Devil's County

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Story 1.

The Devil's Footprints

On the morning of the 9th of February, 1855, the people of Mid-Devon awoke to find their homes smothered by a thick blanket of snow.

But it soon became apparent that whilst they had been sleeping, some unknown entity had apparently cut a path straight through their county, leaving a mysterious trail where its feet had passed upon the ground.

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Before his children had retired to bed the previous evening, John Loosmore had allowed them to look out of the window at the snow falling outside.

An easterly wind had been depositing thick flurries of snowflakes onto his land and the surrounding properties for several hours, and as he bade his excitable daughters goodnight, he promised he would find time to build them a a snowman before he left for his shift the following morning.

When he awoke several hours later, Loosmore hurriedly dressed before confirming that both girls were still fast asleep in their beds.

He was just in the process of pulling on his boots in order to make good on his promise when there was a sudden and loud hammering at the front door.

John rose to his feet and made his way across to a window to see who was outside.

The unexpected visitor to the Loosmore household that morning turned out to be the son of a local farmer, who had been hurriedly dispatched by his mother with orders to fetch the local constable.

Inviting the youth inside, John had cautiously listened to the boy's tale before changing into his tunic and reaching for his stovepipe hat.

As a result of what he had been told, Constable Loosmore took the liberty of locating a small lead kosh from one of the downstairs cabinets, which he would occasionally use to supplement the official wooden truncheon he had been issued with.

He also ordered the boy to build a snowman for the girls outside the front door, ensuring that his fatherly responsibilities were fulfilled, alongside those of the wider community.

Loosmore was some distance away from the town centre when he had heard the sounds of men shouting.

Increasing his pace, the officer hurried down the lane in the direction of the disturbance.

Minutes later, he was at the town square to find a small posse of agitated locals assembled there.

As he surveyed the various weapons and tools each were brandishing, John found his hand dropping to the kosh in his pocket before he inquired what was transpiring.

With some persuasion, the throng parted, eventually revealing the cause of their consternation.

There, pressed deep into the snowfall, was a trail of footprints running from one end of the village right through to the other.

As he stepped forward for a closer look, Loosmore noted that they appeared to have been caused by the hooves of an animal, rather than those made by a human.

When he asked why such a trail should be any cause for excitement, the constable found himself being jostled and shoved in the same direction the tracks were heading.

With each subsequent step he took, the realisation of what had perturbed the resident slowly began to dawn on him.

The footprints he was now following did not stop, even when faced with any form of obstruction.

Upon reaching the edge of any building, The tracks would then perfectly recommence on the other side.

Where low-lying obstructions such as stalls or laden carts were in the way, the prints travelled up and over them in an unbroken line.

Wrestling with the evidence which was being presented to him, Lusmore called for a ladder before clambering up to survey the roof of a nearby single-storey dwelling.

When the officer climbed back down, The assembled gathering could see that his face was pale.

He explained to them that the tracks had continued across the roof of the building, as if whatever had made them had walked up and over it without a care in the world.

A quiet hush now descended upon the gathering, as each person present was caught up in their own thoughts.

Someone or something had passed through their village in the night, walking upon hooves instead of feet, in defiance of the laws of nature.

And if the rumours were to be believed, this might not be the first time such a visit had taken place.

Realising that the local constable may not be the salvation they required, the crowd immediately set off, in search of the town priest.

The first few weeks of 1855 had been unusually cold, and the south west of England had been battered and bruised by repeated snowfalls.

In the county of Devon, the Aix and Tain rivers had both frozen over at times, failing to thaw and becoming covered with each successive storm.

Hapless residents were almost prisoners in their own homes, with the local roads and pathways rendered completely inaccessible.

By early afternoon on the 9th of February, reports had begun to filter through to the Exeter Constabulary that something inexplicable had allegedly taken place during the previous evening.

As the day had slowly progressed, a steady stream of riders had arrived from various hamlets and villages dotted along the county's southern coastal path, all wanting to inform the police about a mysterious trail that had been found trodden into the freshly fallen snow.

Officers were dispatched to a number of neighbouring towns, later returning to confirm to the borough superintendent that there was indeed an unbroken line of hoofprints which appeared to travel in a path of roughly 100 miles.

By the end of the day, reports had been received from over 30 separate locations, all situated along a trail which stretched from Tainemouth right across to Weymouth.

