New month, new episode! For input into the Curse-O-Meter we discuss the Hairy Hands of Dartmoor, it’s hairy and non hairy cousins, and other ghostly body parts from all over the world. We also discuss the Ohio Vampire, the world’s luckiest or unluckiest man, and why you shouldn’t flush your toys down the toilet.

Probably Cursed Artifact No. 2 now up for sale – https://probablycursed.etsy.com/?etsrc=sdt&section_id=45788091

News Stories covered in this episode:

The unluckiest man – https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/unluckiest-man/

Creepy doll head blocking sewer – https://news.sky.com/story/creepy-dolls-head-blocks-bristol-sewer-as-water-company-issues-halloween-warning-12996470

The vampire woman of Ohio – https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/10/31/hellen-schweizer-woman-identifies-as-vampire/71317120007/

TRANSCRIPT:

You know what this is, don’t you? This is voodoo. Nonsensical research and experimentation. Witchcraft.

You don’t believe this, do you? The cult is full of superstition and mysticism. We’re scientists. All this talk of scientific explanation.

It’s sinful, that’s what it is. It’s your imagination, I think. My imagination. It’s not, I tell you. Here, I know what it is.

It’s here. Probably Cursed. This is the Probably Cursed podcast. I’m one of your hosts, Chris.

And I’m Sheryl. And for today’s episodes, we’ve got some hairy hands for you. We have vampires, an unlucky or lucky man.

You can be the judge and the creepy doll head. Every month, we bring up topics that appeared in the news recently and use it to calibrate our Lord Canarvon Cursometer. This is the world famous AI machine that we have spent tens of thousands of dollars on to determine if something is actually cursed or not and to what degree. And we’ve feed it a few news stories at the start of every episode before we get into the main topic just to make sure it’s calibrated properly.

Let me just switch on the Cursometer now. Okay, this is from Ripley’s Believe or Not. The luckiest or unluckiest man in the world from November 9th. Frane Selick of Croatia has a reputation for being the world’s luckiest or unluckiest man, depending on how you look at the situation. He has said to have survived a train crash, a plane crash, and a car crash. And that’s just the start of his impossible brushes with death. While riding the rails of Sarajevo to Dubronik, a freak accident saw his train catapulted into a river. 17 passengers were killed, but Selick reports that he was able to swim to shore with nothing but a broken arm and hypothermia for his troubles. A freak accident catapulting a train. Yeah, I feel like that is a freak accident. Of all the accidents, that is the most that’s a freak.

The very next year he was flying in a plane from Zagreb to Revykja. I might be pronouncing these wrong, sorry guys. Do not expect us to pronounce things correctly.

Yes. He reports that an accident saw the door become detached from the aircraft, which presently crashed. This time 19 people lost their lives while the superhuman Selick was reported to be found in a haystack.

He woke up in the hospital, appropriately rattled, but not really worse for wear. Next we have is a bus accident in 1966. The unfortunate man was in another fatal accident when the bus he was riding again plunged into a river.

There were four casualties, but again he came out largely unscathed. This man should not be on public transportation. You should just not be anywhere he is.

It sounds like your chances of dying dramatically increase. I wonder if like Border Patrol or like the no-fly list. Yeah, like a no-fly list, but just for unlucky people.

Not people who mean harm, but if you see this person things are going to go down. Yeah, so then after that couple of uneventful years passed until 1970, when Selick reports that his car fuel tank exploded on the motorway and he just barely escaped. In 1973 he saw another freak car accident when a malfunctioning fuel pump leaked petrol all over his vehicle and sent flames spooing at him. Fast forward a couple decades to 1995 and he is making the news again. Zagreb bus knocked him down.

The next year the mortal man’s seventh and final most famous disaster. A truck came barreling towards his Skoda as he drove around a mountain road. This ended up with Selick having to leap free from his vehicle only to watch it explode. Well, at least he wasn’t taking public transportation that time. That is true and it sounds like there weren’t any passengers in his car who were willing to risk their lives. Yeah, you gotta wonder like can he get insurance anymore? Is his name also flagged in the insurance company systems? Yeah, I you know it’s funny because like I don’t know what the rest of the world does for like life insurance and stuff, but if this was the state it would be considered like a pre-existing condition. He nearly died several times.

It is important to remember that there are some doubts about these seven separate claims. Selick himself certainly made sure to emphasize the drama of his life story and plays up the effect of these incidents had on him. In the mid-2000s as though to make up for the horrible, horrible deal Lady Luck had given him, Selick won the lottery in Croatia. His jackpot was around 600,000 pounds. With this he bought a luxurious home only to have a change of heart and sell it in 2010. He returned to his humble life with his fifth wife. Did he just buy the home, move in and he was like, you know what?

Nah, I’ll move back. I want to know if his fifth wife is the only one to survive his years and years of terrible, terrible waxiness. Oh yeah. Like is she just waiting for her life to also disappear or? Was his other wives on that bus and on that plane.

