Macabrepedia: A Marriage of True Crime and the Truly Bizarre

Sawney Bean and His Cannibal Clan

November 15, 2021 Matthew & Marissa Season 1 Episode 15
Macabrepedia: A Marriage of True Crime and the Truly Bizarre
Sawney Bean and His Cannibal Clan
Show Notes Transcript

When travelers start disappearing in  Galloway, nobody knows why until a husband and wife are pulled from their horse in front of dozens of travelers. This leads them to the worst cannibal family in the history of the country. But, did Sawney Bean really exist? Was this story grossly exaggerated, or did his family do what their legend famously says?






https://www.metalkingdom.net/lyrics-song/Skiltron-Sawney-Bean-Clan-175830

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Matthew:

macabrepedia deals with dark subject matter may not be suitable for all audiences listener Discretion is Advised

Marissa:

go you not by Galloway come by to while my friend I'll tell you the dangers there beware of Sony been there's nobody can study by it's there for his face is seldom seen battat his eyes is tailored to meet your fate at the hands of Sony been for Sony he has taken a wife and he's hungry barons do wean. And he's raised them up on the flesh of men in the cave of Sani beam. And Sani has been well endowed with daughters young and lean, and they have taken their fathers seed in the cave of Sani bean. And Sani sons are young and strong, and their blades are sharp and keen to spill the blood of travelers what meat was Sani bean. So if you ride from there to here, be wary in between less they catch your horse and spill your blood in the cave of Sani beam. They'll hang you up and cut your throat and they'll pick your carcass clean, and they'll use your Banes to quiet the weeds in the cave of Sani be Buffy Are you not Captain rides on an errand of the Queen. He carries the writ of fire and sword for the head of Sani been. They've hung them high in Edinburgh town and likewise their kin and the wind blows cold on their bones and to help they have gone Join us now as we add another entry into this our macabrepedia.

Matthew:

Welcome to macabrepedia a marriage of true crime in the truly bizarre we are your hosts, Matthew and Marissa. And today we will be talking about Sony beans.

Marissa:

Yes, we will. We were talking about Sony bean. There is a little bit of dispute about whether he was real or not. But we're gonna get into that and after I tell the story,

Matthew:

as long as it's McCobb and dark. And yeah,

Marissa:

it certainly is we meet those criteria. So Alexander Beane, was known as Sony been to most he was born in East Lothian, which is a few miles east of Edinburgh. He his father was a ditch digger, but he was not really interested in following his father into His family business. He was kind of lazy. So he actually left their parents house, his parents house and he met a woman and her name was black, Agnes Douglas and he ran away.

Matthew:

So she became black bean.

Marissa:

Oh, she kind of didn't didn't she

Matthew:

told me the story of black beans.

Marissa:

So she was she was not very upstanding either. I mean, they kind of got along really well because of that. But they, they ended up getting married and they laughed. It was the start of something. I won't say nice, but it was the start of something.

Matthew:

Because you want to save it for beautiful. It was a beautiful thing to based on that that opening turns into a beautiful, beautiful relationship. In a cave.

Marissa:

It does end up in a cave. I mean, I guess you could see it as a beautiful relationship in some regards. That is the that's the lyrics to a song. So quite nice, actually. But anyway,

Matthew:

is it like a that doesn't sound that I mean, I know that you're taking some artistic liberties with it, but it didn't sound like it was a contemporary song.

Marissa:

No, please forgive me for that because of my Irish accent is atrocious. So I did not even attempt it.

Matthew:

We already had we already had an Irish listener, I guess who had corrected our butchering of Mad Betty the The Hanged woman of Ireland they were they corrected the spelling? Which I? I don't know if that doesn't make it easier to say because no way. No way. So we we would like to take a moment to apologize for every name of of a location or person that ever comes out of our lives that we have done or will do. Yeah, that we will we will butcher it worse than most of the people who die in these these episodes. Oh, hey, tying it back. Good.

Marissa:

So yeah, anyway, we'll get back to the story. They did actually end up having a baby they you know, got married and because of this baby he Sony being felt like he had to start providing for his family. That's what typically happens. So he took up his job which was being highwomen and Galloway and as you probably know being a highway man is not really a job. It's like

Matthew:

it doesn't sound like oh, he so he went into the profession of being a licensed highway man. Yes, killing people. You Yeah, the road. I didn't think that that was like the public transportation.

