It's an odd place, in the middle of the Scottish Highlands. You can only reach it on foot; from a railway station a mile to the west, or from a road, more than ten miles away to the north.
Loch Ossian.
My first visit there was 35 years ago, in 1990. I met a man there, who had just had to flee his home as it had gone up in flames. The cottage, Lubnaclach, sits close to the railway line from Glasgow and now stands abandoned in the moorland. Trains chug by a couple of times a day as they labour up the incline to Corrour Summit, 3 miles to the northwest.
The desolation of the moorland carries a wild and rough beauty, but hides dangers that cannot be underestimated. One wrong step, and the bogs can swallow up the unwary walker. How many were ever lost in this unforgiving environment is not known.
But there are whispers that there is one night in the year that they emerge into the open. Their meeting point is Lubnaclach. Little flames appear from the bogs, seemingly held aloft by persons, ephemeral against the lingering light of springtime. Although the ground is boggy in the extreme, these figures appear to hover above water, mud and bog, and effortlessly cross the streams that run across the moorland.
At the time of such a meeting, the ruin at Lubnaclach inexplicably appears to be whole again, with lights streaming from the windows. At the midnight hour, as April yields to May, a flash of light explodes across the moorland. The hammering of trainwheels, the panting of a steam locomotive pulling carriages - and a penetrating screech from the engine are heard - before a deafening thunderous clap swipes out all lights - and leaves complete, utter and never-ending silence.
The railway line stands empty, awaiting the passage of the first train of the day. Lubnaclach is a shell on a low hillock. And as daylight slowly grows from behind the distant hills and mountains, no vestige is left of the Beltane Gathering.