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Crossroads Spirit

Old_Shoe said:
Back in the early 90's I used to avoid the highway traffic and take the back way home from work in the afternoons. My route took me through a notoriously haunted small Texas town. One day I was driving home and it was very close to raining on me. There was a dark thunderstorm approaching and it looked like it might start raining at any moment. I rounded a corner at a crossroad and I saw a young woman with a metal walker standing by the side of the road with her thumb out. She gave me a pleading look as I drove past which looked absolutely pathetic. I felt kinda torn about possibly giving her a ride. If she looked like a normal person with no "baggage" I most certainly would have given her a ride, but something about her looked off to me and I had a sense of some sort that if I offered her a ride I would NOT be doing her any kind of favor. So I drove on down the road wondering if I'd done the right thing. I did feel like a bit of a cad leaving her there to get rained on. Well, it was a few years later and I had the same exact thing happen AGAIN. At the same spot. And it was the same exact weather condition as the first time, very close to starting to rain. And there she was again, just standing there with her walker with a pleading expression on her face, and I had that same feeling again. I didn't know what her story was or where she wanted to go, but just a sense that giving her a ride won't make anything any better for her. I didn't really think I was looking at a ghost, or anything out of the ordinary, really. But the odd coincidence of that girl with the walker hitchhiking and both times it was about to start pouring rain. More recently, someone erected a roadside cross at that exact spot, indicating someone had been killed there. I have no idea if there might be any connection. But it makes me wonder.
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Which town was that?
 
Old_Shoe said:
Back in the early 90's I used to avoid the highway traffic and take the back way home from work in the afternoons. My route took me through a notoriously haunted small Texas town. One day I was driving home and it was very close to raining on me. There was a dark thunderstorm approaching and it looked like it might start raining at any moment. I rounded a corner at a crossroad and I saw a young woman with a metal walker standing by the side of the road with her thumb out. She gave me a pleading look as I drove past which looked absolutely pathetic. I felt kinda torn about possibly giving her a ride. If she looked like a normal person with no "baggage" I most certainly would have given her a ride, but something about her looked off to me and I had a sense of some sort that if I offered her a ride I would NOT be doing her any kind of favor. So I drove on down the road wondering if I'd done the right thing. I did feel like a bit of a cad leaving her there to get rained on. Well, it was a few years later and I had the same exact thing happen AGAIN. At the same spot. And it was the same exact weather condition as the first time, very close to starting to rain. And there she was again, just standing there with her walker with a pleading expression on her face, and I had that same feeling again. I didn't know what her story was or where she wanted to go, but just a sense that giving her a ride won't make anything any better for her. I didn't really think I was looking at a ghost, or anything out of the ordinary, really. But the odd coincidence of that girl with the walker hitchhiking and both times it was about to start pouring rain. More recently, someone erected a roadside cross at that exact spot, indicating someone had been killed there. I have no idea if there might be any connection. But it makes me wonder.
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Hmm. Notoriously haunted town...was it Crosby?

My first thought was San Patricio, which is lousy with ghosts, but the need to avoid traffic makes me think Crosby.
 
The town I mentioned is Old Town Spring, north of Houston, Texas. It's a neat place to visit. Before it caught fire and was permanently closed down I used to enjoy visiting Wunche Brothers Saloon there. It was built in 1901 and was used as a saloon and bordello. Wunche's is reportedly haunted. Down the street a block or two is a house with a sign out front that says it's the Old Town Spring Ghost Tours. They lead guided walking tours of the area and they host ghost hunting parties.

http://www.gulfcoastspecters.com/id6.html

Editing to add; The highway traffic I mentioned was I-45 which used to get totally clogged into a long skinny parking lot before they widened it. Working either at the airport or in downtown Houston, I-45 or the Hardy Toll Road would be the shortest trip, but it's quicker sometimes to take the back roads northward. The old Hardy Road or Aldine-Westfield would take me into Old Town Spring.
 