Marissa:

No, no, he got straight up just murdered people for their stuff, particularly travelers. So they settled down nearby, but settling down in a cottage just wasn't for them, right. So instead, they took up residence in a cave on the shore in Galloway, and actually lived there for the next 25 years. So they were there for a while. They never went into town, and they didn't talk to anyone or keep in contact with a single soul outside of themselves. So they never spoke to their family or their friends. They just were on their own.

Matthew:

He's a professional criminal. I mean,

Marissa:

yeah. All right. Yeah, I'm sort of I'm sure that's part of it. But basically, the point is that they ended up being very isolated. They were just a unit, nothing else was ever there. So they would get their goods and food and stuff by robbing people and killing them, usually travelers on the road, in fact, Sani been and his family made it a point to never leave anyone alive, which meant that there were never witnesses who could point authorities back to the cave, and the family that were living there. And not only were there no living witnesses, but the family would bring back the carcasses of those that they killed the cave, where they would cut it up, pickle the limbs in barrels and eat them.

Matthew:

Well, I mean, don't let anything go to waste, right? I mean, so really, he's really just, he's just a hunter,

Marissa:

a hunter of people.

Matthew:

Yeah, well, I mean, whatever.

Marissa:

I suppose that's the ultimate game. Haha, no, no, yes. So sometimes they would kill so many people that they would have too much to eat. This was pretty much their only substance substance. If that would happen, though, they would throw parts of the bodies back out into the sea. And these parts would wash back onto into nearby places on the beaches, especially after a storm. So it became kind of part of the area where sometimes after a storm, there would be body parts, human body parts washed up on the beaches. So you can imagine many people are going missing nearby, including friends and family of those who are living in the nearby towns. So people people noticed this happening.

Matthew:

Well, I mean, I mean, it makes sense. I mean, that they would have too many, too many deaths are too much to eat. I mean, you can only pickle so much. And we from our cannibalism episode, we know that you can live like, what was it? 10 days, a person can live like 10 days have eaten another person? He's only feeding what a family three at this point?

Marissa:

Well, it gets much bigger. Okay, into that in a minute. Okay, yeah, people and people would find these carcasses in your body parts lambs in various states of decay, washed up on the beaches became part of the local legend. Even if you did not find the body yourself. You'd hear about it, of course, the type of thing that people gossip about. Everybody's gonna know about this. And the people who live nearby. They were becoming very alarmed. I mean, you would write so missing and then

Matthew:

some people go down to the shore to pick up seashells and they're like, Oh, I found a hand

Marissa:

exactly human. Sometimes they would send people out to near where these disappearances were occurring. They were trying to find out what was happening guess the bottom of it, but most never returned. And those who did never actually found anything. So they did not end up encountering what it was. Or they just didn't come back. Nobody really knew at this point. But people who want a scapegoat, they will find one. So what happens? Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Matthew:

So yeah, they found several so they found Frenchie number three,

Marissa:

call back to earlier about earlier episode.

Matthew:

That's that's pretty much my stick here is to make movie references and callbacks, other other podcast episodes. If you want to catch the joke, you have to you have to go back. It's like a scavenger hunt included.

Marissa:

Some travelers who came through there were brought in on suspicion and then hanged. There were also some innkeepers, who were hanged because some of the missing people had slept in their hands before they went missing. And therefore they were implicated. All of those who were executed, though they maintained their evidence, their innocence until the very end.

Matthew:

Well, that's the weirdest thing. I mean, like, they'd be like, Oh, well, all of these people were out of towners, and so they all stayed at these in so it must be the innkeeper. And it's like, no, maybe somebody is targeting out of towners? Yeah, exactly. Like, it doesn't have to be the one place that they stay there. Well,

Marissa:

they didn't know. You know, they're just they just they really

Matthew:

goes for evidence. They just go and kill people. No, I good enough. And then somebody else gets the more body parts show up and more missing people. And then they're like, oh, man, I guess it wasn't that guy.

