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Ghost Cars / Road Vehicles: Sightings; Videos; Etc. (Not IHTM)

I don't know what kind of camera this was recorded on, but something I will say from the pov of using a helmet cam with a wide angle lens is that going from a wide angle view to non-wide angle when you process a video can really screw with the sense of perspective without otherwise making the video look 'wrong'.

Makes me wonder if something similar has happened here.
 
When I watch it I have a problem with the shadow under the car in front. It seems quite well defined, I can see the wheels and the bottom of the car frame. Then it kind of goes indistinct. Almost "blobby" which I'd associate with effects work.

Neat though....nice idea for a tire advert or maybe BMW's braking system.
 
I went over and over this video but there was nowhere that black car could have come from. I was looking at all the turn offs, all the other roads etc but it literally just appeared out of nowhere. You can do just about anything with recorded footage I suppose but if it hasn't been tampered with and its difficult to see how it could have been tampered with, then maybe we actually did come across a time traveller.
 
Crookshank said:
I went over and over this video but there was nowhere that black car could have come from. ... maybe we actually did come across a time traveller.
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The mystery car certainly did appear from another time - i.e., the missing second on the camera's timestamp. Its appearance corresponds with a one second skip on the timer. :twisted:
 
A fun little one this, and it might all be down to a trick of perspective. But it does look very odd

Link to Gif with frame by frame samples can be seen here

I'm shooting off to work, so if anyone can find the video version, I'll buy them an imaginary internet pint!

LATERS PEEPS

Mr Poultice out:
 
It has definitely been on here before and discussed.

For me it is either CGI trickery, or more likely an illusion. The ghost car travelling at speed is hidden behind the other two cars. If you watch the red car in the right of the frame seems to brake just before the ghost car appears, suggesting it has gone across the front of the red car before it appears to us as viewers.

At the very start as well you can see between the green light and the stationary traffic a light moving quite fast which could be the car coming from that direction. Most logical is that the car has come largely directly towards the camera, hiding it behind the cars we can see, and then swerves across the path of the moving cars.

Would be good to know where exactly this happened to get a Google map of the road layout.

EDIT: Good old internet... https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@55.64111 ... !2e0?hl=en

Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2_t6v0zrIw#t=17

And two sites that give a pretty good explanation of what is probably happening:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQivc9o9zn4#t=20
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunk ... sion.3473/

And a video simulation to show how it is all possible...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjXpKjmdZgo#t=70
 
rynner2 said:
Source
thisiscornwall.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=79373&command=displayContent&sourceNode=78925&contentPK=6038328
Link is dead. No archived version found. The MIA article is presumed to be quoted in full above.
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This quote is lifted directly from the book by Michael Williams, "Ghost Hunting South-west", ISBN 1-899383-61-1
 
CALGACUS03 said:
Hi,

Regarding ghost cars; NilesCalder posted a link on the first page of this thread (as it currently stands) regarding a ghost car in the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland. The link was from The Scotsman newspaper site (and is now dead :( ) but I recall reading a similar article in The Scotsman print edition many (many) years ago.

I was wondering if anyone else saw it (or did I just imagine it?).

It was 17 years ago, or so, and appeared in the Saturday supplement of The Scotsman. It was a double page spread that gave a detailed account of the ghost car - and more importantly, a possible explanation.

The article started by saying that for many years people on one of the Scottish islands had seen an ancient, black car, an Austin or similar, that would disappear from the single track roads at places where there was no chance of a car turning off into a junction, etc. Thus far, the article merely repeated details that I had read in books, etc. about the ghost.

The article then went on though to say that after the islanders had become almost used to the haunting, a new inhabitant came to the island (a minister or doctor?) who drove an impeccably kept example of just such a vintage car.

One day the minister (I'll call him for sake of argument) was driving the car to the port to catch the ferry across to the mainland to do some shopping, when he saw two of his parishioners walking, with their bags in the same direction. He stopped and, finding out they were also getting the ferry, he offered them a lift.

When they got to the ferry, it was one of those "turntable" types (similar to this one) that were common on the west coast of Scotland in the 1960s and 70s. When the minister got there, the brakes on his car failed, and the car plunged off the deck and into the water. While he managed to struggle out, his two passengers, encumbered by bags and coats both drowned, although the water was shallow enough for their would-be rescuers to stand on the roof of the car while they tried to smash the windows with axes hurriedly handed down from the ferry.

And according to the article, the ghost car continues to be seen, making it's early appearances harbingers of the accident to come, and it's current manifestations commemorative of it.

Now: the above story seems just too good to possibly be true. But I wasn't aware at the time of there being anything in the article to mark it as deliberate fiction. As far as I can remember, the Saturday supplement of The Scotsman wasn't in the habit of printing fiction stories anyway.

