According to legend, Sawney Bean and Agnes "Black" Douglas raised a clan of cannibals in a remote Scottish cave. They killed and ate unlucky travellers on lonely roads. This went on for decades with more than a thousand perishing. Who invented this gruesome story? Why? And why has Sawney Bean become a kind of cult hero in Scotland itself?
Cat Byers is our guest today, a writer and historian based in Paris currently finishing a PhD on the Paris Morgue.
Edited and produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/
You can take part in our listener survey here.
Medieval Werewolves, Ghosts & Zombies
Exploding Kings & Red Hot Pokers: Gruesome Deaths of Monarchs
Blood Countess of Hungary: Sixteenth Century Serial Killer
Christmas Day Strangler: the murder of Gwen Ellen Jones
Charles Dickens' Christmas Ghosts
Palmer the Poisoner: Victorian England's Doctor of Death
Why Do People Kill at Christmas?
Ghost That Solved Its Own Murder: Red Barn Murder
The Ghost of Anne Boleyn
Hellfire Club: Sex, Scandal & Satanism in Georgian England
Amelia Dyer: Victorian Baby Farm Killer
The Real Origins of Witches
Victorian Death Photography: Postmortem Posers
Mother Shipton: Tudor Prophetess of England's Doom
The Real Witch Hunts: Persecution & Panic
The Man Who Hanged Nazis: Albert Pierrepoint
Ghost Fetishes: From Ancient World to Victorians
Origins of the Loch Ness Monster
Guy Fawkes & the 1605 Gunpowder Plot
Hammersmith Ghost: How to Murder a Poltergeist
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society
Gone Medieval
The Ancients
Dan Snow’s History Hit
The Rest Is History