Whilst the tracks themselves were unremarkable, resembling a horse's hoof with a width of two and a half inches, the manner in which they were laid out made little sense to those who encountered them.

The pattern which had been left trodden into the snow resembled that of a biped, rather than a horse or any other type of ungulate.

The footprints of this mysterious intruder travelled in two parallel lines, situated six inches apart, with a gap of roughly eight inches between each of the steps.

The technique with which this unknown creature had walked paled into insignificance when compared to the apparently impossible path it had travelled in order to complete its mysterious journey.

The owner of the footprints had seemingly been able to traverse fast-flowing stretches of open water with ease, walking vertically up the side of houses and outbuildings, and across the sloping roofs of structures of varying sizes.

Nothing seemed to act as an obstruction or barrier to impede this phantom creature's progress.

The route taken by the nocturnal visitor was neither linear nor random.

In some places, it had travelled up and across man-made structures without a care.

In others, there were signs it had deliberately deviated from its path to approach windows or doorways, before then resuming its travel.

The investigating officers were also baffled to find no signs of any damage having been caused, or property interfered with at any of the locations they had visited.

Whilst bewildering in nature, it appeared that no obvious crime had been committed.

Witness testimony in relation to the footprints was dutifully recorded, and incident reports filed, but there was little more in the way of police investigation.

As the snows finally began to melt away and the footprints disappeared, wild stories about who or what had created them spread in their wake.

For the people living in the communities affected by the incident, there was only one plausible explanation for what had taken place.

They believed that the devil himself had risen up from the depths of hell and walked amongst them whilst they slept, his fiery hooves searing a lasting impression in the snow as he passed them by.

After all, this was not the first time that Lucifer had paid a visit to Devon.

200 years before, on a cold Sunday morning in October 1638, The congregation of St Pancras Church in Whiddicomb was sitting quietly listening to a sermon being delivered by the Reverend George Lyde.

All of a sudden, the church was filled with a foul and acrid burning smell before something came crashing through the roof, sending debris tumbling down onto the assembled parishioners.

As the terrified onlookers watched on in horror, a mysterious ball of blinding light suddenly started to hurtle around amongst the throng.

It repeatedly bounced and ricocheted off every surface it came into contact with, and collided violently with several of the fleeing worshippers.

One of those struck by this manifestation was an elderly lady, who immediately fell to the floor crying out in pain.

Those who tended to the woman's injuries as she lay dying would later swear that her clothes had remained perfectly undamaged, despite the catastrophic burns caused to her skin.

Two men also sustained fatal injuries when they were thrown to the ground after the object struck them.

Moments later, the large wooden doors to the church crashed open, and the glowing orb vanished.

As the terrified worshippers rose to their feet and began to tend to their wounded, it became apparent that one of their number was missing.

A young man by the name of Jan Reynolds was nowhere to be seen.

Witnesses claimed that immediately prior to the tragedy, Jan had been asleep in his pew, a pack of cards clasped in his hand, which he had been playing with as he had dozed off during the sermon.

Rumours quickly began to circulate that it was the devil who had come crashing into the church to claim the soul of Jan Reynolds.

Stories emerged of a phantom rider dressed all in black riding away from the building with the terrified youth slung over his saddle.

For many years to come, the fate of the missing teen would be used as a cautionary tale by parents attempting to keep their children in line.

In the decades after the mystifying appearance of the devil's footprints, many competing theories were put forward in an attempt to rationalise the phenomenon, and whilst these vary greatly in terms of credibility, none ever managed to successfully explain what had occurred without some degree of doubt.

Perhaps the most common theory regarding the footprints is that they were created by some kind of animal.

Some have suggested that the trail was made by nocturnal creatures, such as badgers or foxes.

They argue that badgers in particular have been known to grow to such a size that their tracks could be seen as comparable to those of a human being, and that a pack of these predatory animals moving around at night in search of food may have been responsible.

Another proposition is that something like a rat or mouse could have potentially been the culprit, by leaping through the snow.

Over time, and facing no small degree of ridicule, these suggestions have gradually been modified to propose that the intruder may have been a kangaroo, escaped from a travelling circus or private collection.

Much like the many sightings of big cats on the UK mainland, there have indeed been similar reports of wild kangaroos and similar large marsupials throughout the British Isles.

A slightly more believable explanation would be suggested half a century later.

by the British novelist Geoffrey Household.

