Heh heh. It's midnight - somehwere's it's midnight, no matter where you are: The Witching Hour - that strike of the clock that marks the start of the Wolf Hours: those moments between dusk and dawn where our ancestors huddled around the built up fires looking into the dark. And often... the Dark looked back. It wasn't just for the warmth that our forebearers built fires as a bulwark against the night's lonely expanses - it was to throw light upon the darkness as well. Wether the cro-magnon huddled in his caves imagining the sabretooth, the frontiersman clasping his rifle wondering if the howl in the night was wolf or redskin, or the Cherokee making chants to ward off the Raven Mockers - our ancestors weren't fools. They knew that the darkness had teeth. Something that we often forget in this day of concrete and streetlight, but the teeth are there still, naetheless. Sometimes they bite when you least expect it. Sometimes they just nibble in the dark places of the imagination, reminding us that the demons born of the mind are as ravenous as the night gaunts of the elder places. It's fitting I think that we begin this Hallow's Eve with a tale that has made my blood run cold on occassion since I first discovered it, also, years ago. A tale of murder most foul... and monsters. Definately a fitting place for a story. Not a ghost story mind you, but a story of the macabre nevertheless. It is a story of haunting, in the other sense of the word. A haunt is a place where animals come to feed. ************************************************** It began five centuries ago, in the 15th century reign of James the 1st. The setting was in a remote area Scotland - where even in a land so long settled, there still remained numerous wild regions, sparse in human dwellings. The grotto and cave of this tale were located on a remote, forbidding and completely uninhabited stretch of Scottish coast... for all intents and purposes, may as wel have been located on the moon or darkest Africa as far as the awareness of the world was concerned. Furthermore - even the accidental and unlikely wayfarer would have been unlikely to venture into this place... for the opening to the grotto was a forbidding, ominous looking cleft where rising tides snt foaming waves 200 yards deep in, obsuring the cave openings farther within. Explorers risked getting trapped by the rushing waters and smashed by the crashing surf at all but a few hours at low tides... All but the denizens of the caverns beyond. They knew the times of the tides... and when it was safe to come out and feed. Communications as we understand them were non-existant. Unlike the virtually instantaneous communications of the phone and internet today, messages and mail were hand caried, often taking weeks or months at a time to wend their way to intended reciepients. If ever. Travel was equally slow... travelers wended their way across "roads" that were often little more than tracks through virgin forrest, over lonely foothills and and unpopulated countryside. Wether by shanksmare or horseback and carriage, such thoroughfares as there were became virtually impassable morasses of mud during foul weather. No streetlights either. Nor handy policemen to shout for... Trips that would be less than overnighters today could span weeks, months before lateness of arrival aroused fears for their saftey... or outcries over their lack of arrival. And when they failed to arrive.... supposing that inquiries resulted in attracting the atention of authorites, by the time communications made the route both ways - what little evidence remained could long have mouldered away. A perfect setting for monsters. And as often occurs, it attracted them. Like all families, this one began with a single pair of breeders. The sire was spawned in the hamlet of East Lothian, near Edinburg, of a family of common labourers. History doesn't seem to have recorded the name of his mate, but it is to be believed that she was a fitting helpmeet for the ghoul she cleaved unto.... a human ghoul named Sawney Bean. Nor is it recorded how they met and where - or if - they wed, but it is known that after an indeterminate period of wandering... they found their way into the the isloated grotto below Bennane Head on the coast in the county of Galloway. And, somehow managing to navigate the secret of the tides that allowed entry to the caves beyond the grotto mouth, they set up housekeeping there. Like all good little monsters... they bred others of their kind. Dozens of them - an entire clan formed of incest and inbreeding. Generations actually - they lived within their grotto and caverns for upwards of twenty-five years never venturing into city, town nor village. And in this time they raised a horde of children and grandchildren raised after their own fashion without concepts of humanity or civil society. A family of ghouls... keeping company only with themselves, and allowing no others to survive with knowlege of their existance. Eventually the clan numbered more than 48 individuals, at least 32 of which were grandchildren of various ages, begotten through incest. They lived and supported themselves wholly by robbery and murder. And they ate their victims. It's estimated that in the twenty-five years of their residence beneath Bennane Head, they ambushed, killed and ate more than 1000 travelers - and 100 may have been a conservative number - butchering them, robbing the corpses, dismembering and devouring the bodies either raw or pickled. Restrictions on fire were a must, not only to prevent discovery from prying eyes, but to keep from suffocating the dwellers during hours spent pent in by the grottos rushing tidefill. And the total doesn't include those unfortuantes who may have been blamed and executed for the Bean's bloody crimes. Stealth and ambush were their trademark, and Sawney trained his horde well in the arts. No survivors could be permitted - ever - lest an outcry be raised that would lead to an investigation that might uncover their lair. And they practiced it well. They seldom attacked more than two people on horse back at a time... lest one escape. Foot