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Phantom Hitchhikers & Road Ghosts

I read a very interesting account of a road ghost (or ghosts, in this case) while researching the Roy Fulton case I linked to earlier in this thread this year.

It concerns a London chap who was motoring up to Cambridgeshire one evening in the mid 70s. As he made his way deeper into the countryside, he noticed a campfire ahead near the carriageway and, as if warming themselves around it, a group of ten or so men in Roman Legionary costumes, passing around what seemed to be some form of drink in a leather bag. The guys seemed pretty content, and the driver recalls them laughing and looking as if they were sharing jokes.

Recognising the oddness of the scene he'd just passed, the driver assumed they were probably re-enactors or extras from a nearby film shoot. It wasn't until he was a couple of miles closer to his destination that he realised he'd seen the trunk of a tree up against which one of the 'Romans' was leaning. Recognising that this was not something he'd expect from a re-enactor or film extra, he pulled into the nearest roadside pub and downed a double whiskey (applying quite a 70s approach to drinking and driving). Noticing the drivers's ashen face and anxious demeanour, the pub landlord merely said "if you've seen the Roman's mate, don't worry, you're the third who's spotted them today".

The account ends there and I can't find too much else about it online. Wondered if anyone else had come across this story and, if so, what they make of it. Frustratingly, I can't find an exact location for where this sighing occurred, so can't look into any historic Roman presence in the area.
 
I read a very interesting account of a road ghost (or ghosts, in this case) while researching the Roy Fulton case I linked to earlier in this thread this year.

It concerns a London chap who was motoring up to Cambridgeshire one evening in the mid 70s. As he made his way deeper into the countryside, he noticed a campfire ahead near the carriageway and, as if warming themselves around it, a group of ten or so men in Roman Legionary costumes, passing around what seemed to be some form of drink in a leather bag. The guys seemed pretty content, and the driver recalls them laughing and looking as if they were sharing jokes.

Recognising the oddness of the scene he'd just passed, the driver assumed they were probably re-enactors or extras from a nearby film shoot. It wasn't until he was a couple of miles closer to his destination that he realised he'd seen the trunk of a tree up against which one of the 'Romans' was leaning. Recognising that this was not something he'd expect from a re-enactor or film extra, he pulled into the nearest roadside pub and downed a double whiskey (applying quite a 70s approach to drinking and driving). Noticing the drivers's ashen face and anxious demeanour, the pub landlord merely said "if you've seen the Roman's mate, don't worry, you're the third who's spotted them today".

The account ends there and I can't find too much else about it online. Wondered if anyone else had come across this story and, if so, what they make of it. Frustratingly, I can't find an exact location for where this sighing occurred, so can't look into any historic Roman presence in the area.
The mid-70's sounds a bit early for re-enacting groups. The Sealed Knot started in 1971, but I think it took a few years for the idea to catch on.

On the other hand I don't see anything improbable about a member of a re-enactment group needing to be propped up by a tree.
 
The mid-70's sounds a bit early for re-enacting groups. The Sealed Knot started in 1971, but I think it took a few years for the idea to catch on.

On the other hand I don't see anything improbable about a member of a re-enactment group needing to be propped up by a tree.

Sorry, have re-read that passage and I seem to have mangled the meaning, somewhat! The driver could see the tree trunk through the 'Roman's' mid-riff - suggesting the figure was (at least partially) transparent.
 
The account ends there and I can't find too much else about it online. Wondered if anyone else had come across this story and, if so, what they make of it. Frustratingly, I can't find an exact location for where this sighing occurred, so can't look into any historic Roman presence in the area.
It's a nice story. It'd probably be about Ermine Street I suppose. And if not, it's certainly a good story to make up about Ermine Street. But I hope it's true :)
 
