The Hairy Hands of Dartmoor: The story of Devon’s ‘haunted road’
(Getty Images)
The B3212 is a road that runs from the outskirts of Exeter through sprawling, picturesque Dartmoor and on to Yelverton.
But search the internet for its name and you’re more likely to find tales of horror than you are traffic information.
What greets you is the question: is the B3212 Britain’s most haunted road?
To understand this you have to look back through the history books — and to less empirical works — to find out why.
According to legend the road, or, rather, a particular area of it — in Postbridge, Dartmoor — is said to be haunted by a malevolent spirit: the Hairy Hands.
Since around 1910, countless motorists and cyclists have been involved in accidents on the expansive stretch.
The road runs through Dartmoor National Park (Google Maps)
That may not sound strange or particularly unusual, but many of those who survived crashes during this period described a strange sensation beforehand.
Each told the same story — that they felt as if someone or something was pulling at their steering wheel or handle bars, spinning them out of control.
In 1921, however, a series of crashes on the road — including one deadly — brought persistent local rumours of supernatural intervention to national attention.
In June that year, Dr EH Helby, a medical officer for Dartmoor Prison, was killed when he lost control of his motorcycle and sidecar — which was carrying two young girls, who both survived.
Weeks later, two more crashes occurred: first a coach driver lost control, injuring several passengers, and then there was another motorcycle accident.
Dartmoor’s vast expanses mean it is home to many eerie stories
The army captain who survived the latter described to police how a pair of invisible hands grabbed hold off him and forced him off his motorbike, causing him to crash violently.
The story was suddenly picked up by the national press.
It was dubbed the story of ‘the unseen hands’ by the Daily Mail — and has stayed in the public psyche ever since.
However, soon the myth changed as the hands took on a stranger form.
In 1924, a woman, who was camping on the moorland with her boyfriend, was woken in the middle of the night by what she described as a sinister, clasping and — crucially — hairy pair of hands.
The woman made the sign of the cross and the hands apparently disappeared, but it was that adjective that stuck.
Many accidents have occurred on the B3212 (Jeff Collins)
The stories have continued down the years — but the hands, often hairy, have always featured.
The story has been told in books, a short film, around campfires and across the ghost-obsessed elements of the web, taking on a life of its own.
Of course, this sort of thing is greeted by many with suspicion, particularly among locals, who put the many accidents down to outsiders not knowing the road.
Indeed, the number of incidents has prompted investigations into the road which have concluded that its curvature, at points, can be dangerous.
The sudden gravitational pull of an unexpected dip in the road? That could easily explain how someone could feel like a hand was pulling them down.
But the hairy hands? Who knows.
Yet the myth remains one of the country’s most persistent and evocative ghost stories.
(Credit: Adam Burton / robertharding/REX/Shutterstock)
