You may be familiar with Wes Craven's 1977 horror movie The Hills Have Eyes.
It's the story of a group of travelers who fall victim to a deranged and homicidal family
of mutants in the Nevada desert.
What you may not be aware of is that Wes Craven was inspired to write the movie after reading
about the alleged true story of Sawney Bean and his family, who were said to have been
a cannibalistic clan from Scotland responsible for the deaths of over 1,000 people.
But did any of that actually happen or is it just a legend?
Coming up on Atlas.
They wanted to see something different, but something different saw them first
The Hills Have Eyes
Alexander “Sawney” Bean was born East Lothian in the 1500s.
After leaving his home at a young age due to his unwillingness to earn an honest living,
he married a woman named Agnes Douglas, who by some accounts was a witch who went by the
name Black Agnes.
Together they moved to another place in Scotland and took up residence in a coastal cave in Bennane Head.
The cave was 200 yards deep, contained several tunnels and during high tide, the entrance
was blocked by water.
This is where they began their notorious crimes.
They would sneak out at night to ambush and rob travelers.
Eventually robbery turned to murder and murder turned to cannibalism as the Beans began to
devour their victims.
People in the nearby villages where alarmed, but no one could figure out who was committing
these crimes as the Beans' cave was the perfect hideout.
Hundreds of people went missing throughout the years.
During the years they were committing these atrocities, the couple produced eight sons,
six daughters, eighteen grandsons and fourteen granddaughters.
The grandchildren were the products of incest and relied almost entirely on human flesh
for sustenance.
Their reign of terror continued for over two decades.
Search parties were dispatched to find the murderers but turned up nothing, although
this didn't stop them from accusing and lynching innocent people.
One night, the clan attacked a young couple returning from a fair.
They managed to kill the woman by dragging her from her horse and disemboweling her but
the man managed to put up a fight.
A group of twenty people who were also returning from the fair happened upon the scene and
fought off the Bean family.
Now that the murderers had been discovered, King James himself came to Bennane Head with
an army of 400 men and bloodhounds to track them down.
The bloodhounds eventually led the men into the cave, where they discovered the gruesome
remains of hundreds of people.
The family had even gone as far as to pickle some of the human meat in jars.
They were apprehended and marched off to Toolbooth Jail in Edinburgh where they were sentenced
to die.
The men of the family had their legs and arms cut off and were left to bleed to death.
The women and children were burned to death after watching the men die.
The veracity of these events has often been called into question.
The main source for the story is The Newgate Calendar, which was a crime catalogue of Newgate
Prison in London, but no other historical documents have ever been found that mention
Sawney Bean or his family.
If thousands of people had gone missing like the story claims, there would probably be
some kind of record or at the very least a mention of it in a newspaper.
Details in the story also vary wildly.
Sometimes the events take place in the 13th century and sometimes they take place all
the way up to the 16th century.
The first printed version of the story didn't come out till the 18th century.
It's worth noting that many people had in fact been tried and convicted of cannibalism
during these times, so it's not too farfetched to think that it actually could have happened.
It's possible that the story of Sawney Bean was inspired by real events and was passed
down through word of mouth for generations, with each retelling adding grisly details
that strayed from the truth.
Whatever the case may be, people today still make the journey to Benanne Head to visit
Sawney Bean's cave but no one has found any human remains there...yet.
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