GHOST DOES HAT TRICK

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 68, 17 September 1927, Page 20

GHOST DOES HAT TRICK

"MYSTEBY OF GNABLED OAK

.Green Dragon lane, a lonely road near .winchmore Hill, England, has, during the last few months, acquired a sinister reputation (declares the London "Daily Chronicle!'). On several occasions^ men walking home alone in the evening have had, their hats torn from their heads by a black form; with gleaming e^es, which would swoop down upon them, with an eerie screech, ana then swish upwards again into the darkness. EFinally, a uniformed constable was told off "to keep watch near a' gnarled old oak. P.C. Gogy kept his lonely .vigil, ever alert when the fitful moon peeped; out from behind a scudding cloud, listening to the wind whispering with uncanny whine through the hedgerow. The last wayfarer had gone home, and nothing had happened. The constable having decided that "it .was sm eyewash,? was about to move on when—Swish. Something sent his helmet, spinning into the darkness, a ghostly 'scream' rang in his ears, and a lush of air fanned his face. At^ the station his report was reeeiv-ea-with more than usual attention. The station sergeant, with another constable eser*e > set, out with the narrator to see for himself. 'A long wait, arid— adthing. ■Incredulous in his turn, the sergeant tras, about to leave, when—swish—his helmet fell m the road to the accompaniment of an unearthly scream. Metropolitan police force regulations make Bo_;provision for the taking of ghosts Mto^custody,. but the: sergeant was not nonplussed. At that moment the mooa came out and- revealed the' retreating figure of a great tawny owl—a giant among a race of giants, jjl^rly the next; morning a search was made at the foot of the gnarled oak, and over two dozen men's felt hats were found m the grass; tattered and tor|i, almost beyond recognition..