Ghost Like A Sheet Or Balloon

[SimonBurchell]

This is really annoying me. I am reading The Road Map of British Ghosts Volume 2 by Ruth Roper Wylde. In the section on Warwickshire, page 292 on my Kindle, there is this, from the early 2000's:

The married couple and their baby daughter were travelling by car on the B4091 just past the Norton Motorbike Museum one night [...] they were driving at the speed limit when something white came over the grass embankment at the side of the road and came straight at the car. As it passed over the car, they both saw that whatever it was appeared to have a human face.

The husband was driving, so the wife turned in her seat to look out of the back window of the car. To her horror, she saw the thing turn around in the road behind them and come chasing after them. At this point the couple, rather unsurprisingly, started to freak out and the husband hit the accelerator and tried to speed away from whatever it was.

They described it [...] as having a movement that looked like a curtain blowing in the window with that sort of up and down undulation that blown fabric has. The white object actually came up alongside their car despite their increased speed, before veering off and disappearing from view.

The pair actually drove straight round to my correspondent's house at the time as he lived close to where the incident occurred, and he remembers them being visibly shaken by what they had experienced.

Now the annoying thing is that I would swear that I have read an account of something similar happening, but in West Sussex, on the B2166 between Runcton and Bognor Regis... but of course I cannot now find that account, and I'm not sure if I read it on Kindle, or in a hard copy book, or in the FT. As I recall, the figure in that case came diagonally across the road, and continued across the fields on the far side. Both encounters are so unusual that they have stuck in my mind. It may be that I have read an account of the Warwickshire encounter somewhere previously, and my memory is playing tricks with me... but I was so certain of the West Sussex location because it is an area familiar to me. Has anyone come across it?

 

[SimonBurchell]

Got it! It's from Sean Tudor's excellent The Ghosts of Blue Bell Hill, pp. 321-322... not quite as similar as I thought but:

Julia Nash encountered a similar apparition on a country road (the B2166) between Chichester and Pagham, West Sussex. It was around 8.30pm on a November evening. the road was busy, with cars in front and behind hers, and a line of traffic coming the other way. After Runcton Nursery the road enters a sweeping S-bend section that is marked by warning chevrons and a white village sign for Lagness. The verge on the left is lined with trees and bushes; the right is flanked by a wide grass verge and a stream that flows parallel to the road. Julia takes up the story:

I saw something black flapping at the corner of the front passenger part of the windscreen and then just a head and shoulders in a black hood and cloak came across the bonnet about half way and looked at me with dark, amused eyes. The car didn't go through it; it was carrying it along on the bonnet. At first I thought it was a pheasant, then a human, so I was shouting at it to get out of the way. I had no option but to keep going because of the heavy traffic. I must have been travelling about 35-40 mph. We went into the bend and then down the road and got to the long hedge on the right side of the road [opposite the entrance to Roundstone nurseries, around 200 metres down the road] and then the ghost dissolved into that hedge in a kind of jagged way, having crossed the line of cars coming in the opposite direction. I remember it was still just the head and shoulders in the black hood and cloak, and the head turned to the left before it disappeared, as though it was looking at the traffic coming towards it. The whole incident must have taken only 10-15 seconds.

As I've said, surely other drivers coming in the opposite direction must have seen it as it crossed in front of them, and of course the driver behind me. It was a solid ghost, not transparent at all, but the features were indistinct except for the eyes which were dark brown. The face in the hood was sallow and fairly long and I didn't see a mouth and nose. I'd say it looked like a 30-year-old man, but probably not a monk. I felt a bit stunned by it all but not exactly frightened. I accepted it was a ghost although I've never seen one before. But it must be fairly unusual to see a ghost on a busy road.

Julia indicated that the figure, which she thought resembled a poacher or smuggler from two centuries or so ago, had stared straight at her 'with dark eyes that were definitely amused' - as if, she reflected afterwards, he had hoped she would have a collision - which fortunately did not happen. Julia later heard that the figure had been seen previously and was known to some of the locals. She was sufficiently intrigued to look into the accident record of the area but this proved unremarkable.

