UKH

hey

I was wondering if there is any scary horror stories on any wales mountain scrambles ?

Or is there like a haunted mountain ?

Also i’m sorry for posting loads and annoying people i won’t do that anymore .

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

There's loads! Check out this for a start:

https://www.visitsnowdonia.info/myths-and-legends

But that's just scratching the surface. Llyn Idwal is supposedly named after the son of a Welsh prince who drowned in the lake, the Cwm Annwn haunt the slopes of cader and king Arthur killed a giant on the summit of Yr Wyddfa.

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

If you want some horror stories on Welsh scrambles look for Brave Dave on YouTube. 
 

Some of those videos are scary. For a variety of reasons. 

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

there was this 'little incident' - youtube.com/watch?v=OmpWzwBTvXY&

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

With the understanding that 'true' and 'haunted' don't really go together, here's a few. Not specifically Welsh. I wonder if there are more? I struggled to think of these few

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/articles/destinations/horrible_hills_for_hall... 

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

Watch out for the Afanc!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/history/sites/themes/society/myths_afanc.shtml

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

Apparantly this is one of the most horrifying things in Snowdonia:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crags/glyderau_foel_goch-9534/yr_esgair_...

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

Not wales, but the prospect of running into the Spectral Hound of Craven always adds a bit of spice to walks through Trollers Gill in Wharfedale...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barghest

North of the border, there’s Benalder cottage bothy, and it’s supposed haunting

https://www.smc.org.uk/downloads/archives/journal/prize/wh-murray-prize-201...

though in my personal experience the only unwelcome night time presences were the swarms of mice that seemed to infest it...

In reply to Red Rover:

Got to admit that looks like crib goch on steroids looks scary but it looks interesting .

In reply to DancingOnRock : 

The scariest thing about brave dave is that he is a mountain guide and guided someone up byrants gully before he done a grade 3 .

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

There's the true story of a climber who took a couple of novices climbing in the 1920s in poor weather on Craig yr Ysfa. They were exhausted and left to find their own way back to Helyg, while the leader went ahead, had a meal and went to bed, only calling a search party after having had breakfast. Both had fallen into a lake in the dark and drowned. 

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

The scariest thing is that, no, he isn't.

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

Don't even think about it!

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

Well worth reading up on this one. F.W. Giveen, November 1927. Ascending Great Gully on Craig yr Ysfa then series of mishaps in the way back to Helyg. Acrimonious inquest followed by attempted murder in Oxford and then suicide. Wow!

My idea of mountain horror

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/hill_talk/mount_snowdon-725572

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

It's more general, but:

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/hill_talk/spooky_hills_and_other_places-7...

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

on the subject of grim stories our head of security at Kishorn was John "Taff" Tunnah who as a young lad went as a 16 year old to N Wales with two older lads, perhaps 18 or so.  Caught out in bad weather and freezing temperatures they sheltered beside a wall with the older lads either side of him.  In the morning when he woke up and saw that they had sheltered not far from help (farm/road etc) he discovered the two older lads had both frozen to death.

The start of an illustrious and famed career in the RAF Mountain Rescue

https://heavywhalley.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/john-elwyn-taff-tunnah-b-e-m-...

he told me off on one Lochcarron Mountaineering Club winter meet for carrying insufficient gear, but I was but a beginner then.

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

One day I can tell you about the night at 'bad manor' but I need a roaring fire and strong drink

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

There was that incident with Dai Latov in the Pass 

In reply to Myfyr Tomos:

Have you got any links Myfyr? I couldn't make head or tail out of the article on footless crow.

In reply to pancakeandchips: Like you I struggled with it until I discovered another article on it in Footless Crow which makes more sense Starting after the picture of Llyn Fynnon Llugwy made most sense

http://footlesscrow.blogspot.com/2016/01/hole-in-mind.html

In reply to pancakeandchips:

"Over Welsh Hills" by Frank Smythe was my initial source and further reading can be found in an interesting little book titled "A Perilous Playground" by Bob Maslen-Jones.  

In reply to L.A.: Giveen was also involved in a fairly traumatic incident in 1925 whilst still a student https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/september-1992/63/cleari...

In reply to Myfyr Tomos:

There's a good description in Raymond Greene's 'Moments of Being.' Giveen was intending to kill Greene for blackballing him from the Climbers Club before he killed himself.

