What happened
The stretch of what is now the B3212 across Dartmoor, between the villages of Postbridge and Two Bridges, had a bad reputation from the early 20th century. Drivers and cyclists said their vehicles suddenly veered off the road “as if something had taken hold of the wheel.” In June 1921 the medical officer of Dartmoor Prison, E. H. Helby, was killed here after losing control of his motorcycle combination – the two girls in the sidecar survived. A few weeks later a coach ran off the road, and on 26 August an army officer testified that a pair of invisible hands had wrenched his motorcycle's handlebars. When the national press took up the story, the legend of the “hairy hands” was born. In 1924 a woman spending the night with her husband in a caravan by the road said she had seen a huge, hairy hand crawling up the window, which vanished when she made the sign of the cross.
Witnesses
Survivors of the 1921 accidents, an army officer (26 August 1921), journalist Rufus Endle and a woman camping by the road in 1924; the case was covered by the “Daily Mail” in October 1921, among others.
Explanations and hypotheses
Local skeptics pointed from the start to visiting drivers going too fast on a narrow road between high banks. When the authorities examined the stretch, they found that the camber of the road was dangerously steep in places – after it was rebuilt, the accidents stopped. The legend lives on, however, and is one of the best-known tales of Dartmoor; Charles Fort cited it in his book “Wild Talents” (1932).
Disputed A likely explanation exists, but some of the facts are still disputed.
Sources
- T. Gifford, The Unseen Hands (Daily Mail, 14 października 1921)
- BBC Devon – Discovering Devon: The myth of the hairy hands of Dartmoor
- Charles Fort, Wild Talents (1932)
More: Wikipedia (en)