On Friday 4th of December 2020 Jackie Tonks and I were driving along the road that links Newport Pagnell to the village of North Crawley. It was around ten thirty at night. The North Crawley road becomes Brook End then becomes High Street and finally Crawley Street. We were about a mile beyond North Crawley on the Crawley Street area of the road. We had turned around and started to drive back towards North Crawley.
Suddenly a strange sensation passed through the car. The sensation seemed to 'enter' the car from the right effecting Jackie, who was driving. It was a cold, prickling feeling like standing next to a big open meat freezer crossed with pins and needles. Jackie felt it in her legs and side then it hit the right side of my face then crawling around my scalp, neck and finally to my left cheek. Imagine an ice cold pins and needles but with a dragging sensation as if something was moving over us. It lasted about twenty seconds. It was as if something moved through the car and us.
Jackie switched the interior light on and we both looked on the back seat. There was nothing there. We turned around and drove back through the area but the sensation did not repeat itself.
Jackie later told me that she was badly frightened and that she felt that something was in the car with us for a while. She confessed she nearly screamed and burst into tears. She said it was one of the most frightening things she had experienced and she had survived the Nepalese earthquake.
I felt no sensation of fear just the weird physical feeling of the ice cold prickle.
I make no claim that this was a 'ghost' (whatever they may be) or anything paranormal. I'm just reporting what happened. Jackie was effected for some time afterwards.

Ruth Roper Wylde claims to have encountered a frightening figure along the road.
Is Ruth Roper Wylde behind the excellent UK Paranormal database?
 
I have a tale to add to this thread. I think it counts as a road ghost (just)

This happened sometime in the 1950s. My father’s older brother, My uncle John, was cycling home on a push bike after visiting his girlfriend at the time. She lived in Knighton in Leicester and he lived not far away at Wigston fields. It was evening but not terribly late. As he pedalled up the road next to St Mary’s church an elderly gentleman came out of the church gates and started crossing the road. My uncle had to brake hard to avoid hitting him. As the elderly chap reached the middle of the road my Uncle, stationary waiting for him to cross, muttered under his breath something like “Come on you silly old sod. I want to get home tonight”
The elderly bloke looked right at him, as if he had heard what my Uncle said, and then promptly vanished.
My Uncle almost shat his pants. he raced off home and almost came a cropper a couple of times.
This tale is the stuff of legend in our family. My Grandma was able to confirm the condition of my Uncle when he came home that night. He was pale and shaking. when he walked in she immediately knew something was wrong and when she asked him he just said “I think I’ve just seen a ghost“

A few years ago I asked my Uncle about what he saw that evening, and he described the gent as being “old and doddery, bent over like he had a bad back. He wore a flat cap.“

My Uncle is still with us, elderly himself now. I’ve no doubt if I asked it he could tell me about it again.

I’m presuming this is the gateway….


0034A9BF-7151-4C58-ACA9-E964F6147B24.jpg
 
I don't think so. Its run by a guy up in Lancashire i think.
Thanks, I found a Mysteries and Monsters podcast featuring Ruth. Have somehow missed her books and really enjoy reading about road ghosts, so added to my reading list.

In 1985, when I was 17, I was walking at night from Chittlehampton to Umberleigh Parish Hall in North Devon. It's a walk of about two miles that passed without incident and which I had done more than a few times as the Parish Hall is next to the branch line station, our closest public transport in this rural part of the country. I was going to a friend's birthday party and it was already dark by the time I reached the humpbacked bridge over the railway track as I entered Umberleigh. There was clear, starlit night sky and no mist or fog.

A car was coming the other way as I reached the bridge and so I walked cautiously by the left hand parapet of the bridge, with the 'hump in front of me. As the car headlights swung up and over towards where I was stood, I distinctly saw the illuminated shadow of an old man wearing a cap and with a small Jack Russel type dog tucked in by his outside leg. Seem to think he had a walking stick, too. A not unfamiliar sight in rural Devon and I stopped as I feared he would walk into me. The car with its headlights went past, and I looked away so as not to lose my night vision. I immediately looked back again and the man had gone, vanished and with absolutely nowhere on that bridge he could have gone other than past me or in the direction I was going. The bridge is far too high to think of climbing over.

