Speaker 1: Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClain smith. For
Speaker 1: the weeks in between episodes, we look at the stories that,
Speaker 1: for one reason or other, didn't make it into the show.
Speaker 1: In last week's episode, Ghosts in Time, we looked at
Speaker 1: the strange occurrences that took place in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: at Balley Rectory in Essex, England. What intrigues me most
Speaker 1: about the story is the slight air of credibility it
Speaker 1: carries due to the reputable character of the witnesses and
Speaker 1: the anodyne nature of the supposed hauntings. But for others,
Speaker 1: a ghost story is nothing without something a little more
Speaker 1: sinister buried somewhere within. I was reminded of one such
Speaker 1: story after receiving a tweet from Graham Murray, a listener
Speaker 1: of the show. Graham compared the phrase Balley Rectory with
Speaker 1: the equally evocative grimp and Meyer. For those that don't know,
Speaker 1: grimp and Meyer is the fictional haunt of the Hellish
Speaker 1: hound featured in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's masterful Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 1: story The Hound of the Baskervilles. The Mayer is actually
Speaker 1: based on the eerily beautiful fox Tormia, which is found
Speaker 1: on Dartmoor in the southwest of England. For a relatively
Speaker 1: small pocket of wilderness, there could be fair fewer places
Speaker 1: in the UK so synonymous with a gloomy, moonlit night
Speaker 1: as Dartmoor, home to some of the country's blackest and
Speaker 1: most treacherous of bogs, with some believed as deep as
Speaker 1: twenty feet it is rumored to have snared even the
Speaker 1: most seasoned of travelers. It is also the location of
Speaker 1: the infamous Dartmoor Prison, whose looming gray granite walls were
Speaker 1: said to make even its governor shudder at the mere
Speaker 1: sight of them. And, like all such places, particularly on
Speaker 1: the days when the fog rolls in just that little
Speaker 1: bit thicker, it's easy to see this intensely evocative landscape
Speaker 1: for the cauldron of myth and folklore that it has become.
Speaker 1: It is a place also of rich ancestral history, having
Speaker 1: been home to settlers as far back as the late
Speaker 1: Neolithic period, their bodies now long since buried deep beneath
Speaker 1: the peaty wilderness. Just a few miles to the northwest
Speaker 1: of fox Tour is a stretch of road that strikes
Speaker 1: a line right through the heart of the Moors. Known
Speaker 1: rather prosaically as the B three two one two, it
Speaker 1: is nonetheless the location for one of Dartmoor's most intriguing mysteries.
Speaker 1: On March twenty fourth, nineteen twenty one, a certain doctor
Speaker 1: Ernest Helby of the Dartmoor Prison medical team had been
Speaker 1: instructed to travel to the local village of Postbridge. It
Speaker 1: had fallen to doctor Helby to attend the inquest of
Speaker 1: a man named French, who not long before, had been
Speaker 1: killed after being thrown from his horse and trap whilst
Speaker 1: riding through the village. Doctor Helby planned to make the
Speaker 1: trip on his motorbike, accompanied by his wife Maude, and
Speaker 1: the two young daughters of the prison's deputy governor, who
Speaker 1: had begged to come along. With the girls safely positioned
Speaker 1: in the sidecar, doctor Helby and his passengers set out
Speaker 1: on their journey to Postbridge. A short time later, the
Speaker 1: Adkin family, who had been holidaying nearby at a place
Speaker 1: called Cherrybrook Farm, were driving along the B three two
Speaker 1: one two when they spotted a distressed looking woman up ahead.
Speaker 1: It was none other than Missus Helby. Mister Adkin, who
Speaker 1: was also a doctor hurriedly pulled up the car and
Speaker 1: rushed to her aid. Down below in a ditch lay
Speaker 1: the crumbled mess of doctor Helby's motorbike. The two young
Speaker 1: girls had been safely thrown from the vehicle, but the
Speaker 1: fifty one year old doctor Helby had not been so lucky.
Speaker 1: Doctor Adkin confirmed his debt, but when he asked Maud
Speaker 1: what had happened, her reply deeply shocked him. He was
Speaker 1: shouting about someone's hairy hands, she said, and how they
Speaker 1: were forcing him off the road. Despite a short notice
Speaker 1: in the Times newspaper, the event passed with little attention.