Did anybody else see this story? I can't believe that I imagined it - given that I recall all of the above (just (of course :roll: ) nothing actually useful like dates or names, etc.

Help..!

CAL.
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Replying to a very,very old post here, but I have found the details on this incident further to recalling the documentary "The Ghostman of Skye", mentioned previously on this thread.

The accident happened on 13 April 1959 at Kyleakin when a car went off the ferry 'Broadford', after hitting a ramp, into about 30 feet of water and four passengers drowned.

This was clearly the incident being alluded to by several people in the documentary as connected to the Skye 'ghost car' - although interestingly the ghost car itself turns up in a book published several years before 1959, where it is stated to have first been seen in 1947. I think we might have another case of a long-maintained ghost story, or phenomena, which has had a few different stories attached to it over the years. Alternatively we could see it as a possible example of 'second sight' - a foreshadowing. Seeing it mentioned in print in 1953, years before the accident, really is quite strange.

The 'ghost' car itself was supposedly a 1930s Austin.
 
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I think there are ghost car stories in a haunted roads thread. I was interested to read about one car/driver spotted haunting a certain area as it looks like it happened near where I had a spooky (but not likely to be supernatural) experience.... I don't think I had ever heard the stories when I lived in the area.

My experience was really really freaky at the time....to me (and I was alone). I think that belongs in another thread....
 
Earthly oddity said:
I think there are ghost car stories in a haunted roads thread. I was interested to read about one car/driver spotted haunting a certain area as it looks like it happened near where I had a spooky (but not likely to be supernatural) experience.... I don't think I had ever heard the stories when I lived in the area.

My experience was really really freaky at the time....to me (and I was alone). I think that belongs in another thread....
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C'mon, spit it out.
 
SimonBurchell said:
C'mon, spit it out.
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It really belongs in the thread related to funny/strange occurrences that may or may not be connected to something one has imbibed earlier..... :hahazebs:

Most of it probably reflects a strange feeling of paranoia and concern for ones safety when walking through a town in the early hours of the morning alone....(I really took stupid risks regularly when I was younger). The journey from one side of town to another took what seemed to be far too long and by the time I got back to safety my senses had been working overtime.....

But reading on here about a ghostly car driver that has been seen haunting a specific road in that area was a bit strange.....all these years later.
 
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One thing about the Skye 'ghost car' is that it is usually associated with the road from Portree to Sligachan. However an older (1960s) reference states that the road between Sconser, Sligachan and Drynoch (the A863) is the site where the car was seen.

The family who died in 1959 (and were presumably, according to the story, being driven by the minister) were from Carbost: if he had picked them up there they would have driven down the A863. So - any 'ghost car' seen near Portree is in the wrong place.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
There are stories of phantom/ghost cars seen crashing into ditches and hedges that lead people to find long-undiscovered car wreaks.

https://hauntedspotslibrary.wordpre...r-accident-leads-to-real-body-surrey-england/

Not checked the sources on this blog btw.
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This was the A3 case:

"On December 11, 2002 at roughly 7:20 P.M, drivers on the A3 in Surrey began to call in about an accident involving a car that had had swerved off the road with its headlights blazing and went into the underbrush down the embankment off the side of the highway at Burpham near Guildford."

The Surrey Police have since stated it was just the one driver who called in and it is simply repetition on the internet of the original story that has made it become multiple drivers. But everything else is correct: the Police attended the scene and eventually found the maroon car buried deep in the undergrowth of a ditch. It had been there undiscovered for five months and the remains of a young petty criminal wanted by the Police for an alleged robbery lay nearby.

So it is a definite mystery involving either a time slip or a ghost car or one massive coincidence.

However, some commentators have suggested there may have been a second person in the car who escaped (relatively) unharmed and who didn't want to get involved with the law. Then five months later he/she rang them in a state of remorse with their story in order to guide them to his remains. Who knows, they may have even caused the crash through an argument, then allowed five months to pass in the hope that any of their blood/DNA will have dissipated from the scene. It has also been claimed that the fact the young man's skeleton was found on the embankment and not in the car suggested he was dragged from the wreck by a second person.

Unless the original witness who rang the Police comes forward it is hard to rule out foul play:

https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/a3-ghost-crash-remembered-10-4807754

https://www.seanwyatt.co.uk/Ghost-crash
 
I've found another version of the Skye 'ghost car' story, related at the end of a 1995 newspaper article. In this particular telling the "wee black car" isn't seen again after the accident, making it very much in the tradition of Highland 'second sight' stories.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
This was the A3 case:

"On December 11, 2002 at roughly 7:20 P.M, drivers on the A3 in Surrey began to call in about an accident involving a car that had had swerved off the road with its headlights blazing and went into the underbrush down the embankment off the side of the highway at Burpham near Guildford."

