The Legend Of Sawney Bean & His Cannibal Killers

The head of a 45-member clan in Scotland, Sawney Bean allegedly killed and cannibalized over 1,000 victims in the early 16th century.

Believed to have lived in a cave with about 50 immediate family members, all born of incest, the Beans were known for robbing, kidnapping, and eventually murdering strangers ~ whom they later dismembered and ate.
Over the course of 25 bloodlusty years, the Beans are said to have cannibalized 1,000 people.
The grisly tale is also believed to be the true story behind ‘The Hills Have Eyes’, the terrifying cult horror classic.
But is the legend of Sawney Bean even real?

The man known as Alexander Sawney Bean was supposedly born in the late 1600s near Edinburgh, Scotland, though very little is actually known about his early life.
Sawney Bean might have originally been a tanner by trade, others say that he was first a hedger and a ditcher.
Nevertheless, most accounts agree that Bean eventually left these trades behind and took up with a woman, sometimes called Black Agnes Douglas, in Ayrshire.

The legend goes that the Beans retreated from society and confined themselves in a cave over the sea.
Now called Bennane Cave, the hideaway was said to become hidden when the tide rose high enough.
This giant rock formation was allegedly equipped with various tunnels that spanned over a mile in depth, and allowed ample space for the young couple to start and raise a hideous family.

The Bean clan grew quickly, with Sawney Bean’s wife eventually giving birth to 14 kids.
With ever-increasing mouths to feed and no real trade to fall back on, Bean turned to robbery and murder to make ends meet.
It didn’t take long for his family to help him with his crimes.

The Beans worked together to ambush lone travellers and local passersby, and were consequently left with a mountain of bodies to dispose of.
As the legend goes, this is how the Beans ultimately turned to cannibalism.
The criminal clan was said to hack up the bodies of their victims, quarter them, and pickle them in their cave.

As time went on, the family continued to grow.
The cave eventually became home to 18 grandsons, and 14 granddaughters ~ all born out of incest!
The Bean clan eventually numbered 45, and all of them had a hankering for human flesh.
With what was essentially a small army to help him, Sawney Bean went on to orchestrate ambushes with military precision, tracking and pouncing upon their victims before dragging their lifeless bodies back to the cave to be consumed.

A list of missing persons grew by the day, and occasionally limbs would wash ashore, but the Beans, hidden from society, went undetected.
Instead, local innkeepers became suspects as they were usually the last people to have seen the missing person in question.
Many innkeepers grew fearful of being wrongly accused and several of them abandoned their inns for other occupations entirely.

But the Bean clan’s reign of terror was not to last.
One day, the Beans encircled a husband and wife on horseback as they returned from a local fair.
The Beans ambushed the couple from behind and took the woman down immediately, gutting her and gnashing on her entrails.
Her husband, who witnessed the horror, fought the Beans hard.
He barreled over several of them with his horse and pulled out both a sword and a pistol until he was released from their grip.

By this time, a group of about 30 fellow fair-goers had made their way along the same path, and when the Beans took notice of them, they retreated.
But it was too late, they had exposed themselves as the cannibalistic, cave-dwelling murderers that they were.

The husband made his way to Glasgow, where he implored King James VI to do something about the Bean clan.
The king is said to then have personally led a mob of 400 men, and bloodhounds to Bennane Cave.
Here they were met with an unfathomable scene of carnage, severed limbs, hanging bodies, and piles of stolen loot.

The Beans were arrested and taken to Leith in Scotland, where they awaited exEcution.
The locals were said to have been so disgusted with the Bean family that they demanded a more painful punishment than mere death.
As a result, 21 of the Bean women were burned to death.
The men were dismembered and left to bleed out.

Besides this story of Bean from 1755, there are no contemporary records to verify his existence.
There are also no records of the missing persons, the various innkeepers forced to abandon their trades, or even the 400-person manhunt led by the King of Scotland himself.

The English often portrayed the Scottish as sinister barbarians during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, because the Scots were trying to reinstate one of their own on the British throne.

In an effort to disenfranchise their cause, such stories were passed along, and would become legends.
Some historians contend that it was simply an English propaganda tool.
Could it really be just dig at the Scots ~ people so barbarous they could produce a monster like Sawney, who lived in a cave and ate people?
Or did he really exist….

Bennane Cave, where Alexander Sawney Bean and his clan were said to live.
Picture Credit ~ Mary and Angus Hogg/Public Domain