Yeah. Frane’s story has a happy ending. He spent the last of his winnings on a hip operation and on a shrine to the Virgin Mary in thanks to his good fortune.

It’s good that he still sees himself as being a fortunate person. Well, so here’s the thing, because I was raised Catholic. Most Catholics don’t believe in luck. They believe it’s the hand of God. So part of me is wondering if he just thinks that like God doesn’t want him to die. Like a disaster has to happen and you just happen to be in the area, but I’m taking care of you. Yeah.

You will wake up in a hay bale as an entire plane full of people explodes around you. The other thing to consider is if he is Catholic or one of these religions that have like saints in them. Is this the first signs of the miracles towards becoming a saint? Oh, will he become a saint? Will he become a saint? New Croatian saint. The saint of near death experiences. It means practically an angel of death.

Yeah, no kidding. That is the first story fed into the charsometer. I will feed in the second one here. This one comes from USA Today, published November 1st of this year. Written by Linda Hall.

Title. A vampire with a day job inside the life of an Ohio woman who identifies as a vampire. Halloween means something more to Helen Schweitzer than it does to others who merely carve pumpkins, go trigger treating her bob for apples. This Halloween marks the two year anniversary of an epiphany for Schweitzer. On that date in 2021, the Ohio woman was struck by her connection to vampirism. There’s been no turning back for the 28 year old woman who identifies as a vampire who wears fangs and a makeup palette of dark red lipstick with a Phoenix eye. I don’t know what a Phoenix eye is. Punctuated by red, orange, and yellow and a beak and a tail.

I have no idea what they’re writing about in this article. She dresses like a Phoenix, I guess. A Phoenix vampire. I guess so. Yeah. Wait, vampires are afraid of fire.

They should be. She also wears a white shirt with flowy sleeves and a black cape. It’s my go to look. From the time she was young, quote, I’ve always been all about vampires, Schweitzer said, citing her preoccupation with Anne Rice books and with Dracula. There are different kinds of vampires, she said. They can be lawyers or janitors, as well as psychics and witches. Vampires and witches get along famously, she said, and run in similar circles.

Not every vampire is bad. Attacking people or offering human sacrifices, she said. I follow a higher path. So she’s high-roading the other vampires right now.

A 2015 survey by the Atlanta Vampire Alliance said 5,000 people in the United States identify as real vampires. Wait, wait. Somebody is writing that on their census? Like, are they picking a gender? And then they, like, it’s like, put what your gender is and you just like… Ready. It’s like, pick what your gender is and they just check the box and be like, other vampire. Well, this wasn’t so much on the census, but a survey done by the Atlanta Vampire Alliance. So the results might be a little skewed.

I see. It sounds like our dog is possessed by a demon just to warn everyone. So yes, 5,000 people in their survey identified as real vampires and some of them do drink blood from willing donors. I don’t know if that implies that some of them are going out and getting it blood thief style. I also wonder if you can fill that out on your back of your Alberta health card to check off the box.

But like, I’m willing to be drinking by a vampire. I hope so. I hope so too. Blood donor? It’s like, yes, please. Other consider themselves psychic or energy vampires.

So some Colin Robinson’s out there. For the record said, Schweitzer, I’m not interested in sucking anyone’s blood. Schweitzer also doesn’t subscribe to the notion she will live forever. Another concept people associate with vampires. She does suck in energy, she said, which she feels all around her. As others do, sometime during their life, she reached a point where she found a key that unlocks everything. Living as a vampire just felt right.

As she traverses her hometown of Wooster, Ohio, about 50 miles from Cleveland, clad in vampire garb, people are not scared of her. Although they may do a double take. They’re more intrigued, she said, stressing, one of my biggest fears when I started dressing like this was causing others to feel afraid. That’s not what vampires want at all.

Yeah. She had pledged to herself, if I scare people, I will stop. When she realized she was a vampire, she was actually cosplaying or dressing up in costume, she said. But after posting a TikTok video with herself as the character of a vampire, she found a community of vampires.

I came out of the coffin, as it were, and never felt so free in my life. Schweitzer blends her life as a vampire with a regular day job as a social media manager helping businesses to thrive. In establishing a relationship with a company, she doesn’t usually dress as a vampire on the first meeting. I want them to feel comfortable, she said.

A big part of my career is TikTok, because her fans love it. Schweitzer said she is surprised and proud of my city because there’s been so open and accepting of her. For being a small town of primarily Christians, I thought I’d get burned at the stake. When I grew up here, I felt that acceptance wasn’t the case, said Schweitzer, who was a victim of bullying as a child long before she knew she was a vampire.

There were signs along the way, however. The sun makes me nauseous, in addition to dizzying week. I felt that way since I was a kid, she said. Her comfort zone is cloudy and snowy. So she’s getting heat stroke every summer? I suppose so.

Okay, just checking. She’s probably not taking off that black cape. No, I feel like she should be maybe drinking a little bit more water.