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This is a great thread and I've been looking up some of the places mentioned here (it's a Friday night and as usual I have nothing better to do with my time than p*ss around on the internet!). I was pleased to see that the Devil's Punch Bowl, which looks an incredible place, has old associations with Thor. The naming of any place with the tag Devil or Witch is usually the work of early Christians trying to persuade the ango-saxons to stop going to places of worship associated with the old gods.

Caxton too may have originally been a Scandinavian settlement, and crossroads have associations with Odin. Again, all our crossroads lore may stem from Christians trying to scare us away from places that were once sacred to us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caxton,_Cambridgeshire
 
Old_Shoe said:
Back in the early 90's I used to avoid the highway traffic and take the back way home from work in the afternoons...
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Sorry to be daft but what's a "metal walker" - like a walking frame?
I like the anecdote though, very road-ghosty, especially with the repeated weather conditions.
It reminds me of something Twin Peaksy. Or maybe Ghost World where there's a man waiting at a defunct bus stop for a bus that never comes.
 
I've never heard the term "walking frame", but it would sound like what I was referring to. Just a frame made of aluminum tubing that people use like a cane, but with both hands. I think THAT and something about her overall appearance gave me the impression that the girl belonged where she was and that if I were to give her a ride down the road then her parents or guardian would be very worried and unhappy that she was out getting lost by hitchhiking.
 
Old_Shoe said:
I've never heard the term "walking frame", but it would sound like what I was referring to. Just a frame made of aluminum tubing that people use like a cane, but with both hands. I think THAT and something about her overall appearance gave me the impression that the girl belonged where she was and that if I were to give her a ride down the road then her parents or guardian would be very worried and unhappy that she was out getting lost by hitchhiking.
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I took a trip around the town on Google Street View. I could not find her. ;)
 
Scribbles said:
This is a great thread and I've been looking up some of the places mentioned here (it's a Friday night and as usual I have nothing better to do with my time than p*ss around on the internet!). I was pleased to see that the Devil's Punch Bowl, which looks an incredible place, has old associations with Thor. The naming of any place with the tag Devil or Witch is usually the work of early Christians trying to persuade the ango-saxons to stop going to places of worship associated with the old gods.
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I used to play cricket for the nearby village of Thursley, the name of which derives from Thor's Lea (i.e. the meadow or clearing of Thor).
 
There was a story my great aunt used to tell, about a spot on Scalm Lane, near Bishop's Wood, just off the B1222. There is a crossroads where that lane is crossed by another road, and she said every year (I forget when but it could well be midsummer) cut flowers used to appear on the grass verge at the crossroads.

My great aunt was born around 1900 and died in the 1980s, so I can only rememer the broad details now. But needless to say, at that time, the whole 'roadside flower shrine' phenomenon wasn't remotely a thing, round this part of Yorkshire, anyway. And she said it was supposed to be where a gypsy girl was buried a long time before - could have been the 19thC or even earlier. Being buried not in consecrated ground, would have been a huge thing, in the past.

The farm where my great aunt grew up was close to this site, and my great grandad owned and rented fields nearby. The sudden, annual appearance of flowers on this otherwise boring, remote-ish spot that is barely on the way to anywhere - always struck me as a bit creepy. I have a feeling I read that sometimes criminals or people seen as 'beyond the law' were buried at crossroads. So there may be some truth in it. Aunt reckoned the passing gypsies would leave the flowers even though whoever was buried on the grass verge was long beyond living memory. I have seen from censuses, and remmeber my mum who grew up on the farm, telling me that they always had a lot of gypsy workers at harvest time, and the same families would come back for decades, even generations, to work on the same farms, round here. So there will have been romanies camping round or near the woods in the past.

ETA: I don't think many 'locals' are actually really locals, from round here any more - almost all the old families are long gone. So I don't know if this is still part of local lore or whether it has passed out of (almost) all knowledge.

