4d (edited) • General discussion
The Hairy Hands of Dartmoor
Even in daylight the landscape around the B3212 across Dartmoor possesses an unsettling quality: sudden fog, prehistoric stones, streams black as oil beneath narrow bridges. The moor seems less like scenery than weather made solid. One understands immediately why generations of people travelling across it began imagining things moving in the mist beside the road.
And on this particular stretch between Postbridge and Two Bridges, they imagined the Hairy Hands.
The legend emerged properly during the early twentieth century after a succession of violent accidents on the moor road. Drivers and motorcyclists described losing control suddenly and inexplicably, as though some external force had seized the wheel or handlebars and wrenched them sideways. Survivors spoke of large disembodied hands — cold, muscular, covered in dark hair — appearing from nowhere and dragging vehicles towards the verge.
One of the most famous cases involved a doctor travelling by motorcycle in 1921. His machine suddenly swerved off the road near Postbridge, killing him instantly. Other witnesses reported similar experiences: steering wheels twisting violently in their grip, invisible forces dragging vehicles across the carriageway. By the 1920s the story had spread nationally through newspapers and collections of Dartmoor folklore.
The details vary wonderfully. Sometimes the hands are visible; sometimes merely felt. In certain versions they emerge through the fog ahead of travellers before fastening themselves upon the controls. Elsewhere they become almost vampiric in behaviour, scratching at caravan windows at night or creeping across the glass towards sleeping occupants. One woman reportedly escaped only by making the sign of the cross upon the windowpane.
What makes the legend so effective is its absolute simplicity. No face. No voice. No explanation. Merely hands appearing suddenly where hands should not exist.
And Dartmoor itself encourages precisely this kind of fear. The moor has always possessed an atmosphere peculiarly suited to English folklore: ancient crosses marking forgotten tracks, Bronze Age burial sites half-submerged in grass, ruined farmhouses dissolving slowly into rain and granite. Even modern roads across the landscape feel temporary, vulnerable to weather and darkness. The Hairy Hands seem less like a ghost story imposed upon Dartmoor than something generated naturally by the place itself.
Rational explanations exist, of course. The B3212 was historically dangerous: narrow bridges, bad visibility, treacherous weather, poorly surfaced roads. The early motorists crossing Dartmoor were inexperienced and often travelling in primitive vehicles with unreliable steering. Fear and suggestion did the rest.
Yet the story persists because it touches something older than ordinary haunting. Most ghosts belong to houses, churches or graveyards — places where human beings once lived. The Hairy Hands belong entirely to landscape and motion: lonely roads, sudden fog, the terrifying loss of control.
And perhaps that is why the legend remains genuinely unsettling even now. Driving across Dartmoor at night, with rain sweeping sideways across the headlights and darkness pressing against the windscreen, one can still imagine it quite easily: fingers closing suddenly over your own on the wheel, steering gently but irresistibly towards the edge of the moor.
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The Hairy Hands of Dartmoor
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