It would get rid of the feeling dizzy and ill sensation when being in the sun. Yep. You can’t subsist fully on the energy of others. You need a little bit of water.

You gotta hydrate. She gains most of her energy in the night. Some of the stereotypes are rooted in reality, she said. However, I love garlic, that’s just a legend. She described her faith as Norse paganism, represented by the god Odin, my man in North mythology, the top god. However, I believe in all things.

Using crystals and incense, I sometimes practice witchcraft, she said, adding, magic is everywhere. Schweitzer hasn’t met any other vampires in Wooster, but she will know one if she sees one. When she went to Salem, Massachusetts, they were everywhere.

So they burned all the witches, but they didn’t do anything about their vampires. I know. My life is really cool, said Schweitzer, whose lifestyle is supported by her friends and family. My husband is super supportive.

He helped me get ready today, she said. He thinks it’s kind of cool I made a character for him on TikTok. So I bet he’s her familiar. Yep. Her parents treat it as a thing I do.

They’re proud of my journey, being true to myself. The future is less clear. Schweitzer acknowledged as she grows older, she may not be able to portray a vampire on TikTok. But my soul is a vampire, she said.

It’s all about soul stuff. I follow a lighter path. You see how happy and bubbly I am? She said, happy, bubbly, energy vampire on TikTok.

I would say social media manager is the perfect career for a energy vampire. That’s true, you have to see the sun. And on top of that, most people just like doom scroll through Facebook and TikTok and etc. Oh yeah. I wonder if she can get her energy off the internet. That’s a good point. If every post she shares, that gives her a little boost. I hope she’s like doing things like calling from what we do in the shadows, where she leads the daily weather in a very monotone voice and never finishes it. She just keeps going and going. And the first clip is like, it just says watch to the end, exclamation point.

And she never gets to the point. I have our third story to put into the curseometer. This article is titled, Creepy Doll’s Head locks Crystal Sewer as water company issues Halloween warning.

It’s from Monday, October 30th, 2023. A creepy figure was found in a Bristol sewer by the Wessex water crew. Workers investigating a blocked toilet had a fright when they found the head of a child’s doll, complete with gruesome hair made up of flushed wet wipes.

The creepy figure was found in a Bristol sewer by Wessex water crew. It makes matters worse. It could not be shifted with rods and jetting equipment. And the team eventually had to pull it out the end of the hose. That doll was stuck. Yeah.

Also, how did it get down the toilet? Anyway. Older brother. Yeah.

Calling it. The company is now reminding customers not to put anything down the toilet, unless it is the three P’s. Flushing anything other than the three P’s, paper, poo, and pee, can lead to blocked pipes and lead to sewer flooding at your home or someone else’s. Who’s flushing a doll head down somebody else’s toilet? Well, you know, you don’t want to block up your toilet. That’s right.

You go over to your friend’s house and ask these theirs. I will say I didn’t expect the third P to be paper. I thought it was going to be puke.

Also, about the thing to flush down the toilet. They also said that this is not the first time that toys have been discovered in the firm’s network. There was a Peppa Pig and even an elusive fish Nemo found in the sewers previously.

Well, now invasive species, both of them. Now I’m looking at the dolls head from this article and part of me wonders, did it look that creepy when they flushed it? Or did it look like just a normal doll? If it looked that creepy from the start, I bet that’s why they just crammed in the toilet.

They said goodbye. To describe this image for people, it looks like all the stuff that would have been in the drain of your shower sucked the top of its head in like a mess with both of the, with both its eyes gouged out. And because I had to smash it to get it out, the lower part of its face is missing. It’s a pretty gruesome sight.

I would definitely be slightly afraid to find that in the sewer. Okay, that should be enough news to feed into the Lord Hanarvan Cursometer. Let’s activate it here.

Please stand by. Okay, the results for the unluckiest man. He is probably cursed.

He’s more than probably cursed. Considering his own wife number five and I’m not sure what happened to the other four. Yep, do not travel with that man, especially if you’re married to him.

Do not be married to him either. Yeah, like what’s the male equivalent of a black widow? That’s a stumper. Black widow were?

I guess so. And like, I know he tried to flip it around saying that he became lucky because he won the lottery. But like all this misfortune is happening to others.

If he wins the lottery, no one else does. Yeah. So he brought more misfortune to those around him.

That is correct. So he himself, like in his own protective like bubble, he’s going to be fine. It’s just anything around him.

He’s like in the eye of the storm and around him is the cursed twins. For our second news story, the vampire woman in Ohio, probably benign. Yeah, she doesn’t, even though she identifies as a vampire, she’s not what I would traditionally associate with a vampire. She’s just dressing like one. I mean, she’s not really going out and hurting anyone.

No. Vampire is supposed to be a monster. Yeah, she doesn’t sound like a monster. She even said that if she, if people in the area were afraid of her, she was going to stop.

So pretty harmless. Yeah. And the results from our third story, the creepy doll head stuck in the sewer.