But either way, a lot of old lore around crossroads is because they were seen as an 'unholy' place where people were hung or hastily buried, beyond the confines of 'civilised' society.
 
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ramonmercado said:
Ah! I thought this might have been about the return of Benny.
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Here you go Ramon ..

"Miss Dianne .. Miss Dianne .. ?"

abenny.jpg
 
Old_Shoe said:
I've never heard the term "walking frame", but it would sound like what I was referring to. Just a frame made of aluminum tubing that people use like a cane, but with both hands. I think THAT and something about her overall appearance gave me the impression that the girl belonged where she was and that if I were to give her a ride down the road then her parents or guardian would be very worried and unhappy that she was out getting lost by hitchhiking.
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This sort of thing, I'm assuming?

upload_2018-6-16_21-15-53.png


Do you think she wasn't a ghost/apparition then, but rather a physical, real person? It must have been an awfully hard thing to do to leave someone without much mobility in the pouring rain though.

I don't suppose the girl and her walking frame could actually have been some optical illusion/trick of the light affair? I mean no disrespect by asking that, just that I've read the occasional account of people thinking they saw something bizarre which turned out in actuality to be a post box / tree stump / etc that in a certain light or weather, gave off the appearance of something completely different.

Just throwing it out there as an idea, although probably quite an unlikely one :)


More and more crossroads seem to end up being replaced with roundabouts nowadays, so it's always nice to encounter one. (There's still a crossroads near a place I drive to regularly, don't think it has any ghostly connotations though).

Several years ago I'd read about a crossroads that used to be haunted, or to do with witches or somesuch, but it had since been replaced by the dual carriageway so it was no longer the same crossroads. All the same, apparently people would sometimes see a ghost or witch (I really can't remember the details) in the back seat of their car, or so I'd read.

Cue one time we were driving back home at the end of a holiday, I was driving the last leg while Mr Zebra slept. Very late at night/early in the morning sort of time. Almost home, trundling down the A12 when the crossroads story popped into my head and I realised I was just approaching that exact part of the road. Nothing happened, but I was absolutely terrified for the rest of the way along the road until I turned off.

I'd be rubbish if I ever actually saw a ghost. I'm such a wuss.
 
Yes, that picture is it. No, the girl was not a trick of light, she appeared very real. I can't say she wasn't real. I just had a strong feeling both times I saw her that it's best to leave her there. And the coincidence with identical weather conditions both times I saw her. And finally that white cross got planted there at that spot. It all adds up to make ya wonder...
 
Old_Shoe said:
Yes, that picture is it. No, the girl was not a trick of light, she appeared very real. I can't say she wasn't real. I just had a strong feeling both times I saw her that it's best to leave her there. And the coincidence with identical weather conditions both times I saw her. And finally that white cross got planted there at that spot. It all adds up to make ya wonder...
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She can't have gone too far from where she lived, probably only a few hundred meters.
 
joeosker said:
There's a crossroads out on the A449 South Staffs that has the occasional
late night horseman sighting ,about half a mile from Gibbit Wood were the last man in England to be gibbited met his end ,oh yes plus the odd car that disappears just up the road(at another crossroads )
,can you ride a horse at 3am ? Any Equestrians out there?
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Of course you can ride a horse at 3am, why wouldn't you be able to?

