Haunted house

Trail heads to deepest, darkest Scotland to spend a night alone in a creepy bothy...

“EVERY TIME YOU APPROACH A BOTHY, IT’S LIKE A CROSS BETWEEN CHRISTMAS MORNING AND EXECUTION BY FIRING SQUAD”

Bothies. You either love ’em or hate ’em. Unless, of course. you don’t know what one is. Well picture a drug den, randomly set in the mountains, then add a light sprinkling of mouse droppings and you get the picture.

I’ve stayed in many bothies over the years, but always with other people. Something had niggled away at me for a while. Could I cope on my own in a bothy? Would I panic? Would I run screaming into the mountains never to be seen again? Would I find the answers to life’s imponderables? Or would it be easy? When life gets a little dull, it’s fun to play chicken with your fears. Come with me (because no one else is), to a remote bothy, somewhere at the arse end of Scotland…

Strabeg bothy sits right up at the very top of the country. It’s not the most northerly or anything notable like that, but it is all the flipping way up there. That’s about 580 miles (11 hours driving) from my house in the English Midlands. Strabeg is also located about 2 kilometres from the road. Now, this doesn’t sound like much, but when I visited, it was the most adventurous 2km I’d walked for a while. I took along a load of firewood because I wanted to inhabit the place, not just stay there, so warmth would be important (I managed seventeen and a half hours). This meant that for the first kilometre of the journey I was bent double, a vision of myself in 30 years’ time. I hope I’m still doing this type of thing then.

The approach

At the end of the first kilometre I had to ditch the firewood. I’d come back for it later. The next kilometre of ground (and I use that term in the loosest of ways) was one big bog with a few ditches to navigate. Just before the bothy, which sat picturesquely at the base of a crag covered in birch trees, there was a stream to cross. Now, the wetness of the bog and the raging height of this stream suggested a lot of recent rainfall. I had to cross it before I could sample the warmth of the bothy. First, I needed to go back for the wood. Half an hour later,

I had all my stuff at the stream.

I had the waistband of my pack undone (in case I fell over, so I could shed the pack with ease), poles in hand, boots and socks off, and in I went. My gosh, it was cold. What made it worse was going back across for the firewood. I like to think I’m not a wuss, but my eyes were watering with the pain of the cold.

Every time you approach a bothy, it’s like a cross between Christmas morning and execution by firing squad. You’re excited about what awaits, but with equal measure dreading what you may find. Sliding the door bolt loudly to the left,

I announced my arrival to every rodent and spirit within. Luckily, I had the place to myself, but it was 1pm so there was time for others to arrive. I was sincerely hoping for the place to myself, after all it was midweek in January.

The bothy

Strabeg isn’t your normal bothy, it’s a step up, with an upstairs and a bathroom. Now don’t get excited about this, the bath and sink definitely aren’t plumbed in, the toilet on the other hand does work. When I say work, you have to collect a bucket of water from the nearby river to flush away any offerings you may have made. Where this all goes, I have no idea. I didn’t leave a deposit in the time I was there. So, whoever cleans out the septic tank, don’t pour scorn my way. Apart from the cool dampness of the place, all seemed as it should be.

Before I unpacked and settled down in front of the fire for the evening, I explored outside. In a derelict outbuilding, two rusty iron bedsteads leant against a wall. These conjured up the presence of the bothy’s past inhabitants more than the empty interior did. How many times had they rocked as their owners slumbered, and how still must they have stood when those same lives came to an end? It is impossible to think about an abandoned croft without thinking in terms of the number of generations that have lived there. Talking about spirits, some generous soul had left some whisky. The sun being over the yard arm (1.30pm), I decided to get stuck into it.

The other chore was to go looking for more firewood. I’d brought some with me, but I was definitely going to burn this and some, so I needed to do the decent thing and make sure I left the bothy with at least as much wood as I’d found in there.

