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When you say “it wasn’t a moorland animal “, do you mean it wasn’t an animal or it wasn’t a moorland animal?
I think that question makes sense.

And also, does "not an animal" rule out birds? Which are technically not animals I know, but for the purposes of this thread we need clarification I think.
 
I do not know much about wildlife, but from an official site these variety of animals live there.
Do any of them make noises similar to a werewolf?

"Dartmoor is a rich habitat for wildlife and has a wealth of bird life including warblers, buzzards, redstarts, golden plover and dunlin.
The moorland also supports red grouse, buzzards, foxes and roe deer."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/england/sevenwonders/southwest/dartmoor/02.shtml
 
And also, does "not an animal" rule out birds?
Many people use "animal" to indicate non-human mammals. This is cultural usage I guess.
Technically, in a scientific sense, animals include birds, fish, insects, reptiles, etc. as Muva1 says, and also mammals, which includes us.
As a child I learned that there were three classifications of stuff, vegetable, mineral and animal. That leaves out bacteria, viruses and fungi (IIRC), which I didn't learn until I was an adult.

Well that's all I have to say, because someone on this forum certainly knows more than I do about genera and kingdoms and stuff like that, and I don't know squat about Dartmore. In fact, in another thread, I conflated Dartmore with Yorkshire by ignorantly stating that the Hound of the Baskervilles was set there.
Opps . . . :doh:
 
Oh yeah, I forgot :-( . I'm going with Thermos as well then.

Aaaahhh yes. As a teenager I'd often take a mug of tea to bed, and one night used a tumbler with a fitted lid. After I drank the tea I put the lid loosely back on the tumbler and placed it on the floor.

In the night as it cooled down it made an intermittent buzzing sound which I thought was a wasp or whatever. Couldn't find it so I got my brother up to track it down.
He wasn't amused until he found the tumbler and realised where the sound came from. I was severely mocked!
 
A rusty wind turbine.

Having spent some time walking the windswept Galician section of the Camino de Santiago a couple of years ago I can attest to the spookiness of a grating wind turbine heard through the mist.

But I'm going for something more mundane here: a gate or an outbuilding door - either the sound of rusty hinges grinding against each other, or in the case of a metal farm gate, wind causing metal parts to vibrate and grind against their neighbours. (This latter may sounds unlikely, but I've actually experienced it happening - albeit in high wind - and the combination of metal rubbing metal, and wind whistling through the bars, can make a vaguely musical, if dissonant, wailing sound.)

Another possibility might be the the sound created as wind passes through the gaps in old corrugated sheeting (which might, for example, serve as the roof of an abandoned outbuilding) - the sound made by the sheets shifting and sliding over those underneath is not very far from that exemplified in the American Werewolf clip.

Edit: Also, it strikes me, that wind passing through a metal pylon - indeed any metal frame structure - can make some very disconcerting sounds.
 
Another IT dude, has fixed what the previous IT dude mucked up, so it’s all systems go here in the office sadly.

Some good answers here but none of them correct.

Do you want me to reveal what was making that god awful sound, or do you all want more time..?....shall I drop in a clue..?

When we found out what was causing it, we both looked at each other and burst out laughing out of embarrassment (and a little relief :))

I have another fortean Dartmoor story which I’ll try to post a bit later.
 
Another IT dude, has fixed what the previous IT dude mucked up, so it’s all systems go here in the office sadly.

Some good answers here but none of them correct.

Do you want me to reveal what was making that god awful sound, or do you all want more time..?....shall I drop in a clue..?

When we found out what was causing it, we both looked at each other and burst out laughing out of embarrassment (and a little relief :))

I have another fortean Dartmoor story which I’ll try to post a bit later.
Oh go on, tell us...
 
Yes, come on - spill those beans.

...When we found out what was causing it, we both looked at each other and burst out laughing out of embarrassment (and a little relief :))...

There's really nothing to be embarrassed about. I'm country-born and a veteran hiker myself, and I've had a conversation on this kind of thing with a mate of mine in Scotland, who is an extremely experienced outdoorsman; we both admitted to incidents in which we'd had the wind put right up us by what turned out to be really mundane events.

