Would it be inopportune here to share another Quentin Smirhes classic clip?
Watch to the end to see the relevance…
Heh, that's probably not dissimilar to what my face was like in the immediate aftermath...
Now, if only front and rear dash cams had been a thing in the early 2000s... the whole episode could have made an interesting reaction video.
Which does beg the question, rather - are sightings like these becoming more or less reported, with the rise of dash cam usage?
From a more sceptical perspective, it could be argued that an apparently sinister figure may lose its sense of spookiness when rewatching footage later on, safe at home and away from other cues - leading to the realisation that it was just someone out for a walk, after all. And many sceptics, rightly, now query a lack of tangible evidence for such accounts as mine, at a time when image recording technology is both cheap and readily available.
I've seen some pretty ropey fake footage of 'roadside ghosts' online (many of which seem to be rather influenced by
The Ring, it appears) so it's hard to know whether having a dashcam recording of my encounter would have added anything, other than confirming that the whole thing wasn't a hallucination.
Again, it's not so much what I saw, but how it made me feel, that remains the most vivid part of it all.
Quercus, thanks for that - a good one, well told. Husband had a faceless ghost encounter in the 1970s which I will have mentioned numerous times here because, although he's had a few weird things happen, that one absolutely scared him the most.
Yes, it's strange just how much a lack of face is terribly, terribly bothersome... I suppose humans are hardwired to look for faces and the emotions to be deciphered there (hence the prevalence of pareidolia), and to have nothing at all to work with, well... it's highly discomfiting.
With this one, it's hard to tell exactly what
was there - there was no head that I could detect, that much I know (some accounts of faceless figures describe a head with a smooth, featureless expanse where a face ought to be), and there was no outline of a head (so, scarf, balaclava or morph suit don't come into it). But it wasn't like an 'invisible man' style of thing - I couldn't see the inside crown of the hat, or the back of a shirt, or anything of that nature.
It was almost like a vortex, or a state of complete nothingness. So strange that I can't really describe it properly, or draw it, or anything - like trying to describe a brand-new colour. I don't have the words; just the sensation. And for me, it was a state of utter fear and panic.
I sympathize with your husband!
Thank you for this story
@Quercus deeply spooky and clearly and thoroughly told. Some thoughts:
By coincidence last night I watched
The Nun, which was not very good but does have a gang of faceless ghost/demon nuns at one point.
My immediate mental image upon reading the description of the walker was that of someone in 17thC Mathew Hopkins-esque garb, I think this is partially because of the picture of "the tall ghost" or similar generic name in an old book- I think this might be in
Usbourne's Book of the Unknown: Ghosts. It's also because I worked at a historical building which had reports of a man in similar clothing along the roadside outside, he was also supposedly seen by a member of staff once, no reports of facelessness though. As a student a guy tried to create an "urban myth" for an art project and got another tall thin friend to walk through trees near a road in similar getup, neither where anywhere near your sighting.
I was told a story, coincidentally by the tall thin friend mentioned above, it's from another guy we were at uni with, whom I was friendly with but not close to. Apparently, as a teen on the Isle of Wight one night was walking to his girlfriend's house down various country lanes, he was walking down one when he spotted an old lady stood a short distance away in the middle of the road with her back to him - very quiet road, middle of nowhere with no traffic. He shouted to see if she was OK, no response, so knocked on the door of one of the two or three houses on the lane, he asked if the woman lived there, the man who answered said no but came out to take a look. He also got no response on calling over so walked around to face her, his face crumpled in horror and he screamed "she's got no face!" and ran away. The guy in question, ran back home in the other direction, needless to say, terrified.
Hey, thanks! Your friend's story is also pretty chilling, and all of these accounts are making me re-evaluate just how rare (or otherwise) these kinds of sightings may be...
I think I know which illustration you're referring to in the Usborne ghost book - and the clothes I saw are probably worth elaborating on, especially as the 1991 account of a figure walking up Ditchling also references the clothes.
As I rounded the corner, the figure walking up the hill gave me no particular cause for alarm. The clothes were quite nondescript, and hard to pigeonhole as belonging to any given era by dint of their extreme plainness.
The boots looked like knee-length utility boots, the type you might buy if you were involved in equine pursuits. They appeared to be made of matt brown leather, and styled more as a plain yard boot than a shaped and polished dress boot. A heel of about two inches, and slightly baggy and rumpled with wear around the ankle. The tops disappeared up into the hem of the coat and I don't remember seeing any buckles or zips. They weren't rubber Wellington boots, I'm fairly sure of that.
The coat was a long, plain affair, coming down to just below the knee, something in the manner of an Australian 'duster' coat worn by stockmen. There were no adornments or anything; no turned-back cuffs or adorned pockets or buttoned backpieces in best C18th fashion. Just a very plain, long, dark brown coat, which wasn't noticeably dirty but did appear to be well-used, and entirely in keeping with someone who worked the land.
The collar
may have been turned up, but I can't say for sure. I don't recall seeing any hair, or ears, or anything like that as I approached from behind.