There wasn't an atmosphere and I just felt surprise at his disappearance, I was pretty certain about what I had witnessed and I intentionally walked that same route again at night soon afterwards, waiting for car to pass at that same spot but there was no repetition of what I had seen. I have since driven over that bridge many times as an adult and always keep an eye open...! However, I have searched and found no record of a ghostly figure on this bridge and with no further experiences or witnesses thus I must consider it was a possible case of pareidolia caused by the approaching headlights as they swung over. But maybe not...

When I related this experience to a work mate about a year later, she said that her boyfriend had been spooked out on that same road whilst driving alone at night by the feeling of someone being in the back of the car with him. Can't place it as happening at the bridge but was the same road.
 
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Thanks, I found a Mysteries and Monsters podcast featuring Ruth. Have somehow missed her books and really enjoy reading about road ghosts, so added to my reading list.

In 1985, when I was 17, I was walking at night from Chittlehampton to Umberleigh Parish Hall in North Devon. It's a walk of about two miles that passed without incident and which I had done more than a few times as the Parish Hall is next to the branch line station, our closest public transport in this rural part of the country. I was going to a friend's birthday party and it was already dark by the time I reached the humpbacked bridge over the railway track as I entered Umberleigh. There was clear, starlit night sky and no mist or fog.

A car was coming the other way as I reached the bridge and so I walked cautiously by the left hand parapet of the bridge, with the 'hump in front of me. As the car headlights swung up and over towards where I was stood, I distinctly saw the illuminated shadow of an old man wearing a cap and with a small Jack Russel type dog tucked in by his outside leg. Seem to think he had a walking stick, too. A not unfamiliar sight in rural Devon and I stopped as I feared he would walk into me. The car with its headlights went past, and I looked away so as not to lose my night vision. I immediately looked back again and the man had gone, vanished and with absolutely nowhere on that bridge he could have gone other than past me or in the direction I was going. The bridge is far too high to think of climbing over.

There wasn't an atmosphere and I just felt surprise at his disappearance, I was pretty certain about what I had witnessed and I intentionally walked that same route again at night soon afterwards, waiting for car to pass at that same spot but there was no repetition of what I had seen. I have since driven over that bridge many times as an adult and always keep an eye open...! However, I have searched and found no record of a ghostly figure on this bridge and with no further experiences or witnesses thus I must consider it was a possible case of pareidolia caused by the approaching headlights as they swung over. But maybe not...

When I related this experience to a work mate about a year later, she said that her boyfriend had been spooked out on that same road whilst driving alone at night by the feeling of someone being in the back of the car with him. Can't place it as happening at the bridge but was the same road.
That is really interesting. I'll pass it on to Rob Gandy, who writes about road ghosts, if that's ok with you.
 
That is really interesting. I'll pass it on to Rob Gandy, who writes about road ghosts, if that's ok with you.

Another one for Rob, it's the most convincing ghost sighting I have been told firsthand and took place in 1994 on the private driveway leading to Dartington Hall near Totnes in Devon.

Some background first, Dartington Hall is a 14th Century restored courtyard of buildings owned by a charitable trust and situated within an 850 acre country estate bordered by the River Dart. There are several ghosts attributed to this location that have appeared in print over the years, with one being a classic headless horseman seen by the lodge house at the entrance to the private drive up to the Hall. However, to the best of my knowledge this particular ghost has not been witnessed in living memory. The witness RC was a male in his mid-30s from Manchester who had recently left the Army, having joined up in his late teens. He was married with two small children and the Army outreach found him accommodation in Totnes. He was desperate for work and immediately got a job as a waiter/barman with the Dartington catering operation based at the Hall.

This is the experience RC related to me. On the morning in question he had not long started his job and was cycling from Totnes to the Hall for breakfast service, a journey of under two miles. It was late Autumn in 1994 and still dark, so RC was using his bike lights. However, when he reached and passed the turning for the private drive at about 07.00 am his front light was flickering and so he turned it off to save the last of the battery (having judged there was now sufficient dawn light to see his way and not much chance of meeting a car that early). The private drive drive passes the entrance to some new houses on the right and then you come to large ornate gates and signage. Passing through the gates the lodge house is immediately on the left. The single track drive then pass over a raised stone 'causeway' as it crosses a brook and a river meadow that is prone to flooding. There are speed humps and it is here the incident took place.