The real curse is people. Yeah. 100%. Don’t flush things down the toilet that don’t belong there boys and girls. It’s true. Remember the three P’s. Yeah. Four.

Chris came up with a fourth. Paper, puke, poopies and P. Mm-hmm. Before we get on to our main topic, it’s time for us to head on down to the probably cursed museum and gift shop. Talk about our most recent artifact. These artifacts, Sheryl and I travel all over the world through thrift shops, small towns, estate sales. We bring back the most creepiest and weirdest and possibly cursed items we could find. So this month’s item of interest is actually three items. We have three marionettes. One of them is an old man. We also have a woman in a dress and a man with two guns that when I was trying to see what the equivalent was, most places online were saying he’s probably abandoned.

Or bandito. Mm-hmm. I think these are little Spanish figurines.

They are. So they were made in Mexico in the 1960s to give you a bit of description of the dolls themselves, although you will be able to go to our social media and see photos of these dolls. The woman is wearing a green skirt with a red apron and a white top. And she’s got the strings from her marionette pieces wrapped around her neck.

Uh, not sure what to make of that. Same with the old man. The old man is wearing like a straw hat and he’s got white hair dressed in brown and white.

And he also has his strings around his neck. This is how we found them. Yes. So for those of you who are wondering what was going on, we didn’t do it ourselves. This is how we bought them. It’s entirely possible that these puppets came to life and attempted to strangle each other with each other’s strings.

Yes. Hopefully in the thrift store in which we found them. Just like Toy Story but darker. So the bandit has a little bit more of a sinister backstory.

He’s dressed in black mostly with like white trim and he’s got a gun in each hand. The smile that was drawn on his face kind of doesn’t match up with his lips. So it kind of looks a little weird. Oh, like his sculpted lips.

Yeah, his sculpted lips. It’s just not right. Oh yeah. And he’s also wearing a straw hat.

So he just doesn’t look right. And he was actually purchased on a shop on eBay that was selling haunted items. I bought him and the listing had him identified as a spirit named Stanley. It did mention in his listing that he may have ill intent.

May. He’s probably cursed people. Well, so I don’t know if you remember Chris, but I started putting together a list of like the creepy things that happened after items came into our house. Oh yeah. So of all the things that we’ve been dealing with, this is one of the ones that the most creepy occurrence, which is kind of the reason why I picked him for this week. Within a day of having Stanley in the house, when I was going down to the basement to grab some of my laundry, it looked like a shadow figure was running out of the basement towards me, like up the steps from our basement.

And it was kind of like threw me back. But so we bought the two other marionettes at a thrift store later because we saw them and were like, oh, they’re kind of the same. Like now we got a set. And since we introduced the two marionettes, we haven’t really seen anything crazier or mysterious in the house.

It’s almost like he has the company now that he so desires. The three are being sold as a set. That being said, if you want to potentially encounter creepy occurrences, you can get rid of the other two once we mail them to you. And you can see if you’ll find your own shadow figures in your house. You can purchase them for creepy wall decor or to torment the doll-hater in your family. We have one in mind who may not appreciate to get a creepy marionette with strings wrapped around its neck. I bet you know one too. And Christmas is coming.

Sure is. Maybe you’d like a shadow figure of your very own. Currently they are sitting in our cabinet of curios with all of our other weird creepy things. Any purchases of items offered probably cursed Etsy shop will help fund our podcast and also help Chris and I get our haunted museum to grow and grow. And this item went live with the publication of this episode.

So if you’re one of the people who’s listening to it first, you can head out to probablycurse.etsy .com and you’ll be able to find it in our artifacts section on our store. Now we are ready to tackle our topic for today’s episode. The hairy hands of Dartmoor. We’re also known as the hairy hands of Devon.

It’s all pretty much in the same area. The area being the southwest of England in Devon on a road now known as the B3212. Most of these stories about the hairy hands started in the 1920s when this particular stretch of road had experienced a sudden surge in road accidents. And that is like accidents of almost every type of thing that was on the road. Bicycles, motorcycles, cars, horses.

So what are the hairy hands? So imagine you’re driving your car. And we’ll say at night because it’s spookier. Anyway, you’re driving and suddenly the steering wheel turns in your hand, lurching the car into a turn. And you try to regain control of the car, but you can’t seem to force the steering wheel back. And as you look down in a panic to find the source of the malfunction, you see a very large pair of very hairy hands gripping your steering wheel.

This is a story that has happened to many. And the stories range from it grabbing to steering wheels and handlebars of motorcycles. Some say it grabbed the reins of their horses. And the road itself had already been notorious for horses throwing their riders and bolting and carriages winding up upside down in the ditch. And up until the 1920s, the phenomenon had only been a locally known story until the Daily Mail published an article titled The Unseen Hands on October 14th of 1921.

And I’ll read the article here. The stretch of road is quite an ordinary one. It is wide, straight, open, and bordered on either side by a broad strip of rough grass. It slopes gently to a brook, which it crosses by a narrow humped bridge, beyond which lies the village of Midmore.

