The Man on the Moor

The Mist, The Moor, and a Man who didn’t belong . . .

Over the years, as well as the usual stuff I write and talk about, I’ve relayed a few weird tales from both my own and my colleagues’ experiences. A friend of mine once joked that as well as the thrillers and spy fiction I write, I should pen something along the lines of Strange Things Soldiers Have Seen. To be fair, I don’t really have the time to devote to such a venture but I still tell the odd story of strange goings on not easily explained. So, nothing too serious here, just a tale I have relayed from personal experience and, weird as it may seem, this did actually happen. Even all these years later, I still don’t have a rational explanation for it. And, well, it’s Halloween so please enjoy it in the manner in which it is meant.

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Many moons ago, when I was a young Royal Marine Commando, I was attending a promotion course to achieve the rank of Corporal. This was a tough, 3-month evolution with a lot of emphasis on operational-focussed exercises in the field and, as one would expect, leadership of troops in battle. The exercises were both physically demanding and mentally testing, pushing candidates to their limits and often beyond. One of these exercises was a night navigation test, a NAVEX, conducted as the name suggests, overnight in order to increase the difficulty of the test. While not quite as long or as taxing as the 30 Miler completed during our Commando training, this was still a long slog carrying kit, heavy radio and batteries, and weapons over the wild, rough terrain of Dartmoor. The start time was around eleven o’clock at night with the cut-off time being around five in the morning. My NAVEX took place, rather fittingly, in late October. Wet, cold autumnal weather from the west dominating our experiences in the field. When we arrived at the start of the NAVEX, we were met by members of the DS, the Directing Staff, who ensured we were carrying the correct kit, weight, and had at least a rough idea of where we were going. We were split into eight-man sections and despatched off in fifteen-minute intervals in different directions to ensure we wouldn’t just follow each other. My section was particularly strong with a couple of SBS (Special Boat Service) operators, two guys from Brigade Patrol Troop (BPT), and some of the course’s best performers.

When we set off just after 2300h, the weather had calmed somewhat but the damp remained in the air as we set the bearing on the compass and trotted off into the bleak Dartmoor night. We took it in turns to lead a leg of the exercise, each man assuming the responsibility for the accuracy of his map-reading and pace-counting as we couldn’t see any features to guide us in the dark. Within a couple of hours, we were well into the middle of Dartmoor itself, all signs of civilisation many miles behind us as we ran through swollen streams and panted up steep hills, balancing speed of progress with accurate navigation, determined not to screw up and fail the test. It was well into the wee hours when we decided to stop, take on some water and swap over lead navigators. We all gathered around the maps to make sure we knew where we were and where we were going. We noticed that the thick mist that had been collecting in the hollows and valleys was now everywhere, reducing visibility to a few metres. We joked that the DS had engineered this in order to add a further testing element to the exercise. Happy with our position and new bearing, the lead navigator folded the map and stowed it away as we finished off our drinking and shoved some snacks down our throats to keep our energy levels up. Once everyone was ready, we set off again in single file along a small game trail and over a hill, monitoring our bearing to ensure we didn’t veer off and become disoriented in the fog. We had just crested the hill when the front man stopped and we closed up behind him, looking up to see what was wrong.

Still in single file, we watched in silence as a man appeared from the fog, walking towards us a couple of metres from the small track we were following. He had a pale, pinched face, long, dark curly hair, was slight of build, and dressed in a suit and black, slip-on leather shoes with white socks. His suit was grey or silver and you could see it was a very thin material covering a white shirt and skinny black tie. He looked, for all intents and purposes, as though he had just stepped out of a pub after last orders. Except there were no pubs for around 20 miles, no houses or even farms for at least 10 miles. Not even a definitive track or road that led to either or that it could be argued that he was following. He was literally in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of thick fog and going to who the hell knew where. The man didn’t acknowledge us. Didn’t look up, turn his head or comment. Didn’t seem to notice eight armed Commandos stood only metres from him. He merely continued walking with his hands rammed into the pockets of his tight suit trousers, shoulders hunched and eyes locked on the ground to his front. As he passed us, we all turned to follow his progress until he melted into the fog and was out of sight. Nobody moved or said a word for almost a minute until one of the SBS operators spoke.

