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A family of fiendish inbred cannibals who live in a gloomy cave ambush and kill passersby – before feasting on their remains.
It sounds like the premise of a gruesome horror movie.
And it pretty much is. But the scariest thing is that Wes Craven's 1977 disturbing film, The Hills Have Eyes, was in fact inspired by an even more terrifying story from Scottish folklore.
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The cult classic was apparently loosely based on the story of Alexander ‘Sawney’ Bean and his 45-member clan.
As Halloween approaches, the movie may well appear in the TV schedules.
But few people will realise the frightening flick has its roots in the twisted tale of the Beans, a man-eating mob said to have mauled thousands of people to death before eating them.
Craven reportedly came across the legend while searching for source material in a New York library.
His movie follows a family who become stranded in a barren atomic zone inhabited by cannibalistic mutants with a taste for blood.
While many believe the Sawney story to be true, some historians have doubts about its validity.
Nevertheless, it remains part of Scottish folklore and was grisly enough to catch Craven's eye.
According to legend, Sawney was born in East Lothian in the 1500s. He led a normal life and tried to follow in his dad's footsteps by becoming a ditch digger and hedge trimmer, but soon realised the work was not for him.
He left home and got together with a woman called "Black" Agnes Douglas and the couple made their home in a dark, dingy cave near Ballantrae, on the Ayrshire coast.
The pair, who lived off the land, had six daughters, eight sons, 14 granddaughters, and 18 grandsons. Some of the grandchildren were a result of incest, it's claimed.
The Beans had no contact with the outside world but would gather late at night to ambush travellers, groups or individuals, who passed their cave.
The poor folk who succumbed to the clan were often mauled to death, according to the tale.
As the cave was around 180 metres deep and the entrance was blocked by water at high-tides, the family were able to go undiscovered by locals for decades.
It's said that after killing their victims, they would take them back to their cave where they would dismember, cook and eat them with leftovers, often pickled and salted.
Body parts were apparently often found washed up on nearby beaches and it has been estimated that over a 25-year period, they killed and ate 1,000 people.
But as more people vanished into thin air, locals eventually began to take notice.
Searches were launched to find those responsible but they were never found.
During one hunt, the search party found the cave but refused to believe any human could live in it.
A particularly macabre part of the story involves a couple who were travelling on horseback from a fair when they were ambushed by the Beans. The woman was dragged off the horse and mauled to death.
Her husband, who was said to have witnessed the clan slitting his wife’s throat, ripping open her belly and feasting on her entrails.
A group of 30 more fairgoers appeared on the trail and the family fled before they could turn their attention to him.
He was then taken by the large group to report his horrifying experience to magistrates.
In some reports, it has been said that King James IV (later James I of England) was told of the incident and arranged for a search party of men and dogs to hunt the clan down.
After two decades, the family’s existence was finally revealed.
The party took to the caves but after hours of searching, they still couldn’t find anything or anyone until dogs picked up the scent of body parts still hanging on the walls of the cave.
The Beans were captured, with hoards of bodies, clothes and their victims' belongings found.
They were taken to Edinburgh where they were sentenced to death for their heinous crimes.
According to the Daily Record, 27 male family members, including Sawney, were drawn and quartered.
Some reports claimed the men's genitalia was cut off and their hands and feet severed, before they were left to bleed to death in front of their female relatives, who were then burned as witches.
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