Marissa:

Exactly. And because of this, there was you know, a lot of stressed innkeepers and some of them abandon their businesses after this and they moved elsewhere. They didn't want to be accused. So they just kind of abandoned the ends. It made it harder for travelers who were coming to the area. Sometimes they would camp out not good. made it worse. And some people actually nearby They speculated that a pack of wolves We're living nearby and they were responsible. But this is a wolf. Yeah, but this didn't make sense because

Matthew:

it didn't it didn't make sense when they were killing all the walls in France either. Yeah.

Marissa:

And they didn't find the wolves. They didn't find body parts. It was just washed up on shore. That's not going to be a pack of wolves doing that, right. They're not gonna get rid the bison in the ocean.

Matthew:

Yeah, they go and they just they they go hold the leave their bones. Yes. It's just it's always at low

Marissa:

tide. No, no. So at the end, we you you mentioned, they only had like three people to provide for solve the case. So in this time, they were there. The beam clan grew considerably the beam, the beam clan, the clan have been Yes. So Sony and black beam, and they had

Matthew:

Pinto and kidney. I mean, what was right that a kidney bean, right? Get it? Because they're eating people,

Marissa:

I get a kidney. So in the 25 years that they live there in the cave, Sani and Agnes black bean, they had 14 children. But then 32 grandchildren, and all of these. Right? Notice, remember how I said they didn't have contact with the outside world? So living in this cave together, all these grandchildren were born from inbreeding,

Matthew:

allegedly, though, because I mean, maybe what they do is they take it's like the Amazonians. Right? They like

Marissa:

think they take the travelers to travelers to kill their seed.

Matthew:

That's exactly what it is. That's it took the joke right off my lips,

Marissa:

they all helped out in this family business that, you know, they were born into this, they were raised into this. This was their culture. So they helped out when they could. They were also very careful though, with what they were doing. They would not attack if a traveling party was too big. They only do it if they could be assured of success. So they would take the bodies and they would clean up the evidence. And they made it impossible basically to know what happened by the time the next traveler came through because they took the stuff and they laughed and they cleaned up the evidence. none the wiser. When you came through the next day, all I can

Matthew:

picture is that X Files episode with the family were they rolled them all out? Yeah, whatever episode that is. Yeah. But I mean, I don't want to even say look it up, because I don't know it was I see I've seen it one time when I was like nine.

Marissa:

It makes an impression. Boy, the Hills Have Eyes. They got limbs. Interestingly, I actually heard that that episode was inspired by something Charlie Chaplin wrote in his autobiography.

Matthew:

Wow. I mean, Charlie already gets a bad enough rap in some circles. Yes. Oh.

Marissa:

So in this way, it's actually estimated that Sony been in his clan of cannibals, killed 1000 men, women and children. That's a lot of people. And most of these people were traveling through the area, or they were just unlucky enough to be walking nearby. A lot of people, but 25 people in the cave, you have to provide for them. They eat a lot, right?

Matthew:

I guess. I mean, I

Marissa:

mean, that's what they did. They took the bodies back to the cave and they lived off of the flesh.

Matthew:

Yeah, no, I'm just, I know that. I'm just he, you it hurts the killcount when you have to divide it though, amongst 25 to 30 people, instead of being one of the most prolific killers of all time. It's like, well, my kids help.

Marissa:

And on that note, let's see what we can take out from our sponsors. I don't want to

Matthew:

dig around this cave at all sponsors are not we would like to take a moment to thank today's sponsor. I personally haven't had as much experience with it as I would like to but I hear good things today. sponsor is sleep Hall. Man sleep is great, huh? So I assume that everyone was like, oh, yeah, I love sleep. Oh, yeah. I love sleep. Thank you. Sleep, the cousin of death, bringing you all sorts of inspiration, fears, anxieties, and perchance a dream. There's the rub. So thank you so much to sleep for sponsoring today's episode. Hey, sleep see it tonight. As always, check the affiliate links below. The main one that we have been pumping out since our one of our early episodes is the pod podcasting hosts that we use at buzz sprout. If you use the affiliate link below, it helps out the podcast and gets you a$20 amazon gift card when you utilize that link, as well as sign up for one of the paid memberships. Buzzsprout is a very helpful and kind of fun tool to use in podcasting. I do think it is pretty cool to be able to kind of see the growth over time and kind of see what episodes hit better than others and kind of get feedback that way. Since we don't always get a lot of interaction with our our fans. Oh, that sounds dope. retention so super potential we

