According to the legend; The family, consisting of 48 people, would come out of their caves at night and feed the passers-by or local people to their traps.
It took a long time to catch up with the Bean Family, who were said to have killed almost 1,000 people over the course of 25 years and feasted on the corpses of the dead in their caves. Here is the blood-curdling story of the cannibal family…
It all started when the husband and wife, who gave up on adapting to society, hit the road.
The past of the father of the family, Alexander Sawney Bean, is not very pleasant. Often beaten and humiliated by his father, Bean put aside his efforts to integrate into society and met a woman named Agnes Douglas.
The couple, who loved and married each other, had to leave the city soon after because Agnes was accused of being a witch and collaborating with demons.
They experienced human flesh for the first time while living a nomadic life.
The couple, who decided to go to Southern Scotland, had no job and lived on the run. It is estimated that it was at this time that they experienced human flesh for the first time.
In order not to be caught, they left the bodies in a form that looked like they were from an animal attack. After months of illegal travel, they thought it was time to settle down.
46 people with incest relations were born in the filthy cave they settled in.
On the Ayrshire side of Scotland, they found a filthy cave 180 meters deep whose entrance was mostly blocked by the tides. They would use this cave not only for hiding, but also for making and raising children.
Over time, they formed a family of 48, which expanded to 8 sons, 6 daughters, 14 grandchildren and 18 grandsons. Moreover, it is rumored that some children were born with incest.
Their only contact with the outside world was when they were out hunting at night.
The large family had almost no contact with the outside world. The only time they went out was at night, when they ambushed people passing by in droves.
The poor people who fell into their traps were feasted on their tables with the leftovers after they were cut to pieces by the cannibal family. This process continued for 25 years and the Bean Family killed almost 1000 people in total in this way.
The public encountered body parts on the beaches.
The people, who could not understand that there was something wrong for years, realized that the human population in the area they lived in had decreased considerably after a while. Also, when they found body parts on the beaches, they finally realized that something strange was going on, but the search was unsuccessful.
Things started to unravel slowly when the man whose wife they had eaten before their eyes managed to escape.
According to one of the rumors, they unloaded a couple traveling on horseback during the fair and ate the intestines of the woman after they opened her stomach. The husband, who managed to escape, told the magistrates about this incident, and the search team got involved.
The teams, who managed to find the cave thanks to the search dogs, found body parts hanging on the walls and ceiling of the cave after hours of research.
Male members of the family sentenced to death had their penises cut off.
As the investigations continued, the Bean Family was reached and the victims’ belongings, clothes, legs, arms and feet were also found.
The male members of the cannibal family, who were sentenced to death for their crimes, received another punishment, cutting their penises into quarters. This is how the story of the Bean Family, which was eliminated with the death penalty, came to an end.
The Bean Family in popular culture:
The story of the movie series The Hills Have Eyes is based on this legend.