Scary but supposedly true local legends.....

[thebear]

I'm sure we all had some, for examply round my way there was the story of a bloke with a freddy kruger glove killing taxi drivers

or he was the driver

A kid at school who was meant to have hung himself in the music room was another

what ones did you have?

[Megamixer]

Our Primary school was a WWII hospital back during the war so there were alway stories about the toilets being haunted and kids swearing that they'd seen/heard spooky stuff in there. One kid reckoned he's seen a severed hand at the bottom of a drain in there but that was pushing it a bit

[themightymartin]

There's supposed to be a secret tunnel leading from the William Cobbett pub in Farnham (where I grew up) to an underground strip club. In actual fact there is a secret tunnel, but it connects the pub with Farnham Castle. Probably used as some sort of escape route if the castle was overrun.

[samhain81]

The Midnight Piddler -

A old man after a nights drinking would pee through random letter boxes of peoples homes around midknight.

Come to think of it, think it might have been me, so be on your best behaviour everyone, I may know where you live.

[oli_lar]

Purple Aki seemed far too far fetched to be true...but it was. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akinwale_Arobieke

[thebear]

Purple Aki seemed far too far fetched to be true...but it was. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akinwale_Arobieke

I remember reading about him on a board somewhere, in fact was partly the reason I made this thread

here;s a pic of him -

[themightymartin]

If he's banned from touching peoples' muscles, could he be arrested for shaking hands then?

Another urban legend relating to Farnham, Surrey is the story of the Surrey Puma. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrey_puma

This (typically grainy) photograph is said to be of the cat, although with nothing else in the photo to compare its size to I think it's pretty unlikely that it's anything more than a common house cat:

[TwoHeadedBoy]

How many common house cats have you seen with a tail that long?

As for Purple Aki, there was a time when almost EVERYONE I knew "claimed" to have encountered him!

[joefish]

"A knight who fell at the crusades, but who was not wealthy enough to have his body returned home for burial, had his heart cut from his body and sent home to his parish church of Woodford in Northamptonshire. The heart was set into stone in one of the pillars and can still be seen today, if you know where to look. This poor hero's ghost has been seen (and captured on film) kneeling before the altar".

At least, he's one possibility. The other was a well-travelled landowner. A petrified heart, wrapped in a dried cloth bundle, genuinely can be seen behind a small glass panel near the top of the fourth pillar from the back on the left-hand side, half-way up the main aisle. Where it came from was unknown for a long time, but apparently it was discovered by builders conducting repairs in 1848, in a bamboo jar hidden behind a stone in the pillar. After it was discovered, it was set back in the pillar on view behind a square of glass.

And we know this because of more recent building work uncovering secrets. In 1992, work on another part of the church roof revealed an earthenware pot, concealed by the reverend as a time capsule back in 1866, and including this fascinating hand-written account of the discovery of the heart and how it was preserved so well for the next 150 years:
http://www.woodfordpc.co.uk/fhheart.htm

As for the ghost photo, yeah, it's a bit cr*p. Long exposure from 1964 that someone obviously walked in front of:

Sorry.

[themightymartin]

How many common house cats have you seen with a tail that long?

It's a much more plausible explanation than the standard "alien cat from another planet" story that has been suggested by others.

[Negative Creep]

From where I grew up, the Bluebell Hill ghost

http://www.hauntedkent.net/x0003a.aspx

[TwoHeadedBoy]

How many common house cats have you seen with a tail that long?

It's a much more plausible explanation than the standard "alien cat from another planet" story that has been suggested by others.

When people talk about "Alien Big Cats" they don't mean "alien" as in from another planet, they mean it as in not native to where it's been seen.

[Antiriad2097]

How many common house cats have you seen with a tail that long?

Tail lengths vary widely on domestic cats. Most have 'average' length tails, but quite short ones are not uncommon. By the same token, I don't think an unusually long tail in the occasional cat is stretching the imagination too much.

[TwoHeadedBoy]

True, true... But we've had cats my whole life, and personally I've never seen one of that length. It MIGHT be just another cat, but the amount of reported puma sightings in Britain (as well as evidence of feedings) - far too many for them to be considered "urban rumours" anymore - means that photos like that one shouldn't be dismissed so easily.

http://www.bigcatmonitors.co.uk/evidence.htm

It'd be hard to confuse something with a tail like this:


with something like this:

[tachi]

From the BBC article in 2006 relating to the Hairy Hands reported many times just 9 miles from our home:

The mother-in-law, the husband, the amateur map reader, none of these are quite as dangerous a backseat driver as those infamous hands on the roads of Dartmoor.
Of all the spirits, entities and creatures that are said to inhabit the county of Devon, none are so openly hostile towards people as the Hairy Hands.

Picture this; you're driving the narrow moors lane near Postbridge and Princetown, its dark, cold and a typical moors night.
All of a sudden the steering wheel or handlebars are grabbed by a gruesome pair of hairy, calloused hands that are inhumanly strong and do their utmost to fight you off the road.

That's a story that's been repeated many times since its first suggested incident in June 1921 when a worker at Dartmoor Prison was killed as his motorcycle became uncontrollable and crashed.
The tale was related by his children who were riding in the sidecar, all they knew was their father shouting at them to get off the bike and apparently wrestling with the controls.
They jumped clear, he didn't.

This was repeated again sometime later, another motorcyclist, this time with a pillion passenger, seemingly driven off the road approaching the same spot.
This time the passenger saw things more clearly and insisted he saw a large hairy hand grasp the handlebars and forcibly upset the bike.

The last thing you want to see while driving on Dartmoor. It seems though that its not just motorists that are at risk from the devil's digits, any campers in the area have need to fear too.

In 1924 a young couple were camping in a caravan in the area and the woman was woken in the middle of the night by a heart-racing fear.
Her bunk faced the caravan window and up it she saw crawling a large hand, covered in hair and, she said, exuding an intent to do her and her husband harm.
Instinctively the lady made the sign of the cross and said the hand balked and made its way away.

The tale has arisen again and again and the area has become a notorious area for accidents, many of the survivors giving the story of feeling or seeing the large rough hands, covered in hair grabbing at them and trying to drive them off the road.
Strangely for a legend some of the most skeptical people remain the locals. Many suggest it's all down to 'grockles' trying to drive narrow, high walled roads far too fast.

So are these hands an evil entity, the ghostly form of an ex-Dartmoor Prison inmate or some kind of moors spirit?
Whatever they are, its certainly a good idea to take just that little bit more care when driving around the Postbridge or Princetown area.