WEBVTT - S01 Episode 7 Extra: Hands Off 0:00:10.720 --> 0:00:15.680 Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClain smith. For 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:18.480 the weeks in between episodes, we look at the stories that, 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:20.960 for one reason or other, didn't make it into the show. 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:25.440 In last week's episode, Ghosts in Time, we looked at 0:00:25.440 --> 0:00:28.320 the strange occurrences that took place in the nineteen twenties 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:33.200 at Balley Rectory in Essex, England. What intrigues me most 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:35.960 about the story is the slight air of credibility it 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:38.960 carries due to the reputable character of the witnesses and 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:43.920 the anodyne nature of the supposed hauntings. But for others, 0:00:44.000 --> 0:00:46.600 a ghost story is nothing without something a little more 0:00:46.600 --> 0:00:58.800 sinister buried somewhere within. I was reminded of one such 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:01.960 story after receiving a tweet from Graham Murray, a listener 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:06.200 of the show. Graham compared the phrase Balley Rectory with 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:10.920 the equally evocative grimp and Meyer. For those that don't know, 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:13.639 grimp and Meyer is the fictional haunt of the Hellish 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:17.160 hound featured in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's masterful Sherlock Holmes 0:01:17.160 --> 0:01:21.880 story The Hound of the Baskervilles. The Mayer is actually 0:01:21.880 --> 0:01:25.160 based on the eerily beautiful fox Tormia, which is found 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:30.200 on Dartmoor in the southwest of England. For a relatively 0:01:30.200 --> 0:01:33.240 small pocket of wilderness, there could be fair fewer places 0:01:33.240 --> 0:01:36.280 in the UK so synonymous with a gloomy, moonlit night 0:01:36.480 --> 0:01:40.280 as Dartmoor, home to some of the country's blackest and 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:43.160 most treacherous of bogs, with some believed as deep as 0:01:43.200 --> 0:01:45.800 twenty feet it is rumored to have snared even the 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:49.880 most seasoned of travelers. It is also the location of 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:53.480 the infamous Dartmoor Prison, whose looming gray granite walls were 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:55.840 said to make even its governor shudder at the mere 0:01:55.920 --> 0:02:00.360 sight of them. And, like all such places, particularly on 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:02.680 the days when the fog rolls in just that little 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:06.680 bit thicker, it's easy to see this intensely evocative landscape 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:09.440 for the cauldron of myth and folklore that it has become. 0:02:10.639 --> 0:02:13.919 It is a place also of rich ancestral history, having 0:02:13.960 --> 0:02:16.239 been home to settlers as far back as the late 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:21.040 Neolithic period, their bodies now long since buried deep beneath 0:02:21.040 --> 0:02:25.760 the peaty wilderness. Just a few miles to the northwest 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:28.320 of fox Tour is a stretch of road that strikes 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:31.359 a line right through the heart of the Moors. Known 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:34.440 rather prosaically as the B three two one two, it 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:38.560 is nonetheless the location for one of Dartmoor's most intriguing mysteries. 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:51.520 On March twenty fourth, nineteen twenty one, a certain doctor 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:54.960 Ernest Helby of the Dartmoor Prison medical team had been 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:58.160 instructed to travel to the local village of Postbridge. It 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:00.560 had fallen to doctor Helby to attend the inquest of 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:03.360 a man named French, who not long before, had been 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:06.320 killed after being thrown from his horse and trap whilst 0:03:06.400 --> 0:03:10.560 riding through the village. Doctor Helby planned to make the 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:13.360 trip on his motorbike, accompanied by his wife Maude, and 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:16.320 the two young daughters of the prison's deputy governor, who 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:19.720 had begged to come along. With the girls safely positioned 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:23.040 in the sidecar, doctor Helby and his passengers set out 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:28.080 on their journey to Postbridge. A short time later, the 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:31.040 Adkin family, who had been holidaying nearby at a place 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:34.280 called Cherrybrook Farm, were driving along the B three two 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:37.320 one two when they spotted a distressed looking woman up ahead. 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:41.760 It was none other than Missus Helby. Mister Adkin, who 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:44.240 was also a doctor hurriedly pulled up the car and 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:48.120 rushed to her aid. Down below in a ditch lay 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:51.640 the crumbled mess of doctor Helby's motorbike. The two young 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:54.280 girls had been safely thrown from the vehicle, but the 0:03:54.320 --> 0:03:57.040 fifty one year old doctor Helby had not been so lucky. 