The Beast of Blairadam is considered a fabled creature – yet we have spoken to Fifers who are convinced they have been in its presence.
Described as a big black cat that is larger than a Labrador, the beast has been spotted several times over the years at the 3,000-acre Blairadam Forest near Kelty but its physical form has never been captured on camera.
This has led to assumptions that the existence in these sprawling woods, straddling the border of Kinross-shire, of an unidentified creature – possibly a puma or a lynx – is less a reality and more fable than fact.
Homage has been paid to the beast in a poem by Kelty man Jim Douglas. He writes:
‘Wan nicht wis awfy eerie/Ah wis walkinʼ wae ma dearie/All at once we heard a horrid howl/It really wis sae frightninʼ/Jist like bein struck by lightninʼ/But Mary said, heʼs lonely, the pair sowl.’
Inside the forest is a beast carved on bricks and some writing engraved on the side of it, which says ‘touch not the cat’.
In Kelty itself, a large mural of what the beast could look like was created by Vanessa Gibson and her son Ben.
However, this depiction is not just of the legend but of something tangible.
“There’s been so many sightings of it,” says Vanessa, 54, who herself believes she saw the beast when she was walking her dog early one morning.
Two descriptions of the beast have been reported. One is coloured black, the other sandy. Both are significantly bigger than a large-breed dog.
One explanation for the beast’s apparent presence in woods regularly frequented by humans is the Dangerous Wild Animals Act, which saw many big cats released into the wild when it came into effect in 1976.
Indeed, it is from this period to the present day that all of the sightings outlined below have taken place.
This feature speaks to those who are certain, through personal experience, that the Beast of Blairadam is a living, breathing mammal.
‘I was taken aback’
One of the most recent suspected sightings of the beast took place in September this year.
Stephen Knudsen, 59, was driving back to his home on the Blairadam estate after doing some shopping at the Co-op in Kelty.
“What was really strange was that as I got close to Dullomuir Farm I heard this incredibly loud cat squealing like it was in a proper fight.
“I was taken aback by the unusual sound.
“I went past Kiery Craigs and as soon as I came out of a cutting this sand-coloured cat leapt into the undergrowth and ran to the south to get away from me. It was definitely not a fox.
“I was ready with my camera to find it but I didn’t see it again. I really want to take a picture of it.
“I think it didn’t hear me because on this occasion the wind came from the north. Normally it would have disappeared before I had got the chance to see it.”
‘It was huge’
Stephen, a joiner, moved to the estate in 2003 and says he first saw the beast three years later when he was packing away after doing a job in the Kiery Craigs area.
“It was pitch black,” he says. “I put my tools into my van and as I walked down the side of it for some reason the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
“I got into the driver seat and put the lights on. In front of me was a sand-coloured cat with a really long coat sniffing at a wheelie bin.
“It was huge, the size of an Alsatian, maybe longer. It wasn’t bothered by me and casually walked into the forest.
“It was definitely not a fox.
“I am torn between thinking it was a cougar – but they are quite heavy-looking and this wasn’t – and a cross between a cheetah and something else.”
Three months later, Stephen says he was told of another sighting. The beast “came out of rhododendrons and went off into a field”. It was said to have had a long S-shaped tail.
“I know mammals and I am very observant,” says Stephen. “I believe there is a lot about wildlife that we are still to learn.”
‘It was following us’
It was 6.30am and John Wilson was metal detecting on the Blairadam estate when he experienced the terrifying feeling of being watched.
The encounter happened three years ago when John, now 57, was taking advantage of being an employee on the estate to hunt for artefacts in its sprawling grounds.
He was with a friend at the time.
“We were on the edge of a field next to Blairadam House and it was getting light,” recalls the Rosyth resident who grew up in Kelty.
“I could hear branches breaking and shuffling in the undergrowth in the trees, which were 10-foot to the right. It was following us.
“I started to hear deep growling, as well as the noise of the branches and the trees.
“It was keeping pace with us and I could hear it walking in the trees. After a few minutes I decided to bail out and went back to the car.
“It was pretty creepy.”
‘It was growling like a wolf’
Though John, who now works as a farmer in Crossgates, never actually saw the creature he is convinced that he had encountered something unusual.
“With the branches cracking and undergrowth moving I thought it was a deer,” he says.
“But it was growling like a wolf, it was a deep growl.
“It was enough to make me go away.
“I have grown up in these woods my entire life and been here early morning, all through the day and late at night with all my friends.
“I’ve seen and heard everything in here but never heard anything quite like that.”
‘We took off running’
A farmer who has lived in the Blairadam area his whole life “never stopped running” for a mile when he apparently had a brush with the beast.
Stuart McDougall, 41, rents land from Keith Adam, the owner of Blairadam House.
The encounter happened in the early 1990s, when he was 13.
“I was with my friend shooting rabbits at the back of the Rookery, near Blairadam House,” Stuart recalls.
“I had a feeling something was not quite right so I moved away from the wood. Then I heard awful squeals, growls and howls.
“We took off running and never stopped until we got home a mile away.”
‘You get a sense there’s something not right’
Stuart has not actually seen the beast but he says there is evidence it exists.
He recalls an incident in the 1990s when the then resident of Greenlee Cottage reported that her hens were being terrorised by an unknown animal.
One morning she saw unusual-looking paw prints close to the hens. These were taken away and put into a plaster cast by staff from Blair Drummond Safari Park. This was not the first time a plaster cast of the beast has apparently been made, as we explain later.