The author of Rogue Mail recorded that he had been approached by a man whose grandfather had been working at the Davenport Naval Base at the time of the incident.

This man suggested that the true cause of the marks was actually well known to the authorities.

The informant claimed that on the evening of the incident, the strong winds that accompanied the snowfall had managed to pull an experimental military balloon free of its moorings at the base.

Two metal shackles had been left dangling behind it, as it had then been subsequently dragged across the countryside by the weather front.

Whenever these shackles had made contact with the pristine snow beneath them, be this on the ground or the walls and roofs of buildings, they left behind a pair of indentations that closely resembled hoof prints.

Eventually, having now travelled in excess of 100 miles, the balloon had come down to Earth near the town of Honerton.

Desperate to keep the affair secret, naval officials had paid off a resident whose greenhouse had been demolished by the crashed aircraft.

They quickly recovered the debris and took it back to the safety of their base.

Given that this explanation is far more credible than that of a leaping field mouse, it is hardly surprising that Household's proposal is the closest the mystery has ever come to an accepted solution.

The final proposal is that the marks were caused by an as-yet unobserved and undocumented natural phenomenon, such as an extreme weather event.

Fifteen years earlier, a similar trail was discovered which stretched across 12 miles of Lokloman National Park.

Anecdotal evidence also suggests that there is a small stretch of land on the Polish border with Ukraine, where exactly the same set of tracks are found pressed into the snow on an annual basis.

When all is said and done, what are we to make of this haunting tale from Devon's dark dark and distant past?

At the time of its occurrence, the sheer size and scale of the mystery immediately pushed the witnesses into the arms of religious teachings, despite the huge advances in scientific understanding being made throughout the land.

Given the large number of locations where witnesses came forward to report the footprints, it is clear that something did indeed take place on that fateful evening.

And yet, as much as the infamous Whiddicum thunderstorm was most likely a rare occurrence of ball lightning, it is almost certain that society's undying need for intrigue naturally attributed more mystery to the devil's footprints than was perhaps warranted.

There are no recorded images of the tracks, only pencil sketches, and the size of the footprints seems to vary from witness to witness.

The reality is that as wild rumours about the devil having stalked the land began to circulate, every ungulate track and trail in the county was inevitably misconstrued as evidence of Lucifer's visit.

Stories of footprints travelling up walls and along roofs are probably the product of urban myth or exaggeration, and the vast length of the trail was probably much shorter, with other sets of ordinary hoofprints being added onto the original tracks by witnesses eager to become involved in the rapidly growing legend.

And yet the notion of so many people of the day buying into this story, if the evidence was indeed this lacking or this easily explained away, truly beggars belief.

As we will go on to see in future episodes, Victorian England was no stranger to myth and mystery.

Did the devil, or indeed some form of unidentified cryptid, visit Devon on two occasions during the 1800s?

Perhaps so.

As ever, we leave you to decide for yourselves.

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story 2 the hairy hands of dartmoor

throughout the world There are numerous examples of highways and thoroughfares which are believed to be haunted by the spirits of previous travelers.

Perhaps one of the most gruesome and well-publicised examples of this phenomenon is to be found on an unassuming stretch of road which cuts through one of England's most beautiful national parks.

As he sat and listened to the coroner's opening statement, the young constable had tried to cast his mind back to the case in question.

Several months had passed now since the accident had taken place, and he was struggling to distinguish the facts of this particular incident from the many others he had attended since it had transpired.

He was painfully aware of the attention his uniform was receiving from the other interested parties seated around him in court.

In addition to the families of the victims, Several members of the local authority were also in attendance, as well as a significant number of journalists.

Cursing his poor luck at having been the officer who attended the scene, he found himself once again nervously wiping his palms down the sides of his trousers.

The coroner continued to read through the statements of the various witnesses who he had not felt the need to call to the inquest.

The ambulance workers who had attended the scene.

the doctor who had performed the autopsy on the male party.

The nursing staff who had treated his female companion, who had survived.

Their written accounts were all relayed in a calm and composed manner, the facts agreed and deemed protected from any scrutiny.

Finally, the coroner laid down the sheaf of papers he had been reading from and asked for the constable by name.

The officer rose before swearing the oath on a Bible which had been handed to him by the clerk.

and then introduced himself to the court.

He was then led through his statement by the coroner, who would pause on occasion to clarify something or to ask him to expand on a particular point.

The constable related how he had been called to attend a stretch of highway known as the B3212

which was located near Cherrybrook Bridge.