The Surrey Police have since stated it was just the one driver who called in and it is simply repetition on the internet of the original story that has made it become multiple drivers. But everything else is correct: the Police attended the scene and eventually found the maroon car buried deep in the undergrowth of a ditch. It had been there undiscovered for five months and the remains of a young petty criminal wanted by the Police for an alleged robbery lay nearby.

So it is a definite mystery involving either a time slip or a ghost car or one massive coincidence.

However, some commentators have suggested there may have been a second person in the car who escaped (relatively) unharmed and who didn't want to get involved with the law. Then five months later he/she rang them in a state of remorse with their story in order to guide them to his remains. Who knows, they may have even caused the crash through an argument, then allowed five months to pass in the hope that any of their blood/DNA will have dissipated from the scene. It has also been claimed that the fact the young man's skeleton was found on the embankment and not in the car suggested he was dragged from the wreck by a second person.

Unless the original witness who rang the Police comes forward it is hard to rule out foul play:

https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/a3-ghost-crash-remembered-10-4807754

https://www.seanwyatt.co.uk/Ghost-crash
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Another interpretation is that a car might have gone off the road at a well-known RTA "black spot", e.g. a tight bend or a place where ice formed more readily (it was December). This car was removed by its own driver between the time of report and the time of police attendance.

On arrival, the police searched and found a previous car which had gone off the road at the black spot, complete with dead driver.

This might seem unlikely, but I am aware of an identical incident: A car went through a hedge on a tight bend. When it was recovered, it was found to have been resting atop a second car, complete with dead driver at the wheel. A few minutes' Googling has regrettably not enabled me to find a link.

maximus otter
 
I have to say when I read about the A3 case I thought there was something immediately dodgy about it. An anonymous caller giving notification they'd seen a car go off the road at a spot where an accident from months earlier was then discovered? I can't help but think there's some foul play involved.
 
As for the Skye 'ghost car', the last bit of the puzzle seems to be in place. The minister involved was Rev. Donald Alick Maclean, and his own brief account of the tragic 1959 accident is given in the course of this biographical newspaper article about his long and occasionally controversial career.

Some of the various versions of the story out there (nearly all of which are inaccurate in some detail or other) involve the minister either dying himself or subsequently going mad. By his own admission Maclean, perhaps understandably, had a "breakdown" afterwards, but did return to his job and eventually left the Free Presbyterians for the Church of Scotland.

Now as regards the 'second sight' bit: the 'car' was undoubtedly seen well before 1959, as it was recorded in a 1953 book. Various people claimed to have seen it, including a lorry driver in 1948 in daylight, the local doctor, and the postman, who saw an "old Austin" with a single lamp at the front and a glow in the interior that revealed there was no-one in it. There does seem to be a story out there of an earlier accident of a farmworker who died after crashing his car into a wall: there is also an inference that one of the early witnesses, a Dr Alan Macdonald, originally made the story up in the 1940s. But whatever earlier stories there were, the community at large clearly later adopted the 'ghost car' as a foreshadowing of Maclean's accident - in line with the Gaelic cultural understanding of these apparitions. To me this fits very much with the idea of such stories serving as a sort of collective way of commemorating or processing the memory of an a event or individual.

You might also in this case throw in the old tradition of ghostly chariots, carts, or lights serving as a premonition in Gaelic folklore. This was a largely Gaelic speaking community at the time, particularly in Maclean's own circles.

That's the sociological bit, anyway. As for the phenomenon itself, many of the sightings of the 'car' seem to be mainly of a light moving along the road toward the witness before vanishing. Some, eg an early report by an army officer, describe a vehicle travelling too fast to be a normal car. While this almost sounds like an 'earthlight', I'd like to propose that on the twisting hill roads of the area, it might under some circumstances be possible to see a sort of mirage of very distant vehicle lights from a bit of road that happens to align with the section the witness is on. It might also explain why sightings seem to have tailed off with the upgrade of roads in recent years. Of course, this doesn't explain some of the stranger accounts.
 
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SimonBurchell said:
C'mon, spit it out.
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Weirdly enough when I went to check on the stories of ghost car with driver I realised it was a van not a car. And the event that happened nearest where my weird experience was was of a kind of "purple/lilac wisp fluttering across the road" which the car occupant felt was a female apparition....
Unfortunately for me I felt a sense of impending fear/dread/doom and a black shadowy "thing." I might have preferred a lilac wisp!

Anyway my tale is now on the thread about drunk/stoned weird experiences.
 
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