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:01.360 Doctor Adkin confirmed his debt, but when he asked Maud 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:05.440 what had happened, her reply deeply shocked him. He was 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:09.280 shouting about someone's hairy hands, she said, and how they 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:13.200 were forcing him off the road. Despite a short notice 0:04:13.200 --> 0:04:16.440 in the Times newspaper, the event passed with little attention. 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:21.240 That was until something extraordinary occurred months later on the 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:27.280 exact same stretch of road. On one gray and foggy 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:30.520 August Friday, a young army officer who had been staying 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:33.760 at Penley Farm in Postbridge offered to run some errands 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:37.720 in nearby Princetown. Setting off on his motorbike, he had 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:39.520 barely made it out of the village when he was 0:04:39.560 --> 0:04:42.360 astonished to see two hands on his handlebars that did 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:45.719 not belong to him. The hands began to fight with 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:48.680 him for control of the vehicle. As the officer approached 0:04:48.720 --> 0:04:51.440 the border of a nearby forest. The struggle became too 0:04:51.520 --> 0:04:54.240 much and he too was forced off the road head 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:57.800 first into a ditch. Fortunately, on this occasion, the young 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:02.599 officer escaped with only minor cuts bruises. The story was 0:05:02.600 --> 0:05:04.919 picked up by the Daily Mail, who ran an article 0:05:05.000 --> 0:05:07.520 later in the year detaining the strange events, along with 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:10.800 the account of another victim of the ghostly hands. The 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:13.560 man had been driving an open topped motor coach in 0:05:13.600 --> 0:05:16.040 the exact same spot as the others when he saw 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:18.640 the hairy hands pull the wheel violently toward the edge 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:23.080 of the road. Thankfully, on this occasion, again nobody was hurt. 0:05:28.360 --> 0:05:31.159 Are you always taking care of your family? Do you 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:34.320 often take care of others and not yourself? Now it's 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:37.840 time to take care of yourself, to make time for you. 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:40.760 You deserve it. 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Teledoc therapy is available through most insurance or employers. 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:24.280 Download the app or visit teledoc dot com. Forward slash 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:30.920 Unexplained podcast Today to get started. That's teladoc dot com 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:42.159 slash unexplained podcast Fast becoming an accident hotspot, the local 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:45.440 council made a thorough assessment of the area, deciding that 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:49.880 a treacherous camber had been responsible for the accidents. After 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:52.400 a number of repairs were made, the problem appeared to 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:56.479 have been resolved. That was until nineteen sixty one when 0:06:56.520 --> 0:06:59.719 another car was found overturned at exactly the same spot, 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:03.080 with the driver having been sadly killed. We will never 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:07.920 know exactly what sent the car careering off the road. Then, 0:07:08.120 --> 0:07:11.600 in nineteen seventy eight, a doctor from near by Somerset 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:13.880 was driving through Dartmoor on the B three two one 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:17.080 two when, in his own words, the atmosphere in the 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:20.240 car suddenly became deathly cold, and I had a feeling 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:23.440 almost like paralysis. I stopped the car and found I 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:27.440 was trembling all over. I drove on, but after about 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:31.040 two hundred yards it came back worse than ever. I 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:33.800 was aware of a great force, something quite out of 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:37.120 my control. The steering wheel was wrenched out of my hands, 0:07:37.160 --> 0:07:40.320 sending the car skidding across the road. The next second 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:45.080 I was hanging upside down from my seat belt. It 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:47.320 would seem this was the last incident linked to the 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:50.400 strange case of the hairy Hands, with some believing the 0:07:50.440 --> 0:07:53.720 curse to have simply vanished from the area. But what 0:07:53.840 --> 0:08:05.280 of the owner of those mystery hands. In eighteen o five, 0:08:05.560 --> 0:08:09.000 as British involvement in the Napoleonic Wars began to escalate, 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:11.960 so too did the number of prisoners captured by the 0:08:12.000 --> 0:08:16.080 British Navy. With the current facilities in appalling condition and 0:08:16.160 --> 0:08:18.720 straining to cope with the numbers, a prisoner of War 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:23.920 depot was commissioned. A suitably isolated destination was chosen, and 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:27.520 in eighteen o six work began in Earnest. Three years 0:08:27.600 --> 0:08:33.640 later the facility was finally opened, its name Her Majesty's Prison, Dartmoor. 