In winter it is a lonely spot, but in summer many vehicles pass daily. One day in June last, a doctor was riding down this slope on his motor bicycle in the sidecar of which he had as passengers two children. Quite suddenly, so the children say, he called out, there’s something wrong.

Jump! The 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 Some weeks passed, then one day a motor coach was traveling 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. So these motor coaches were, imagine a bus, but with no roof. It s like a convertible, but it seats many many people.

Interesting. So people just kind of got flown, flung everywhere. This accident occurred at the same spot as the former one.

Mere coincidence of course, yet listen now to the sequel. Friday, August 26th, 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. I don t know why he says my house, because I don t think the reporter knew this person before the incident. An hour later, I was in 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 in and saw to his cuts and bruises, which were fortunately not serious. How did it happen? I asked. He looked at me rather oddly. I hid the turf at the edge of the road, he answered. What, in the fog?

No, there was not much fog. I could see all right. I suppose I looked puzzled, for I knew that he was an expert cyclist, and had ridden his machine some thousands of miles. It was not my fault, he said at last. Believe it or not, something drove me off the road. A pair of hands covered mine. I felt them as plainly as I ever felt anything in my life.

Large, muscular, hairy hands. I fought them for all it 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. I have since visited the spot, which is the same at which the two previous accidents occurred. I make no comment, and will only add that for obvious reasons, I have altered the name of the village. So that’s the end of the article.

I see. Now, as a Canadian, my brain immediately goes to the idea that the hairy hands may be somebody’s gloves. Some nice old fuzzy winter gloves. Okay, like fur line gloves. Not for aligned gloves. Some cultures in Canada make gloves where the furs on the outside of the glove.

Yeah, I guess that’s true. It might not be hairy hands, it just might be furry clad hands. My other thought is that the Tower of London has a bunch of ghosts of animals, and one of them I believe was a gorilla.

Chris and I were at the Tower of London recently for our honeymoon, and I’m fairly certain there was a gorilla in one of the buildings that would occasionally attack people. I think you’re right. Yeah.

I’ll let you say it. Like that to me, I don’t know, some people in the UK have some strange exotic animals. Maybe a gorilla got loose and died on the road and… Actually, I have a story coming up that does involve the appearance of a hairy ape. So it might be linked. So this article had caused quite a stir at the time, and it brought a lot of attention to the area from other journalists. Basically, everybody right about these hairy hands grabbing steering wheels, and they’re like, we’re gonna go out and check this out.

Of course. And it had caused so much attention that officials in the area were forced to look into the numerous amounts of accidents that were occurring on the road, and they’re able to determine that the road was too uneven and had it smoothed out. And it seemed to put a stop to as many accidents as there were, like they did decrease, but it didn’t stop the hairy hands from reappearing. Later on in the decade, there was another sighting of the hands and the story is from toadhaulcottages.co .uk.

The most frightening account came from a couple of newlyweds touring Dartmoor on a caravan holiday. Promise it wasn’t, Chris and I. It’s true. We saw no hairy hands that weren’t attached to a hairy man.

Yes, that’s correct. When their vehicle broke down, the husband decided to follow the signs to Princeton by torchlight and told his wife to stay in the car and lock the door, and under no circumstances should she open it, they had parked just before the small stone bridge that crossed the river. Wrapped up under blankets, she was comforting herself with the thought of a returning husband. When she heard a heavy thump on the roof of the car, she frantically fumbled for her torch and shined it towards the passenger side of the window where she was met with a terrifying sight. A pair of huge hairy hands were clawing at the glass. Being a woman of faith, she had the presence of mind to draw a cross on the inside of the misty window and much to her relief, the hairy hands retreated and vanished into the night. Her husband found her three hours later, huddled and tearful in the footwell and unable to speak coherently.

All she could do was point to the huge handprints on the outside of the frosty window. I would like to point out to our non- British listeners. If you do not know, a torch is the British version of a flashlight. So if it sounds a little weird that they pointed the torch at the hairy hands, it’s because it’s a flashlight.

Yep, the English just never thought to come up with a second word. That’s right. It’s got to stick with the light on one end.

It is a torch. Four decades later, the hairy hands appeared again in the 1960s. The story is from legendary dartmore.co .uk. In 62, a visitor to dartmore, Florence Warwick, who was toodling along the road when wanting to check her location, she stopped the car to look at a map. In her words, I looked up and saw a pair of huge hairy hands pressed against the windscreen. I tried to scream, but I couldn’t. I was frozen with beer, and then the website, the website just ends the story right there. I couldn’t find anything more. Yeah, it’s definitely starting to sound more and more like a gorilla to me. Because they have they described what color the hairy hands are?

No. And in fact, based on the stories I was reading, the amount of hairiness on the hands also changes. Oh, interesting.

Some of it just described it like, I don’t know, regular dude hands with hair on it. Okay. And in other words, they’re almost like animalistic. Interesting. And finally, the most recent story I could find of the hairy hands took place in 2008.

