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Ghosts From Modern Tragedies

There's also the story with police video where they hear a woman in a crashed car calling out to save her baby and even talk to each other about it, but upon accessing the car the woman was most definitely killed on impact, which the police did not know at the time.
 
It could be that they're walking around like regular people. They don't see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don't know they're dead.

Yes. The idea that ghosts may be utterly indistinguishable from the living is a somewhat disconcerting one. I had an imaginary movie scene play in my head last night, as I lay in bed thinking about this: where someone moving away from a disaster scene up a smoke swathed underground station escalator later realises that the crowd of other people around him consisted largely of the shades of people who had been unaware that they were dead.
 
A fair point but from the description of the car was the roof had caved in:

"It seemed to be in slow motion as it flipped over and would have continued rolling, except that the roof smashed into a lamppost stopping the car dead, flattening the roof. The lamppost, damaged by the force of the impact, fell over landing directly on the car"

Gilbert, Andy. Credible Witness: Paranormal Police Stories (p. 23). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

The fire brigade had to cut the roof off before they could even see inside the crushed vehicle and find the deceased individual. It doesn't sound to me the sort of accident you would run away from.
It can be astonishing to see some accidents from which people walk away with very minor injuries. Also add in the fact that anyone else in the car has probably been up to no good and has very good reason for not wanting to talk to the police, and that adrenaline can give you the impetus to get away very quickly even with fairly major injuries - and I think this may have been more likely.

Anyone saying 'oh yes, it was definitely him' is quite likely to be mistaken, given the circumstances. Someone of the same sex and similar build could be mistaken for the driver running away whilst everyone is still slightly shocked and processing what just happened.
 
It can be astonishing to see some accidents from which people walk away with very minor injuries. Also add in the fact that anyone else in the car has probably been up to no good and has very good reason for not wanting to talk to the police, and that adrenaline can give you the impetus to get away very quickly even with fairly major injuries - and I think this may have been more likely.

Anyone saying 'oh yes, it was definitely him' is quite likely to be mistaken, given the circumstances. Someone of the same sex and similar build could be mistaken for the driver running away whilst everyone is still slightly shocked and processing what just happened.
I feel this one has become a bit like one of those 'Uncanny" cases that initially hit you between both eyes but then as you and the show analyse what happened the doubts start to creep in. The 'ghost' exiting from the passenger side is undoubtedly a red flag given only the driver was found deceased in the wreck and thus presumably still in the driver's seat.
 
I feel this one has become a bit like one of those 'Uncanny" cases that initially hit you between both eyes but then as you and the show analyse what happened the doubts start to creep in. The 'ghost' exiting from the passenger side is undoubtedly a red flag given only the driver was found deceased in the wreck and thus presumably still in the driver's seat.
Yes, it's always disappointing when you pick up on a story that seems inexplicable, only to find that it's more than likely just misinterpretation or something! Sigh. There are true mysteries out there though, we just have to find them.
 
I just referred back to Credible Witness on my Kindle and two passages stick out:

I saw a person get out of the passenger side and run straight across the road in front of me, causing me to slam on the brakes as he was lit up by my headlights and I just managed to avoid hitting him. I saw the person run away over the road in front of me [...] I immediately recognised the person as someone I had arrested recently and I had a good view of him in my headlights. The police officer I was with saw the lad as well and he also knew him by name.

[...] the officers who had been at the front of the pursuit came running over to me and said that no one had got out of the car and neither could they have.


It seems the witness had a very good view of the person leaving the car, and other attending officers were insistent that no-one had.
 
I just referred back to Credible Witness on my Kindle and two passages stick out:

I saw a person get out of the passenger side and run straight across the road in front of me, causing me to slam on the brakes as he was lit up by my headlights and I just managed to avoid hitting him. I saw the person run away over the road in front of me [...] I immediately recognised the person as someone I had arrested recently and I had a good view of him in my headlights. The police officer I was with saw the lad as well and he also knew him by name.

[...] the officers who had been at the front of the pursuit came running over to me and said that no one had got out of the car and neither could they have.


It seems the witness had a very good view of the person leaving the car, and other attending officers were insistent that no-one had.
I don't feel we can say "case closed" as that is quite solid testimony. Another possibility is that the car had swung around as it flipped and in fact the 'ghost' got out of the driver's side and this got lost in the re-telling (although this is supposition, of course). It is a shame that we are unable to obtain further details unless someone wants to dig down into "road deaths north of Birmingham about 30 years ago", I guess there will be a record somewhere...?

Edit; add in stolen car and police pursuit to that's each, too. This book was published in 2017 and it states '25 years" ago, so maybe early-90s?
 
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I just referred back to Credible Witness on my Kindle and two passages stick out:

I saw a person get out of the passenger side and run straight across the road in front of me, causing me to slam on the brakes as he was lit up by my headlights and I just managed to avoid hitting him. I saw the person run away over the road in front of me [...] I immediately recognised the person as someone I had arrested recently and I had a good view of him in my headlights. The police officer I was with saw the lad as well and he also knew him by name.