Marissa:

have a little bit of interaction now and it is very appreciate Yeah, it's super fun and

Matthew:

it's I don't want to go I don't want to be so assuming as a call call people fans, but listeners, those who have given us some some level of feedback we do appreciate that as always. But anyways, as far as Buzzsprout goes, it is inexpensive for what you get absolutely with the the the paid subscriptions with the use of magic mastering which takes out a good bit of the fine tuning of the sound. Hopefully you guys enjoy the sound. A lot of that is due to magic mastering which is one of the products that you can get through Buzzsprout affiliates. Sponsorships, it is it is it is a great tool and you can join the huge number of people who already utilize that as well as macabrepedia Yeah,

Marissa:

it's really handy to be able to see it as your podcast grows in numbers.

Matthew:

I also think we should do something with this spot, more so than what we're just doing now. Like what? Well, I mean, macabrepedia is a marriage of true crime and the truly bizarre I feel like maybe we need to dig into some truly bizarre stuff.

Marissa:

I mean, I guess we can do that. What's thinking,

Matthew:

I don't know. Um, interesting facts. Like, I don't know, Guinness records like Henry coffer be having a ball of hair that he's collected over the years that weighs over 167 pounds is that all of his hair. See, that's something we could really put in here, I'm not going to dig into now you're putting me on the spot. But until we actually come up with that, we will just I guess we'll just have to make do with the true crimes portion of this and we'll go back to the beans

Marissa:

so 25 years is a long time for them to be there. But it's not forever. And it really seems like this clan could have been would have just kept going as long as they could, I mean, they were clearly breeding living in this little cave, this was their world, they would have just kept doing it as long as they could. But one day, a husband and his wife had gone to a traveling fair nearby. They were both riding home on the same horse. It was just them alone, nobody else was around them. They were the perfect target for the beating clan. And when they saw them, they attacked a man attacked first he jumped out from the bushes off onto the road. And the husband actually had a pistol on him and he fired the guy but he hit the wild man but did not like take him down. So he was still coming over and then he these other guys come out of the bushes and they dumped him more men kept jumping out and they surrounded the couple on their horse and somebody actually pulled the wife off of the back of the horse and they slit her throat

Matthew:

you got to think that just describing it as men jumping out of the woods or the bushes or whatever is on either side of this this road that they're traveling down they've been in this cave pumping out kids for so long like the that that you have to think about the also the description as a wild man like these are cave dwelling people that have spent most of their lives being just taught whatever their crazy as parents have decided

Marissa:

to teach you imagine if you have no outside influence just you kind of leave you with these be your

Matthew:

worldview is totally

Marissa:

cute. Oh man that's why they're attacking people on horses well I mean

Matthew:

people with education still attack people on horses really gotta think if you're living in a living in a cave somewhere with your with your your family yeah, I'm saying like the worldview of these people would be just nuts

Marissa:

like completely unlike we can relate to I'm sure you know how can we always

Matthew:

see all most of these stories? We might do one later where like if you're raised by wolves, you come you know your tent you can be brought back and you're an okay person all in all like Howie Mandell and walk like a man which was that's it that's the movie restaurants for the for this episode.

Marissa:

That is a classic that one I have not seen

Matthew:

Howie if you're listening Love Your Work my dude like he's not listening that was my that was my jam but anyways being raised by wolves as a wild child which there are a number of those that have haunted right they always

Marissa:

not necessarily by wolves but not raised out in the wild

Matthew:

by by the survived in the wild until somebody found them whatever. They they seem to end up like mildly adjusted, but like can you imagine like people who chose to go be criminal criminals in the woods? The kind of curriculum that your schooling would have through they're always just filtered down God?

Marissa:

Well the only people who chose it would be just the you know Sani Anis and by Agnes Right.