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

More mythology than horror: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Branches_of_the_Mabinogi

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

It's all beginning to sound like a Ngaio Marsh plot!

Or Gwen Moffat?

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

Have there been any Cthulu sightings in N Wales?   I suppose it might depend on the strength and amount of local beer consumed

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

Tony Smythe's classic 'Rock Climbers in Action in Snowdonia' has a story about a shack with a corrogated iron roof in Ogwen Valley which was known to climbers as Ty'n y Shanti.  This was where the bodies of the two drowned climbers mentioned earlier were brought, and was reputedly haunted.  He writes "Several visitors to the hut have seen and heard frightening things - flickering lights, the creak of bedsprings from rooms known to be empty, a heavy footstep in the attic, or even the visit of a pale, silent and completely soaked man who walked into the hut one night, entered a bedroom, and then vanished."

I have heard that the Climbers Club hut at Cwm Glas Mawr, near Ynys Ettws, is haunted.  Menlove Edwards stayed there in the 1940s and it is where he attempted suicide, although I believe his later successful suicide took place elsewhere.  

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

I know many people who have seen the ghosts at the NLMC hut in Capel Curig!

Personally, I never saw anything, but then it could have been because I had either too little or too much beer in the Tyn-y-Coed...

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

Giveen seems to have been a walking disaster-magnet.

In reply to Red Rover:

Having done it twice I can confirm that it involves a few moves on dirty, sloping holds a few feet above a sharp col. There is nothing in the way of a belay for the leader if you pitch it. It's a big drop on the right hand side. As normal for this sort of thing the second will wonder what the fuss was about. Short and sharp. The scramble before is easy and after although loose in places far easier. 

In reply to Ian Archer:

I did it many years ago in the rain. I only kept going because it seemed a better idea than trying to reverse greasy rock and slippery grass. I was very relieved when I got to the top.

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

Welcome back.

Hope you'll be spitting some bars soon.

Scary stuff in Wales? Snakes and ladders. 

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

Cadair Idris, has plenty to offer;

https://www.cadairidriswales.com/mountain-myths-legends-of-cadair-idris

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

About 40 years ago I read a story in a book that ever since then I have failed to trace, or to identify the participants. If anyone else has heard this story, and can point out my inaccuracies and embellishments, I'd be very grateful.

The story went, as far as I can recall, something like this....

Sometime between the late 19th century and the early 20th, a famous mountaineer had arranged to meet with his friends at Ogwen Cottage, for a weekends climbing. Apparantly they were all coming from London or Oxford or Cambridge. Our mountaineer got there early in the day, and as his companions were not due until the evening, he booked in at the cottage, then left to ascend the Glyders.

On the tops, he spotted a small tent, and approched it in curiosity, and there was a young guy there in his early twenties, just making a brew. He offered our mountaineer a brew and they sat talking for a while, during which the lad asked about the Devil's Kitchen, as he fancied ascending it. Our guy pointed out how difficult it was and advised him against it, and eventually he bade his farewell and continued his walk back down to Ogwen

On arrival ot Ogwen Cottage, he was chatting with the lady who ran the place, and mentioned his encounter with the young lad, and wondered if she might know who he was. She asked, was the tent green? did he have fair curly hair? brown cord trousers? etc. Our mountaineer replied in the affirmative to her accurate description, and asked who he was. The lady replied, we don't know, but he was found dead at the foot of the Devil's Kitchen last week.

In reply to Welsh Kate:

The children in my class believe (because I told them) that the Afanc lives in a small lake above our school. They say they don't but you can see their skittishness when we are dipping our nets in the reeds!

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

Look into Aleister Crowley - occultist 
Active one Scotland, Alps and the greater ranges - not sure about Wales though 

http://footlesscrow.blogspot.com/2011/01/brief-mountaineering-career-of-ale...

In reply to blackmountainbiker:

Brilliant!

In reply to Fredt:

Sounds like a variation on this (taken from ukc post end of last year)

My dad went for a walk from Ogwen Cottage in the winter of 1951. It was a cold, wet day with grey cloud. The hills were empty of people. He was on his own but walking past Llyn Bochlwyd he noticed a tent and a man standing outside it.

They met up and fell into walking together over Bristly Ridge and then west over Glyder Fach and Glyder Fawr. It was blowing hard and they spoke very little. They met no one. They descended down off Glyder Fawr and approached the top of the Devil's Kitchen cliffs.

