Take the A82 from Glasgow and drive north for two hours. Turn right at Glencoe, deeper inland, until you come to a huddle of identical white houses on the far end of the loch. This is Kinlochleven. Park by the visitor’s centre and take the footpath east (marked West Highland Way), moving against the current of the river. Zip your jacket up! This is Scotland, after all, and the sky will be low, dull, and pregnant with rain. Persevere up the gutted and ill-kept trail, ignoring the mud that sucks hungrily at your boots, until the valley opens up into a bleak expanse of moorland. Feast your eyes on the sight before you. Wedged into the crooked hills, braced grimly against 24,000 million gallons of water, is Blackwater Dam: a two story high wall of pale concrete, smeared all over with slimy green moss.
Lots of horror games prefer to keep you closed off and claustrophobic in a spaghetti dinner of tight corridors and vent shafts. However, I think there’s something to be said for the terror of open spaces, long empty roads and barren moorland, where the eyes play tricks on the mind. Cast your gaze to a far-off glen. Is that thing you took for a tree actually moving? Is it – no, surely not – is it coming closer?
At the centre of the spookiness is a certain graveyard that lies along the trail. A wooden picket fence has been hammered up and over a small uneven hill, closing in a plot of land pockmarked all over with concrete slabs. Some of them are carved with names: Mr W. Smith. Mr Cummingham. Mrs Reilly. Most just say ‘Unknown’.