Matthew:

Yeah, man, there's there's so many other depths of this story that would be interesting to delve into that. I mean being this this is also possibly just a legend. Yeah. Or at least blown out of proportion. It's hard to say for sure. But

Marissa:

yeah, but let's if they were real, like psychologically just know there's no coming back from this period like absolutely not

Matthew:

any one part of this story would make it so that these people would be messed up for life. If you put if you mix it all together into 25 bean casserole that it is like you're gonna have a pretty messed up family for sure.

Marissa:

Yeah, absolutely. So they, they these messed up people really, they they attacked these people. This couple, they pulled the wife off the back of the horse. As I said, they slit her throat so she's dead. The man was then also pulled off of his horse by the group and he saw his wife get her throat slit. He saw this happen. So he was preparing to die. Also, he saw his wife killed. He knew his time was coming as luck would have it. Because there had been many people at the fair, more people were leaving and going home. So right when this was happening, somewhere between 20 and 30 people came into view along the road. All Seeing this attack unfold. Nice. Yes. To say they were stunned was surely an understatement. So when they came across this, they saw that the dead woman's clothes were ripped off and she was being disassembled. The attackers were tearing her flesh in her intestines, and they were eating it and sucking at her blood, and then killed the other dude yet. No, not Yeah, they were just it was kind of way I read this. The way I read exactly. That's the way I read is very animalistic. They were just attacking and eating what they could write and other people were taking care of him. That's just like they're attacking in a pack.

Matthew:

Yeah, we'll take your kill. And I guess he just you know what you do with it.

Marissa:

The crowd began to shout as they watched this, and the attackers noticed this and then they started to fleet. The woman's body was dragged away and then she was found toward the coast. And in preparation for butchery. It looked like they had started to take her bows out. And they had done all this, but they had dropped it as they fled. So this is her body, restoring the beach,

Matthew:

trying to butcher her on the run, like tear apart while they're running away.

Marissa:

They were disemboweling her and eating her I mean, they were doing what they could in the moment. I'm sure it wasn't like that dire, but they were working on it for sure. And at this point, the husband and the horse were actually still alive. And as it turned out, they were the first creatures to survive an attack by the being clan and 25 years. The news of this witnessed attack actually reached the king, King James at the time, and he himself traveled to Galloway with a host of 400 men and many bloodhounds to try to find these cannibals.

Matthew:

You just heard a story that like there's a bunch of wild cannibals running around disemboweling people on the road. Like that's not just like your your local, like, there was a murder, right? It's big deal. Yeah, this is like Wait, hold on what happened

Marissa:

and disappearing for 20? Over 20 years, right? Yeah, area, like oh, man,

Matthew:

I totally thought we had them. When we hung that last innkeeper.

Marissa:

They thought that they were wrong. And the husband who had been attacked was the man leading them to where it occurred. So he was there to show them where it had happened, and where his wife's body had been dropped. So it was this way, and His Majesty and the bloodhounds actually went and of course all these guys not just not just not just the king.

Matthew:

Where's the reverence? Suddenly coming from King James, his man? Oh

Marissa:

my god. Okay, so the key goodness, the king, his guys, and these bloodhounds guys

Matthew:

remember the night

Marissa:

Shut up. Him and his soldiers in a bloodhounds. They got to work. They went from the scene of the attack following the direction where the woman's body had been dragged, which again, as I said, toward the beach, they had been seen fleeing that way as well. So this led them to the beach surrounded by tall cliffs that could provide hiding places, people had actually passed this cave where the beings had lived, like many times people actually were aware of the area pretty good. It wasn't so far away from settlement that nobody ever passed it. But the cable should they would starve to death. Right. But the actual cave though not nearby. But the cave went back into the rock almost a mile. It was not a big entrance, either. It was not super apparent from the coast. And when the tide came in the floor of it would flood pretty bad. So it was really dark within the cave, too. You couldn't see anything but you got not that far back into it. Just you know, you couldn't see your hand in front of you. We've been to some caves where they you know, they'll shut the lights off for a second just to show you and it's like, true darkness. Yes.

