An 8-Mile Hike From Anywhere—Is This The UK’s Spookiest Night’s Stay?

If you fancy a spine-tingling night away for Halloween, this haunted hut might be just the ticket.

Scattered across rural areas of Scotland are bothies, abandoned houses, and shelters used by intrepid hikers and explorers. Unsettlingly remote, eerily quiet, and unnervingly exposed at the best of times, there’s one bothy to rule them all when it comes to being haunted.

Riddled with horror stories and accounts of strange goings on, Ben Alder Cottage is a homestead with a dark history—not even some of the hardiest of explorers dare tread the floorboards of this bothy. Located in the heart of Scotland, the house is in the middle of nowhere, with fearless visitors required to take on an eight-and-a-half-mile hike with two river crossings just to get there.

What Is The Most Haunted Place To Stay In The UK?

Staying the night in such extreme isolation becomes even more disconcerting after learning the tales of the bothy’s past. One old legend suggests it’s haunted by its original resident, a servant called McCook, who tragically hanged himself off the back of the front door.

In another gruesome story, it is said that a woman and her infant once sought refuge in the cottage for several days during a storm. Driven mad with hunger, she killed and ate her child and was then seen passing through the moorland “wild-eyed with despair that no one dared cross her path” to eventually become “lost in the morasses of the place.”

Whilst those tales have been contested, for several decades stories have continued to persist of unexplained activities. Hikers have recounted stories of disembodied footsteps and groans, old-fashioned music playing in one of the unoccupied rooms, and witnessing a packet of biscuits being flung from the mantelpiece across the room.

What’s It Like To Stay In A Haunted House?

Ahead of Halloween, outdoor brand Columbia challenged one brave outdoor content creator and The Hike Society ambassador, Chris Knight, to go alone into the wild and take on what’s known as the UK’s most haunted bothy.

“Ben Alder is renowned as being the haunted bothy and having done plenty of research on the bothy’s chilling past, I had already started to creep myself out before I had even set foot in the place,” Chris said after his stay. “The isolated nature of the bothy’s location would be enough to put most people off; it’s sat in the shadow of a 1,147m mountain and is 14km from the nearest road.”

There’s no phone signal, and you have to trek across wild moorland to reach it. “After leaving my car, I didn’t see or hear a single soul for the 30 hours I was off-grid,” he said.

As with most bothies, it lacks basic amenities. It has no running water, electricity, or a toilet. It also only has three small windows, so Chris described it as almost dark, even during the day.

“The solitude also means you become sensitive to every creek, howl, and rustle that’s through the night,” he added. “Despite sleeping with earplugs in, I could still hear strange unexplained noises, which I definitely didn’t want to go investigate.”

“Whatever it was, one thing’s for sure: I won’t be rushing back in a hurry.”