Monsters You Never Heard Of (4 page)

There is a stretch of road between the villages of Postbridge and Two Bridges. It is a rather ordinary piece of road. It runs through slightly rolling moors, and for the most part is fairly straight. Yet during the early years of this century there seem to have been an unusual number of accidents on that road, particularly in the vicinity of the village of Archerton.

At first, the main means of transportation along the road was horsepower. Riders would describe how, suddenly and for an unknown reason, their horses would panic and dash off, often throwing the rider. Pony carts were often used by local farmers. Ponies would veer off without warning, and the farmer would find himself in a ditch with his cart overturned. There were many injuries as the result of such mishaps.

After the bicycle become popular cyclists too seemed to fall victim to unusual accidents on this road. Some said that it felt as if the handlebars were torn out of their control. Bicycles plunged into ditches or crashed into the stone walls which border much of the road.

Cars and buses had more serious accidents. They skidded off the road and into walls. People were sometimes killed in such accidents. A local doctor was riding along the road on a motorcycle. His two children were riding in the sidecar. Then suddenly the motorcycle went out of control. No one is sure why. There was a terrible crash. The two children were thrown clear, but the doctor was killed.

That piece of road was getting a very bad reputation. Something was wrong with it—but what?

The Hairy Hands, from a woodcut by Theo Brown.

In 1921 a young Army officer was seriously injured when his motorcycle crashed along that same stretch of road. He seemed to have suddenly veered off the road for no reason at ail. Later, he recalled what had happened just before the crash. He said that he distinctly saw a pair of large hairy hands clamp down over his own. The hands twisted the motorcycle's handlebars, forcing it off the road.

That story caught the attention of reporters for the London
Daily Mail
. They came down to Dartmoor. The reporters talked to a lot of people who said that they felt the presence of "something" when they went down that stretch of road.

The Hairy Hands became front-page news. Interest was so high that local road authorities felt that they had to do something. They investigated the road. Then they decided that there was indeed something wrong with the road. According to the authorities, there were too many little ups and downs in the road. These could cause vehicles to go out of control. Road repairs were made. But what about the Hairy Hands? The authorities said that was all nonsense.

But the story didn't end with the road repairs. Three years later a woman and her husband parked their trailer near the spot where the Hairy Hands had been reported. That night the woman was awakened by a scratching noise on the window. She said that she saw a large hairy hand clawing at the window. She sensed something evil. The woman slipped out of her bunk and fell to her knees. She made the sign of the cross, and the hand disappeared. But the feeling of evil lingered on. She said that she and her husband never again went to that part of the country.

The stretch of road haunted by the Hairy Hands.

In the early 1960s rumors about the Hairy Hands were back. Ruth E. St. Leger-Gordon, a collector of Dartmoor folklore, reported she had heard of a strange accident near the fatal spot on the road. A young man was found dead beneath his overturned car. Police could find no reason for the accident to have happened at all.

There were also more rumors about people seeing the Hairy Hands, at a different place on the road.

The Dartmoor folklorist reports that most local people now laugh at tales of the Hairy Hands. But there are still a fair number who insist that there must be "something" to the story. A genuine fear of that section of the road has grown over the years.

The most famous of all the Sherlock Holmes stories is the story of "The Hound of the Baskervilles." It is a story about a dog of monstrous size. The dog seems to have supernatural powers. According to legend, it had killed one of the ancestors of the Baskerville family. Many years later it appeared to be on the prowl again, stalking another member of the family.

The great detective Holmes proved that the legendary dog was really a fake. It was large and vicious, but otherwise quite a normal dog. It had been used by the villain to frighten the Baskervilles.

Sir Arthur Corian Doyle wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories. But the idea of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" is not a completely original one. Legends about such a dog are very common in the British Isles. Many people think that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle got his idea from legends about the Black Dog of Dartmoor It was supposed to be a huge black creature with blazing eyes. It roamed the lonely roads and moors. If a traveler happened to meet the monster, his only chance was to run for his life. If the demon dog caught him, it would tear him to bits.

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Dartmoor isn't the only part of England that was supposed to be visited by demon dogs. There were many legends about the animal seen at a place called Tring in Hartford, England. It was said that the demon dog appeared near a spot where a woman had been hanged for witchcraft. About 150 years ago a man published a report of his meeting with this monster.

The man and his companion were riding home in a cart at night. They were just passing the spot where the hanging had taken place. There was a sudden flash of light.

"What's that?" the man cried out.

"Hush," said his companion. He pulled the horse to a stop.

"I then saw an immense black dog just in front of our horse. It was the strangest-looking creature I ever saw. He was as big as a Newfoundland dog, but very thin and shaggy. He had long ears, a long tail, and eyes like balls of fire. When he opened his mouth we could see long teeth. He seemed to grin at us. In a few minutes the dog disappeared, seeming to vanish like a shadow, or to sink into the earth . . ."

Collectors of folklore have heard many similar stories from English country people. There was a Mrs. Jewell who told of her meeting with the Black Dog of Torrington. She said it happened in the 1870s, when she was only about ten years old.

Late at night she was walking down the road with her father. "It was a moonlight night," she said, "and suddenly a sound of something panting came from behind us, and a great black dog, big as a calf, with great shining eyes, came alongside us. I caught at father's hand and cried out. Father said, 'Tis the Black Dog! Hold my hand, don't speak, walk along quietly, and don't cry out.' "

Scene from a movie version of
The Hound of the Baskervilles.

The dog trotted alongside them for about a quarter of a mile. Then father and daughter turned to go into their cottage. The dog did not follow. The girl's father said that he had seen the dog many times before, and it had never harmed anyone.

Mrs. Jewell said that later in life she also saw the dog several times, but never at close range. She insisted that many other people in the district had seen it, but would not talk about it because they thought that outsiders would not believe them.

The woman who wrote down old Mrs. Jewell's account was Barbara Carbonell. She collected another Black Dog of Torrington story from her own daughter. Her daughter said that in 1932 she and her husband were driving down a road in the Torrington region. Suddenly an enormous black dog appeared in the headlights of their car. The driver slammed on the brakes. But he was quite sure that there was no way to avoid hitting the creature. Somehow there was no crash. When the car stopped and the couple got out to investigate, they could find no trace at all of whatever it was.

On the Isle of Man there is a place called Peel Castle. There is a well-known black dog legend attached to the castle. The creature was called the Moddey Dhoo. Back in the seventeenth century there was a garrison of soldiers stationed at the castle. A huge shaggy black dog used to come into the guardroom, No one knew who owned the dog, or how it had come into the castle. But the thing was so frightening looking that none of the soldiers had the courage to touch it. So it would just come into the guardroom every once in a while, then disappear.

This is an English bloodhound. Could it be mistaken for a demon dog?

One day a soldier who had been drinking tried to challenge the beast. He yelled at it, and dared it to follow him up the stairs. Then he ran out of the guardroom and the dog padded out after him. There was a horrible scream. The man staggered back into the room. He was pale and trembling. Worst of all, he seemed to have lost his power of speech. The poor fellow died three days later, but he was never able to reveal what had happened to him. The black dog was never seen again in Peel Castle.

However, in the 1920s and 1930s, several people did report seeing the Moddey Dhoo at other places on the Isle of Man. Seeing the dog was taken to be a sign of bad luck. One man who said he met the dog reported that his father died a short time later.