242 – The Hairy Hands of Devon
(AKA – The Hairy Hands of Dartmoor, The Unseen Hands) The legend of the Hairy Hands is set in Postbridge, Dartmoor. The road is now known as the B3212. Since 1921, the road has been the locale of a legendary menace – a pair of powerful unseen hairy hands that occasionally drives people to their death. But where did this story come from? And is it true? Blake discusses his research into the case with Karen, and he thinks he’s figured this one out.
The little stone bridge near Archerton mentioned in the tale. (Drive the B3212 with Google Maps)
The story originates in 1921 in The Daily Mail with a story from a “T. Gifford.” Gifford, an enthusiast of Spiritualism and well versed in the lexicon of Theosophy, writes – in veiled terms – of three recent accidents:
The Unseen Hands – The Daily Mail – October 14, 1921
THE UNSEEN HANDS
by T. Gifford
The stretch of road is quite an ordinary one. It is wide, straight, open and bordered on either side by a broad strip of rough grass. It slopes gently to a brook, which it crosses by a narrow humped bridge, beyond which lies the village of MIDMOOR. In winter it is a lonely spot, but in summer many vehicles pass daily.
One day in June last (June 1921?) a doctor was riding down this slope on his motor-bicycle, in the side-car of which he had as passengers two children. Quite suddenly, so the children say, he called out, “There is something wrong. Jump!”
Next instant, the machine swerved, the whole engine broke away from its fastenings, and the doctor, flung headlong into the road, was killed instantly. The children, though shaken, were happily unhurt.
Some weeks passed, then one day a motor-coach was traveling up the slope when, quite suddenly and for no apparent reason, it swerved, mounted the grassy slope to the right of the road, and, though it did not upset, lay over at such an angle that several passengers were thrown out, one, a woman, being very seriously injured. [helluva long sentence! -B]
This accident occurred at the same spot as the former one. Mere coincidence, of course, yet listen now to the sequel.
* * * * *
Friday, August 26, was a dull, rather foggy day. In the morning Captain M., a young army officer who had been staying at my house, left on his motor-bicycle to visit friends at some distance.
An hour later I was in the garden when I saw Captain M. coming up the drive. He had blood on his face and his bicycle was badly battered.
“Had a bit of a smash and thought I’d better come back,” was his brief explanation.
I took him in and saw to his cuts and bruises which were fortunately not serious. “How did it happen?” I asked.
He looked at me rather oddly. “I hit the turf at the edge of the road,” he answered.
“What – in the fog?”
“No. There was not much fog. I could see all right.”
I suppose I looked puzzled, for I knew that he was an expert cyclist and had ridden his machine some thousands of miles.
“It was not my fault,” he said at last. “Believe it or not, something drove me off the road. A pair of hands covered mine.
“I felt them as plainly as I ever felt anything in my life – large, muscular, hairy hands.
“I fought them for all I was worth, but they were too strong for me. They forced the machine into the turf at the edge of the road and I knew no more till I came to myself, lying a dozen feet away on my face on the turf.”
I have since visited the spot, which is the same at which the two previous accidents occurred. I make no comment and will only add that, for obvious reasons, I have altered the name of the village.
Unseen Hands – Eerie Mystery of Devon Road – The Daily Mail – October 17, 1921
UNSEEN HANDS
EERIE MYSTERY OF DEVON ROAD
MOTOR ADVENTURES
What is the mystery of the unseen hands on the Post Bridge – Two Bridges Road in East Devon?
On one stretch of this road, a little distance out of the Dartmoor village of Post Bridge, three curious accidents have occurred since the end of March.
These accidents were described, in a veiled manner, in an article called “The Unseen Hands,” which appeared in THE DAILY MAIL last Friday. In that article, Mr. T. Gifford, described how in each case the vehicle unaccountably swerved to the side of the road.
On this first occasion, this strange swerving resulted in the death of a doctor who was on a motor-cycle. On the second, a motor-coach was affected and several passengers were thrown out. On the third, an officer friend of Mr. Gifford riding a motor-cycle, stated that he actually felt two large, muscular, hairy hands close over his own and force him into the side of the road in spite of his resistance. As a result of this apparently enforced turning movement, the young man was hurt and his bicycle was damaged.
The doctor in the first instance was Dr. E. H. Helby, Medical Officer of Princetown Prison. Were his hands similarly turned against his will by the “large, unseen hands” which so nearly killed the young officer?
It is impossible to answer the question, but the fact that he shouted to his two children, passengers in the sidecar, immediately before the accident, telling them to jump, as there was something wrong, shows that he was aware of danger.
Yesterday the author of the article, who is interested in psychic matters, told a DAILY MAIL reporter that two explanations of the matter were the interference of an “elemental” or natural spirit, or of the earth-bound spirit of some such person as a murderer. [see elementaries]
“As far as I know, however, there is no record of a murder having occurred near the spot,” he said. “I do not think that the young officer to whom the last accident occurred knew of the fact that two similar accidents had taken place on the same spot. The accidents happened within a few hundred yards of each other. I should say,”
The place where the accidents occured is near the gates of Archerton, the house of Sir Courtenay Walter Benentt, former British Consul-General at New York.
“The `hairy hands of Dartmoor’.” Light (London), 42 (August 26, 1922): 540.
Here is the entry from the spiritualist newsletter LIGHT! From 1922!
Wild Talents – by Charles H. Fort – 1932
Notice of Dr. Ernest Helby’s death in The Scotsman, 28 March 1921.
Dr. Ernest Hasler Helby, Medical Officer, Dartmoor Prison, aged 51, received an extensive fracture of the skull through the breaking of a portion of a motor cycle while he was driving from Princetown to Tavistock. A verdict of accidental death was returned at the inquest on Saturday. The deceased’s two daughters were riding in the sidecar when the accident occurred. [*not* his daughters.]
Helby was a former Naval doctor, having served on the HMS Imortalite in the 1870s., and also had been involved in the force-feeding of women suffragette prisoners when they went on hunger strike in 1909 at the Winson Green Gaol..
This was part of a larger article on “A Series of Motor Fatalities in England.”
The story was also picked up in TRUTH – another British newspaper – in October. Typical Halloween News Fare, IMHO, with no additional details added.
News report of Charabanc accident on same road.
This initial coverage may have been somewhat inaccurate in that one fatality resulted from the accident, but it was a man named Mr. R. Lee (age 30).
British writer Beatrice Chase suggested (after seeing a near accident involving swerving) that the root cause of such things was magnetic rocks. (She was a noted author in her time, hailing from Dartmoor.)
Theo Brown, a folklorist, wrote in several volumes about the case. This seems to be the source of Dan Cohen’s write-up in Monsters You Never Heard Of. (Theo Brown on Wikipedia)
Dartmoor Gunpowder Tragedy – 1851
Was T. Gifford a real person? Well – while we don’t know who they were, I did track down another article by Gifford in print. It’s about animal ESP!
This from the Northern Ensign and Weekly Gazette – Wednesday 01 February 1922
Dartmoor Prison – aka Princetown Prison – (on track to close in 2024)