While corpse paint and wearing all black may not seem out of place at a metal show, it may not be immediately identifiable in all environments. Say, for instance, the woods of a Scottish island. And it was that unfamiliarity that found a group of metal fans who were camping having their trip interrupted by the local authorities.

According to the BBC, a group of "heavy metal campers" set out for a getaway on the island of Loch Leven in Scotland Sunday night only to get quite a scare when the local authorities descended upon their campfire fearing something sinister was afoot.

David Henderson, an Aberdeen University teacher and metal fan, and civil engineer Ross Anderson had hit the wooded area with a group of metal loving youths and their dog and set up a campfire in the woods. Henderson also sings with a black metal group called Nyctopia and the collective of campers were sporting some of their metal look on the way to the site, which raised concern amongst some who spotted them.

Henderson told the BBC, ""We are just a group of friends who like to go wild camping, drink beer and listen to heavy metal music. We parked the cars opposite Lochleven Castle and did a safety briefing before we rowed over to the island. A woman from Historic Scotland told us we weren't allowed to camp there. So we rowed away to another island and camped there. We set up our tee-pee and got a fire going with lots of nice food. We were sitting around the fire telling ghost stories and that's when we started seeing loads of weird lights in the sky and across the water and then there were more and more of them."

Apparently concerned citizens had reported the campers and police, helicopters, boats and fire crews had been rallied for fear they might be a suicide cult. As authorities closed in on the site, they smashed the windows of the cars thinking they might find a suicide note inside.

"The lights seemed to come towards us and the dog started barking - it was very surreal and we really didn't know what it was. It was like something out of a movie, like some kind of an X-Files episode," said Henderson. "We thought, if it came to it, we would grab the kids and get in the boat and get away from there. We killed the fire because we didn't know who this was and our priority was to protect the kids. When they came closer we realized it was a rescue team and I could hear on their radios that they wanted us off the island."

Read the rest of the story at the BBC.

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