"Something Utterly Malign"; Or, Why You Should Be Very Careful Where You Hike In Scotland

British author Joan Grant (1907-1989,) is probably best known for her historical novel about ancient Egypt, “Winged Pharaoh,” which expressed her lifelong interest in reincarnation and the supernatural.  However, this week we shall look at a passage from her autobiography, "Time Out of Mind," which describes an experience in 1928 that was as sinister and uncanny as anything in her fiction:

On one of our Sundays off my husband Leslie and I went to Rothiemurchus intending to climb towards the Cairngorms. It was a beautiful day and we had it to ourselves. Basking naked in the sun, we ate sandwiches beside a burn. It was far too hot and peaceful for serious walking, so we decided to wander on for another mile or so, and then go for dinner to the hotel in Aviemore. Nothing could have been farther from my mind than spooks when suddenly I was seized with such terror that I turned and in panic fled back along the path. Leslie ran after me, imploring me to tell him what was wrong. I could only spare breath enough to tell him to run faster, faster. Something utterly malign, four-legged and yet obscenely human, invisible and yet solid enough for me to hear the pounding of its hooves, was trying to reach me. If it did I should die, for I was far too frightened to know how to defend myself. I had run about half a mile when I burst through an invisible barrier behind which I was safe. I knew I was safe now, though a second before I had been in mortal danger; knew it as certainly as though I were a torero who has jumped the barrier in front of a charging bull. 

A year later one of Father’s professors described an almost exactly similar experience he had had when bug-hunting in the Cairngorms. He was a materialist, but had been so profoundly startled that he wrote to The Times--and received a letter from a reader who had also been pursued by the “Thing.” Some years later, when I was living at Muckerach, the doctor told me that two hikers, for whom search-parties had been out three days, had been found dead. He showed me the exact spot on the map. It was the place of my terror. Both men were under thirty. One came from Grantown, the other from Aviemore. The weather was fine. They had spent a good night under the shelter-stone on the highest ridge, for they had written to that effect in the book which is kept up there. They were found within a hundred yards of each other, sprawled face downward as though they had fallen headlong when in flight. “I did a post-mortem on them both,” said the doctor gravely. “Never in my life have I seen healthier corpses: not a thing wrong with either of the poor chaps except that their hearts stopped. I put ‘heart failure’ on the chit, but it is my considered opinion that they died of fright.”