Now it was figured out about a year later, so.
Speaker 2: You twenty one pounds, like like the unity the current he.
Speaker 3: Was carrying weight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a big difference. That's a very specific weight he had.
Speaker 3: He had a whole lot of dollars, weighed twenty.
Speaker 4: One pounds pounds. Yeah, Well, never took on the euro,
Speaker 4: did they.
Speaker 3: No, No, no, So it was it was a year
Speaker 3: later that they did craniofacial reconstruction of his face. And uh,
Speaker 3: a friend of the family saw it and thought it
Speaker 3: might be sown by the name of Emmanuel Kilt from
Speaker 3: South Paris, France. So you know, a little a little
Speaker 3: bit of a distance to get to the highlands of Scotland.
Speaker 3: But he was last seen by his parents like a
Speaker 3: previous year to that, so nineteen ninety five, so it
Speaker 3: was a full year that he had been kind of missing.
Speaker 4: So this is all true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is all true. He sold his car for
Speaker 3: like three hundred and fifty pounds in a pair of
Speaker 3: CROs in a pair of crocs, And then.
Speaker 2: I shouldn't make fun I mean, he's dead, so that's
Speaker 2: not well, not ideal.
Speaker 3: He can't defend himself right now against the Trock's allegations.
Speaker 2: But uh.
Speaker 3: So he stayed at a hotel in Glasgow, uh two
Speaker 3: days after he sold his car. He paid with his
Speaker 3: visa for that, so they kind of confirmed his identity
Speaker 3: from that. Now some people think he was murdered because
Speaker 3: a witness had seen him with another man at the
Speaker 3: Railroads railway station, but the forensic evidence points to suicide.
Speaker 3: So he shot himself in the heart, which is an
Speaker 3: odd way to kill yourself with a musket. Wow, that
Speaker 3: he would have had to have, you know, dragged all
Speaker 3: that up on the cliff face of ben Alder Mountain there,
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It does sound does some parts of the story sound
Speaker 1: like he did plan to take his own life, his
Speaker 1: car and getting his affairs in order, just very sad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very strange.
Speaker 2: I don't want to speculate. Well, I guess what we're doing,
Speaker 2: but it might be not so much that he wanted
Speaker 2: to shoot himself with a you know, black powder weapon,
Speaker 2: but the gun laws made that the easiest route.
Speaker 3: No, I can see that. Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 2: It ain't like Georgia where it's just you know which
Speaker 2: version of the AR fifteen do you want to use.
Speaker 4: Over too?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: To me, this is is something that could be the
Speaker 3: beginnings of a ghost story that that's going to be
Speaker 3: trickling down to the cottage now. Of course, been older
Speaker 3: cottage is known as one of them most remote and
Speaker 3: haunted Bothy's in Scotland, and I know we've not said
Speaker 3: that before, so I want to lock that in here.
Speaker 3: It is located in the Central Highlands and it's right
Speaker 3: on the shores of lock airt The building's like right
Speaker 3: at the base of the mountain and it's like right
Speaker 3: on the shore, so it's really kind of tough to
Speaker 3: get to. It's remote. It's like eight point five miles
Speaker 3: from the nearest road. It was last inhabited in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighteen and there's a lot of ghostly stories, but let's
Speaker 3: talk about the two most famous ones. First off, it's
Speaker 3: said that it's haunted by its first inhabitant, a man
Speaker 3: named McCook, and the story is that he hanged himself
Speaker 3: on the back of the front door. And to me,
Speaker 3: this is interesting. You can see a picture here in
Speaker 3: the show notes that's me at age ten, in front
Speaker 3: of my Bothy. I lived in this small, one room
Speaker 3: cabin for six years by myself and my three dogs.
Speaker 3: And in this cabin there was a to me, in
Speaker 3: my ten year old mind, a ghost that was just
Speaker 3: like this McCook guy. He would show up when I
Speaker 3: would get in bed, and he would stand right next
Speaker 3: to the front door, and I could clearly see, you know,
Speaker 3: his sort of a plaid or I guess we would
Speaker 3: say tartan shirt. Yeah, and he would stand there next
Speaker 3: to the door and just stare at me as I
Speaker 3: would lay in bed, and incredibly creepy and really freaked
Speaker 3: me out. And then I was told later on that
Speaker 3: the description of the person I was describing was a
Speaker 3: real person that lived in there and had accidentally shot himself.