There had been a traffic accident involving a motorcycle and sidecar, the occupants of which had been severely injured.

He explained how the male rider had been rushed to the hospital in Tavistock and had died of serious head injuries, but that the same doctors had managed to save his girlfriend who had been thrown clear of the impact.

He was asked to clarify that no other vehicles had been involved and that there was no suggestion of alcohol having played a part in proceedings.

From witnesses at the scene, it appeared as though the rider had lost control.

despite travelling in a straight line, with nothing in his path which might have caused him to swerve.

The twisted remains of his motorbike had later been examined by a local mechanic, with no defects identified.

His testimony complete, the coroner asked if any of the other assembled parties had any further questions for the officer.

There was a pause, and then a hand was raised by one of the reporters.

Is the constable familiar with the story of the hairy hands, and was there any indication that this local legend had some bearing on the fatal crash?

There was a longer pause as the young constable carefully considered his answer, aware that all eyes in the courtroom were now fixed upon him.

Eventually he replied that he could not identify any apparent reason for the crash, and that the true cause had most likely been lost now, along with the life of the rider.

Having been dismissed, he made straight for the court doors, avoiding the gaze of all those present.

He was, in fact, very familiar with the tales of the spectral hands that haunted the road between Pottsbridge and Two Bridges, but he had not been completely sure what the wounded motorist had been mumbling as he had been placed in the rear of the ambulance at the scene, and he was damned if he was going to condemn his entire career to ridicule by admitting to the reporter that the dying man may indeed have been claiming an invisible person had wrenched control of the motorbike from him.

The first suggestions that some malevolent entity was at work on the B3212 can be traced back to the turn of the century.

In the early 1900s, several cyclists who had been travelling along this particular stretch of road claimed that an invisible force had physically taken hold of their handlebars.

Having gained control of the steering, It had then caused them to swerve sharply and fall from their bikes, sustaining serious injuries in some cases.

Naturally, the local constabulary took a dim view of these explanations, but as time progressed, such reports stubbornly persisted.

Into the mid-1910s, a number of pony and traps were forced off the same road, with the drivers again claiming that they had felt a pair of rough and hairy hands overlay their own before yanking the reins they were holding to one side.

There followed several crashes involving involving motor vehicles, with one traveller being found dead in the driver's seat of his car, which had overturned as it had come off the main carriageway.

It was during the summer of 1921 that the legend of Dartmoor's hairy-handed ghost finally became cemented in the national consciousness, following a pair of terrifying incidents which took place on the road.

The first of these occurred in June of that year and involved Dr.

E.

H.

Helby, who was the medical officer at the nearby Dartmoor Prison.

Helby had agreed to take the daughters of the prison's governor out for a ride in his motorcycle combination.

The two young girls seated in his sidecar had screamed and cheered in delight as the bike had powered along the road, until suddenly the doctor began to struggle to retain control.

He had fought unsuccessfully for a few seconds to straighten the handlebars before the motorbike hurtled off the carriageway and into a ditch.

The doctor was killed by the force of the impact, but both girls survived.

When they were interviewed by the police in the following days, they claimed that immediately prior to the crash, Helby had yelled at them to jump, telling them that someone had grabbed hold of his hands and was trying to crash the motorbike.

Neither had seen anybody else present.

but were adamant that their driver had been visibly struggling with someone or something.

The following August, the local police were called to another accident involving a motorcycle, this time ridden by a young army captain.

On this occasion, the rider had survived his ordeal and swore blind to the officers that he had felt the sensation of a pair of large and rough hands closing over his own, which had then wrenched his handlebars violently to one side.

Several years later in 1924, a woman and her husband who were holidaying in the vicinity of Powder Mills claimed to have had an encounter with the haunted hands.

The female party stated that she had been awoken in the night by the sound of something scratching against the outside of the caravan they were camping in.

Rising from her bed, she had followed the noise as it had travelled away from the door frame across the exterior of the caravan to one of the windows.

Suddenly, a large male hand had appeared on the pane of glass.

The woman had watched in terror as it had made its way up across the window, trying to get inside at the top where it was slightly ajar.

She screamed out in alarm and then reflexively made the sign of the cross.

As her bewildered husband had awoken and sprung out of the bed, The hand had promptly disappeared, leaving no trace that it had been there.

Almost four decades would pass before another such incident was reported to the police, when a terrified motorist by the name of Florence Warwick staggered into a local police station.

