The Black Loch of Rannoch Moor

Rannoch Moor, Perthshire, Scotland

Rannoch Moor — twenty miles of blanket bog at 300 metres — is considered one of the most hostile terrains in Scotland. Travellers who leave the path are said to be drawn deeper by a sound just beyond hearing.

Rannoch Moor is not a specific haunted location but a category of place — a vast, featureless, waterlogged expanse that has killed people in every century of recorded Scottish history and that has a quality of atmosphere that travellers consistently describe in similar terms. The Moor covers approximately fifty square miles at an elevation of 300 metres, studded with lochs and lochans of varying depth and treacherous ground between them. The Wade Road — General Wade's military road — crosses its eastern edge. The West Highland Way runs its northern flank. Neither approaches the interior. The specific folklore attached to Rannoch: a sound. Not animal, not wind, not water — a sound below those, described variously as a low tone, a vibration felt more than heard, and a human voice calling from just over the nearest rise. It is heard only by people who have already left the path. Following it leads further from the path. This tradition is distinct from the standard 'will o' the wisp' format. There is no light. The sound does not move away as it is followed — it simply continues to seem to be slightly further on. Walkers who have reported it describe a strong compulsion to continue and a difficulty in turning back, attributed in the folklore to the Moor's active unwillingness to release those it has accepted. The moor has yielded bog bodies, Bronze Age artefacts, and the remains of aircraft from both World Wars. The walking tradition treats it with consistent caution.