A ghost story

Kenny, my friend, wanted to climb all the Munros in Scotland. Munros are mountains over 3000 feet high.

Kenny is a dentist; precision is vital to him.

“I want to climb all the Munros” he said. “There are two hundred and eighty odd of them. Fancy coming with me?”

His lack of numerical precision with regard to the number is due to the growing accuracy of modern surveying, unlike in Sir Hugh Munro’s day when he first published his list in 1891, known as Munro’s Tables. Some hills, once Munrohigh, are now smaller. Others, that once looked up to their peers, have grown with digital accuracy, and may now lord it over their diminutive neighbours.

Consequently the total number of Munros varies. But what does not vary, is that there are a lot of them, they are high, some remote, and all but a few are challenging.

“Lets go to Knoydart and do one” said Kenny one day. “We’ll go in by Loch Garry, drive the long remote single-track road to Kinlochhourn, and walk in to the bothy at Barrisdale.”

Knoydart Peninsula is one of the most remote places in Britain. People do live there, just a few, and with only boat access to the rest of the world, no roads. Hence we had to walk.

“It’s a holiday weekend said Kenny, and we’ll need the tent because the bothy will be busy.” So we took the tent.

We arrived at the bothy in Barrisdale after 11pm, in the dark. It wasn’t busy at all, only a couple of tents nearby, and inside the bothy in one room and visible through a partly open door were two men drinking a bottle of whisky, laughing and tale-telling.

We quietly looked into the other larger room, split across one end with a two-tier wall-to-wall sleeping platform. The lower platform with easy access, the other much higher one requiring a climb. Only two people’s gear evident, a sleeping bag, empty, on one side of the lower platform, with guygear around it, obviously one of the whisky drinkers. Another full sleeping bag, slowly rising and falling, lay several feet away, surrounded by girlgear. We decided this was not a bloke.

The tent we’d hauled in was obviously not needed. Plenty of sleeping space.

So we threw our stuff onto the top platform and hauled ourselves up, settling down to sleep, longwalktiredlegsleep.

I woke at some small hour, in the dark. Freezing. In my arctic-rated goosedown sleeping bag. Something was not right. I looked around, off the platform towards the far wall, and saw a misty gently evanescent swirl of…something. It roiled and rolled and rose and pulsed. It was weird. And very very very cold. I sensed Kenny’s stirring beside me.

Quietly I said “…are you awake?”

“Yes” he replied softly “…have been for ages”

“Can you see something swirling?”

“Yes” he said, and added “…are you cold, I’m bloody freezing”.

We watched, unable to see each other, but both able to discern some hazy glowing swirl of shapeless nothing. But cold. Very very cold.

 

SUDDENLY a piercing terror-stricken scream tore through the silence. The woman below us overcome by some nameless horror, filling her heart and escaping through her lungs, again and again and again.

Then followed by a male voice, rudely awakened from a whiskyfog, groaning “Duh..er….whoa…whassamatter…are you ok? Are you ok? What’s wrong?”

The only reply was the noise of hyperventilation as the woman’s lungs rose and fell rapidly, combined with the sighs and groans and moans of fear.

Then another piercing scream, as she was once again overcome by some nameless terror.

Again from the bloke “Aaaaargh….are you ok? Are you ok?” he asked, but she made no reply just a sucking lung-sound.

(At this point one needs to imagine him fumbling with the neck cord of his sleeping bag as he struggles in the blackness to release his arm, which he tentatively reaches out across the pitch-black void to comfort the woman but uncertain of what his fingers will reveal…)

Kenny now frustrated by our fellow climber’s inability to adequately deal with the situation, loudly proclaimed from beside me “You’re ok, you’re ok, you’re in a bothy, you’re ok.”

There was a sudden inhalation, the sound of zips, shuffling and sighs, then heavy breathing, more sighs and shuffling. Then slowly, gradually, all quietened, the cold chill evaporated, and at some point I think we all fell asleep. I know I did, I pulled my bag over my head and curled up figuring I was safer in there than outside it with whatever malevolent ectoplasmic fog had decided to plague us.

Kenny and I rose at 6am and took off up the mountain into the mist and rain, leaving our heavy gear behind to collect later on our way back out. And although reaching the top of our desired mountain, we got well and truly lost in the trackless wilds of Knoydart, only temporarily lost, as most lostness is, but that’s another story, for another time.

 

We returned to Barrisdale and the bothy in the late afternoon. A man was sitting outside, enjoying the weak sun now peeking through a clearing sky. We nodded hello. He smiled. We went inside to retrieve our gear as the man appeared behind us and noticed we were hauling sleeping bags and tent off the top platform.

“Were you sleeping in here last night?” he asked, curious.

“Yes” said Kenny.

“You buggers! You bloody buggers!” he said “So it was YOU. I’d had a few drams and was fast asleep and then this screaming started, gave me such a bloody fright! Then I tried to calm her down, and was managing, and just as my own heart stopped racing, then more screaming, then as I got my pulse back down again this deep voice from above went “It’s ok you’re in a bothy” and I nearly wet myself. I had no bloody idea you pair were up there!”

“Oops, sorry!” we said.

Then asked him “What was going on? We saw swirly cold stuff, but no idea what was happening. Did you speak to her about it in the morning?”

“She wouldn’t speak. She’d said to me yesterday when she arrived that she was staying for several days, and was very chatty. But this morning would not speak, just threw all her stuff roughly in her pack, took no breakfast and set off up the track at a gallop, back to the main road. Whatever it was it must have really disturbed her!”

We agreed. And it disturbed us too. But obviously not as much as him!

And then we set off home ourselves.

Ghosts.

Do you believe in them?

Do you wonder if we two believe in them?

Doesn’t matter. Not really.

All that matters is that we believe in two things.

Stories.

And fear.