‘A Psychic Conversation with The Big Grey Man’ was my contribution to Alan Grieve’s ‘Dry Your Eyes, Big Man’ at Workspace, Dunfermline (7.7.18). The one night show and event brought together responses to The Big Grey Man of Ben MacDhui. Haunting Scotland’s second highest mountain, this legend or ‘strange phenomena’ engenders terror in those that experience its presence, with some hearing footsteps, others seeing a huge figure in the mist. Wendy Wood describes her own encounter in her book ‘The Secret of Spey’ (published by Robert Grant & Son, 1930):

‘It was on a dull day, with light snow lying, and I had no further intention than to wander to the mouth of the Lairig…I stopped to enjoy these surroundings, the uprush of the cliffs of Creag a’ Leth-choin, too steep to hold the snow, and the shadowed side of Sron na Lairig, and as I turned to retrace my steps I heard a voice of gigantic resonance. It spoke with the harsh consonants and full vowels of the Gaelic, but it issued so close to me that I was too startled, and I suppose I might as well confess, too scared, to unravel or even remember the sound of the words’.

P.26, ‘The Secret of Spey’, Wendy Wood

Lurcher’s Crag, Lairig Ghru, Cairngorms. Photo: Jenny Brownrigg

Affleck Grey’s ‘The Big Grey Man of Ben MacDhui: Myth or Monster?’ (Lochar Publishing, 1989) brings together the evidence of those who have seen or heard him. During World War 2, on mountain rescue duty, Peter Densham and Richard Frere found themselves in a conversation with the Big Grey Man- on what subject, they were unable to recall:

‘I was surprised after a little to hear Frere apparently talking to himself. Then I had the impression that he was talking to someone on the other side of the cairn. I went around and found myself joining in the conversation. It was a strange experience which seemed to have a psychic aspect. We talked to someone invisible for some time, and it seemed we had carried on this conversation for some little time, when we suddenly realised that there was no-one there but ourselves. Afterwards, neither of us, strangely, could recall the purport of this extraordinary conversation’.

P.7, ‘The Big Grey Man of Ben MacDhui: Myth or Monster?’, Affleck Gray

‘A Psychic Conversation with The Big Grey Man’ imagines such a conversation taking place, and seeks to re-imagine the Grey Man’s purpose of haunting these particular slopes and his approach to hill walkers. The text is laid out in the shape of his spectral silhouette.

Installation at ‘Dry Yer Eyes, Big Man’, Workspace Dunfermline, 2018. Photo: Alan Grieve

‘Dry Yer Eyes, Big Man’, Alan Grieve, Workspace Dunfermline, 2018. Photo courtesy the artist