“It’s been an ongoing thing for many years,” he says. “One night I was out shooting with my friend at Kiery Craigs and the crows made a terrible noise that they would never usually make at night.
“We got a terrible feeling and left.
“You get a sense there’s something not right and the hairs stand up at the back of your neck.
“The growls that I heard when I was younger were nothing like any animal that I know of in the UK.
“I have shepherded across Scotland and I have a good grasp of native wildlife but this was different.”
‘It moved from one side of the track to the other’
One of the famous stories of the Beast of Blairadam is of an apparent sighting that led to footprints being preserved in a plaster cast.
The incident is said to have happened in the 1980s when two members of staff for the Forestry Commission were using a roller to resurface a straight track close to Lochorine House.
“One of the men went down the road and graded the forestry road while the other one came behind him with a roller,” recalls John Wilson, now 67, who worked as a tree feller for the Forestry Commission at the time.
“There were woods either side of the track and the animal moved from one side of the track to the other.”
‘There’s a big lion on the road’
At the time the Forestry Commission had its own walkie talkie system that was accessible to staff as far away as Dunkeld.
John says that there were gasps as one of the staff members yelled into a walkie talkie: ‘You’d better get someone up here – there’s a big lion on the road.’
“This could be heard by everyone who worked for the Forestry Commission,” John says.
“Because the track was being resurfaced the animal’s pad marks were left behind.
“One of the forestry staff took a plaster cast of this and it was left in the forestry office at Blairadam.
“But the office shut a few years ago and it is not known where the plaster cast went.”
Though the story of this sighting has circulated widely in the local area, John says the Forestry Commission did not want it publicised at the time for two reasons.
First, it might have frightened away the many visitors to the forest and second, it could have encouraged bounty hunters.
“A fear was that people could come to the woods to become the first person is Scotland to shoot a big cat.”
‘I have seen the Beast of Blairadam’
In his working life John was employed by the Forestry Commission between 1977 and 2001.
He says he had been in his job less than three years when he was first made aware of an unidentified creature in Blairadam Forest.
A colleague was fishing in a boat in Loch Glow Reservoir when he thought he saw a dog rounding up sheep on moorland that abuts the forest.
“He looked again and said ‘that isn’t a dog’,” John says. “He stopped fishing and quickly got back in his vehicle and started driving towards Lochorine House.
“When he arrived at the house the cat, which was a black colour, jumped out onto the road in front of him and then left.”
The man was apparently so convinced about what he had seen that he returned to the reservoir and told someone staying in a nearby caravan that ‘I have seen the Beast of Blairadam’.
“They think it was a puma,” says John. “The Forestry Commission got wildlife experts out into the area to look for evidence.”
‘I followed it along the path’
John claims there was another sighting in the late 1970s on a track in the Dowie’s Walls area.
“There was an airstrip for people to play with planes,” he says. “Supposedly a boy was playing with a plane that crashed it into trees.
“When he went looking for it he said he saw the beast walking out onto the road. It just looked at him before carrying on.”
In 2013, John believes he saw the beast wading through snow on a walk between his home in the hamlet of Kinnaird and Maryburgh, on the edge of Blairadam Forest.
“It looked like a black cat and I followed it along the path before it vanished.”
He says he returned to the spot the following day and its pawprint was visible.
“I measured it and it was four-and-a-half feet from one pad to the other.”
John believes the beast could be living in an underground mine shaft that has not been filled in.
He says that while working for the Forestry Commission he discovered 32 mine shafts in a survey of Blairadam Woods.
“A big cat could be quite happily live in one of them,” he says.
‘There is a big cat there’
There is no suggestion that the beast has caused harm to a human but it did apparently help a runner win a race.
In January 2013 Iain Taylor, secretary of Carnegie Harriers running club, crossed the line in a run at Blairadam Forest 18 seconds ahead of his nearest rival.
He told the Daily Record at the time: ”A cat ran out from the south side of the forest, right across the track.
“I would say it was about two foot high, three foot long and was black.
‘”The following day, there were what looked like cat prints in the snow.
‘”A couple of guys in the club had said they had heard a cat out there but I’d always thought it was a load of rubbish.
‘”I’d never believed in the Beast of Blairadam but there is a big cat there. It’s probably the reason I won the race.”
‘We are keeping the local legend alive’
As Vanessa Gibson was painting her mural of the beast she could not believe the amount of attention it was receiving.
In summer 2020 she undertook the project with her joiner son Ben, 27, in Kelty’s Main Street for the Kelty Street Art initiative.
Vanessa, an art teacher at Auchmuty High School in Glenrothes, says: “It came about because the location of the wall is on the way to the woods from Kelty.
“It’s surrounded by flats and concrete so we thought we would add a bit of colour.
“When I painted the mural I was amazed by how many people stopped to tell me their story about spotting it in Blairadam forest.
“We like to think we are keeping the local legend alive.”
‘I saw a dark shape’
The mural has been created in the 1950s tattoo style. A quote on the artwork says ‘Whit’s fur ye’ll no go by ye’.
“It was a mother and son collaboration and we don’t often get the chance to do that,” Vanessa says.
She herself believes she saw the beast six years ago – not at Blairadam but three miles away at the Lochore Meadows Country Park.
“I was walking along and I saw a dark shape on the edge of a misty field,” Vanessa says. “It was too big to be a dog.”