And this is from an article by Nick Redfern from Mysterious Universe back in 2018, where he interviewed the man who had the experience. According to Anthony, it was around 11pm, and he had been visiting a customer in Postbridge. The evening had gone very well and a pleased and satisfied Anthony was now homeward bound to the city of Bristol.

It turned out to be a journey that he would never ever likely forget. Anthony had barely left Postbridge when his skin began to feel distinctly cold and clammy in a sense of dread and fear completely enveloped him. I mean, I normally feel that when I’m driving. Me too. Driving’s scary. Yeah. Especially when you’re doing on the wrong side of the road.

At night. And the fact that there seemed to be no logical reason for this only heightened Anthony’s fear and concern. After all, he was merely making a leisurely late night drive home, something that usually cheered him after spending several days on the road and away from his wife and two young daughters. It would not take long before he found out what lay at the heart of this strange and sinister affair. Like so many people before him, Anthony was about to have a dark and very close encounter with a pair of hands of the very hairy variety. He explained further that perhaps two minutes after the atmosphere in his car became oppressive, fear filled and even somewhat malevolent, he felt his hands begin to go numb. He added, I actually thought I was having a stroke. Fortunately, it was no stroke.

In some ways, however, it was far worse. Anthony could only look on in both complete horror and disbelief, as just as had been the case so many decades earlier, a very large pair of hair covered hands or paws, as he intriguingly described them, encased his own hands, and then suddenly attempted to forcibly steer the car towards the edge of the road and skidded on to the cold moonlit moors. To his credit, Anthony struggled valiantly with the wheel and on three occasions, bought off the actions of the spectral hairy intruder in his midst.

Interestingly, after the third attempt at Anthony, the hands simply vanished into thin air, amid a brief flash of light. The shaken driver floored the accelerator and did not stop until he reached one of the service stations on the M5 motorway. The mysterious hairy intruder, it seems, had struck once again. Fortunately, however, on this occasion, it did not succeed in achieving its deadly goal. And so, like, that’s the last most recent bad story of the hairy hands. I did find one possible good story of the hairy hands, and this comes from Ruth St. Lejear Gordon in her book, Witchcraft and the Folklore of Dartmoor. She interviews an unnamed man who lived in the area who was trying to find a memorial stone, something he had attempted many times before but could never find.

The area is scored by deep fissures that, when you’re in the bottom of them, it’s often hard to tell what direction you’re headed in. This time, the man became frustrated and threw, well, this time he attempted it. The man became frustrated and threw down his walking stick. He sat on a stone and lit a cigarette. As he smoked, he became aware that his walking stick was slowly starting to revolve, all on its own, stopping once the handle pointed straight at him.

When he reached down to grab it, he suddenly felt a firm yet gentle grasp of a hand on his wrist, and it led him straight to the memorial stone. So, that’s not all bad. I would like to point out that the hound of the Baskervilles should also have been happening at those moors in Dartmoor. Oh yeah, you’re reading ahead on my notes. Oh, am I? Believe me, I got some weird stuff from the area.

I’ll let you keep going. So, I looked into the possible explanations of why this was happening. Some have speculated it’s due to vengeful ghosts, but no one’s been able to really attribute it to where humans have lived in the area for like half a million years, and not only humans, also Neanderthals. So, could possibly be the first Neanderthal ghost based on the hairy hands. He’s seeing cars and he’s like, what the hell?

He sees wheel and he’s like, I invented that. Give that here. Yes. So, that initial article from the Daily Mail, they made a follow-up article, but they were unable to attribute the hairy hands to the actions of any vengeful spirits either. Quote from the article, as far as I know, however, there is no record of a murder having occurred near that spot.

I do not think that the young officer to whom the last accident occurred knew of the fact that two similar accidents had taken place on the same spot. And back to Ruth St. Lejear Gordon’s book, Witchcraft and the Folklore of Dartmoor, she suggests a couple possible theories beyond it being a ghost. One is that the hands belong to what she calls the elementals, which she describes as beings of disembodied matter, neither of the spirit or human worlds. Another theory she puts forward is that they are a thought materialization brought about by some past violent event in the area, kind of like stone tape, but the reenacting events actually interact with modern times. But what would it be reenacting? Doesn’t really go into it.

Yeah. She just postulates that something violent and terrible happened in the area. Hunting bears, good old bear baiting. In search of more scientific explanations, I found Beatrice Chase, one of the many reporters who went out to investigate the Harry Hans phenomena, and this was right after the Daily Males article was released. And she theorized that the accidents in the area are due to magnetic rocks. So this is the quote from her article. I see.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Are you talking about like the type of magnets that can like make those little, I don’t know what they are, shavings, metal shavings stand up so you can like build sculptures with them and stuff? I think so, the kind that attracts metal. Yeah, could they be the ones that like that could be the Harry Hans?

Is that all of a sudden your hands just become covered in random metallic debris from other accidents in the past? Oh, you know what? I like your theory more. Yours is more scientific.

