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Phantom Hitchhikers & Road Ghosts

I grew up near here, but only found out about this one when I was in my 20s;

The road outside the Eyre Arms at Hassop, Derbyshire (B6001) is said to be haunted by a cavalier. Hassop Hall was occupied by royalist troops in the Civil War but some years ago a man was killed in a car crash near the pub. Just before he died he told rescuers that he had swerved to avoid a horse-drawn carriage coming straight towards him but then it disappeared. On at spooky misty night In the 1980s a stranger ran into the Eyre Arms at Hassop begging for help and said he had just knocked down a pedestrian in his car. Everyone rushed outside but there was no trace of anyone, alive or dead.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.2...4!1stsiQGR43-AyS7PqD8GWn-Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
 
Floyd1 said:
I grew up near here, but only found out about this one when I was in my 20s;

The road outside the Eyre Arms at Hassop, Derbyshire (B6001) is said to be haunted by a cavalier. Hassop Hall was occupied by royalist troops in the Civil War but some years ago a man was killed in a car crash near the pub. Just before he died he told rescuers that he had swerved to avoid a horse-drawn carriage coming straight towards him but then it disappeared. On at spooky misty night In the 1980s a stranger ran into the Eyre Arms at Hassop begging for help and said he had just knocked down a pedestrian in his car. Everyone rushed outside but there was no trace of anyone, alive or dead.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.2...4!1stsiQGR43-AyS7PqD8GWn-Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
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I know that road well. There's a steepish bend before the Eyre Arms - just by the entrance to Hassop Hall itself - which I think is a bit of a crash magnet. It's not a 100 metres away from where myself and an ex were almost wiped out by an insane driver towing a trailer, back in the 90's. We were a split second from being made road wraiths ourselves.
 
Two of the experiences my late dad had - which I've related on the Derbyshire & Peak District Ghosts - qualify as road ghosts, I think.

It's the first story of his (#30) that most gives me the shivers, but those relevant here are the latter two (posts#31and #32):

Story #2:

Heading south towards Warslow from the village of Longnor in the Staffordshire Peak District, you travel along what is initially a very straight section of road (now part of the B5053). Soon after leaving the village you reach a small bridge which crosses the river Manifold. My dad was a little older here – and what made it stick in his memory even more than it might was that it took place on his first ever ride in a motor car (he’d been in motorised vehicles before, but never a domestic one). The vehicle was open topped, and it was a fine sunny day. As they approached the bridge, but still at some distance, my father saw very distinctly a lady in light coloured clothes (yes, another one) standing in the road in the middle of the bridge. As the vehicle approached she moved to the side and stood up against the low wall, smiling at the occupants of the vehicle as the car passed by. My dad looked at her as they are passed, blinked…and she was gone. When he asked the other people in the car if they had seen the lady, they had no idea what he was talking about - no-one else had seen her, despite the fact that a car passing a person on this bridge would probably be less than six feet away from them.

Notes: I have a vague recollection of hearing at least one other ghost story associated with this bridge, but cannot recall any details or find anything online. There is one story which might be relevant - if, that is, it hadn’t been attributed to the wrong Longnor: white ladies and water appear in both – but the source I’ve found concerns the Shropshire rather than Staffordshire Longnor and others appear to have conflated the two. I got quite excited when I read Rob Gandy’s article in the latest FT (389) - it includes an experience with similar elements in an unknown location, which it is within the realms of possibility could have been here – but other aspects of the tale do not really fit.
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I’ve already related my dad’s final story, some time back, on the Weird Things That Have Multiple Witnesses? thread. I’ve just done a straight cut and paste of that here:

My dad had an experience which involved several other witnesses...and a bus.

He is considerably older than my mum and served in WW2. Sometime in the early years of the war he was riding a bus to his home high up in the White Peak. It was late at night and pitch dark. There were less than half a dozen other passengers, and, of course, the driver.

At one point on their route the bus had to negotiate a steep hill with a hairpin bend which leads down into to a longish and very straight section of road. This area is notorious for accidents - which is probably due to the nature of the road - but also has a headless horseman tale associated with it.