My dad made to go down them. The man became very anxious and strange in manner. He refused to descend that way. My dad, being cold and wet and wanting to get back to Idwal Cottage quickly said ok, see you later and descended. 

When he got to Idwal Cottage he was greeted by the warden. My dad told him where he had been. 

'Did you see a tent by Llyn Bochlwyd?' the warden asked.

'Yes, I have been walking with the man from that tent all day but he wouldn't come down the kitchen cliffs so we said goodbye there. We haven't seen another soul all day'. 

The warden went a little pale and said ' No, that is not possible that man died yesterday.'

'How? Where?' asked my dad.

'He fell over the Devil's Kitchen's cliffs' replied the warden.

In reply to blackmountainbiker:

We were in Wales on a family holiday last year.  My niece, who was 5 at the time, asked why it says "Araf Slow" in the road everywhere.  We convinced her that an Araf was a very rare animal, a bit like a badger but red like a fox, and you had to drive slowly to be careful not to hit them. We even got a couple of old guys in a pub to play along with us - they overheard us and staged a loud conversation about when they had last seen an Araf.

We did explain about dual language signage in other contexts

In reply to kathrync:

This is great.

In reply to kathrync:

When my boys were younger we did similar, convincing them that the reason it said Perygl Danger" on some cliffs was that a perygl was a dangerous bird that lived on cliffs and would swoop down and attack people. 

In reply to Cneifion Arête: this didn’t take place on a mountain, but in a pub in Llanberis in around 1980.  I was at teacher training college in Liverpool and had hitched out to Wales with the foolish intention of walking up Snowdon that evening. We flogged up the Llanberis path in increasing snow, until we decided to retreat above Clogwyn due to the icy snow.

Down in Llanberis, we decided to have a drink in a pub, to warm up a bit before trying to get back to Liverpool.  The pub was sparsely occupied, and a man approached us.  He said ‘you can have a lift (motioning to my female companion), but you can’t, and if you come looking for us, I’ve got a load of hammers in my van’.

Unsurprisingly, we declined his offer and a short time later, left the pub.  Walking down the street, it suddenly occurred to me that we had just met the Yorkshire Ripper.  Pre-mobile phone days of course, we eventually called the Police.  Unfortunately, by the time they arrived, he was long gone.

I am convinced it was Peter Sutcliffe that we met that evening.

In reply to Run_Ross_Run:

Wait is that actually a real story because i don’t get why anyone would be scared of devils kitchen it’s just a rocky steep mountain path i came down it before .

Although that waterfall on devils kitchen looks pretty fun and i could see why that would be dangerous .

But anyway that story was pretty good both of them 

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

No idea. I copied from a post (not mine) on ukc from last year. 

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

If you want to see a bunch of gaunt, spectral figures moaning and rattling their chains then I'd recommend Malham's Catwalk.

In reply to jaipur:

Wasn’t Peter Sutcliffe from the North East with purely a fetish for ladies of the night?

Did he put up a mixed ice route in Snowdonia with ‘his hammers’?

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

There is a very nice shelter up Cadar Idris. I won't be stopping in it any time soon though.

In reply to Removed User:

I replied to a similar thread some time ago regarding the Cadair Idris hut.

29 Oct 2019

In reply to pasbury:

About 15-20 years ago, a couple were bivvying in the summit hut on Cadair Idris. In the wee small hours a large man stumbled into the hut, sat down and placed a bottle of whisky and a very large knife next to him on the bench. He then proceeded to remove his damp shirt and to their horror, his upper body was mutilated with fresh cuts and he was covered in blood. They decided a hasty exit was in order and they left the hut without any objection from the new arrival. They descended the mountain and reported the incident to the police. Later on that day, our bloodied friend was seen by a group from a local outdoor centre. No idea what became of him. Spooky or what!

Were you that couple in the hut?   Were you the bloody knifeman... 

Post edited at 17:49

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

i guess the point of the story, if it is a ghost story, is that the spectre of the dead man wont (or cant) go back to the place of its/his demise. its not that the cliffs are scary and he is afraid of the path.

In reply to Removed User:

You dont fancy being a great poet then?

In reply to Webster:

It makes sense in the second version where some random person is planning to head down it but not in the first where its a serious climber saying dont try it.

In reply to Dave the Rave: it was that Peter Sutcliffe. As an addendum, li’m certain I heard one of his murders in Southern Cemetery years before. None of this is a joke.

