So I grew up hearing about the Catman of Greenock. Everybody did, it was just one of those things.
Some people swore he was a Russian sailor who got stranded here in the 70s and never left. Others said he was just some homeless guy who’d lost the plot and started living like an animal down by the industrial estate.

Most people laughed it off. Something to scare kids. “Don’t go near the factories at night or the Catman will get you.” That kind of thing.
But the weird part was, the stories never really changed.
A man covered in soot.
On all fours.
Eyes that caught the light like a cat’s.
Seen under cars. Behind bins. Between buildings.
Never talking. Just watching.
I didn’t believe it. Not really. It was Greenock, we have got enough odd stories without adding feral sailors to the list.
Then a few years back, I was cutting through the old industrial lanes late one night. I’d done it loads of times. It shaved a good ten minutes off the walk home. 
The place always smelled the same. Damp concrete, oil, something metallic.
The streetlights barely worked. They didn’t so much light the place as twitch over it.
I heard it before I saw anything.
A scraping noise.
At first I thought it was rubbish dragging in the wind. But there wasn’t any wind. It was slower than that. Deliberate. Like nails across the ground.
I stopped. Like full on froze.

It went quiet. Not normal quiet. The sort of quiet where the world stops.
I told myself to just keep walking. Don’t be daft.
A few steps later, I saw something shift under a parked car up ahead. I actually felt relieved for a second. Thought it was a cat.
Then it moved further out.
Too big.
A hand came out first. Black with soot. Or dirt. Or something. The fingers bent wrong somehow too curled, like they’d forgotten what upright was for.
Then his face.
Low to the ground. Eyes catching the weak streetlight and throwing it back at me. The skin looked stretched tight across his cheeks. His mouth was dark. Wet. He was chewing.
I didn’t look at what he was holding. I didn’t want to.
He looked straight at me.
Not startled. Not aggressive. Just aware.
That’s the part that feared me up the most. He didn’t look like he’d been caught. He looked like he’d been there long before I arrived.
Like I’d walked into his home.
We just stared at each other. Couldn’t have been more than a few seconds but it felt long enough for every daft childhood story to flood back into my head.
Then he moved.
He didn’t stand up. Didn’t shuffle. He just slid backwards, pulling himself under the car in one smooth motion. No noise. No scrambling. Just gone.
I stayed there longer than I should have. Trying to convince myself I’d imagined it. That my brain has a case of the f*** arounds and had stitched a person together out of shadow and nerves.
Then I heard the scraping again.
Further down the lane now. Moving away. Slow. Steady.
I didn’t take that shortcut again.
People still argue about whether the Catman was real or just a story that got bigger every time it was told. Maybe that’s all it is. A story that stuck.
But I know what I saw.
And it’s not the soot or the crawling or even the eating that stays with me.
It’s that look.
Like he recognised me.
Like I wasn’t the first person he’d watched from under a car.
And sometimes, if I’m walking home late and the streets go that same heavy kind of quiet, I catch myself listening for that sound again.
That slow scraping.
Just in case.


This is a well known urban legend on the West of Scotland there's a few videos online if you want to research the myth. 

Just thought it would be cool to make a story about the legend and share. 

The Catman of Greenock