The legend of Sawney Bean is one of Scotland’s most chilling tales, passed down through generations as a cautionary reminder of the darkness that can dwell within the human heart.

According to the legend, Alexander Bean was born into poverty in East Lothian during the 16th century. The son of a ditch digger and hedge trimmer, Alexander grew up in harsh conditions, learning to survive by any means necessary.

When Alexander reached an age where he could earn a living, he quickly realised that he was not fit for the hedge cutting and ditch digging life, much to the disappointment of his family.

Alexander began a relationship with an allegedly ‘vicious’ woman who went by the rather evocative name of Black Agnes Douglas. Agnes had apparently suffered the not uncommon inconvenience of being accused of witchcraft, and also suffered Alexanders bleak outlook on life and inclination to not working for a living, so together they left their respective abodes.

However, rather than eking out a meagre existence through honest toil, Sawney Bean and his wife turned to a life of hideous crime and depravity.

After some robbing and some light cannibalisation of one of their victims, they established their home far from the prying eyes of society in a cave along the coastline in Bennane Head, between Girvan and Ballantrae. The cave was 200 yards (180 metres) deep and the entrance was blocked by water during high tide, and it was there, hidden from view and undiscovered, that they began their 25 year reign of terror.

Sawney Bean, and later his clan, would lay in wait for unsuspecting travellers passing along the lonely roads nearby. With ruthless efficiency, they would ambush their victims, overpowering them before dragging them back to their cave. There, they would be subjected to unspeakable horrors, their corpses were dismembered and their flesh used to sustain the cannibalistic appetites of the ever expanding Bean family.

The Beans are said to have produced six daughters and eight sons – an alarming amount of offspring by todays standards but they didn’t have Netflix in 16th century Scotland (There’s a joke about bingeing ‘Dahmer’ there, somewhere.) The Bean offspring in turn produced eighteen grandsons and fourteen granddaughters.

As time went on the clan grew in number, their ranks swelled by the incestuous offspring born into this nightmarish existence. Whole generations of Beans living and dying within the shadowy confines of the cave, the monotony and lack of social media only broken by the occasional McDonalds (clan) takeaways, (sorry, couldn’t resist that one) their lives defined by violence and savagery.

Despite the remoteness of their lair and that the clan stayed in their cave by day and took their victims at night, rumours began to spread of disappearances along the coastline. Whispers of a savage clan lurking in the darkness grew louder. Local people began to take notice of the disappearances and searches were launched to find the culprits.

One search party found the cave, but the horrifying stench emitting from it’s entrance led the men to believe no human could live there.

The search then turned to the local innkeepers. Often they were the last to see the Bean clan’s victims alive and the townspeople were desperate for some kind of justice to be served. Many innocent people were hanged but still the disappearances prevailed.

At this point, one has to wonder why road blocks hadn’t been set up to ensure the safety of travellers. Or maybe the innkeepers could have set up some kind of armed escort service to ensure safe passage for a small fee, but they didn’t and so, one night, a soldier and his wife were travelling home from a fayre on the soldiers horse when they were attacked by the Bean clan. The soldiers horse was spooked and threw the poor wife to the ground. The soldier, armed and trained in combat managed to escape but his poor lady wife was captured, disembowelled and dragged back to the cave.

The soldier was rescued when more people returning from the fayre appeared on the track, scattering the remaining clan members – who nobody seems to have thought to follow, oddly… The soldier was taken to the local magistrate, who was then informed of what had transpired.

The tale of the murderous cannibal clan reached the ears of the King, who then decided he was going Bean hunting. The King (who may or may not have been James VI of Scotland because that would call into question the timescale of our tale) led a search party of four hundred men, complete with bloodhounds.

The bloodhounds, being bloodhounds, followed their noses straight to the cave which had been declared uninhabitable by the village search party. When the searchers entered the cave by torchlight, they were met by a macabre scene. The floor of the cave was scattered with disarticulated human limbs with body parts hanging from the walls and ceilings like some kind of sinister butchers shop. Stacks of barrels filled with pickled limbs, piles of stolen heirlooms and jewellery.. and amongst all this vileness and horror, the Bean clan.

There are two versions of the events following the Bean clan’s discovery. Their crimes were so heinous that there was no mercy to be found. Sawney Bean, his wife, and their offspring were all sentenced to death. One version states that the search party were so horrified by what they discovered in the cave they detonated gunpowder at its entrance, sealing the horror and it’s perpetrators in a rocky, remote tomb forever.

The other claims the clan was captured alive and were taken in chains to Edinburgh, then executed in Leith or Glasgow after being declared as ‘subhuman and unfit for trial’.

The executions carried out on the Bean clan were reminiscent of those carried out for High Treason. The men had their hands, feet and genitals cut off and thrown into the fire before being left to bleed to death.

The women and children were forced to watch this spectacle before being tied to stakes and burned alive.

And so ended Sawney Bean and his clan. Their reign of terror in Bennane Head is said to have cost the lives of around 5593 men, women and children.