“Well, that was f**king weird.”

This broke our silent spell and we were soon discussing the odd encounter. Maps were brought out as we tried to identify where our strange visitor had come from and where he was going but nothing to explain this realistically could be found. Someone joked that based on his clothing, he looked like he’d left a crap 1980’s nightclub and we laughed but also recognised the accuracy of this description. We were just about to move off and continue with the task at hand when one of the BPT lads stepped off the track, turned on his torch and examined the ground where the stranger had been walking. Curious, we paused again then joined our colleague when he called us over. He looked up at us while highlighting the bracken and heather around him.

“There was something bugging me about that bloke other than the obvious weirdness. I couldn’t quite work it out at first but then it hit me; he was walking along like he was on a road or a track but look.”

With that, our colleague began walking where our strange visitor had walked, but having to lift his legs high to avoid entanglement in the dense foliage and even at that, encountering difficulties when trying to maintain a forward momentum. I could see exactly what he meant; nobody could walk through that thickness of scrub without staggering or stumbling, yet our nocturnal walker had ambled along as casually as if he was on a pavement in Plymouth. Our colleague spoke again.

“The other mad thing I can’t wrap my head around? I could see his shoes and socks. As clear as day. But how is that possible?”

He was right: Where the stranger had been walking was thick foliage to almost knee height. Yet I had also seen the stranger’s feet clearly. Again, we were silent for several moments as we digested this until the lead navigator suggested we get back to the business of completing the NAVEX and deal with our weird encounter after that. We were, as he reminded us, still on a clock.

With that, we returned to the mud of the thin game trail, confirmed our bearing, adjusted our loads, and jogged off once again into the fog. While I was running, I thought long and hard about our strange visitor and tried in vain to come up with a valid reason for his appearance in that location and his completely inadequate dress for the weather. It also bugged me that he hadn’t acknowledged us, not even a sideways glance. But the walking demonstration my colleague had shown us was what bothered me most. It was completely at odds with how our weird walker had ambled past us, smooth and steady with not even a hint of resistance. And the impossibility of seeing the stranger’s shoes bothered me a lot and try as I might, I couldn’t explain it. But, like the rest of the section, I put it to one side and focussed on our current task. Between the fog and the dark, the navigation was challenging and took all our collective skills to ensure we didn’t stray too far off course. But we were a strong section and confident in our abilities and made good progress through the night.

We finally closed in to the finish point of our NAVEX and had completed it with a little time to spare, checking in with the DS then changing into dry clothing before wolfing down a massive, greasy breakfast in one of the derelict stone barns of the old farm complex. Over huge mugs of steaming tea and coffee, we discussed our weird occurrence with each other and guys from the other sections but by then the oddity had worn off and it was treated as an amusing rather than spooky encounter with many jokes and outlandish theories bandied around.

I’d almost forgotten about the encounter until a former colleague and I got back in touch a couple of years ago and he reminded me of it and the memories came flooding back. He now lives in Southwest England and regularly visits Dartmoor, recalling the memory of the occurrence every time he visits. For those, like me, who rarely make it to the region let alone Dartmoor itself, the memory faded with time and age as day-to-day life took precedence. Odd though, that as soon as I was reminded of it, the details were immediately as clear as they had been on the night in question, right down to the cheap fabric of the suit. And I found myself once again, stood on a slim, muddy trail in fog-bound Dartmoor watching a man dressed for a 1980’s nightclub glide past a section of armed Commandos without so much as a glance. And again, I was completely unable to determine a realistic explanation for this encounter.

So, there you have it, a wee Halloween-related tale appropriate for the time of year. Hope you enjoyed it!