There then follows some commentary upon the location, significance of the stream etc. Not remarked upon, but possibly significant, is that the civil parish boundary follows the stream.

 

[Tunn11]

Weren't there a pair in Southwest Scotland who reported a whole set of weird apparitions coming at then in their car but which vanished when they stopped and got out?
It sounded to me like carbon monoxide poisoning from the exhaust or internal reflections in the windscreen, but an odd one just the same.

 

[catseye]

Mine wasn't a road ghost, but I had a 'sheet' ghost!

I was a young child, so may have misinterpreted something I saw, but the situation was never repeated and I can't for the life of me think what I actually DID see, unless it was purely imagination....

I was upstairs alone, going to the bathroom. Then I turned off the light and went to go back downstairs (I can't remember if the landing light was on, but probably, our stairs were a death trap even in the daylight). As I went, I turned to look in through the doorway of my parents' bedroom, and saw, reflected in the full length mirror of my dad's wardrobe, a white shape which, as I watched, crumpled down and vanished into the floor. It looked exactly like the reflection of a white sheet being held up and then dropped. There was nothing to cause the reflection - the wardrobe was right at the back of the room and so I could see the rest of the room as I looked.

So, ghost like a sheet, but only a reflection of it, and then vanishing.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

The classic 1968 film of the M.R. James story "Whistle and I'll Come to You" has to be the ultimate ghost like a sheet!

 

[Floyd]

I was upstairs alone, going to the bathroom. Then I turned off the light and went to go back downstairs......, our stairs were a death trap even in the daylight).

'Upstairs stairs' or 'downstairs upstairs stairs', perchance?

 

[catseye]

'Upstairs stairs' or 'downstairs upstairs stairs', perchance?

This was in my parents' house, where we only had the usual number of upstairses.

 

[RuthRoperWylde]

This is really annoying me. I am reading The Road Map of British Ghosts Volume 2 by Ruth Roper Wylde. In the section on Warwickshire, page 292 on my Kindle, there is this, from the early 2000's:





Now the annoying thing is that I would swear that I have read an account of something similar happening, but in West Sussex, on the B2166 between Runcton and Bognor Regis... but of course I cannot now find that account, and I'm not sure if I read it on Kindle, or in a hard copy book, or in the FT. As I recall, the figure in that case came diagonally across the road, and continued across the fields on the far side. Both encounters are so unusual that they have stuck in my mind. It may be that I have read an account of the Warwickshire encounter somewhere previously, and my memory is playing tricks with me... but I was so certain of the West Sussex location because it is an area familiar to me. Has anyone come across it?

I didn't think it would have been this particular apparition you had read about before, as this is the first time this couple had told their story to anyone as far as I am aware. I might have talked about it on a podcast maybe? Also - there's a similar (ish) description on the A34 later in the same one of my books.....

 

[RuthRoperWylde]

Weren't there a pair in Southwest Scotland who reported a whole set of weird apparitions coming at then in their car but which vanished when they stopped and got out?
It sounded to me like carbon monoxide poisoning from the exhaust or internal reflections in the windscreen, but an odd one just the same.

I think that might have been on the A75 Kinloch Straight (I think that's what its called... might be misremembering..) but yes, they allegedly had all sorts of odd things happen in a short stretch of the road.

 

[RuthRoperWylde]

The classic 1968 film of the M.R. James story "Whistle and I'll Come to You" has to be the ultimate ghost like a sheet!

That story terrified me as a kid!

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Weren't there a pair in Southwest Scotland who reported a whole set of weird apparitions coming at then in their car but which vanished when they stopped and got out?
It sounded to me like carbon monoxide poisoning from the exhaust or internal reflections in the windscreen, but an odd one just the same.

I have read this account. If the two witnesses came out on the record and were prepared to be interviewed then I might go with it, but as it is it sound s more like a work of fiction and somewhat resembles a sub-plot from a Stephen King novel about a motorist who shortcuts along a logging road and all sorts of weird things happen. But, and its a big BUT, I haven't met the witnesses and stranger things have been claimed by seemingly reliable people...