RC passed through the gates and looked up ahead. There ahead and to the side of the drive was what he described as the 'perfect silhouette' of a glowing white figure of a person in a full-length cape that he thought to be male. He related that it was if someone had painted the glowing figure with "white paint on a black background", so precise was its outline. RC had a moment of puzzlement and then fear as he realised 'it' was also floating several inches above the ground...! He was faced with the immediate dilemma of either slamming on his brakes and turning around or just cycling like hell past this apparition. He chose the latter and told me that as he looked back he saw this glowing caped figure beginning to dissipate ("fade away" were the words he used).

What impressed me most was RC did not then run around telling everyone he had seen a ghost. In fact, he told just one of the waitresses in confidence but she couldn't resist telling someone else and the story then leaked out. I got on well with RC and so was able to approach him, buy him a pint and get these details. By the way, the caped figure definitely had a head and was adamant it couldn't have been someone out for a walk, not least due to the glow. He would go on to cycle this route at all times of day and night and never found anything 'rational' to account for what he had seen. The guy was a down to earth Mancunian and not prone to exaggerations or fantasy and he never wavered from his first telling of what he experienced. The following year he found an HGV driving job back up North and moved on with his family. I have to say I believed him implicitly.

So please share and happy to provide any further details.
 
Dartington Hall is supposed to have / had a 'white lady' who appeared just before something unfortunate happened to one of the Champernowne family. But it wouldn't be much good wandering about along the drive early in the morning long after the Champernownes have left?! Excellent story. I'd have definitely have fallen off my bike.
 
Another one for Rob, it's the most convincing ghost sighting I have been told firsthand and took place in 1994 on the private driveway leading to Dartington Hall near Totnes in Devon.

Some background first, Dartington Hall is a 14th Century restored courtyard of buildings owned by a charitable trust and situated within an 850 acre country estate bordered by the River Dart. There are several ghosts attributed to this location that have appeared in print over the years, with one being a classic headless horseman seen by the lodge house at the entrance to the private drive up to the Hall. However, to the best of my knowledge this particular ghost has not been witnessed in living memory. The witness RC was a male in his mid-30s from Manchester who had recently left the Army, having joined up in his late teens. He was married with two small children and the Army outreach found him accommodation in Totnes. He was desperate for work and immediately got a job as a waiter/barman with the Dartington catering operation based at the Hall.

This is the experience RC related to me. On the morning in question he had not long started his job and was cycling from Totnes to the Hall for breakfast service, a journey of under two miles. It was late Autumn in 1994 and still dark, so RC was using his bike lights. However, when he reached and passed the turning for the private drive at about 07.00 am his front light was flickering and so he turned it off to save the last of the battery (having judged there was now sufficient dawn light to see his way and not much chance of meeting a car that early). The private drive drive passes the entrance to some new houses on the right and then you come to large ornate gates and signage. Passing through the gates the lodge house is immediately on the left. The single track drive then pass over a raised stone 'causeway' as it crosses a brook and a river meadow that is prone to flooding. There are speed humps and it is here the incident took place.

RC passed through the gates and looked up ahead. There ahead and to the side of the drive was what he described as the 'perfect silhouette' of a glowing white figure of a person in a full-length cape that he thought to be male. He related that it was if someone had painted the glowing figure with "white paint on a black background", so precise was its outline. RC had a moment of puzzlement and then fear as he realised 'it' was also floating several inches above the ground...! He was faced with the immediate dilemma of either slamming on his brakes and turning around or just cycling like hell past this apparition. He chose the latter and told me that as he looked back he saw this glowing caped figure beginning to dissipate ("fade away" were the words he used).

