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