Hers and she describes it here. We were motoring up from two bridges and saw a motor coach full of passengers ahead of us on the road coming towards us. While several hundred yards distant, the coach suddenly swerved into the roadside at almost right angles. It seemed for a few seconds impossible either that it should not turn over or that the passengers did not get thrown out. It was a long straight piece of road with no curves and no other traffic and the coach was being slowly and carefully driven. When we drove up to the place we examined the tire marks on the road which were almost right angular, I’ve never seen such a thing.

So got pulled sideways, she’s saying. May I suggest that these things may be due to magnetic rocks of which there are many on Dartmoor? This extraordinary season may have increased or altered magnetic currents.

It would appear to have some connection with metal and the steering wheel or handlebars would act as conductors and an electric shock might account for the strange sensations described by the young officer. Interesting. So magnets. Magnets.

No one knows how they work. I was also looking through Reddit forums for anyone else’s explanations and all I could find was from people who have lived or visited the area that the roads around that area are just really really terrible. So that’s about all the information I have on the hairy hands but the area itself is also full of strange occurrences. You had already alluded to a hellhound that inspired the Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles called The Demon of Dartmoor and apparently it was last photographed in 2009 and described as a comparable to the size of a miniature pony with rounded ears, shaggy coat, and powerful front limbs. Back to witchcraft and folklore of Dartmoor, the author recounts stories of a red monkey that would jump onto passervise in the area and follow them as far as the next village and then they disappeared. Yeah, yeah, I think it could be a red monkey. And the red monkey disappeared, not the people.

I mean either or. There’s also these stories I found from DevonLive.com. One event was the Devil’s Footprints, a 60 kilometer straight trail of hoof marks that appeared after a fresh no-fall in February of 1955. The trail went over the top of narrow walls and roofs and have been attributed to the tracks of Satan.

No, that seems like a good place for him to go for a visit in the winter. And it’s not the first time the Devil’s been to Dartmoor. Another story from the 13th century had the Bishop of Exeter traveling with his chaplain and they were approached by a stranger offering them bread and cheese. As the chaplain accepted them, the bishop saw the man had cloven hooves for feet and knocked the goods out of the chaplain’s hand. The stranger announced he was the Devil and then he disappeared. What would have happened if he’d eaten the cheese and bread? I don’t know. Diarrhea.

That sounds like something the Devil would do. Then there’s also the Beast of Exmoor, a giant black cat that roams the area. There’s also the Devon Mermaid. The stories from 1937 were fishermen captured a fishman in a net that groaned like a human had webbed feet like a duck, the tail of a salmon, and the face of a man. They lost it when it leapt out of the net and ran away. And later when they caught up to it, they saw that it was dying. Poor mermaid. Poor mermaid man.

What did they do with him though? Like back then, taxidermy could have been a thing. Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, the story kind of ends there. Like you think you would keep it?

Yeah, yeah. Like I would try save it somehow. Unless they’re like very superstitious and then maybe they buried it or set it on fire. Or they gave it to the London Natural History Museum and they lost it. Oh yeah.

It’s in a sample drawer somewhere. Just like a huge, a huge folded up man with fishtail. They’ll find it in like 50 years and be like, what is this? And to round off all of these strange happenings, they also have their very own headless horseman who rides across the Bickley Bridge. So there’s a bunch of ghost horses, but I suspect they can’t have hairy hands. Like it could be the devil’s hands.

Yeah. The devil’s been there twice. He might have hairy hands. That’s true. You never hear about the devil’s hands.

No. I know our hands are the devil’s play things. Yeah, you never hear about the devil’s hands. And to round off the topic here, I did look for similar ghostly body parts stories from around the world.

All right. Hairy hand stories have appeared elsewhere. There is La Mano Palluda, the furry hand broadly from Latin American folklore. The story is about a very, but generally it is a disembodied hand seeking vengeance after its owner died and will attack and kill anyone who sees it. Other stories have it looking to come after children that leave their beds at night.

That’s fair. The Iroquois have a legend of a disembodied hand called the Oniate, and it’s a spooky disembodied hand that appears in deserted areas to attack people passing through them. Sounds very similar.

Yeah. And in case you’d like to Frankenstein a complete being out of spooky body parts, Japan has the story of the Ishiarai Yashiki, an enormous hairy foot that had crashed through a samurai’s roof into his mansion demanding with a booming voice to be cleaned. They cleaned it and it left, but it kept returning every night afterwards. The last night when they refused to clean the foot, it destroyed the man’s roof, kicked in walls, basically had a tantrum.

Destroyed his whole house. Yep. Wow. I feel like that’s the sort of thing you tell your wife happen when you’ve had a huge party and your house got destroyed while she was gone for a couple days. Oh yeah.

Yeah. It was a giant foot. It crashed through the ceiling and demanded to be cleaned.

And wouldn’t you know it when I finally manned up and told it? No, it destroyed everything. Yeah. I’m the victim.