Speaker 3: So it's like I feel a little bit of a
Speaker 3: connection to this.
Speaker 2: Maca one story cabin. But the biggest problem is the stairs.
Speaker 4: Yes, and are you able to see the picture?
Speaker 2: I am, I just got it open that. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's a really neat looking cabin. Yeah, not a few
Speaker 2: if it's your only home, and every I get, yeah,
Speaker 2: ten years ago.
Speaker 1: So it just that's going into I guess another's all
Speaker 1: together different territory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know for sure. I mean when you tell me,
Speaker 2: the first thing I'm thinking is this is a story
Speaker 2: you've somehow failed to mentioned before now, But I'm also
Speaker 2: thinking it's it's got this weird parallel in that my
Speaker 2: dad loved to find old cabins and tear them down
Speaker 2: and then restore them for people. And like tearing down
Speaker 2: cabins and reassembling them was a big chunk of my youth.
Speaker 2: It's kind of crazy, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you've spoken about that before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I guess Matt, you just grew up in
Speaker 1: a remote part of Colorado and I had some family issues,
Speaker 1: and so you just wanted to escape from it all.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, I worked on a cattle ranch, herding
Speaker 3: cattle the people, and I don't don't write in not
Speaker 3: not her team cattle, but I don't know practices at
Speaker 3: the time, but it was it was a very interesting,
Speaker 3: interesting life, you know, to to grow up in. So
Speaker 3: when we talk about these uh, the help that stayed
Speaker 3: in these bothis uh, you know, as they would work
Speaker 3: for these different farmers and ranchers and everything. It's I
Speaker 3: definitely feel a big kinship with them about that. But
Speaker 3: we have another story about the ben Alderbothy, and that's
Speaker 3: during a very violent storm. There's no dates around this,
Speaker 3: we don't know when it happened, but during a very
Speaker 3: violent storm, a woman and her infant took refuge in
Speaker 3: this bothy and they were trapped there for days, and
Speaker 3: her sanity diminished as her hunger, desperation, and isolation grew,
Speaker 3: and she was driven mad with hunger, and she killed
Speaker 3: and ate her own child, and then was seen passing
Speaker 3: through the moorland, wild eyed with despair that no one
Speaker 3: dared cross her path. She eventually became lost in the
Speaker 3: morasses of the place. So it's a very gruesome story
Speaker 3: that is still being told to this day about this boffy.
Speaker 3: But you know, we've now come to the part where
Speaker 3: we ruin all the fun.
Speaker 4: Now, I think we've been ruining the fun as we
Speaker 4: go along, all right.
Speaker 3: Now, residents who lived in the cottage during the nineteen
Speaker 3: thirties actually made up that story about the crazed woman
Speaker 3: as a way to spook away unwelcome travelers you'd like
Speaker 3: to call them travelers. But yes, yes, But isn't that
Speaker 3: interesting that ghost stories used to be used to scare
Speaker 3: people away and now they're used to attract business.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that is ironic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we've had a one eighty there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is a really good point.
Speaker 1: And absolutely, I think a lot of these bodies were
Speaker 1: a little known about. It's just interesting that they used
Speaker 1: to be for farm hands and for men and women
Speaker 1: too at times, and that nowadays it's really for white
Speaker 1: collar workers who just want to get out of town,
Speaker 1: get out of Dodge for the weekend, and I want
Speaker 1: to just go and hike. So it's really different kind
Speaker 1: of demographic that uses them nowadays.
Speaker 3: I do want to finish with McCook, and then I
Speaker 3: also want to say really quickly that one of the
Speaker 3: interesting things is that all these YouTubers, they are kind
Speaker 3: of dedicated to just doing hiking videos, and when one
Speaker 3: or two of them spent the night in one of
Speaker 3: these Bothy's, and they focused their video on the idea that, oh,
Speaker 3: there's I'm spending a night in a haunted Bothy. Suddenly
Speaker 3: that video would go viral.
Speaker 4: Oh and then that cause shows what people want.
Speaker 2: It's the pressure, the algorithm, all these things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: You'd see these videos, pretty earnest videos of hikers and
Speaker 1: they've got two hundred views, and then suddenly they've got
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty seven thousand views. So people are
Speaker 1: absolutely gobbling up the ghost.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as as usual. It's definitely that way. So to
Speaker 3: the McCook story, one of his descendants heard the story
Speaker 3: and was able to correct the main component, which is
Speaker 3: that he died peacefully in his bed at the age
Speaker 3: of eighty five. He did not hang himself off the
Speaker 3: back of the door.
