GHOST DOES HAT TRICK

Evening Star, Issue 19666, 20 September 1927, Page 3

GHOST DOES HAT TRICK

MYSTERY OF GNARLED OAK . Green Dragon. lime, a lonely road near Winchmorc Hill, England, has, during the last few months, acquired a sinister reputation (declares the London ‘Daily Chronicle’). On several men walking homo alone in the evening have had their hats torn from their heads by a black form, with gleaming eyes, which would swoop down upon them with an eerie screech and then swish upwards again into the darkness.

Finally, 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 pooped out from behind a scudding cloud, listening to the wind whispering with uncanny whine through the hedgerow. The last waylaror had gone homo and nothing had happened. The constable having decided that “it was all 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 rush of air fanned his face.

At the station his report was , received with more than usual attention. The station sergeant, with another constable in reserve, sot' out with the narrator to sec for himself, A long wait, and—nothing. Incredulous in his turn, the sergeant was about to leave, when—swish —his helmet fell in the load to the accompaniment of an unearthly scream. Metropolitan police force regulations make no provision for the taking of ghosts into custody, but the sergeant was not nonplussed. At that moment the moon came out and revealed the retreating figure of a great tawny owl —a giant among a race of giants. Early the next morning a search was made at the foot of the gnarled oak, and over two dozen men’s felt hats uere found in the grass, tattered and torn, almost beyond recognition.