In floods of tears, she reported how she had pulled over to the side of the road to check her map, as she had gotten lost whilst visiting family in the area.

Warwick related how she had switched off her engine and then produced a small torch from her handbag to inspect the route.

Suddenly, she was startled by a dull thump from the windscreen and had turned the torch upwards to see what had caused the sound.

Recoiling in horror, she saw two large and hairy disembodied hands pressed flat against the glass of the window.

Once the officers had managed to sufficiently calm the distressed motorist, They drove her back to the scene and searched the lay-by where she had stopped, but they did not find anything of consequence.

Having satisfied themselves that she was neither intoxicated nor suffering from some form of mental episode and not knowing what else they could do, they escorted her to the campsite where she was staying, advising her to get a good night's rest.

There remains a great deal of speculation as to who the owner of the spectral hands may be.

Some historians and local residents claim that they could originate from a motorist who died in a horrific crash on the road, losing both his hands in the process.

Others state that they belong to the spirit of a prisoner who was executed at Dartmoor Prison and seeks vengeance on the souls of the living from beyond the grave.

The majority of commentators though are drawn to the tale of an unnamed worker at the nearby powder mills.

In this story, The man was able to quit his job at the gunpowder factory as he was left an inheritance from a wealthy aunt who had passed away.

Having enjoyed a lengthy period of celebration at a local hostelry, the worker then decided that he wanted to reclaim his personal tools from his former employer.

Staggering into the factory, the drunken man forgot that he was wearing his own hobnail shoes, rather than the safety boots he had been issued with by the company's owners.

A spark caused by his footwear, which was making contact with the granite floor, subsequently ignited some of the nearby powder and immediately caused a huge explosion.

Once the fires had been brought under control, all that was found of the victim were his hands, lying severed on the cold stony floor.

Documentary evidence revealed in local newspapers certainly suggests that prior to its closure, the gunpowder factory was no stranger to misfortune.

Serious accidents were reported there in both 1851 and 1857, which resulted in the deaths of workers due to explosion or fire, though neither make specific reference to the discovery of dismembered appendages.

Who knows?

Perhaps the hands are not even human at all.

Sitting alongside these news stories is an alternative theory regarding the high number of traffic accidents which have occurred on the road.

put forward by a writer named Beatrice Chase.

In her article, she alleges that the moorland which the carriageway had been carved through contained a significant quantity of metal deposits, which exerted a magnetic effect on the motor vehicles that were travelling across it.

There is no evidence that the local authorities have given any credence to Chase's theory or investigated it to any significant degree.

Official police reports of accidents which have occurred on the B3212 make reference to drivers being tired or intoxicated and unfamiliar with the roads they are driving upon.

Work has also been carried out to reduce the camber of the carriageway in some parts, as it was considered to have contributed to the collisions.

There are striking similarities between this story from the wilds of Dartmoor and other haunted highways around the world.

In the vicinity of Uniondale in South Africa for instance, There is apparently a ghostly female hitchhiker who is believed to antagonize passing motorists.

Another such example is the woman in white, who leaves the seats of motorists who offer her a lift soaked through with water from the nearby lake in which she drowned.

Dartmoor's hairy hands are by no means the only example of a pair of disembodied and ghostly appendages which have been separated from their owner.

In the Mexican city of San Luis Potosi, two sets of severed hands are said to haunt an alleyway in the Alfalfa district.

These are thought to belong to two boys, who were executed in 1780 for the murder of a priest.

Closer to home, there has been widespread speculation that a photograph taken in Northern Ireland during the early 1900s may have captured a ghostly severed hand.

The image, which shows 15 female workers posing at a linen factory, appears to depict a hand resting on the shoulder of one of the women, even though they all had their arms folded at the time the image was captured.

Unfortunately, over time, the legend of the Hairy Hands has become something of a go-to for motorists who have been involved in traffic collisions throughout the region.

In many of these cases, more obvious and viable explanations have been evidenced and documented by investigators, which has only served to undermine and devalue the stories featuring the Hairy Hands from the county's distant past.

We may never know if there is any truth behind this haunting legend from the southwest of England, or if it is simply a fabrication created and perpetually revisited by motorists in order to excuse poor standards of driving.

Regardless, if you do happen to find yourself driving through the rolling moors and heathlands of Dartmoor, think twice before taking the B3212.

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