STRANGE ACCIDENTS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLII, Issue 9421, 29 December 1921, Page 3

STRANGE ACCIDENTS

MYSTERY ON A DEVON ROAD. ATTRIBUTED TO UNSEEN HANDS Details of three mysterious motor accidents on a Devon Road, due, it is alleged to some weird, unseen hands, interfering with the steering gear or the machines, were published recently, m the "Daily. Mail." The accidents, three of them occurred on the road between the village of Post Bridge and Two Bridges, East Devon, at a spot where the highway is wide, straight, and open, and slopes gently down to a brook. In the winter the spot is a lonely one, but m summer many vehicles pasß daily. One day m June last, Dr. E. H. Helby, medical officer of Princetown Prison, was riding down this slope on his motor-bicycle, m the side-chair of which he had as passengers two children. Quite suddenly, so the children say, he called out, "There is something wrong. Jump!" * Next instant the machine swerved, the whole engine broke away from its fastenings, and the doctor flung headlong into the road, was killed instantly. The children, though shaken, were happily unhurti. Some weeks passed, then' one day a motor-cOach was travelling up the slope when, quite suddenly and for no apparent reason, it swerved, mounted the grassy slope to the right of the road, and though it did not upset, lay over at such an angle that several passengers were thrown out, one, a woman, being very seriously injured., The accident occurred at the same spot ag the former one. I 'Muscular Hairy Hands." The third and most sensational accident m yiew of the victim's subsequent statements, is thus described by Mr T. Gifford, who lives nearby, and who first brought the mystery under the notice of the "Daily Mail" :— Friday, August 25, was a dull, rather foggy day. In the morning, Captain M., a young Army officer, who had been staying at my house, left on his motor bicycle to visit friends at some distance. An hour later I was m the garden when I saw Captain M. coming up the drive. He had blood on his face and his bicycle was badly battered. "Had a bit of a smash and thought I'd better come back," was his . brief explanation. . . I took him m and saw to his cuts and bruises, which were fortunately not serious. "How did it happen?" I I asked! He looked at me rather oddly. "I hit the turf at the edge of the road," he answered. . , . "WhaVl-in the fog?" ' "No. There was not. much fog. I could see all right." . . ' "Believe it. or not, something 3rove me off ; the road. A pafr of,_,fe«ndß closed ' over mine. I felt tnem as plainly as. l ever felt anything m my life— large, muscular, hairy hands. "I fought them, for all I was worth, but they were too strong for me. They forced the. machine into the turf at the edge of the road, and I knew no more till I came to myself, lying a dozen feet away on my face on the turf." Mr Gifford, who is interested m psychic matters, said that two explanations of the matter were the interference of an "elemental" or natural spirit, or of the earth-bound spirit of some such person as a murderer. '<As far ,aB I know, howe'Ver , '.'there i's no record of a murder having occurred near the spot," he said. "I do not think that he young officer to whom the last accident occurred knew of the fact that two similar accidents had •taken place on the same spot. The accident happened within a few hundred yards of each other, I should say,"