Hindhead is an area of myths and superstition!

According to legend, the Devil would jump from hill to hill at the three ‘Devil’s Jumps’ near the village of Churt. This tormented Thor, God of Thunder, who lived at nearby Thor’s Lie (Thursley). When Thor tried to strike the Devil with thunder and lightning, the Devil retaliated by scooping up a handful of earth and hurling it at Thor. The depression that remained is the Devil's Punch Bowl. The three villainous highwaymen were tried and then hung on Gibbet Hill, near the site of the murder, as a warning to other criminals. After the hanging, many fears and superstitions arose around Gibbet Hill. In 1851 Sir William Erle, an English lawyer, judge and Whig politician, paid for a Celtic cross to be put up on Gibbet Hill to banish these fears and raise the local spirits. (National Trust)

The area around the Devil’s Punchbowl, in south west Surrey, in the 1800s had a terrible reputation due to the activities of local highwaymen and robbers. They regularly robbed the stage coach as it travelled slowly up the hill on its way to Portsmouth. The murder was mentioned by Charles Dickens in “Nicholas Nickleby” (1838). It is also the theme behind another famous Victorian book, “The Broom-Squire” (1896), by Sabine Baring-Gould. (A broomsquire is someone who makes their living out of making besom brooms – a trade unique to the heathland areas of England. The bushy plant called “heather” is collected and fashioned into broom brushes). (Visit Surrey)

Gilbert White of Selborne records, in his Naturalist's Journal 1768–1793, that on 23 December 1790 there was a terrible thunderstorm during which: Two men were struck dead in a wind-mill near Rooks-hill on the Sussex downs: & on Hind-head one of the bodies on the gibbet was beaten down to the ground. JMW Turner created a collection of 71 Mezzotints under the title Liber Studiorum. These were published in 1811. One of these was of Hindhead Hill with the gibbet clearly shown. (Wikipedia)