travelers allowed for greater mass production, naturally. No corpses were left behind. Stripped of whatever jewelry, clothing, weapons and monies - whatever caught their killers facy - the bodies: men, women, children, were dragged back to the lairs for dismemberment. There, by torchlight, or by moonlight on such nights as permiited, the corpses were butchered, cut into peices for pickeling, arms, legs and other parts - and the delicacies: brains, livers and kidneys for immediate consumption. At times when the highway robbery business was especially brisk, they developed surplusses... Body parts carried far up the coast for disposal and tossed into the sea began to wash up on beaches... to the terror and disgust of beholders. All good things must come to an end, and all evil things often suffer the same fate: it was inevitable that the spawn of Sawney Bean would grow more and more bold, and more convinced they were beyond the reach of the arm of the people they preyed upon. Inevitably, they grew careless. On one particular ambush, their target was a man and wife, traveling through Sawney's territory. While the husband looked on in horror, the woman was dragged from her horse, her throat cut, and her body dismembered before his eyes - the killers slicing and bolting down still warm and quivering "choice bits": a welcome change from their diet of ripe and pickled fare. They took too long with the woman... by the time they turn to the man, horror and shock had turned to fight spurred by revulsion. He battled furiously for his life - not surprisingly, but no doubt annoying to the Sawney's. A group of travelers, some fifteen to a score enroute home from a nearby faire, happened upon the scene. A group tha tsize was too large for the ghouls to savage, and they fled - but too late: at long last, they'd been witnessed and a survivor of their attacks had escaped. The mysteries surrounding the dissapearences of travelers and the body parts washing ashore was near to an end. Having escaped the afte of his wife, the man told his tale to his rescuers, and then to a magistrate. The magistrate hurriedly relayed the tale to his boss, King James IV of Scotland [King James I of England], who himself led a troop of 400 angry and outraged men, men at arms, and dogs to the scene... The gigantic posse combed the area - not knowing of the grotto and caverns tha textended more than a mile inland beneath Bennane Head. However, the tides being well out, the Bean's foremost defense against discovery was gone. Dogs soon found the trail of the morderes, nd led the party into the grotto and thence the caverns beyond - into a scene of ghastley horror. The flickering torchlight revealed almost fifty of the cannibalistic family, and their ghoulish larder. Arms, legs, torsos, and limbs of men, women and children hung from the walls and ceiling. Other piles of body parts were laid in crude vats for pickling... Great piles of possessions, jewels, and moines strewn about in heaps. [Not being prone to go to townships, the cannibals had no use for monies except as playthings. Probably kept it as magpies steal shiney things] The stench was no doubt horrendous also. Beans give off gas.... Naturally, the Beans were given a hasty trial, after having been dragged to the nearest township of Leith. Afterall, they had the high law of the land there with the posse... And the evidence against them was to say the least, overwhelming. Equally naturally... the verdict was death. While the women and children watched, the males were dismembered while still living - in a true eye for an eye fashion - and left to bleed to death. The women and children were cast into great fires and burned to death... It was said that none whatsoever showed any sign of repentance, cursing and denoucing their executioners until they fell into unconciousness from the flames. It is not recorded if any of the Beans haunted the area after their demise... BUT, I'll tell you this: You couldn't pay me to go into that grotto and cave alone after dark. ;] A haunt is a place where animals come to feed. **************************************************** Other accounts of the tale of the Bloody Beans can be found here: http://www.girvan-online.net/culture/fpeople/s_bean.htm and again Hre: http://www.theblackhornet.com/stories/beane/index.html Fact or Fiction? According to some sources, the tales are apochryphal, according to others, fact and legend. Either way, it's a good tale for Radio Free Halloween: We've always lived in the Wolf Hours here. And it doesn't needs be apochryphal... our worst monsters - from Vlad Tepes to Dahmer - have always been er... human beans. snicker

Wow, IB! A delicious (pardon pun) tale ripe with history and imagary. And a grotto I would never venture into as well. Thanks for "diggin" it up.

When my kids were little and I tucked them in at night they would always ask about monsters and I would always tell them there was no such thing as monsters. And to myself I would think, 'except the Human kind'. Grim story. Very suitable for Halloween. jon

Very well done, especially how you kept the tone of the story as regional conversation. It read as an oral story, which is difficult to maintain through the entire piece. My only question is: what took you so long to start posting here? ;-)

Heh. I come from people with an oral story telling tradition, so I kind of picked it up from my grandfather and other elders, and the few shamans I knew. And i always loved Manly Wade Wellman's Silver John stuff... when i got into doing bardic circles in the CA, that was a conversational style of tale-spinning I tried to emulate. ;] Works well around a bardic campfire late, late at night when people are passing the mead around and the wind is howling through the pines... shrug No idea. In spite of the fact that I post a lot, I don't write much, Crescent. [Yeah, there's a difference] A lot of my more frivolous drivel gets posted in Radio Free also... and time keeps me from doing as much creative writing and graphics as I'd like. ;[

That's: "doing bardic circles in the SCA" there. My "S" key must have taken a vacation. ;]