Speaker 1: That was until something extraordinary occurred months later on the
Speaker 1: exact same stretch of road. On one gray and foggy
Speaker 1: August Friday, a young army officer who had been staying
Speaker 1: at Penley Farm in Postbridge offered to run some errands
Speaker 1: in nearby Princetown. Setting off on his motorbike, he had
Speaker 1: barely made it out of the village when he was
Speaker 1: astonished to see two hands on his handlebars that did
Speaker 1: not belong to him. The hands began to fight with
Speaker 1: him for control of the vehicle. As the officer approached
Speaker 1: the border of a nearby forest. The struggle became too
Speaker 1: much and he too was forced off the road head
Speaker 1: first into a ditch. Fortunately, on this occasion, the young
Speaker 1: officer escaped with only minor cuts bruises. The story was
Speaker 1: picked up by the Daily Mail, who ran an article
Speaker 1: later in the year detaining the strange events, along with
Speaker 1: the account of another victim of the ghostly hands. The
Speaker 1: man had been driving an open topped motor coach in
Speaker 1: the exact same spot as the others when he saw
Speaker 1: the hairy hands pull the wheel violently toward the edge
Speaker 1: of the road. Thankfully, on this occasion, again nobody was hurt.
Speaker 1: Are you always taking care of your family? Do you
Speaker 1: often take care of others and not yourself? Now it's
Speaker 1: time to take care of yourself, to make time for you.
Speaker 1: You deserve it. Tele Adoc gives you access to a
Speaker 1: licensed therapist to help you get back to feeling your
Speaker 1: best to feeling like yourself again. With tele adoc, you
Speaker 1: can speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video.
Speaker 1: Therapy appointments are available seven days a week from seven
Speaker 1: am to nine pm local time. If you feel overwhelmed
Speaker 1: sometimes maybe you feel stressed or anxious, depressed or lonely,
Speaker 1: or you might be struggling with a personal or family issue.
Speaker 1: Teledoc can help. Teledoc is committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches,
Speaker 1: so they make it easy to change counselors if needed.
Speaker 1: For free. Teledoc therapy is available through most insurance or employers.
Speaker 1: Download the app or visit teledoc dot com. Forward slash
Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast Today to get started. That's teladoc dot com
Speaker 1: slash unexplained podcast Fast becoming an accident hotspot, the local
Speaker 1: council made a thorough assessment of the area, deciding that
Speaker 1: a treacherous camber had been responsible for the accidents. After
Speaker 1: a number of repairs were made, the problem appeared to
Speaker 1: have been resolved. That was until nineteen sixty one when
Speaker 1: another car was found overturned at exactly the same spot,
Speaker 1: with the driver having been sadly killed. We will never
Speaker 1: know exactly what sent the car careering off the road. Then,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy eight, a doctor from near by Somerset
Speaker 1: was driving through Dartmoor on the B three two one
Speaker 1: two when, in his own words, the atmosphere in the
Speaker 1: car suddenly became deathly cold, and I had a feeling
Speaker 1: almost like paralysis. I stopped the car and found I
Speaker 1: was trembling all over. I drove on, but after about
Speaker 1: two hundred yards it came back worse than ever. I
Speaker 1: was aware of a great force, something quite out of
Speaker 1: my control. The steering wheel was wrenched out of my hands,
Speaker 1: sending the car skidding across the road. The next second
Speaker 1: I was hanging upside down from my seat belt. It
Speaker 1: would seem this was the last incident linked to the
Speaker 1: strange case of the hairy Hands, with some believing the
Speaker 1: curse to have simply vanished from the area. But what
Speaker 1: of the owner of those mystery hands. In eighteen o five,
Speaker 1: as British involvement in the Napoleonic Wars began to escalate,
Speaker 1: so too did the number of prisoners captured by the
Speaker 1: British Navy. With the current facilities in appalling condition and
Speaker 1: straining to cope with the numbers, a prisoner of War
Speaker 1: depot was commissioned. A suitably isolated destination was chosen, and
Speaker 1: in eighteen o six work began in Earnest. Three years
Speaker 1: later the facility was finally opened, its name Her Majesty's Prison, Dartmoor.
