Sandy Coutts and the Beast of Bennachie

Bennachie rises over the Garioch in Aberdeenshire. Its highest point, Oxen Craig, stands 528 metres above the surrounding farmland. The Beast of Bennachie was first spotted in the 1970s, and it became particularly prolific in the 1990s. In 1995 the reports came one after another, a string of independent big cat sightings around the foothills, as the Press and Journal later put it. One witness kept coming back.

Sandy Coutts was a retired farmer from Insch. Late in 1994 he was on Brindy Hill, between Keig and Alford. He saw a large, yellowish creature. The following February he saw a similar beast. Same place.

These were big cats, he was certain. But he did not yet call them the Beast. Within the space of a year he would see four mysterious big cats.

25 September 1995. Near the Oyne Fork, Coutts saw something different, a jet-black feline. "It was much larger than a dog, definitely a big cat, and had a long curved tail." This, his fourth sighting, was the one that convinced him. He had met the infamous Beast of Bennachie.

The day after the Oyne Fork sighting, sheep carcasses were found in the area, which seemed to back up his claim. Others were seeing things too. A big cat was almost snapped by a press photographer on 25 January 1995. A milk roundsman told of a sheep found killed near Monymusk, and of another incident near the Oyne Fork. As farmers lost patience, Grampian Police even appointed an officer dedicated to sniffing out the predatory cat.

In 1996 a different theory surfaced. More than two years earlier, a Rottweiler puppy had escaped in the Durno area and was never seen again. Perhaps it had gone wild and taken to killing sheep. Even the Press and Journal called the idea shaky. One local farmer was blunter: "I'll believe in the big cat when I find one lying dead."

That same year Christopher Burges-Lumsden, the laird of Pitcaple, blamed a panther-like animal for two lambs found partly eaten near Whiteford. Their throats were torn. Cat tracks lay nearby. He set a trap. Police played it down and said it would most likely catch a fox.

Sceptics of British big cats point to escaped or released pets, domestic cats misjudged at a distance, dogs blamed for livestock kills and rumour fed by the media. In 2019 Defra stated that neither Natural England nor Defra had received any credible reports of wild living or breeding big cats. Around Bennachie, conclusive evidence of a big cat has never been found.

The Beast did not go away. Shortly before Christmas 2001, school-bus driver Doug Riley saw an animal near Blairdaff "about the size of my old labrador dog, and jet black", with a long tail. Later reports came from the River Don near Inverurie, Chapel of Garioch and the Back o' Bennachie car park. To the north lies another legend, the Beast of Buchan, reported from the 1930s onward. Through it all, Sandy Coutts stood by every one of his sightings.