In Scotland, 321 acres and the ruins of Yester Castle have hit the market for offers over £450,000. The ruins date back to before 1267 and the only remaining structure is the subterranean Goblin Ha’ or Hobgoblin Ha’ (Goblin Hall). According to legend, the castle was built by Sir Hugo de Giffard, a wizard and necromancer. Old Hugo decided to build a castle and made a pact with the devil in exchange for an army of hobgoblins who helped build it.

[East Lothian Courier via Ghost Theory]

Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. This week we chronicle Scotland’s Fear Liath. Come back Monday and Wednesday for the rest of the story.

Leave it to Scotland’s Fear Liath to meet any (or all!) of your horrifying cryptozoological encounter needs. A sudden sense of creeping psychic dread followed by inexplicable panic and unprovoked activation of your fight-or-flight response? Leave it to the Liath! A more traditional, rampage-style assault, up to and including wild pursuit of a moving car? He’s on it! Or maybe a subtler, mysterious encounter – a huge, lumbering figure glanced through the fog… a giant footprint in the mud… a stolen picanic basket? Greyman’s got it!

“What is the Fear Liath?” you ask.

Some folks refer to it as Scotland’s Bigfoot, and in some ways that’s accurate. Hiker’s who have seen the Fear Liath (also known as “The Greyman”) have described it as a burly giant with a strikingly inhuman face and a head-to-toe coating of thick, ash-colored fur. What makes the Fear Liath a taxonomical oddity, however, is the effect it’s said to have over people in its vicinity. Supposedly, travelers of the Cairngorm Mountains, and especially visitors to Ben Macdui, the range’s highest peak and suspected site of the Greyman’s lair, have experienced bizarre sensations of terror that come out of nowhere and, often, send the suddenly stricken mountaineers screaming into the mist.
John Norman Collie, an experienced British mountaineer famous for performing pioneering climbing feats in the Himalayas and the Canadian Rockies, authored the most famous account of this strange phenomenon.

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