The Warning I Ignored…

It was a misty day and it rained a lot. Because of the crowds around Glencoe, I decided to drive a little further south, towards a slightly lesser known area. I see ‘’Fairy Bridge’’ on the map and it catches my attention. I want to go there!

The photos look beautiful and I’m always up for a little magic and folklore.

Without knowing it at the time, I had already driven past a place along the way that would later unexpectedly take on an important meaning in this story.

When I arrive at the parking area, the atmosphere feels different…

It is busy enough in this small place and I can’t quite put my finger on what it is that I’m feeling. I’m tired and hungry and thought that might be where it was coming from, so I decided to eat and drink something first. It was already later in the afternoon, close to 5:00 PM, before I would start this walk and I realised at that moment that I had only eaten breakfast.

Once my stomach was full, I looked around to see if I could find a starting point. I couldn’t…

I open Google Maps and after doing some research I’m not much wiser, so I decide to search online to find out the best way to walk to this bridge.

It says that I first need to follow the paved road for a while until eventually a small forest path appears on my right. From there I should be able to continue along the path and eventually reach the Fairy Bridge.

I walk for a little while and feel that there is something hanging over this ‘’area’’. I still can’t quite put my finger on it. It is a little later in the day, but it will still be light for hours…

Often, when dusk begins to fall, a forest can suddenly feel very different and oppressive, almost threatening.

But that wasn’t the case.

I hear a dog barking in the distance after a large truck loaded with tree trunks thunders through this tiny road. A road that is barely wide enough for one car, let alone an entire truck. I can imagine the dog being quite overwhelmed by it and feeling a little threatened. You do feel rather vulnerable standing at the side of a road like this.

I greet the people and continue walking. Eventually I see on the map that I need to turn right and when I look, I see a small path heading diagonally uphill into the forest. And by ‘’path’’ I mean flattened grass and weeds, not even 20 cm wide. There is a small van parked beside it, opposite a house. I walk a little way uphill and that strange feeling grows stronger.

Before long I see a run down shed, or something resembling one, with only its chimney still standing upright. I seriously start wondering whether I’m walking through someone’s back garden. I continue a little further and reach a slightly wider path, still unpaved and certainly not something you could call a proper walking trail. It climbs fairly steeply over tree roots. To my left I see two large rectangular iron boxes dug into the ground, roughly two by four metres. There is a little door with a lock on it and I couldn’t help it, but at that point a few horror movies definitely went through my mind.

I even walked over to them to listen and make sure I couldn’t hear anyone inside…

You never know…

The uneasy feeling creeps over me more and more. And just as I’m wondering whether I should turn around, I hear a man approaching with two children. It reassures me because now I officially know that this is a path that is freely accessible and, somehow, I’m happy just to see and hear other people in this strange forest.

I continue along the path and about 20 minutes later I see a beautifully large, tall, old pine tree. It must be more than 30 metres high, if not taller, and I could feel that it had certainly been standing there for centuries. I lean against the tree, but instead of feeling peace, safety and grounding, I notice that I still don’t feel comfortable.

From this spot I can already see the little bridge. Various stories circulate around the bridge, saying that it is a place where fairies gather. Where the human world and the world of the fairies touch…

And in some modern stories it is even claimed that those who cross the bridge return ‘’changed’’ or that their lives change for the better afterwards.

I’m always up for some magic and fascinated by places like this, which is exactly why I came here. I am completely alone. At first I am still mesmerised by the beautiful bridge and the waterfall that appears behind it and flows underneath it.

I take a number of beautiful photos and the GoPro comes out too so I can capture myself at this beautiful, magical fairy bridge. The moment my attention is no longer focused on my phone or GoPro in search of the perfect picture, I start to feel whether I can connect with this special place and, who knows, maybe even the fairies.

Again, that uneasy feeling creeps over me. I know there is supposed to be an old pine tree nearby, growing on top of a large rock, something quite unique and apparently worth seeing, but once again there are no signs, markers or anything resembling a route and I have no idea which of the four paths I should take.