Matthew:

The black is blackness you'll ever see. Absolutely real, real darkness looks like I mean, like, go into a closet and turn it off and get the same idea. But it doesn't take it doesn't take too far away from a cave entrance. Now before it's just pitch black. And if you're I mean, you'd assume that you're smart enough to make it so it's a small enough cave that nobody's going to just walk through.

Marissa:

Well it went by almost a mile.

Matthew:

But I mean, no, I mean, a small enough entrance into the right not gonna be something that's like, Oh, I wonder what's in there. It's like a dark hole in the earth and you're like, I ain't going in there.

Marissa:

Yeah, and and when the search party party first came across it, they did not think it was anything like they kind of ignored it because they figured this could not possibly be it right. But then some of the bloodhounds happened to go into the cave. And once they actually entered into it, they started just relentlessly barking and howling just at this point, it was pretty clear that something was up at this cave. So they sent us part a party of soldiers into the cave with torches, because obviously, it's very dark. They have to have something to light it up, though they didn't know how many how any human could live in this place. It was so dark as I said it flooded. It was that high tide it was almost uninhabitable. I mean, if you walked into it, you'd be like, nobody's gonna live here. Right?

Matthew:

Oh, that's kind of the way I think of most caves. Like there's nobody going to be living in here. Well, yeah,

Marissa:

absolutely. I mean, especially flooded cave or one that floods every twice a day, right. So the place was labyrinthian, really, and it was hard to kind of find where you're going. But at last, they did come to a place in the area in the cave where the family lived. The soldiers who went into the cave or pretty shocked by what they saw. As you can imagine, body parts were hung up all over the cave, they were thighs, arms, legs, torsos, just of all kinds of people, men and women of all ages, they were hanging drying like jerky there also barrels of pickled limbs everywhere. And the belongings of so many people just lay in piles all around. So you've got piles of jewelry and clothing and all kinds of stuff. In addition to actual body parts. And these people living in there, they these cannibals actually did try to fight off these soldiers. But it didn't really work. Of course, they were quickly overpowered, they were all taken to Edinburgh, the soldiers then took these human remains that they found and they buried them outside on the beach. Just as like a sign of respect, try to give them a proper burial what they could find anyway. And the Sani clan, I mean, what can you do with these guys, other than the two at the head of the family, none of them had known civilized life. They were they were clearly just raised very differently than society. They had grown up in this life taught to kill to eat and to commit incest with their siblings. So King James the First was left with this decision. And it was truly a horrifying story about people brought up to be animals. So were they really people at all? And that was his argument here.

Matthew:

So is the story going to be so because they're animals, he just had them all butchered and put into pies or something because they're just animals. He didn't

Marissa:

quite go that far. But King James the First use this thinking as his excuse, though, for what he did. And he declared that since they did not act like people, they should not be tried, like people. Nobody involved in this actually got a trial, yet they were all sentenced to be executed.

Matthew:

Well, I mean, it's one of those things that I mean, in a way, in a way, you can't really, that's kind of what the pleat of insanity is, is not understanding that what you did was wrong. These people did not understand that what they did was wrong.

Marissa:

No, certainly not. Not the most of them anyway. Yeah.

Matthew:

So but so I mean, like the law doesn't really they don't have like a plead of insanity at this time, whatever. But like, it's okay. It kind of makes sense that you're just like, Nah, we're just, there's no reason for a trial like what do they don't know that what they did was was wrong, they're never gonna like that. There's no reason to, like seek counsel for that.

Marissa:

Right. But he was not that kind. He was really doing it just to get rid of them and to treat them as animals. He figured if they were going to do this, they were not human. He just wanted them to die. He wasn't gonna give them give them the human right of a trial. That was what I mean. Unfair, unkind. mean, if

Matthew:

you're Are you are not on His Majesty. Like he. I mean, what else are you going to do with these people? Like, they don't have like, mental health facilities, where they can try to like deprogram them, you know, that it's like, no, you know, this is the same thing as if we had just found that this was a pack of wolves that were doing this what would we do with those pack of wolves? We, we'd go and kill them all. Go and kill them all. Like, I mean, yeah. I mean, called Call me heartless. But at the same time, it's like, I mean, what are you gonna do? You can't make them understand that what they did was wrong. They were they were raised. And I'm not saying like, they don't understand English or whatever. You know what I mean? Like obvious. I mean, most they might have they probably almost certainly. I mean, they I'm sure they have a cake right. Yeah, that's why I'm saying like, they're not exactly animals, but at the same time, they have never been shown society or anything like that, I mean I'm just saying I don't give James that hard of a time on that like even if even if he's doing it for the wrong reasons I don't see based on his timeframe and everything that it would be like you're not going to reform them