This one you had also reminded me about the Fresno Nightcrawler and this is a recently discovered crypt egg and it just seems to be all legs and they just walk around at night. I don’t think they’ve had any interactions. No. With people.

Yeah. I think some people describe them as like a pair of walking pants. What it reminds me of when I see those videos is a clothes pinned legs move back and forth and like a very non-bendy emotion. Oh yeah. It reminds me of somebody playing with a clothes pin. Not like legs like you or I.

No. They move like only the Fresno Nightcrawler can. Inuit mythology has the Issa Tock, a deity that takes the form of a giant floating eye and punishes those who break cultural taboos. Fair.

Can’t break those taboos. The all-seeing god. I wasn’t able to figure out what it does to punish people. Maybe it just like covers them too closely.

Yeah, that’s fair. Watches you while you change. Just makes you feel uncomfortable.

That’s true. And there’s the Krasu from Southeast Asia which is the disembodied head of a woman with her internal organs still attached and trailing down from the neck just sort of chases people, scares them. If I recall correctly, she’s supposed to be like the head of a woman who did immoral things like she was like doing things that women should not be doing. You know, I can’t recall. Yeah.

But maybe a good topic for a future episode. And this last thing I’m throwing in just for the sake of silliness. Fastenus, the Roman winged phallus god.

Nice. Fastenus was literally all phallus. His body was an erect phallus in testicles sporting an erect phallus with a phallus for a tail and phallus is for legs. I’m saying phallus because I’m worried that we’ll get flagged by podcast police. That is fair.

This sounds like the sort of thing that a high school boy would draw in his scribbler while he’s bored during Zines class. It’s true. Yeah.

Especially as the next part, he would fly between the legs of sleeping women to bless them. I see. Which is also something a 14 year old would come up with. Yeah, yeah, I think so. You don’t necessarily need that part to create your Frankenstein disembodied body parts reembodied monster. That’s true. That’s just for the RA diversion, I suppose.

Yeah. Well, now we have the facts of the hairy hands all put out into our Lord Canarvon super AI cursometer. We will now activate it and it will let us know on what level of cursing this resides. Activating cursometer.

Please stand by. And it is determined the hairy hands are definitely cursed. Yeah, especially considering how many people have gotten an accident over the years. It sounds like a road you should avoid. They need to have signs up there, deer crossing, but instead just have a picture of two hairy hands on top of your hands on the steering wheel. You know, I tried to see if there was like signs along the streets.

Yeah. That said beware hairy hands in the area. And I couldn’t find any according to Google Street View.

Oh, weird. So, county of Dartmoor, get on it. It’ll become a tourist attraction. Other than helping that one guy, and if that even was the same pair of disembodied hands that helped that one guy find the memorial stone, everything else that it just seems to want to cause car accidents. Yeah.

Possibly death. I’m not sure if I would want to encounter something like that on the road at night. I do a lot of night driving or I used to do a lot of night driving. You don’t need a big scruffy pair of hands grabbing the steering wheel and yanking it to the left or right.

No. Driving you into a ditch. The Canadian icy roads in the winter will do that to me anyway.

Then you climb out in some deserted area and then the Iroquois Oniate comes out, grabs you next. Yeah. I wonder if they’re related, all the hands.

They know each other. I also have the idea that if someone from the UK had like an Iroquois artifact that they had taken back home with them and because of that they now are being haunted by the hairy hands. Oh, maybe.

Yeah. The Britain has a nice history of stealing artifacts and being like, this is ours now. Maybe they’d stolen some sort of North American indigenous artifact and brought it back. They brought back some spirit with them.

Yeah. Maybe that’s how it started because before 1920 these events didn’t take place. Maybe that’s like some anthropologist from Britain had brought it back home and he was like driving back to his home in Devon and then the hairy hands took him out of the equation off the road. My other thought is that I don’t know if you’ve heard the stories about the like cursed volcano rocks and from Hawaii.

Yeah. There’s supposed to be some rocks that if you take you’ll experience terrible bad luck a lot of the time they get mailed back to the National Park because people experience crazy bad luck afterwards. But what if like the person found the hairy hands and was like, well, this sucks. I don’t want this in my house. And they just buried it somewhere along the side of the road. And that’s where all the accidents happen.

Oh yeah, we’re no one will find it. Yeah. Well, if you find yourself driving in Southwest England, make sure that you keep both hands on the wheel because you might have another two joining you there soon.

Pulling your car off the road. It’s true. And that wraps up today’s episode of probably cursed podcast. We’ll stick next month to our Britain theme and I’m going to look at the magical battle of Britain. Sounds exciting. So tune into us at the very last day of December.

Yeah. It’ll be a magical battle and make sure that also the same time you listen to our podcast first. So you get to hear before anyone else does about the new artifact to be released to the probably cursed gift shop on Etsy and maybe you take yourself home a little cursed object for your new year. And that wraps up today’s episode. This is your host Chris signing off. This is Sheryl signing off.