I stand on the bridge for quite a while, checking Google Maps again and later searching online for more information. The internet connection is incredibly slow and I am still trying to decipher what I am feeling. Is it the magic of the fairies… or is this something else…?

The longer I stand there alone on the bridge, the more oppressive the feeling becomes. I hear sounds I can’t place. I feel a presence I can’t explain, see images that I try to push away and, once it finally becomes clear which path I need to take, I decide to follow it.

The path is muddy, boggy and so wet that sometimes I sink almost 10 cm into the ground. It soon becomes very overgrown and before I know it I’m walking among tall grass, plants and trees, hearing whispers and sounds that don’t belong to the time in which I’m walking here. I pass an old, abandoned ‘’Bothy’’, as they call them in Scotland. And my curiosity is still winning over my imagination. I look inside and all I can think is, ugh, what a creepy place. I definitely wouldn’t want to sleep here.

I keep walking and now the oppressive feeling becomes so intense that I consider turning back. I hear a dog barking somewhere in the distance and there is hardly any sign of human life. It is now 5:45 PM. I hear the humming sound of a motor and see something metallic, which makes my brain think there must be a parking area. Great! So there are people here, I’m on the right track and apparently the tree can also be reached from that side. That might explain the barking dog too. It was just enough to motivate myself to walk a little further.

When I continue, the humming sound turns out to be a generator sitting right at the end of this boggy path, positioned in such a way that it is almost impossible to walk past it and I start wondering whether that might be exactly what the person who placed it there intended. Immediately that uneasy feeling returns, but I also know that I should almost be there, only 30 metres away to be exact according to the navigation, and it feels like such a waste to turn around now after taking this uncomfortable path for nothing.

I head right, up a small hill, and see a car parked on my right. Once again I breathe a sigh of relief. So there is one after all! A parking area. I walk a little further and see another car on the left, but then I also see a house with an open gate. Now this feeling almost suffocates me. The tree stands on private land, is as dead as can be and this house sits eerily isolated and clearly doesn’t want visitors. I think about the barking dog and I’m afraid it belongs to this property and is about to greet me with its teeth, so everything inside me tells me to turn around immediately and get out of there!

Back on this boggy path surrounded by tall bushes, grass and trees, I felt watched from every direction. The images become stronger, the sounds more present.

The whispers coming from the bushes, the eyes burning into my back and watching me from the path ahead. The images of a man chasing me are so realistic that I regularly turn around in shock because it feels as though someone is grabbing my shoulder.

I’m glad I have some experience in trail running, because that is exactly what I started doing! Wearing heavy, clumsy, wet hiking boots, with the whispering behind me, rustling in the bushes and eyes burning into my back, I started running!

I was 30 minutes away from civilisation and at moments like that, those minutes feel long! Running meant I made it back in 10 to 15 minutes, during which I occasionally genuinely felt as though I was being grabbed, turned around in shock, swore at whoever or whatever it was to leave me alone and ran even faster! I couldn’t get the images of this man chasing me out of my head.

Once I reached the paved road and something resembling civilisation, I knew one thing! I am never coming back here and I want to get away from this place as quickly as possible! You know those speed walkers? Those people who smoothly swing their hips from left to right with extreme arm movements, looking anything but comfortable while somehow trying to outrun life itself? No idea why people walk like that, but I can tell you that at that moment, I was one of them! I walked back to my van and left immediately. After about 10 minutes of driving I arrive at a beautiful open spot beside Loch Creran, where another camper is parked, and I decide this is a beautiful place to stay tonight.

I’m not alone and it is an open, peaceful, serene place beside a road.

The view is phenomenal and I try to let go of my earlier experience and enjoy having my feet in the water while looking out over this beautiful loch, while trying not to laugh when my neighbour spends half an hour vigorously pumping up his SUP board, only to spend five minutes on the water before falling in fully clothed, into water that is pretty cold. Which quickly brings his entire adventure to an end and means he spends another half hour packing everything away.

