Scotland's highlands are amongst the most beautiful and remote places in the world.
But to many, this stunning landscape of mountains, lakes and coastal villages also bears a notable air of mystery and foreboding.
Even today, these ancient lands remain steeped in folklore and supernatural tales.
Once one begins to dig into the stories of high strangeness in the Scottish highlands, it becomes clear why it is often considered one of the most haunted places on Earth. In prehistoric times, virtually all of Scotland was covered by glaciers, country-sized swathes of ice that helped carve the highlands we know today.
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Coincidentally, these natural formations also eliminated virtually all traces of human habitation before around 10,000 BC. This has only served to deepen the mystery surrounding who, or what, might have called the highlands home before us.
Thanks to the work of archaeologists and historians, we do know that those humans who did arrive in this rugged landscape not only had to eke out a living in the harsh northern climate, but that their lives were steeped in ritual and superstition.
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This is evidenced by enigmatic monuments like the Calanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis and Skara Brae on Orkney, structures so old that they predate the Egyptian pyramids.
By the Iron Age, Scotland had become home to the Celts and the mysterious Picts. These painted warriors were quick to battle, and continued to prefer the isolation afforded them by their harsh mountainous land long after England fell to modernity.
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To the invading Romans, Caledonia, as they called it, was so treacherous and infertile that it simply wasn't worth adding to their growing empire. And so, the highlands remained a place of mystery and magic. Even today, residents still speak plainly about seeing fairies and other mystical beings or warding off evil spirits with talismans and charms.
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Many still leave offerings of bread or milk outside at night, guarding their children's bedsides from changelings and other mischievous creatures.
Locks and coasts are said to be home to Selkies, shapeshifting seals that walk on land, and Kelpies, beautiful water horses that lure travellers to their watery doom.
The further north one travels, the more immersed they become in a rich tapestry of folklore.
In remote areas, witchcraft is both feared and respected.
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On the isles, grown men still speak of encounters with the Banshee, or the lesser known Binn Nia, wailing spirits seen washing the blood-stained clothes of those about to die.
Skeptics say highlanders are simply too isolated and attached to tradition, arguing that the area's miscovered mountains, dark locks and remote glens naturally give rise to such stories.
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Yet these skeptics often overlook the fact that many highland tales stretch back hundreds or even thousands of years, and accounts of strange events throughout the area's history, persist. For believers, it's not just a place, but a feeling.
A sensation that something ancient and unknowable lies beyond the ruins of Hadrian's Wall.
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Sometime in the 1980s, an elderly woman was attending a house party in Inverness, a city just north of Loch Ness. She'd lived in the area almost all her life and rarely got the opportunity to be social. This party was a welcome occasion to reinvigorate relationships with her neighbors. When she arrived, she saw that there were over 100 people in attendance, including many she had never met before.
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At some point during the night, she struck up a friendly conversation with a young couple who were speaking to several other partygoers about the issues they were having at home. It seemed they had purchased a small cottage on the outskirts of town, only to discover that it was haunted. A lover of ghost stories, the elderly woman asked for more information.
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The two then described being awoken by the sound of dull thuds coming from their fireplace several nights in a row. The first time it happened, they assumed it was just some kindling bursting from the heat. The cottage was old after all, and they needed to keep the wood burning at all hours to stay warm.
However, the next night they heard the exact same thing.
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And not only were the thuds equally loud, but they perfectly matched the spacing and tempo from the previous evening.
After three nights of this, the husband had gone to investigate.
At this point in the retelling, the couple's faces went pale white.
They described in vivid detail how they had entered the living room to see an apparition of a young woman standing near the fireplace.
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They described her as being dressed in a vintage gown, her face streaked with tears. Her long brown hair clung to her damp cheeks, giving her a haunting appearance. Thinking she was an intruder, perhaps one who was mentally ill, the husband had attempted to call out to her. However, she did not acknowledge his presence.
He tried several more times, but to no avail.
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They were still under the impression that this was a real, physical person, despite her odd ghostly appearance. The wife recounted how, even through her disquiet, she felt pity for the young woman.
He was obviously sobbing, even though she wasn't making a single sound.
Then, without warning, she roughly struck her head against the wall above the fireplace, the house filled with the familiar sounds of rhythmic thudding.
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As her head met the wall again and again, blood seemed to seep through the wallpaper, running down in thick, crimson streaks.
The couple became almost paralysed with fear before the wife screamed out for the woman to stop.
But instead, the apparition simply began to decay, like smoke dissipating on a breeze.
After a second or two, she was gone.
Somehow, the couple managed to fall into an uneasy sleep that night.
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However, what they first attempted to pass off as a dream or shared hallucination soon became a frequent event. The knocks, the apparition, it was as if she was following some sort of pattern that would repeat itself night after night.
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As the couple finished their story, the old woman could no longer avoid the sickening feeling rising in her chest and throat. Finally, she worked up the nerve to ask them about the location of the cottage. Their answer confirmed her worst fears. It was the same cottage where she had lived with her family some 40 years earlier.
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As tears filled her eyes, she explained to the couple that her husband had been away serving in the British Army during the Second World War, leaving her alone to care for their two young children. One day, whilst tidying the house, she had come across some letters in her husband's belongings.
Missing him terribly and unable to control her curiosity, she finally decided to read a few of them. To her utter shock, she discovered that they were love letters from another woman.
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The discovery left her completely devastated, and she quickly succumbed to despair.
As the couple stared wide-eyed, the woman described how she had spent the night crying uncontrollably, standing by the fireplace and banging her head against the wall, unable to process the betrayal. In fact, she had struck her head so violently that it left marks on the plaster and on her.
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To prove her point, she parted her fringe to reveal several rough scars on her forehead. It was as if the pain she felt that night had been so strong that it left its mark on the cottage, or perhaps even on time itself. Even though she was still alive and only living a few miles away, a part of her was somehow still haunting the cottage where she had suffered one of the worst upheavals of her life.
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