Speaker 1: By eighteen twelve, The prison housed as many as six
Speaker 1: thousand inmates, most of whom whither French prisoners of war, or,
Speaker 1: perhaps surprisingly for many on this side of the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: American sailors, a consequence of the lesser known War of
Speaker 1: eighteen twelve. Angered by the drafting of ten thousand Americans
Speaker 1: into the Royal Navy, as well as the continued attempt
Speaker 1: of the British government to maintain a foothold in North America,
Speaker 1: the United States took advantage of the distraction of war
Speaker 1: in Europe to declare war on Great Britain. Over the
Speaker 1: course of the war, as many as twenty thousand American
Speaker 1: seamen were captured by the British Navy and imprisoned throughout
Speaker 1: the world. In eighteen fifteen, an end was brought to
Speaker 1: hostilities with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, but
Speaker 1: for the prisoners of Dartmoor it hadn't come soon enough.
Speaker 1: On the sixth of April eighteen fifteen, prison commandant Captain T. G.
Speaker 1: Shortland discovered a tunnel leading from the prison quarters to
Speaker 1: the barrack yard near the gun racks. With many prisoners
Speaker 1: gathered in the yard at the time, and Fearing an
Speaker 1: imminent insurrection, Captain Shortland ordered the prison bell to be
Speaker 1: sounded and the prisoners to return to their quarters. However,
Speaker 1: the bell had only succeeded in bringing more prisoners into
Speaker 1: the yard, and the crowd grew restless. The guards were
Speaker 1: ordered to fire a warning shot to disperse the crowd,
Speaker 1: which served only to send the prisoners into a terrified frenzy.
Speaker 1: As the then grew increasingly agitated, the guards began to
Speaker 1: fire indiscriminately, even shooting the prisoners as they scrambled to
Speaker 1: the safety of their cells. Once the smoke had cleared,
Speaker 1: seven men lay dead, including one prisoner named Thomas Jackson,
Speaker 1: who was only fourteen years old. A later account of
Speaker 1: the events maintains that at least one American sailor used
Speaker 1: the chaos to mount a successful escape from the prison.
Speaker 1: The prisoner made it as far as Carter's Road, where
Speaker 1: he attempted to commandeer a horse and carriage, only to
Speaker 1: be crushed to death beneath the wheels in the process.
Speaker 1: Carter's Road is today more commonly known as the B
Speaker 1: three two one two. Could this unfortunate prisoner hold the
Speaker 1: key to the mystery of the Hairy hands. For any
Speaker 1: motorists brave enough to take that infamous road through the
Speaker 1: heart of the moors, I offer only this, Please drive safely,
Speaker 1: and whatever you do, be sure to wear a seat belt.
Speaker 1: And if God forbid you ever find yourself venturing out
Speaker 1: on foot. As the daylight starts to dim and the
Speaker 1: fog drifts slowly in think on the words of poet
Speaker 1: Edward William Lewis Davis. The hunter homeward speeds in haste
Speaker 1: before fogs overtake him on the waist, And if to
Speaker 1: fox tormias he roam, he'll bid along adieu to home.
Speaker 1: A dreary shroud is over his head, a yawning swamp
Speaker 1: around him. Spread spell bound and lost, he ventures on
Speaker 1: one fatal step, and all is done Hopeless. He struggles, vain,
Speaker 1: his throes deeper and deeper down, He goes the ray
Speaker 1: and claps her ebony, wing his dirge. The howling winds
Speaker 1: may sing, and mists will spread the last, said Paul,
Speaker 1: over that dark grave, unknown to all. All elements of
Speaker 1: Unexplained are produced by me, Richard McClain Smith. Please subscribe
Speaker 1: and rate the show on iTunes. Feel free to get
Speaker 1: in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories
Speaker 1: you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation
Speaker 1: of your own you'd like to share. You can reach
Speaker 1: us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Unexplained Pod. Now it's time to take care of yourself.
Speaker 1: To make time for you, Tell a doc gives you
Speaker 1: access to a licensed therapist to help you get back
Speaker 1: feeling your best. Speak to a licensed therapist by phone
Speaker 1: or video anytime between seven am to nine pm local time,
Speaker 1: seven days a week. Teledoc Therapy is available through most
Speaker 1: insurance or employers. Download the app or visit teledoc dot
Speaker 1: com Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast today to get started. That's
Speaker 1: t e la d oc dot com Slash Unexplained Podcast