The next morning my neighbours leave early and I’m wonderfully alone with my little home, enjoying this beautiful sunny morning overlooking the peaceful loch.

Not much later, a white car pulls up and a woman walks onto the little beach beside it. I’m busy doing some administration for Be The Light Journey and don’t pay much attention to her. About an hour later I suddenly hear someone calling out, so I signal back that she can just walk over to my van.

She is standing in front of me holding a filled black dog poop bag and says something in a strong Scottish accent, which really does sound quite different from English, and I thought she was asking whether it belonged to me. I reply that it isn’t mine, but that I don’t think it’s very considerate of whoever left it behind.

Then she asks if I want it? I looked at her with a completely clueless expression, which must have looked pretty funny to her, and told her that whenever I see rubbish lying around I often pick it up and throw it away, but I don’t want ‘’shit’’ in my bin because of the smell…

She starts laughing and says no! This is a delicacy, the bag is mine. She lives a little further away and when the tide was out she had collected all kinds of snails and oysters from this beautiful loch. She told me I couldn’t get them any fresher and asked whether I wanted to try them? She explained how I could prepare them and I told her I had never tried them before and would be happy to give them a go.

That’s how we got talking and I asked if she would like a cup of coffee or tea and not much later I suddenly had a lovely local woman sitting inside my van, proudly telling me about the area.

Out of nowhere she began telling me that there was a special graveyard nearby, just a little further away. One unlike many others you’ll see…

She didn’t tell me why, but I stored it in my memory and thought I might go and visit it the next day.

Then she started talking about the Fairy Bridge, which is a little further away, and said that it was also worth a visit.

I looked at her.

I was there yesterday, I told her. It is a beautiful little bridge, but the energy didn’t feel right. I shared some of the experiences I had there.

Now she looked at me curiously…

Then she started telling me that it was remarkable that I had felt that. She was from the well known Campbell Clan and told me that there is a lot of history in and around this area. Somewhere in the area beyond the Fairy Bridge, the famous Appin Murder had taken place, something I had never heard of until that moment. A murder that remains unsolved to this day and is still preserved in the archives. She also told me that many other murders and dark things had happened along those roads that had never seen the light of day, stories she wasn’t even allowed to tell.

It sparked my curiosity, but out of respect I didn’t dare ask any further questions because she had just told me that there were certain things she wasn’t even allowed to talk about.

She thought it was remarkable that I had felt and experienced those things in this place. She also told me that where I was standing now was the most beautiful spot I could possibly find in the entire area. You looked straight across the loch towards the mountains, with even a view of the mountains of Glencoe. You were standing in one line with the Fairy Bridge and Glencoe.

Before she left and we wished each other a pleasant day, she said that this place was so beautiful it was almost like a portal…

Later that day her words wouldn’t leave me and I kept thinking back to the experiences of the day before, the woman who had crossed my path today… the fact that she had told me to visit the graveyard, the famous Appin Murder and what she had said about the portal. What did all of this have to do with each other?

At that moment I already had quite a lot to process, so none of it had fully sunk in yet.

That evening, when I was lying alone in bed in my camper in this silent place, since my neighbour had left that morning, I started doing some more research into the Appin Murder and learned more about the Stewarts, the Campbells, the Battle of Culloden and also the person who had been falsely accused and hanged, whose body was then left hanging for 1.5 years in a horrific way to frighten the people…

My interest and desire to understand the connection with what I had experienced only grew stronger.

Only later, while lying in bed doing more research, did I begin to feel that there was something special about all of this and that it hadn’t crossed my path for no reason.

Since it was already half past midnight and the experiences of the previous day were giving me the creeps all over again, I decided to watch something ‘’lighthearted’’ before going to sleep, considering I was standing there alone in the ‘’middle of nowhere’’, still looking out in one line towards the Fairy Bridge and the point that would later become more important than I could ever have imagined at the time. The following day I went to Old Appin Kirk, the graveyard the woman had told me about.