What impressed me most was RC did not then run around telling everyone he had seen a ghost. In fact, he told just one of the waitresses in confidence but she couldn't resist telling someone else and the story then leaked out. I got on well with RC and so was able to approach him, buy him a pint and get these details. By the way, the caped figure definitely had a head and was adamant it couldn't have been someone out for a walk, not least due to the glow. He would go on to cycle this route at all times of day and night and never found anything 'rational' to account for what he had seen. The guy was a down to earth Mancunian and not prone to exaggerations or fantasy and he never wavered from his first telling of what he experienced. The following year he found an HGV driving job back up North and moved on with his family. I have to say I believed him implicitly.

So please share and happy to provide any further details.
Thanks i've e-mailed Rob with both accounts. Really interesting.
 
Dartington Hall is supposed to have / had a 'white lady' who appeared just before something unfortunate happened to one of the Champernowne family. But it wouldn't be much good wandering about along the drive early in the morning long after the Champernownes have left?! Excellent story. I'd have definitely have fallen off my bike.

I think his Army training helped...!

A witness to the Dartington Grey Lady:

https://www.dartington.org/kay-starr/

"...during a performance of Milton’s ‘Cosmus’ in 1929… Kay went to fetch a forgotten item and saw a female figure in a long grey dress crossing the Banqueting Hall in front of her. The Hall at that time was a ruin. Kay stood still as the figure dissolved through the oak door into the private house. [Now the Elmhirst Centre]..."

Kate Caddy who collated these biographies is actually the granddaughter of Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst who both funded and founded the Dartington Trust and thus I can vouch for its authenticity.
 
I was once got mistaken for a road ghost. When I was living at my mum and dads I used to cycle to work. I used to leave the house at roughly 4.45 a.m. It was downhill for a while so I used to get a bit speed up. I used to cycle on the road until I heard a car coming then bunny hop onto the pavement and carry on cycling.
One morning a police car pulled me over and the policewoman asked me if I was cycling down the road the same time yesterday morning. I said yes i was. Then she told me she’d seen something (me) flit across the road ahead of her the morning before and it seemed to vanish. It obviously intrigued her enough to drive along the same road at the same time the next day.
 
What I have seen and am sure it is real though I have wondered is a scruffy British Racing Green
blower Bentley, always in bad weather going like stink in the fast opposite carriageway
hood down two old cocks in it both with Spitfire pilots goggles between J34 and J33 going South,
seen them about 3 times in the last two years hope they are still at it talk about growing old disgracefully.
I posted the above in another thread some time back and have not seen them since but
a mate as reported seeing them, he to had a feeling thet something was not quite right,
anyone else see them or know anything about them?
 
Just looking at a copy of the VMCC motorcycle mag, a chap in the letters
section asked if anyone else had a experience on the A68 just off the junction
with the M1M J58 for Darlington, there's a short stretch of dual carriageway
and at the time in the 90's a BP garage, he was about to turn right through
a gap in the barriers for the station and checked his mirrors and saw a red
VFR Honda coming up behind so waited for it to pass but it didn't and looking
round there was no sign of it and nowhere for it to have gone, it must have
left a impression for him to remember so long and bring it up after over 40 years.
:omr: :litg:
 
Just looking at a copy of the VMCC motorcycle mag, a chap in the letters
section asked if anyone else had a experience on the A68 just off the junction
with the M1M J58 for Darlington, there's a short stretch of dual carriageway
and at the time in the 90's a BP garage, he was about to turn right through
a gap in the barriers for the station and checked his mirrors and saw a red
VFR Honda coming up behind so waited for it to pass but it didn't and looking
round there was no sign of it and nowhere for it to have gone, it must have
left a impression for him to remember so long and bring it up after over 40 years.
:omr: :litg:
There is a stretch of old, disused road there (you can see it in the old photo on the left going through what is now the roundabout), but as you're talking of a 'modern' motorbike I'm not sure it's relevant (unless the road was altered there in recent times).
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/sid...=54.55783&lon=-1.59090&layers=6&right=BingHyb
 
It supposedly happened in the 1990's the road was a dual carriageway then but
he mentioned a BP station that seems to have gone, the bike mentioned was made
from 86 to 97 so would have been a current model at the time.
 