Speaker 4: So that doesn't matter. The truth doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you yeah, well, I forget what I said.
Speaker 2: You're right, well, I mean, the legends always.
Speaker 4: Win, I mean, you know, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, so we thought we'd just looked at just in closing,
Speaker 1: because we're getting to that time we should look at
Speaker 1: the real risks of bothies. So a lot of people
Speaker 1: are frightened about visiting these places, thinking that there are
Speaker 1: nights talkers or ghosts or just other creaky spooky activity.
Speaker 1: But I think in reality there are some real risks
Speaker 1: of staying in these bothies from what we've seen and
Speaker 1: what we've read and just thought about that it can
Speaker 1: be dangerous for people to stay in these places with strangers,
Speaker 1: especially women. There was a woman on a folklore podcast
Speaker 1: and she was talking about how she turned up to
Speaker 1: one of these bothies and was really relishing just the
Speaker 1: peace and the quiet being by herself.
Speaker 3: But the thing is is she was freaking out as
Speaker 3: well because she had made didn't she make?
Speaker 4: It?
Speaker 3: Like a wrong turn and she oh, she was trying
Speaker 3: to cross a river or something that could have been
Speaker 3: really dangerous, and she came just inches from death, and
Speaker 3: she's really thinking about how close she came to ending.
Speaker 1: Her life and then yeah, I forgot that bit, and
Speaker 1: then now it's anticlimactic, but no, So, yeah, she had
Speaker 1: been traveling and I think that she.
Speaker 4: Took a wrong turn and a.
Speaker 1: Little roads seemed to lead to bothies in that area,
Speaker 1: so she eventually found her way back. But I think
Speaker 1: she was enjoying the peace and quiet and also just
Speaker 1: reflecting on her life as well, and then suddenly six
Speaker 1: Polish men turn up. But it can absolutely be dangerous.
Speaker 1: I've read a number of articles by women who like
Speaker 1: to go hiking and talk about the experiences that had
Speaker 1: that men have been inappropriate with the things that they've
Speaker 1: said and their behavior and physically touching women, and just
Speaker 1: they're so uncomfortable that they end up leaving. So I
Speaker 1: think they're not leaving because of ghosts or spooky activity,
Speaker 1: because they're just feeling intimidated by men being there, creepy
Speaker 1: men and having to leave.
Speaker 3: But it is interesting because she, you know, was focusing
Speaker 3: so much on, you know, her previous near brush with
Speaker 3: death that these guys showing up with all these whiskey,
Speaker 3: with all this whiskey, was like, I didn't even fase.
Speaker 2: He didn't trigger the right fear response.
Speaker 3: Yet it did not, and they all got drunk and
Speaker 3: had a great time.
Speaker 1: And yeah, she she was fine in that instance, had
Speaker 1: a savor, Yeah she did. But I've heard of other
Speaker 1: cases where women have been harassed, and I haven't heard
Speaker 1: of anything more serious than that. That's serious enough, but
Speaker 1: certainly lots of women who just feel like they need
Speaker 1: to excuse themselves and leave the bothy because they're in
Speaker 1: fear of their lives, and I just think if you're
Speaker 1: prepared to face the elements in a remote part of
Speaker 1: Scotland rather than dealing with a guy.
Speaker 4: That really says a lot.
Speaker 1: But other than that, there are issues with wild partying
Speaker 1: and drinking and vandalism and as they call it, they're
Speaker 1: fire raising, which is their term for arson. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: we've been hearing too about bothi's becoming places for drug deals.
Speaker 4: I think that's.
Speaker 1: Really go on on.
Speaker 2: How many pounds of dollars do I need to bring?
Speaker 1: So to the point where a lot of these bothies
Speaker 1: are having to be patrolled by police. And then you've
Speaker 1: got nature Mother nature as well, so torrential storms and
Speaker 1: even bush fires. We watch video and there was a
Speaker 1: guy who was approaching a boffy. He'd always wanted to
Speaker 1: visit there, and he was stopped repeatedly on his trip
Speaker 1: there by police and just other officials and park rangers
Speaker 1: who were saying, you have to turn back, it's really dangerous.
