Beithir

Beithir is a snake-shaped folklore creature reported from Scotland, Great Britain, and also treated as a cryptid based on the existence of sightings.

On September 30, 1965, at approximately 11:30 p.m., Maureen Ford and a friend were driving on the A85 toward Perth, and as they approached Perth, they spotted a strange creature on the roadside and testified as follows:

“

...a long grey shape. It had no legs but I'm sure I saw long pointed ears.

”

Then, around 1:00 a.m. as the day changed, Robert Swankie, driving from Perth to Dundee, saw something similar to what Ford had seen about an hour and a half earlier and testified in more detail

“

The head was more than two feet long. It seemed to have pointed ears. The body, which was about 20 feet long, was humped like a giant caterpillar. It was moving very slowly and made a noise like someone dragging a heavy weight through the grass.

”

Shuker thought the creature sighted at this time might be a zeuglodont whale-like creature or a sea creature that appeared through the Firth of Tay and the River Tay.

Shuker did not treat this as a case of a beithir sighting, but books by Japanese occult writers such as Namiki and Amano presented it as one. In Japan, it was introduced as a caterpillar in appearance but not in movement.

In 1994, a correspondent of the British magazine Athene published an article on various sightings of beithir. There are three reports presented. The first was a report of a 10 foot beithir spotted by fishermen upstream of the Falls of Kilmorack near Inverness in 1975, which swam through a gorge near Beaufort Castle and disappeared. The second was a report of a sighting at Eilean Aigas in the River Beauly, Highland. The third was a report of seeing a beithir moving overland near Loch a' Mhuillidh in the 1930s. After discussing the various reports with zoological colleagues, the correspondent considered it to be a species of eel.