Is Ruth Roper Wylde behind the excellent UK Paranormal database?
Much as I'd love to be able to claim responsibility for that excellent resource - No, it's not me. If you hear me referring to databases on Podcasts or radio interviews, its my own databases after 3 decades of research on the subject. I had to go to multiple databases, because even using my personal criteria (I'm only really interested in phenomena that has occurred within my lifetime as I was fed up with reading "dusty" old accounts!) - there's an AWFUL lot of data! :D
 
Thanks, I found a Mysteries and Monsters podcast featuring Ruth. Have somehow missed her books and really enjoy reading about road ghosts, so added to my reading list.

In 1985, when I was 17, I was walking at night from Chittlehampton to Umberleigh Parish Hall in North Devon. It's a walk of about two miles that passed without incident and which I had done more than a few times as the Parish Hall is next to the branch line station, our closest public transport in this rural part of the country. I was going to a friend's birthday party and it was already dark by the time I reached the humpbacked bridge over the railway track as I entered Umberleigh. There was clear, starlit night sky and no mist or fog.

A car was coming the other way as I reached the bridge and so I walked cautiously by the left hand parapet of the bridge, with the 'hump in front of me. As the car headlights swung up and over towards where I was stood, I distinctly saw the illuminated shadow of an old man wearing a cap and with a small Jack Russel type dog tucked in by his outside leg. Seem to think he had a walking stick, too. A not unfamiliar sight in rural Devon and I stopped as I feared he would walk into me. The car with its headlights went past, and I looked away so as not to lose my night vision. I immediately looked back again and the man had gone, vanished and with absolutely nowhere on that bridge he could have gone other than past me or in the direction I was going. The bridge is far too high to think of climbing over.

There wasn't an atmosphere and I just felt surprise at his disappearance, I was pretty certain about what I had witnessed and I intentionally walked that same route again at night soon afterwards, waiting for car to pass at that same spot but there was no repetition of what I had seen. I have since driven over that bridge many times as an adult and always keep an eye open...! However, I have searched and found no record of a ghostly figure on this bridge and with no further experiences or witnesses thus I must consider it was a possible case of pareidolia caused by the approaching headlights as they swung over. But maybe not...

When I related this experience to a work mate about a year later, she said that her boyfriend had been spooked out on that same road whilst driving alone at night by the feeling of someone being in the back of the car with him. Can't place it as happening at the bridge but was the same road.
LOL you might have missed out on my books - but I've found your account whilst researching for Book #6..... Is this the B3227? Do you mind if I use it? And if so, do you prefer to be anonymous? I've nothing for that stretch of road on my databases, but I'll add it to my line of research and see if anything kicks up
 
There is a stretch of old, disused road there (you can see it in the old photo on the left going through what is now the roundabout), but as you're talking of a 'modern' motorbike I'm not sure it's relevant (unless the road was altered there in recent times).
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/sid...=54.55783&lon=-1.59090&layers=6&right=BingHyb
Got nothing on that stretch of road in my databases - nor that stretch of motorway. But I'll add it to the research list and see if anything comes up.
 
LOL you might have missed out on my books - but I've found your account whilst researching for Book #6..... Is this the B3227? Do you mind if I use it? And if so, do you prefer to be anonymous? I've nothing for that stretch of road on my databases, but I'll add it to my line of research and see if anything kicks up
Hi Ruth, great to hear from you, and I have actually read your books...!

Yes, it is the B3227 and use it by all means, I will pm you later today
 
I’ve just watched an episode of The Thames at Night with Tony Robinson (S1E3 Channel 5). They were cleaning the Blackwall tunnel and there was the mention of ghosts. One of the guys had seen a swirling thing another turned around to see a man behind him (the tunnel is closed off while they work) when he turned about again the man was gone. It might have been two who saw that.
 
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