(One of my own most memorable was actually many years ago. I was on a night hike with a couple of mates from my sixth form and were crossing an area of woodland in very high winds. Anyone who has been in such an environment will tell you how noisy and disorienting this can be - the rushing of wind through timber creates a kind of industrial strength white noise which can be utterly overpowering. As we reached a slight rise in the ground a piercing scream erupted just a few inches from my left ear. We looked at each other in horror with mouthed - but completely inaudible - 'WHAT THE FUCKS'. Then it happened again. I will never forget the look of terror on one of my friends - a very funny displaced Scot with a ginger afro (long before geek was cool), who I'm half convinced wet himself that night. But, just as we were about to bolt, I realised what it was. I had an old-school aluminium framed rucksack. The tube which formed the frame ended at each shoulder and one of the rubber end-caps was missing - the rapid movement of air over the open tube was creating a shrill and grating whistling sound. I had to hold my pack up and pop my palm over the top a couple of times to convince my oppos that this is what it was, all without speech, because the forest was so loud. That was a character building night, I can tell you.)
 
Okay I shall tell you all now that the contraption making the noise turned out to be nothing more sinister that a cattle/sheep grid – told you it was mundane.:)

The occasional vehicle going over the grid, was creating a noise that reverberated around the surrounding hills, and which at a distance sounded exactly like the noise the werewolf made in John Landis’s film.

It was only when we got a little bit closer (say a little less than ¼ a mile), that we could actually tell that the noise was coming from the road, and that no godforsaken mythical beast would be ripping our throats out anytime soon :D what a relief.

I’ve just googled the movie, and Landis originally shot the film on location in the black mountains in Wales (not the north Yorkshire Moors as I originally thought)

Interestingly Britain’s first ever cattle grids were installed in Rural Wales in the 1940’s, so my assumption that Landis heard an eerie acoustic caused by the grids, while on location and used it in the film, still holds ………for now anyway.
 
The occasional vehicle going over the grid, was creating a noise that reverberated around the surrounding hills, and which at a distance sounded exactly like the noise the werewolf made in John Landis’s film.

I was in a Metro station in Newcastle when I noticed an escalator that made a sound just like the Alien at 3:29 on this video. What are the chances that Ridley Scott once passed through and thought it would make a good sound effect?

 
Off on a tangent for a moment, this is probably for another thread but have you any experience with Crib Goch? I've been getting YT recs for this and it looks truly horrific...

Again, many years ago, I started this route with another friend, but we bottled - quite sensibly - and turned back when the weather came down. (Greatly to my relief, I'm not ashamed to admit.)

These days - not in a million years would you get me up there, or anywhere like it. My head for heights has withered over time (a not unusual process of ageing apparently) and I have always had an odd relationship with the vertiginous at the best of times; I used to climb, still do some indoor stuff, and regularly have to harness up for work at height, but I'm very choosy as to what I consider tolerable - and arêtes are not on the list.
 
I was in a Metro station in Newcastle when I noticed an escalator that made a sound just like the Alien at 3:29 on this video. What are the chances that Ridley Scott once passed through and thought it would make a good sound effect?


The Iron Man suit servo sound effects in the Marvel movies are sampled from the motors on an adjustable desk in the editors' cutting room - my colleague has the exact same desk at work and once you know what it sound is, you can't unhear it.
 
Off on a tangent for a moment, this is probably for another thread but have you any experience with Crib Goch? I've been getting YT recs for this and it looks truly horrific.

(I'm an armchair mountaineer btw.)
Crib Goch is a rewarding, but properly challenging, scramble in Summer but a mountaineering route in Winter. There are different routes to do it. Been over it a few times over the years. People die there so don't take it lightly.
 
Crib Goch is a rewarding, but properly challenging, scramble in Summer but a mountaineering route in Winter. There are different routes to do it. Been over it a few times over the years. People die there so don't take it lightly.

I have never taken Dartmoor lightly. I never go out without a flask of hot drink, food and warm clothing /waterproofs – even in the summer months.

I’ve been out on the moor in July, weather hot and sunny and not a cloud in the sky. Within five minutes, a storm has come in, the fogs come up from no-where, it’s freezing cold and pis$ing down with rain. Strange place Dartmoor.

I was in a pub in Princetown one cold and stormy October evening, the pub was deserted bar me and the Missus, when six or seven warders came in from the nearby Jail. They ordered pints with whiskey chasers, and I heard the barman ask if they had found him yet – one warder replied that they hadn’t, but they’ll have their drinks and go out and keep looking.

My imagination ran wild. I thought some mad axeman had escaped, and was wandering the moor ready to chop me and the missus to bits when we walked the two miles back to our hotel. :D

Turned out a warders brother in law, was visiting him for the weekend, had gone out for a walk in the morning and hadn’t been seen since – never did find out if it ended happily.
 
DT, as soon as I read your tale ( good build up by the way) I knew what this was having been caught out by the same noise only my close encounter was in daylight so less creepy. I spent a good half hour being convinced the Beast was prowling after me.
 
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