In reply to jaipur:

Ok I believe you. I’m sure he was a climber and he put up Sleazy Route on Cwm Cneifon?

Or was it Nor’ Nor’ buttress?

In reply to Dave the Rave: fool

In reply to Will Hunt:

Very good!

In reply to Dave the Rave: piss takes are funny in the right context; this maniac murdered I don’t know how many innocent women and no, they weren’t exclusively in the north east.

In reply to Dave the Rave:

On the subject of maniacs with hammers:

I heard a tale in going round Kishorn that a new starter had been sent to the stores on his first morning by his chargehand to get a large hammer and, once he had got the hammer, he had to hand deliver a note to a named person in the main office block.

What he did not know was that the chargehand had scrawled a note to the addressee in the offices saying "Give me all the money you have in this office or I'll bash your brains out with this bluddy hammer" ...

In reply to wercat:

Once arrived late at a remote club hut in lakes to find a chap sitting by himself with hut axe and a large number of empty Newky Brown bottles in front of him. As we walked through door someone in the upstairs bunk room said "Oh thank goodness someone else has arrived". A quick assessment was a drunken man in a psychotic frame of mind. Skinned up gave him first go on the joint, he was sick as a dog and went to bed. We partyed on with our new friends from upstairs. 

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

This is my own tale.

Waking up in a blind panic one morning I realised that it was now October and I still hadn't arranged anything for my dissertation. I whirled into action and had soon fixed it for me and my then girlfriend to do the work at a field site near Lake Vyrnwy in mid-Wales. It would take a week to collect all the data I needed and we hired a car and set off.
There are two places to stay near Vyrnwy. One is a four star hotel and spa near the village, the other is a dilapidated bunkhouse clinging to the side of the moor at the end of a mile long forestry track, completely isolated from anywhere. The bunkhouse was used by "Steve" the local outdoor instructor who would house his unfortunate customers there during the week. At this time of year it was deserted and I'd booked it for a snip.
We arrived at Vyrnwy and were shown the field site by the local RSPB rep. We drove up and down the road between his small office portakabin and the field site and met no traffic on the road. Away from the hotel somewhere on the other side of the valley, the whole place seemed deserted. There was nobody else for miles and miles. The moors were desolate, completely silent except for the wind and the rain. A thin light from the sun that already seemed to be hugging the horizon made a desperate attempt to illuminate the moor but the clouds cast a constant shadow over the place.  We set off to find the accommodation and the RSPB man bid us farewell for the week. He had told us that the instructor who had rented us the hut was a bit "fly-by-night". What does that mean? Is he a bat?
It was the last week of October and the nights were drawing in. We eventually arrived after dark, wondering how to get in. We needn't have worried; neither of the exterior doors had locks on them. Creeping in, we flicked a switch and a cold fluorescent light dimly lit the space. Everything was cold and uninviting and we completely failed to get the coal fire going. The bunkhouse was a medium/large sized hut, and with only two bodies to occupy it, it always felt uneasily empty. There was never enough noise to make a place of that size feel inhabited; you always had that feeling like you were passing through somewhere you shouldn't be.

After the first day's fieldwork we returned to the hut in twilight and I went straight to the fire to try and get it going. Daisy went to the kitchen to make a pot of tea and came running out into the common room about 10 seconds later.
"Did you touch the kettle?" she asked urgently.
"No", I replied, "what do you mean?"
"The back door is open and the kettle was already on to boil when I went into the kitchen. It just clicked off".
After confirming that she wasn't joking, we shat ourselves. The back door had been left shut and to open it would have required turning the handle, it couldn't have blown open. There was only one track going up to the house through the woods and we had just driven up it, passing nobody on the way. Whoever boiled the kettle must have come on foot, and been startled away when they heard the car approaching. Or were they still here, in the hut?
I paced back into the common room and grabbed the poker from the fireplace. In what I still think is the single bravest act of my life I proceeded to search the house, including shining a torch into the loft space. There was nothing, but this became a ritual that had to be repeated every night before we could even think about settling for the evening. Coming back to the hut every evening was awful. The place had this cold dread miasma lying over it. It isn't easy to relax in a place where you don't feel safe and private.