Marissa:

well yeah, that's what he said. He said quote it being thought needless to try creatures who are even professed enemies to mankind. So he figured if they were so animalistic, they were mankind's enemies. Why should we bother trying them?

Matthew:

I don't, I don't disagree.

Marissa:

So they were taken to lease and executed quite gruesomely. The men were castrated, and their feet and hands were chopped off.

Matthew:

Yeah, that see now that's probably a bit much unnecessary.

Marissa:

They were left to bleed to death from these wounds. Okay,

Matthew:

James. All right, dial it back, man. dial back a little bit. Okay. See, now now you're just now you just do it because you can,

Marissa:

and the women were forced to watch.

Matthew:

Okay. All right. Um, yeah, again, a little a little. I mean, if we're gonna take the route of trying to say like, Well, they didn't understand that what they were doing was wrong, which clearly that is not James's stance on this per se, because then they also understand, but he's confident that they understand watching their brother husbands get murdered. Well, I'm

Marissa:

sure that they did. No, but then being forced to watch. I mean, think about it. It's kind of something they saw every day. It wasn't their loved ones, but they kind of they kind of saw people bleeding.

Matthew:

Just kind of like, that ain't shit. Yeah. What do you mean? Come on now? I mean, Why'd you cut the ankles that takes forever to bleed?

Marissa:

Yeah, they were looking at it with a professional.

Matthew:

It was like, sloppy work. Yeah, Your Majesty.

Marissa:

Anyway, the women were actually burned to death, though. But none of them regretted their actions, even to the end. Nobody expressed any remorse.

Matthew:

Of course, they didn't. They didn't understand anything.

Marissa:

So this story seems kind of nuts, right? Am I telling a tale versus real? We've got we've got some debate here,

Matthew:

right? I'm not debating it's real. So

Marissa:

that I told the story, this is the story,

Matthew:

you can breathe a little harder directly in the microphones may try to edit out later.

Marissa:

So that's the story, right? While there are people who believe that this is entirely fabricated, there are many people who believe that the beans actually did exist, and they did these things. So we've got people on both sides of this here, and some in the middle. There's evidence and arguments for both. There was a man named Sony Beane, who lives near the Galloway area. And these caves definitely exist as described. In fact, some people think that they have identified the exact cave, your ballantrae I'm sorry about the pronunciation, if it's wrong, and many people did go missing in the area at the time. The dates for this very though they don't know if the dates for that happened to line up with what they say. When they say this happened. The area had a certain lawlessness at the time. Also, you know that there wasn't a lot of structure. King James did travel near the area where the being claimed was claimed was supposed to be in living when he was traveling through the country. On the other hand, it seems that the first written evidence for the story actually appeared around 1700, which is a couple 100 years after the story is supposed to have taken place, which in history is usually a big, huge red flag. Some speculate that the story was completely made up at the Jacobite rebellion, which was in the 17th and 18th century, and it was made up to make the Scots seem like savages. So they think it was early propaganda by the British. One scholar points out that the publications that the story was founded. They were not anti Scottish, but they also had tales, anti English, so about English criminals. So he points that out. But the first verified bench of Sani bein was in 1701. And the union of the nations was in 1707. So it could have been propaganda aimed at making the Scots seem like they were just an inferior and wild people.

