Kellas, who was also a lecturer and veteran of Himalayan ascents, later told Collie that he had a similar experience on Ben Macdui. But he ran away before he could discover what, if anything, was there.Īnother climber, named A. John Norman Collie, told a frightening story of an experience he had on the mountain 35 years previously.Ĭollie said he was climbing alone in the snow and mist and heard crunching sounds, and thought he was being followed by something large and ominous. The Big Grey Man is a mythical creature described as a Scottish Big Foot, the legend of which came to prominence in the 1920s, as reported by the BBC.Īt an annual gathering of the Cairngorm Club in Aberdeen, its honorary president, the highly respected mountaineer Prof. The Brocken specter illusion is responsible for several 'supernatural' sightings on Ben Macdui, the second tallest mountain in the U.K., located in the Cairngorms National Park, Scotland. The mountain is covered in clouds or mist for 300 days a year and is the subject of old superstitions. The term Brocken specter originates in Germany and is named after the Brocken, which is the highest peak in the Harz Mountains. 'This all combines to make the rather disorienting effect of a giant shadow moving in the distance,' says the weather service. The Met Office says that the shadow falls upon water droplets of varying distance, which distorts perception, making the shadow appear to move as the clouds shift. The shadow will appear magnified due to an optical illusion that makes the shadow on the nearby clouds seem to be the same distance as landmarks that can be seen further away through the cloud. The illusion occurs because the sun behind the person will project the shadow through the mist.

This can create the illusion that their shadow is a person seen through the mist, and it will appear to be gigantic and at a distance. Optical Illusion of a Young Girl Sinking Into Sidewalk Is Baffling Internet.Ocean Skyline in Optical Illusion Is Actually Just an Ikea.Psychologist Baffles TikTok Viewers With 'Trippy' Optical Illusion.What marks out Broken Spectre as a departure is that its imagery is largely the product of scientific rather than military technologies, including “ultraviolet microscopy” and “multispectral geographic information GIS systems”, the latter of which Mosse nonchalantly says he “borrowed” from satellite cameras. In Heat Maps he used a thermographic camera, often used by border control authorities and classified as a weapon under international law, that makes people appear as white phantoms drifting through dark space.

They “all use different kinds of imaging technologies that can register unseen light.” In the Congo, he used a rare type of 16mm infrared film, first developed in the Second World War but now no longer made, that transformed the verdant African jungle into a vibrant, raspberry pink. “I find the medium first and work backwards,” he says. He considers these three most recent works as forming a loose trilogy because, while each is rooted in a specific time and place, they all began with the discovery of a new or unusual film format.

Brocken spectre 1990