It was only there that I discovered that the original gravestone from Culloden Moor stood here.

At Culloden, approximately 300 men from the Appin regiment fought on the Jacobite side.

The stone had stood at the head of the grave of the Stewarts of Appin, where 92 officers and men of the Stewarts of Appin who died during the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746 were buried. Later, in 1908, this stone was moved to the graveyard where I was now standing.

After the defeat, the possessions of several Jacobite leaders were confiscated by the Crown. Charles Stewart of Ardsheal, who had led the Appin men at Culloden, eventually fled abroad and his land was permanently declared property of the State.

That fundamentally changed something in Appin. Areas of land that had belonged to the Stewarts for years came under government control.

And that is where Colin Roy Campbell of Glenure appears, the man who would later become known as ‘’the Red Fox’’, the victim of the famous Appin Murder. He effectively became the government’s administrator of the Stewart estates that had permanently been declared property of the State. In May 1752, he was travelling in connection with changes and evictions of tenants on those estates when he was shot dead in the woods of Lettermore.

James Stewart of the Glens, who had opposed those changes and evictions, was subsequently arrested. He was not convicted because it had been proven that he himself had fired the shot, but as an accomplice. The true identity of the shooter has never been established with certainty. James was hanged at Ballachulish on 8 November 1752.

And after sitting in this special graveyard reading all of this, my interest is sparked once again and I start searching for the grave of the murdered Colin Roy Campbell so I can go and visit it. I look up where it is and read that I’m lucky it is even open. It is only open for a few months of the year and the gardens are only accessible on Wednesdays. I look at my phone to see what day it even is and realise it is Wednesday! That can’t be a coincidence anymore! At least, that’s how it feels to me.

My journey continues to Ardchattan Priory, where the murdered Red Fox, also known as Colin Roy Campbell, is said to be buried. When I arrive, there is a grim atmosphere, like something straight out of a movie.

It is cloudy, rainy and occasionally misty. I walk along the long path and arrive at the gate leading to the remaining ruins and gravestones. The feeling of being completely alone overwhelms me more intensely than I expected and I notice myself becoming hyper alert.

When I open the iron gate it makes such a loud creaking sound that I get goosebumps all the way up my back. I laugh nervously at how ironic it feels compared to the movies, but at the same time I feel as though I am literally stepping into another dimension. How the energy changed…

I carefully look at the ruins and the gravestones that have been placed here since the Middle Ages. I consciously feel the energy that hangs here. It is indescribable. It is as though you are literally travelling back in time. Once again I saw images of funerals, the Middle Ages, the Red Fox, how the procession brought him here and the lives of the monks who once lived here, all mixed together at the same time, as though one enormous timeline was unfolding before my eyes in this place.

The energy was overwhelming and also heavy, oppressive. Something ominous, and yet I felt drawn to it and remained curious. Despite all the remarkable things that can be found here, I had only one goal… to find the grave of Colin Roy Campbell. My eyes fall on a very old, spooky gravestone and I knew I was getting close, although I can’t explain why. I turn around and felt it! He is buried here! This has to be it!

I read the gravestones as well as I still can, but I don’t see his name. I’m confused and search online to find out where his grave is supposed to be and what is written on it? I then read that he is buried among the Campbells, but that his grave is confirmed as an unmarked grave by Historic Environment Scotland. Why his grave was never marked with his name seems to have been lost to history.

But his story will always live on….

After this visit I also want to visit the place where James Stewart of the Glens was hanged and brutally displayed for no less than 1.5 years!

James Stewart was not convicted because it had been proven that he had killed Colin Campbell. The court even acknowledged that he was not the shooter. He was convicted as “art and part”. In Scottish law, this meant that according to the jury he had been involved in or had assisted with the plan. Even as an accomplice, he could therefore receive the death penalty.