The end of the week came around and it was Halloween. I said to Daisy, "we've got enough data, but we could stay another night and get some extra...". The sentence trailed off. We both knew we weren't staying a moment longer in that valley than was necessary. It was time to leave. I was so glad to see the back of that shack. As we drove away from Vyrnwy the clouds lifted and the sun came out for the first time since arriving in Wales. As we neared a town my phone sprung into life, receiving the messages and missed calls that had tried to get through all week to that isolated, unconnected place. A weight lifted from my chest and I realised it was the first time all week that I hadn't felt tense. Waves of relief washed over us and we laughed and laughed that it was over.

In reply to wercat:

Amusing but it’s more of a maniac with a pen!

In reply to jaipur:

And not exclusively "ladies of the night" as Dave puts it

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

i was camped below hay tor, wild. it was summer but rainy and windy when i went to sleep. i woke in the night, opened the tent to a dead calm, still, moonlit night. over the moor i saw two children running towards me, as they got near they paused, turned to spirits and dissappeared into holes bored into the ground, passing through molten rock and fire. i walked to where the holes were and two stone celtic crosses appeared over the holes. i woke up in the tent, heard the wind, opened the zip and was face to face with a ponie. i looked past to see it was dawn light, drizzle and surrounded by a herd of ponies. 1 was a fole feeding. 

weird.

In reply to Cneifion Arête:

i was there to climb hay tor, which i did, the raven gulley i think?

In reply to tonanf:

Are you sure it was a fole? Mist and dawn light can play tricks on your eyes.

In reply to Will Hunt:

That's a great scary story.

Strangely enough I don't think I've ever been freaked out in the mountains by anything supernatural in 50 years of climbing and walking. I'm really wracking my brains to think of a single example. The only time I've experienced anything like that was just in ordinary English countryside, doing a recce for a movie in a disused mansion in a remote rural part of Hertfordshire. I suddenly became totally irrationally afraid – I had this incredibly strong feeling that I was being WATCHED, and ran down this fire escape to my motorbike, praying the engine would start. I then drove at a crazy speed down the long drive, and when I got out onto the A road that I think led to Hertford, I opened up and went about 90 mph, not daring to look round. Only after about three miles did I dare to look back, and seeing nothing was chasing me, slowed down, and drove rather gently home. I later found out that the house was very famously haunted, with multiple sightings of the ghosts of two girls who'd been murdered there in Edwardian times.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

What was the house, Gordon? I'm fascinated by these kinds of experiences. A scientific education pushes me to try and explain these things rationally but it's always interesting to speculate on the causes. Perhaps 'ghosts' are internally generated, but then what about shared experiences where several people experience something strange?

In reply to Will Hunt:

I've had this feeling too. On my own for one night in a hut which I've been involved with for long enough to have painted most of it over around fifteen years of work meets ....

In reply to Wingnut:

yes i like that story to .

I have a real story to if anyone has any explanation for this please tell me .

so if anyone has done carnedd dafydd before you’re know ware this is so we’re you park at bethesda to go to the carnnedue sorry for wrong spelling . 

anyway we’re the horses are this old women came along the corner and said in this scary voice these mountains are dangerous the people here are dangerous people get raped here all the time and stabbed everyday .

so i thought that’s a load of bs cuz bethesda is pretty safe .

then when i carried on and she kept on looking at me and following me and my dad up to the farm . 

and we seen her 3 times that day pretty scary right 

In reply to Lankyman:

The Hamels, near Puckeridge. I went there in the autumn of 1974 (probably October). A local historian later told me something about the house, which had been a private boarding school for girls until the mid-1960s. The ghost is thought to be that of a Catherine Mellish, who lived a long life, dying in there 1880 (my memory above was incorrect). She had been orphaned at the age of two when her father was killed on Hounslow Heath. There have been persistent stories and sightings of a victorian lady, thought to be her. When I went, the buildings were semi-derelict and the spooky experience was when I looked down an upper corridor of a separate wing from the top of a fire escape. This was probably an Edwardian addition (for the prep school?) In the mid-80s, when Leach homes first visited it before buying it, they had a very spooky experience with objects being moved and a light being turned on (or off). In 1984-85, at least two girls working as receptionists saw the ghost of the old lady, and refused to go down into cellar singly.

I see that it's now so tarted up as to be almost unrecognisable:

https://www.onthemarket.com/details/9274467/

This may have been the separate wing/building I was referring to:

https://lid.zoocdn.com/1024/768/ef60e440bc4cc48c605f07bff4bd8ad3b54e1535.jp...