Speaker 1: But he wanted to make the trip to the Bothy
Speaker 1: at least to say he'd been there and then returned
Speaker 1: to a local village, and he just said he couldn't leave,
Speaker 1: how much his clothes freaked of smoke, and how dangerous
Speaker 1: it was. There was a fire, a bush fire that
Speaker 1: was just over the hill and could have really easily
Speaker 1: gotten closer if the wind had changed, and he would
Speaker 1: have been in dire straits then. So there are a
Speaker 1: lot of real risks associated with Bothy. I think it's
Speaker 1: something I would love to do, but I don't know
Speaker 1: if i'd want to do that with a ten year
Speaker 1: old and being a woman too. I think that there
Speaker 1: are some absolute concerns there and it is something.
Speaker 3: That may not be around forever, you know, because of
Speaker 3: all the vandalers, some criminal behavior and disrespect this is
Speaker 3: landowner's private property. You know, they could easily say that's it,
Speaker 3: gig game over, everyone out of the port.
Speaker 1: What happens That's happened with the number of places where
Speaker 1: people have just taken them back and said, well, we're
Speaker 1: ripping them out of the association because they're just getting
Speaker 1: damaged and it's just bringing too many people on trespasses
Speaker 1: and problems. So yeah, I think we really want to
Speaker 1: preserve these places. And it's much like camping here or
Speaker 1: in any other country, you really want to leave it
Speaker 1: as you found it all better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2: It sounds like the makings of a Bloomhouse movie. So
Speaker 2: I expect that Haunted book Both the about the next year, probably, yes,
Speaker 2: maybe next week. They not them out pretty fast.
Speaker 4: But.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can go to Mountainbothis dot org dot uk
Speaker 3: and it's a great website to tells you how to
Speaker 3: you know, how to behave, how you can help, how
Speaker 3: to find these places. You know, how to catch a
Speaker 3: bit of boffy fever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can find the best of boffy worlds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they are incredibly interesting places, very beautiful and
Speaker 1: just sleeeped in history and folklore and so no wonder
Speaker 1: they've become a target for ghost stories and legends.
Speaker 3: Yeah on drug deals.
Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate you bringing this to our listeners. I
Speaker 2: mean the I think what we might go a little
Speaker 2: further into some of these sort of Scottish legends too,
Speaker 2: because I was thinking about it. I'd love to the
Speaker 2: Gray Man have been mc dewey. I don't know if
Speaker 2: that's how you sound say that, but there's some really
Speaker 2: interesting effects that go on, and I love the way
Speaker 2: that this has led to all sorts of ghost stories
Speaker 2: and it's yet it's.
Speaker 4: Actually we need to find an expert.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, we can start doing that. Seriously, that's a
Speaker 2: good idea.
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear from our listeners if anyone has
Speaker 1: been to a body, if they've traveled to one, and
Speaker 1: any experiences that they've had. Is it a lot out
Speaker 1: there on reddits and just treads online and just stories everywhere.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure we've had some listeners who've.
Speaker 2: Been to I'm sure, yeah, for sure. And I'm reminded
Speaker 2: a little bit of what we had. Was it the
Speaker 2: Blackfriars Kirkyard, I think that's right. It was the Oh,
Speaker 2: it was the Great Friars Kirkyard. It was the Scottish
Speaker 2: Kirkyard where there was the haunting and the churchyard.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I just kept thinking of the same thing. It's it's
Speaker 2: it's it's cold and wet and dangerous. Yeah, there's cold spots. Yes,
Speaker 2: you're in Scotland.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course there's cold spots.
Speaker 4: It's some giant cold spot.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, but but these are sounds like a first of all,
Speaker 2: it sounds like some really interesting stories. Uh. And I'll
Speaker 2: put links in the show notes to that episode where
Speaker 2: there's more than one episode that sort of covers this
Speaker 2: topic on that BBC show, which is a fun show.
Speaker 2: It does a really nice mix of telling the legends
Speaker 2: and also bringing in skeptics. So maybe we'll hear more
Speaker 2: about that later.
Speaker 4: Yeah sounds good.
Speaker 2: All right, Thanks a lot, guys, monster you've been listening
Speaker 2: to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm Blake
Speaker 2: Smith and I'm Karen Stolesner. You just heard Matt Baxter
Speaker 2: and Karen stoles Know sharing their thoughts on stories of
Speaker 2: haunted bothies in the rural wilds of the UK. Check
Speaker 2: the show notes for more reading and listening on this topic.
Speaker 2: We hope you enjoyed this episode of Monster Talk. Our
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