[...] the officers who had been at the front of the pursuit came running over to me and said that no one had got out of the car and neither could they have.


It seems the witness had a very good view of the person leaving the car, and other attending officers were insistent that no-one had.
It's compelling, but I'm always wary of 'I immediately recognised them as...'

I've misidentified my own children on occasion (as in, seen someone walking past, thought 'Oh, that's Will, what's he doing here, he's supposed to be at work! only to see them again and realise that it wasn't Will after all, it was another generic mid-twenties male with stubble, glasses and a round face). And I'm pretty sure I'm not unique in that (please, everyone, tell me it's not just me...)
 
It's compelling, but I'm always wary of 'I immediately recognised them as...'

I've misidentified my own children on occasion (as in, seen someone walking past, thought 'Oh, that's Will, what's he doing here, he's supposed to be at work! only to see them again and realise that it wasn't Will after all, it was another generic mid-twenties male with stubble, glasses and a round face). And I'm pretty sure I'm not unique in that (please, everyone, tell me it's not just me...)
I still 'see' a close relation who died 18 years ago, walking around like a regular person. It's never really them of course.
 
Yes. The idea that ghosts may be utterly indistinguishable from the living is a somewhat disconcerting one. I had an imaginary movie scene play in my head last night, as I lay in bed thinking about this: where someone moving away from a disaster scene up a smoke swathed underground station escalator later realises that the crowd of other people around him consisted largely of the shades of people who had been unaware that they were dead.
We're back to the revered 'don't know they're dead' movie/TV trope.

To quote just one example, it's done beautifully in an episode of MASH.

That plot line was inspired by a Twilight Zone episode featuring a group of variously injured Civil War soldiers walking along a road. They meet civilians on their way. Guess what they all had in common?

This recurrent theme suggests to me a belief, or perhaps a hope, that the dead will carry on in another life with their personalities intact. We haven't really lost them.
 
I found this relating to Kings Cross.

‘The labyrinthine mass of tunnels that tie together the two mainline stations of Kings Cross and St Pancras have a dark and tragic history. On 18th November 1987, a small blaze, which began at around 7.30 pm beneath an escalator, exploded into a massive fireball, creating an inferno that burned until the early hours of the next morning. 31 people lost their lives and 100 had to be taken to hospital. Hundreds more, trapped deep in the flaming station, managed to escape on still-running Tube trains.

This catastrophe might explain an apparition seen by some passengers in one of the tunnels leading into the Underground station. A woman – aged about 25 – dressed in jeans and 1980s-style clothing, has been spotted with her arms outstretched, sobbing uncontrollably. During the first reported encounter with her, in 1998, as passer-by stopped to ask the woman if she was all right. The passer-by was startled when another passenger walked through the woman as if she wasn’t there. The young woman then disappeared, but several passengers have seen her since.’

From here. https://www.davidcastleton.net/london-underground-haunted-stations-ghosts-tube/
 
I found this relating to Kings Cross.

‘The labyrinthine mass of tunnels that tie together the two mainline stations of Kings Cross and St Pancras have a dark and tragic history. On 18th November 1987, a small blaze, which began at around 7.30 pm beneath an escalator, exploded into a massive fireball, creating an inferno that burned until the early hours of the next morning. 31 people lost their lives and 100 had to be taken to hospital. Hundreds more, trapped deep in the flaming station, managed to escape on still-running Tube trains.

This catastrophe might explain an apparition seen by some passengers in one of the tunnels leading into the Underground station. A woman – aged about 25 – dressed in jeans and 1980s-style clothing, has been spotted with her arms outstretched, sobbing uncontrollably. During the first reported encounter with her, in 1998, as passer-by stopped to ask the woman if she was all right. The passer-by was startled when another passenger walked through the woman as if she wasn’t there. The young woman then disappeared, but several passengers have seen her since.’

From here. https://www.davidcastleton.net/london-underground-haunted-stations-ghosts-tube/
There have been more tales of paranormal goings-on at Kings Cross following the fire, one bring in the IHTM books about the ticket barriers opening and closing by themselves on the anniversary of the fire and a possible premonition of the Kings Cross Fire submitted by a forum member:
 
There have been more tales of paranormal goings-on at Kings Cross following the fire, one bring in the IHTM books about the ticket barriers opening and closing by themselves on the anniversary of the fire and a possible premonition of the Kings Cross Fire submitted by a forum member:
The premonition one was only by about an hour (40 minutes) and took the form of an announcement on a train approaching London that there was a fire at Kings Cross and that the station was closed (iirc). Once the timeline of events was published they were able to work out that the announcement had come before the fire had even started. So did only that person hear the announcement or was the premonition on the part of the guard, perhaps?

Here is another chilling one from this forum:

"A few years ago, my ex boyfriend nearly fainted in Kings Cross. He said he could hear people screaming and a strange noise. It turns out that he was standing near the spot where many people died in the Kings Cross fire. He didn't make this connection for a few years."

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/spooks-on-the-tube-ghosts-of-london-underground.20197/
 
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