Matthew:

Oh, yeah. And that's good. Again, going back to the cannibalism episode. That is one of the things is that you always you always just say, Oh, they're they're wild cannibals. And that is like a benchmark of evil. But when I say that, I do think that it was probably true. I don't think that there was a huge family of people living in these caves and eating all these people. But I mean, that sounds like a pretty sweet little bandit hideout for sure. Were they all related and stuff and eaten people? I don't know. I don't I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go that far. But I mean, like, it definitely seems very plausible that there's a there were a group of highway men and women and guess that we're killing a bunch of people in that area. That makes sense. Also, they have you eaten that many people. You probably got that curry curry that cure the brain amoeba. Both

Marissa:

so the story of Sani being and his cannibal family may have actually been inspired by a folktale of Christie clique. Christie clique was was with a group of people in the midst of a famine when one of them died. And he butchered them, serving it up to the rest of his companions. They started to eat more people and ambush travelers to obtain it. And he would use a hook attached to a rod to pull victims from their horses. This fabricated tail would become a kind of bogeyman, or boogeyman to children in Scotland to get them to behave. So you know, if you're not good, Christie Clico getcha type thing.

Matthew:

Yeah, it's gonna be pretty hard to fish somebody off a horse of the hook.

Marissa:

Yeah. Maybe a source of the stories is true. But the dates were skewed in the retelling, we don't really know. Perhaps it's based on true events that were exaggerated. You know, this could have actually happened. It was just exaggerated.

Matthew:

Yes, that's absolutely where I'm setting my flag. Yeah,

Marissa:

that's what happens to these things. They grow over time. And when things like this, it seems like there was some grain of truth that's been embellished, when we will likely never know the whole truth of it. Stuff like this from centuries ago that get told word of mouth throughout the years, it does tend to blow up.

Matthew:

I mean, throughout the history of humankind. I mean, it's a big old game, a telephone, you know, I heard the story of I heard the story of I heard this story from so and so.

Marissa:

The perhaps, but regardless of how much is true, the story has inspired many tales. This has absolutely become part of our culture. So it ended up inspiring the tale of Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber Fleet Street.

Matthew:

I don't believe that, that that I know. There's nothing about it. It's the same thing he taught in and Tommy beam are close, but like other than that, no, there's nothing about it.

Marissa:

Are you gonna say that it's really just the cannibal thing? I mean, it's really

Matthew:

two people into pies and stuff. Yeah, a spoiler for Sweeney Todd, but also a spoiler for Titus. I mean, come on. Everyone gets baked in a pie also. Spoiler sorry.

Marissa:

We all know we don't know what's inspired. We just know it's kind of seems similar so that I don't

Matthew:

see the similarities. That's where now this is the moment everyone's been waiting for this podcast, right? I'm just like, nope, your story's wrong telling me not it is not that has nothing to do with Sweeney Todd. Sweeney Todd isn't even Well, I was gonna even Scottish

Marissa:

I was gonna do an episode on Sweeney Todd. But Sweeney Todd is not real. So I really wanted to work in something sweet. Leave it alone. Okay, so also, another another inspiration here was West Craven used it as an inspiration for the Hills Have Eyes. You've watched this one Attack on Titan, which is a maga slash anime. That one there are actually two titans in it. I haven't watched it. But this is whatever. There are two titans in it. And one of them's called Sony and one's called been.

Matthew:

I don't know. I haven't gotten very deep into it. They were they weren't named at that time. But that may That's it. That's a That's a cute little thing.

Marissa:

Yes. Cute little nod. It also influenced the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And there is a movie called Sani flesh of the man that's retold in modern day. But fully true, partly true embellished truth or full fledged fiction. We don't really know. Sony being in his cannibal family. It's certainly a story that stuck around and continues to inspire the McCobb I fall on the side of I think there's probably some grain of truth but we'll never know exactly.

Matthew:

Yeah, I think I think there's definitely truth to it, but I don't think that it's it's gonna come from somewhere I mean, I mean, all joking aside like I said, like I mean, I don't think there was body parts hanging and like curing in the in the cave and stuff like that. I don't I don't I don't see how that was done.

Marissa:

That's where I fall on it. Anyway.

Matthew:

Thank you for listening to this episode of macabrepedia as always, please find us on social media. You can find us on Twitter and Facebook at macabrepedia as well as

Marissa:

Yeah, we're also on Instagram and macabrepediapod and if you have a question or if you want to reach out with a topic for an episode, you can reach us at macabrepediapod@gmail.com And don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen

Matthew:

Don't forget to join us next week as we add another entry into this our macabrepedia