The hat was a flat-crowned item, with a reasonably wide brim but again, nothing too outlandish. It was neither particularly tall nor particularly wide, and broadly in keeping with the kind of hats I've seen farmers wear. It may also have been made of leather; there was a very slight side-to-side curve to the brim, but nothing like a Stetson style - if you'd like a point of reference, think Phil Harding off Time Team and his hat. Not a million miles off that, though I don't recall a band or any other decorative addition. Like all the other items of clothing, it seemed to be a dark tertiary colour, functional and well used.
The figure seemed neither noticeably tall nor small; and its gait was quite normal. It was a steep hill, and the figure was making progress with a stride that seemed accustomed to covering long distances. It was walking on the right hand side of the road (so facing any oncoming traffic) but several feet from the edge of the road, more towards the centre line. The figure's boots were definitely making contact with the road - nothing floating above the surface, nor vanishing beneath the surface.
I feel it important to reiterate that, at the point I made visual contact, there was absolutely nothing unusual about the figure, other than I was unaccustomed to meeting pedestrians on this road at this time of night. Nothing seemed 'off', or gave me cause for alarm.
The road from the village to the Beacon is narrow, so when driving the hairpin bends at night I tended to go wide and use all the road, to conserve momentum and avoid having to make more gearchanges than necessary. Obviously, not if I could see the headlights of another car coming the other way! So when I mentioned in my original account that I steered around the figure, that's what I'm referring to - I rounded the bend in the centre of the road, and had to quickly steer back to my own lane to pass safely, when I saw the figure walking up the downhill lane. It seemed bad enough to be slogging up a steep hill in the dark without a passing motorist smacking your backside with a door mirror...
In terms of timings, I only had about three or four seconds to observe the figure in my headlights before I was already alongside it. I was probably doing about 25 miles an hour in third gear, and had half-expected that the figure would move over a little to the side of the road a little as I drove past, but it didn't.
At the point I drove right alongside - with the figure only a foot or two from my door - I was slowing, shifting down to second gear, and making sure I was giving them enough room to pass without putting myself in danger. I was focusing on the road ahead and the trees to my immediate left, but I sometimes wonder what I might have seen if I'd glanced to the right. I was aware of passing the figure in my peripheral vision, but nothing more than that.
As I say, all if this occurred in the space of a few seconds, while rounding the turn. It was only when the most pressing action had been completed (passing the figure safely) that my 'driver' mind receded and my curiosity came to the fore - who are they? Are they okay? Do they need a lift? And so on.
And it was at this point that I decided to see if I could help in any way, and began to slow the car to a halt. Again, still no sense that anything was strange, or 'off' in any way. I'd played Good Samaritan to a few stricken motorists before, offering jumpleads and torches where needed, and I was genuinely concerned that this walker may meet with a mishap if another car came down the hill fast, with nowhere for a pedestrian to move out of the way. If nothing else, I felt it incumbent on me to check.
Because it had taken me another few seconds to play through this internal monologue, I was probably about ten or fifteen metres ahead of the figure before I came to a complete halt. I briefly considered rolling back until I drew level, but thought it might alarm the walker if a car suddenly started rolling downhill toward them. So I opted to wait until they drew level with me, planning my opening words as I did so - something along the lines of, "You alright mate, d'you need a lift up the hill anywhere?"
A certain amount of cold was expected when I rolled down the window, though I can't recall if the air rushing in was really as unbelievably cold as it seemed - or if it was just because the car was pleasantly toasty, and outside wasn't. So I can't comment on whether I experienced an
unearthly cold, or if I'm just a bit of a wuss.
But the situation turned from unexpected to unbelievable at the point that I moved my head to look at the walker's reflection in the drivers side door mirror. Just so I could see how far away they were, and get a sense, I suppose, of the kind of person they were - my own age, older, whatever.
And that's where the problem started, because although I could see the clothes ok, but I couldn't see
them. No face. But not invisible. A nothingness, but at the same time, a nothingness that was also a something. Something indescribable. The scene behind was lit red with the Escort's brake lights, but the nothingness was... infinite nothingness. It wasn't even black. It was just... nothingness. Which isn't
quite the same as nothing.
It's about this point that I start to become uncomfortably self-conscious whenever I'm trying to tell someone about the episode. Because it sounds like I'm either not trying hard enough to form a description, or fear I come across as a bit nuts; as if I'm grasping at my interlocutor's sleeve, eyes rolling wildly, muttering
you gotta believe me boy, there was nothing, but a nothing that was a something...
Nope, it doesn't make sense. I know it doesn't. And it was that sudden, shocked, undeniable acknowledgement that what was before me was utterly outside my frame of reference that eventually pushed the panic button, once I'd spun through all possible logical reasoning and drawn a blank each time. Only then did my lizard brain take over to remove me from the situation as fast as was practicable.
Sixteen years on, I still don't know... but I simply couldn't hang around to find out.
Looking forward to hearing about your other experiences, Quercus.
Hey, thanks... I have a few accounts written down in full as a narrative; a few others that are in note form, and yet more that are just a line or two as an aide memoire.
Will do my best to get a few more posted up! I've alluded to another couple of odd experiences from my past further up the thread, so if anything in particular piques anyone's interest, sing out and I'll pull it together for next time.