I often used to take mine out quite early in the morning, before the traffic got started. Not quite at 3am though, I like my sleep too much. And riding in the dark has a whole host of hazards associated with it, but it's perfectly possible.
 
gellatly68 said:
I'd like to relate this tale. It didn't happen to me, fortunately! The only reason I paid notoce to this tale is because the guy who related it is a thoroughly bluff, no-nonsense Northerner who wouldn't make stuff like this up.
Andy, to give him his name, and his friends had been out on the beach somewhere near Hull. It was a summer night, with a full moon. They were heading home when they walked past a crossroads with a telephone box situated on one of the corners. Suddenly, the phone began ringing. After their initial surprise, they started joking that it was probably a ghost trying to make contact. Andy picked up the receiver, and said, 'Hello? Mr. Ghost? You there? Hello?', but there was no answer. He put the receiver back down, and they carried on their way, making jokes about it, when Andy noticed their shadows on the road.
'Dave', he said to his mate. 'How many of us are there?'
'Four of us,' replied Dave.
'I know that,' said Andy. 'So why are there five shadows?'
And there, next to them, was a fifth shadow.
. . .
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Your friend from Hull told you a standard sort of tale found in ghost story anthologies -- I think he was pulling your leg!

But thanks for sharing it anyway -- it's well told.
 
catseye said:
Of course you can ride a horse at 3am, why wouldn't you be able to?

I often used to take mine out quite early in the morning, before the traffic got started. Not quite at 3am though, I like my sleep too much. And riding in the dark has a whole host of hazards associated with it, but it's perfectly possible.
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I did return from an excellent party one Friday/Saturday in the early hours, our house was down a lane from said crossroads ,my mom asked had I past a horse as one had woke her up walking up the lane towards the crossroads ,no I didn't ,never did work that out
 
This doesn't quite fit the crossroads topic, but the story of the girl with the walking frame reminded me of a story my ex once told me about an odd thing that happened to his grandparents. I can't recall all the details, sadly, so this is rather vague (and I can't imagine he'd be particularly pleased to hear from me in order to ask him to retell the tale)! I know they were driving down a road some distance from their home, perhaps going on holiday or visiting relatives. They spotted an older man in rustic period clothing leaning on an old stone gate post and the sight really disturbed them. I feel like there was some interaction with him but unfortunately I can't recall, perhaps he held up his hand in greeting or doffed his hat. Many years later (I'm inclined to think it was around a decade) they were making the same journey and there he was again, unchanged and in the same pose. I know they were incredibly frightened.

Obviously you could say this was a scarecrow or a dummy, or perhaps an eccentric who liked to dress in period costume, but apparently they were convinced they'd seen something unusual and were very upset by the encounter.
 
Scribbles said:
Caxton too may have originally been a Scandinavian settlement, and crossroads have associations with Odin. Again, all our crossroads lore may stem from Christians trying to scare us away from places that were once sacred to us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caxton,_Cambridgeshire
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Found the gibbet there on G-maps, standing right next to a McDonald's drive-thru. The ignominy is a bit much, especially given this is what used to be there.
http://www.elsworthchronicle.org.uk/Elsworth People/People9.html

People9.jpg
 
skinny said:
Found the gibbet there on G-maps, standing right next to a McDonald's drive-thru. The ignominy is a bit much, especially given this is what used to be there.
http://www.elsworthchronicle.org.uk/Elsworth People/People9.html

People9.jpg
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Good find! I'm guessing that the building in this picture was demolished to make way for the building that became a Chinese restaurant:
331142_6be86f7c.jpg

Unfortunately, that rather excellent place burned down to make way for the McDonald's.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
There's a place I sometimes go mountain biking or simply walking the nature trails, near Hindhead in Surrey. There are two impressive valleys either side of an ancient crossroads, called The Devil's Punchbowl and Gibbet Hill.

A sailor was brutally murdered there and his killers hanged in chains and left to die of exposure or starvation in 1786.
Here are some photos I took there several years back, including the stone marking the spot of the gibbet. The Wikipedia page reports there is a curse on anyone who removes or damages the stone:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unknown_Sailor

Unsurprisingly, the place has a disturbing atmosphere, with people expressing feelings of anxiety and unwholesome sensation as they pass. The spot is rumoured to be haunted by one of the murderers, still begging for forgiveness and mercy:

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My neck of the woods! I believe they were hanged first, and then gibbeted. I have a little book somewhere, I'll check.
 
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