That One Time A Scottish Family Killed And Cannibalized 1,000 Innocent People

To call the story of the Sawney Bean cannibal clan history would be a bit of a misnomer; "Sawney Bean folktales" is a more appropriate moniker. While there's likely some truth to Sawney Bean, also known as Alexander Bean, his story may not have enough basis in fact to be considered true history. Yet he's an impactful figure nonetheless. Widely considered to be The Hills Have Eyes true story basis despite the dubiousness of his veracity, Sawney Bean is an important folkloric figure, and may be a product of propaganda; even if he didn't exist as the tales suggest, his story is no less significant because of this.

Sawney Bean is said to have been the leader of a Scottish clan sometime between the 1200s and 1500s. As the legend goes, he led his family to murder and cannibalize more than 1000 victims. This idea of a family of killers who ambush victims is prime horror film fodder, and while the clan itself might not be the historical cannibals they're often made out to be, there's no doubt they're still incredibly relevant in a mythic sense. 

Sawney Bean's murders didn't go unnoticed, even if nobody knew the culprit. In fact, innkeepers were frequently accused of murdering the missing people, as were often the last to have seen them alive. As the rumors went, innkeepers robbed and murdered guests, likely while they were sound asleep. Because these rumors threatened business, many innkeepers were forced to quit their professions and move, an enormous undertaking in the time.

Sawney Bean's cave (the entrance to which is pictured above) wasn't just a hole in a cliff face. It was an incredible network of tunnels that supposedly extended for miles, giving him and Douglas plenty of room to live and, naturally, expand their family. Even better for their purposes was the fact that the cave flooded during high tide, making it an unlikely place for people to live, and thus a place those on the hunt for the reported thousand or so victims wouldn't bother to check. Because of its size and hidden nature, the Bean clan was able to grow to around 45 people strong, all of them, aside from Bean and Douglas, related to one another.

As the story goes, Alexander "Sawney" Bean was born to an honest ditch-digging and hedging family. Sawney, disinclined to manual labor and looking for an easy way out, left his family business along with a woman named, according to some stories, "Black" Agnes Douglas. Together, they moved into a cave somewhere between Girvan and Ballantrae, on the southwestern coast of Scotland, and stayed there for the rest of their lives.

Isolated from society and refusing to work, Sawney and Douglas are purported to have ambushed travelers for 25 years. 

Though Bean retreated from a life of honest work, living wasn't free. To make ends meet, he and his girlfriend (for lack of a better word) ambushed passersby on a nearby road. To maintain the secret of their whereabouts (the cave in which they supposedly lived is pictured above), Bean and Douglas had to get rid of the bodies, which they could do by tossing them from nearby cliffs or, as Bean discovered, turning them into a food source. Cannibalism became an intrinsic part of the Bean clan lifestyle, a gruesome but effective means of sustenance and hiding their attacks from authorities. 

Inside their secluded cave, Bean and Douglas had time and space to start having children. And have children they did; according to legend, they had eight sons and six daughters. Uninhibited by social mores - they were murderers, thieves, and cannibals, after all - those sons and daughters had 18 grandsons and 14 granddaughters with one another and their parents. What else are you gonna do in a cave?

Consanguineous fornication and procreation is an integral thread in the tapestry of horror woven by Sawney Bean's clan, which not only consisted of criminals of the worst kind, but interbred children likely born to very young parents (given that they were said to live in the cave for 25 years and produced two generations). 

If the stories are true, the Sawney Bean clan killed an average of 40 people per year. That's a lot of meat, even for 45 people, and it's said they preserved what they couldn't eat by pickling and salting leftovers. Not everything got eaten, however. Preserved body parts were said to wash up on nearby shores, giving local towns some idea of the fates of their missing loved ones.

Though the massacre went on for 25 long years, Sawney Bean's reign of terror eventually came to an end. According to legend, the clan attacked a married couple returning from a fair and killed the woman, but the man fought back. In some versions of the story, he had a sword and/or pistol on him; in others, he had a horse, which he used to plow through the attackers. Whatever the weapons, the man escaped and others were warned. After 25 years, the Sawney Bean clan was exposed, and investigations began.

With 1000 people dead, finding the person responsible was a huge deal. That's why King James (King James I in some sources, IV in others) is said to have gotten involved. As the story goes, King James himself led 400 soldiers to the site of the botched murder, using bloodhounds to find the cave where the clan was hiding. Even the 45-person Bean family wasn't enough to take out 400 soldiers, and were subsequently arrested.

Evil as the Sawney Bean clan was, it's no surprise their execution was as violent as the lives they led. There was no trial, given the amount of bodies found in their cave, and the entire clan was put to death the day after they arrived in Edinburgh. The men were dismembered and left to bleed to death while the women watched, and the women were burned as witches. Violent delights have violent ends indeed.

Bean reportedly left his life as a laborer behind around the time he entered a relationship with Agnes Douglas. Though not much is written about her life prior to their relationship, one of the few things that has survived is that, after they got together, Douglas was accused of being a witch in East Lothian, Scotland.

When Bean and Douglas left their home, it was as much because they no longer wanted to work for a living as it was because both had been rejected by society, as Bean's father was allegedly abusive and Douglas was accused of human sacrifice and conjuring demons. Given their later activities, it's hard to feel sympathy, but we can still wonder how their stories would have turned out if not for those events. Assuming any of this actually happened. Which it probably didn't.