The trial itself was extraordinarily problematic. It took place in Inveraray, an influential and powerful Campbell stronghold. Eleven of the fifteen jurors were named Campbell. And the person presiding over the case was Archibald Campbell, Duke of Argyll. Not only Lord Justice General, but also the head of Clan Campbell. Colin Campbell, the victim, therefore belonged to his own clan. At that time, the presiding judge also personally selected fifteen jurors from a group of 45 potential jurors. A Scottish jurist later even used James’s case as an example of what he called a “mockery of justice”.

On top of that came the political situation after Culloden in 1746. The British government was trying to bring the Highlands under control and break the power of the Jacobite clans. James had ties to the Stewarts of Appin and had fought on their side during the Jacobite uprising. Colin Campbell, meanwhile, was a representative of the Crown on land that the government had taken from the Stewarts. After the murder, it was explicitly made clear from London that this attack on authority could not go unpunished. Historian Rachel Bennett concludes from the correspondence that there was clearly a strong determination to punish someone quickly and make an example of them, despite the weaknesses in the evidence against James.

Leaving his body hanging was not an accidental consequence. It explicitly formed part of his sentence.

He was to be hanged on 8 November 1752 at Cnap a’ Chaolais, near the Ballachulish Ferry, on a deliberately chosen, highly visible piece of raised ground. Afterwards his body was to be displayed from the gallows in iron chains/a structure. The location was close to the site of the murder and right in the middle of an area where many Stewarts lived. Everyone using the busy ferry could see the body.

So it was intended as a message:

this is what happens when you resist authority.

That political element can be seen quite literally in the correspondence. After the conviction, the British Secretary of State wrote that the exemplary punishment was important for the future governance of this part of Scotland and should convince people that their wellbeing lay in obedience to the authority of the king. Historian Bennett therefore writes that the case almost took on a kind of treasonous/political character, even though James was formally tried for complicity in murder.

They even took measures to prevent the local population from giving him a proper burial. Sixteen soldiers guarded the body. A hut was built beside the gallows and the guard remained continuously in place until April 1754**,** approximately a year and a half.

But it gets even worse. In January 1755 it was reported that the body/skeleton had fallen from the gallows because of the weather. The Lord Justice Clerk then ordered that it be hung back up as quickly as possible**,** before word got out that it had fallen and someone could bury the remains.

It gave me goosebumps. What a horrific sight it must have been. Even when his body eventually fell from the gallows because of years of exposure to the wind and weather, his remains were hung back up again. Not to serve justice, but to frighten a population and enforce authority. The realisation that James continued to be used as a display of political power for years even after his death was perhaps even more horrifying to me than the execution itself.

And do you remember that monument I drove past when I was on my way to the Fairy Bridge…?

That was the place where James Stewart had hung from the gallows for years. I had already driven past it that day, without having the slightest idea what this place meant. Without knowing who James was. Without ever having heard of the Appin Murder.

All I remember is looking at that monument and thinking:

Nope… I’m not sleeping here tonight.

And maybe that is what stays with me most from this entire story.

I went to a Fairy Bridge because I was in the mood for some magic and folklore. I ended up in a place where I felt incredibly uncomfortable, met a woman from Clan Campbell completely out of nowhere the following day and was then drawn deeper and deeper into a history that I hadn’t even known existed a day earlier.

The Battle of Culloden. The Stewarts. The Campbells. The Appin Murder. Colin Roy Campbell. James Stewart. And eventually that monument I had already driven past before I even knew what I was looking at.

Maybe the Fairy Bridge really was the portal the woman had been talking about…?

Just perhaps not in the way I had imagined beforehand. Maybe a portal isn’t always about fairies, magic or another world.

Maybe sometimes it takes you towards something that happened long ago, but somehow still seems to be present and felt.

Towards stories that have disappeared beneath the surface…

Towards events we would rather forget…

Towards places that remind us how power, fear and injustice can leave their mark on people, even centuries later…

And maybe that is ultimately the real question:

Do we dare to step through such a portal when we don’t know what we will find on the other side?

And once we have seen what lies there…

do we dare to truly remember it?