title: Strange but True: Mysterious and Bizarre People
author:  Thomas Sleman 
description: Contains 62 stories of phenomena that have defied explanation, as well as little-known facts about infamous people and historical events.
zlib_text: ![](images/00001.jpg)
  
  
  ##### www.blackmask.com
  
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  # A MYSTERY OF THE SAND-HILLS
  
  
  ### R. AUSTIN FREEMAN
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  
  I HAVE occasionally wondered how often Mystery and Romance present themselves
  to us ordinary men of affairs only to be passed by without recognition. More
  often, I suspect than most of us imagine. The uncanny tendency of my talented
  friend John Thorndyke to become involved in strange, mysterious and abnormal
  circumstances has almost become a joke against him. But yet, on reflection, I
  am disposed to think that his experiences have not differed essentially from
  those of other men, but that his extraordinary powers of observation and rapid
  inference have enabled him to detect abnormal elements in what, to ordinary
  men, appeared to be quite commonplace occurrences. Certainly this was so in
  the singular Roscoff case, in which, if I had been alone, I should assuredly
  have seen nothing to merit more tha