The location being close to that rare thing, a hillside forest, there was a ready supply. Note – you do not collect green (living) wood. It harms the trees, which do belong to someone, and it never burns with any heat as there’s too much sap in it. The thing to do is look along the margins of the rivers and streams nearby, which are normally littered with dead branches washed down in floods. These make great firewood. Anyway, cutting a long story short, I collected some and dutifully cut it up.

Chores more than done, I had another wee dram. The fire was going nicely. Time to look at the bothy book. I like the experience of these places to be my own for the time I’m there, so I’m a bit of a ghost myself when it comes to bothies. I rarely leave my mark. I’d read online that there was also lots of information about the old occupants. Now I really didn’t want to know about any of this – I knew I couldn’t trust my imagination – so I ignored the pile of notebooks stashed in the corner. The furniture in the main room comprised the usual rough-andready bothy staples, apart from a child’s school desk in the corner. Now this was a bit creepy.

The night

Plenty of whisky left… time for another. Mmm, that’s going down well. Where was I, oh yes, trying not to get creeped out. By 5pm darkness had stealthily crawled up to the bothy walls and was surrounding all within (me). I had dinner, then the last of the whisky. I swept the floor. I was leaving early in the morning, so I wanted to get the domestic bits done before then. There was no avoiding it. By 8pm I was ready for bed, and by bed I mean a roll mat on the floor in front of the dying fire.

A bothy in the mountains, at night, with a warm glow emanating from the windows, makes you feel surprisingly vulnerable. You know that anything out there will be aware that there is someone in the bothy. I tried not to look at the window. It had lost that deep blue/black inkiness, and now a black hole seemed suckered onto it. There was nothing out there, nothing beyond the door, no stars, moon, mortgage or children. It felt like I was the universe.

Light from the fire lit the bothy interior until the early hours. All that time I’d not really slept. Silence is loud. The expectation of sound weighs heavy on the brain. At no point did I feel afraid. But having said that I didn’t leave my cosy room, and I certainly didn’t venture upstairs. Someone once told me about a night they’d stayed in a bothy alone, only to wake to the sound of something heavy being dragged along the floor above them. They fled in terror. Another night, I was in a bothy with a friend, somewhere in the Southern Uplands. We were both awoken by the sound of knocking and scratching at the door. There was nothing subtle about it, there was something big out there. Like the brave walkers we were, we independently decided to bury our heads under our sleeping bag covers and ignore it. In the morning deer prints could be seen in the earth by the door, antlers had clearly needed scratching in the night. Incidentally, while I was out looking at this evidence a panel of plasterboard fell from the ceiling and landed where I’d been sleeping just minutes before. Now that did freak us out, because my friend would’ve had a job waking me after that.

I slept at some point, probably longer than I realised. There was little to distract from the introspection of tiredness and solitude. Don’t do this if you’re having trouble with this way of thinking. I was in a strong place and it felt like the right time for me to challenge myself, looking deep into the subconscious and emerging a better version of myself.

The escape

I woke before the alarm. It was 5.50am, there was a raging gale blowing and the rain had started to drum at the windows. Great, that’s all I needed. The river was bad enough yesterday, with overnight rain it was sure to be above the knees and a bit more of an issue. Two cups of coffee had me buzzing. I was packed and out by half six. The river was actually lower, go figure. Using a compass, I navigated leapfrogging from one grassy tussock to the next for one kilometre over the bog, no mean feat in these conditions. Remember, it’s still dark. All the time I pulled away from the bothy, I felt its presence behind me. That was the moment I felt fear. I couldn’t bring myself to look back that way, knowing that if I did, there would be a glow in a window and a ghostly pale child’s face staring, pleadingly, out at me. The hairs on the back of my neck were not only standing up, but tapping me on the shoulder and urging me to get out of there. The further away from the bothy I got, the stronger this feeling became. I’m now convinced I spent the night in an extremely haunted place.

What did I learn? Ghosts do exist, all bothies are haunted, and I’m not doing it again.

“A BOTHY IN THE MOUNTAINS, AT NIGHT, WITH A WARM GLOW EMANATING FROM THE WINDOWS, MAKES YOU FEEL SURPRISINGLY VULNERABLE...”