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:39.200 By eighteen twelve, The prison housed as many as six 0:08:39.240 --> 0:08:43.160 thousand inmates, most of whom whither French prisoners of war, or, 0:08:43.360 --> 0:08:45.920 perhaps surprisingly for many on this side of the Atlantic, 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:49.840 American sailors, a consequence of the lesser known War of 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:54.480 eighteen twelve. Angered by the drafting of ten thousand Americans 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:57.200 into the Royal Navy, as well as the continued attempt 0:08:57.240 --> 0:08:59.959 of the British government to maintain a foothold in North America, 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:03.080 the United States took advantage of the distraction of war 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:06.760 in Europe to declare war on Great Britain. Over the 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:09.440 course of the war, as many as twenty thousand American 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:12.560 seamen were captured by the British Navy and imprisoned throughout 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:16.280 the world. In eighteen fifteen, an end was brought to 0:09:16.320 --> 0:09:19.200 hostilities with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, but 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:22.360 for the prisoners of Dartmoor it hadn't come soon enough. 0:09:24.080 --> 0:09:28.360 On the sixth of April eighteen fifteen, prison commandant Captain T. G. 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:31.920 Shortland discovered a tunnel leading from the prison quarters to 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:36.240 the barrack yard near the gun racks. With many prisoners 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:38.440 gathered in the yard at the time, and Fearing an 0:09:38.480 --> 0:09:42.160 imminent insurrection, Captain Shortland ordered the prison bell to be 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:46.000 sounded and the prisoners to return to their quarters. However, 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:48.880 the bell had only succeeded in bringing more prisoners into 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:53.120 the yard, and the crowd grew restless. The guards were 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:55.520 ordered to fire a warning shot to disperse the crowd, 0:09:55.679 --> 0:09:58.920 which served only to send the prisoners into a terrified frenzy. 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:02.680 As the then grew increasingly agitated, the guards began to 0:10:02.760 --> 0:10:06.760 fire indiscriminately, even shooting the prisoners as they scrambled to 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:10.960 the safety of their cells. Once the smoke had cleared, 0:10:11.559 --> 0:10:15.320 seven men lay dead, including one prisoner named Thomas Jackson, 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:22.040 who was only fourteen years old. A later account of 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:25.680 the events maintains that at least one American sailor used 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:28.480 the chaos to mount a successful escape from the prison. 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:32.560 The prisoner made it as far as Carter's Road, where 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:35.600 he attempted to commandeer a horse and carriage, only to 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:38.199 be crushed to death beneath the wheels in the process. 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:42.160 Carter's Road is today more commonly known as the B 0:10:42.360 --> 0:10:47.240 three two one two. Could this unfortunate prisoner hold the 0:10:47.320 --> 0:11:01.960 key to the mystery of the Hairy hands. For any 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:05.200 motorists brave enough to take that infamous road through the 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:09.600 heart of the moors, I offer only this, Please drive safely, 0:11:09.840 --> 0:11:13.040 and whatever you do, be sure to wear a seat belt. 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:17.680 And if God forbid you ever find yourself venturing out 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:20.800 on foot. As the daylight starts to dim and the 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:24.680 fog drifts slowly in think on the words of poet 0:11:24.920 --> 0:11:30.880 Edward William Lewis Davis. The hunter homeward speeds in haste 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:35.280 before fogs overtake him on the waist, And if to 0:11:35.360 --> 0:11:39.440 fox tormias he roam, he'll bid along adieu to home. 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:44.160 A dreary shroud is over his head, a yawning swamp 0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:48.320 around him. Spread spell bound and lost, he ventures on 0:11:48.920 --> 0:11:54.280 one fatal step, and all is done Hopeless. He struggles, vain, 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:59.880 his throes deeper and deeper down, He goes the ray 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:04.080 and claps her ebony, wing his dirge. The howling winds 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:08.720 may sing, and mists will spread the last, said Paul, 0:12:09.440 --> 0:12:19.520 over that dark grave, unknown to all. All elements of 0:12:19.640 --> 0:12:23.480 Unexplained are produced by me, Richard McClain Smith. Please subscribe 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:25.679 and rate the show on iTunes. Feel free to get 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:28.319 in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:31.079 you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:33.480 of your own you'd like to share. You can reach 0:12:33.520 --> 0:12:36.480 us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or on Twitter 0:12:36.559 --> 0:12:52.960 at Unexplained Pod. Now it's time to take care of yourself. 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:56.560 To make time for you, Tell a doc gives you 0:12:56.600 --> 0:12:59.720 access to a licensed therapist to help you get back 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:04.000 feeling your best. Speak to a licensed therapist by phone 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:08.079 or video anytime between seven am to nine pm local time, 0:13:08.559 --> 0:13:12.400 seven days a week. Teledoc Therapy is available through most 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:16.840 insurance or employers. Download the app or visit teledoc dot 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:21.520 com Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast today to get started. That's 0:13:21.760 --> 0:13:26.319 t e la d oc dot com Slash Unexplained Podcast