Anyway, just as the bus levels out onto the straight section my dad and the rest of the passengers see a large, white, apparently solid object appear in front of the bus and brace themselves for a collision. There's a shout from the bus-driver and an almighty 'thump' as the object is struck by the bus.

The driver stops and everyone looks at my dad (a not always fortunate by-product of wearing a uniform is that people appear to think that you will know what to do in any given situation) who gets out of the bus followed by the other passengers and checks out the road and the verge. There's nothing there so they spread out and check the near edges of the fields. Still nothing.

At this point I should point out that my dad and the others riding the bus had no clear idea of what it is they had seen, but, on being questioned, the very shaken bus-driver said he thought it was a woman.

The following day police and locals searched the area and my dad thinks that a local army unit also helped, but nothing was ever found.

At the time the Peak was fairly hardscrabble farm country and those on the bus would have been, like him, pragmatic and sober highlanders, not at all prone to histrionics. It's probably also worth pointing out that my dad was a trained observer.

A couple of points: I'd initially thought that the 'thump' of the object hitting the bus might have been a misremembering of the jolt caused by the bus-driver hastily applying the brakes, however my dad is adamant that the two events were separate. Everyone on the bus - albeit there were very few - saw the object. Given the size of the thing seen by the passengers, if it was, as the driver stated, a woman, then she was several feet in the air before the bus hit her.

I should also point out that my dad is a sober and honest individual. He's got three ghost stories - which given that he's now in his ninetieth year doesn't seem unreasonable, or make him sound like he might be someone prone to excesses of imagination in that direction.

Notes: The stretch of road in question crosses Butterton Moor, and was known to my dad as Butterton Clews, but that name is not on the map (although there is a Clews Farm by the road) - it actually forms part of the B5053 mentioned in the previous story. I note now that a tale I told earlier in the thread – that of my uncle, his girlfriend, and the aggressive phantom horseman – took place on the very same stretch of road.
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In relation to the location of the latter incident, I had previously mentioned another earlier episode:

...One of my uncles claimed to have been chased by a man on horseback while riding his motorbike on the road that crosses Butterton Moor between Onecote and Warslow. He was a notorious bullshitter but family tradition asserts that in this case he appeared genuinely terrified and his girlfriend, who had been riding pillion, was virtually apoplectic with fear...
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The uncle in question was a Boer War veteran, with a quite fearsome reputation. (I should point out that this was actually my dad's uncle, but my dad's family doesn't differentiate between generations, which can be quite confusing, but actually makes you feel closer to the history. Similarly, most of my 'aunts' are actually someone's cousin.)

This particular road clearly had a reputation in the past, and was part of family and local folklore, but I've never been able to find anything more recent. How cool would it be if it appeared somewhere in @RuthRoperWylde's archives - but I fear that might be too much to expect.
 
Spookdaddy said:
Two of the experiences my late dad had - which I've related on the Derbyshire & Peak District Ghosts - qualify as road ghosts, I think.

It's the first story of his (#30) that most gives me the shivers, but those relevant here are the latter two (posts#31and #32):





In relation to the location of the latter incident, I had previously mentioned another earlier episode:



The uncle in question was a Boer War veteran, with a quite fearsome reputation. (I should point out that this was actually my dad's uncle, but my dad's family doesn't differentiate between generations, which can be quite confusing, but actually makes you feel closer to the history. Similarly, most of my 'aunts' are actually someone's cousin.)

This particular road clearly had a reputation in the past, and was part of family and local folklore, but I've never been able to find anything more recent. How cool would it be if it appeared somewhere in @RuthRoperWylde's archives - but I fear that might be too much to expect.
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I didn't have this road in my database, no - but I do now!!! I'll do my usual research on it and see if anything comes up.....
But I've only just published Roadmap of British Ghosts Volume 2, so I think it will be a little while before I get around to a volume 3 as I've already started book #7, which isn't road ghosts......
Keep them coming!

Does this stretch of road fall on the Derbyshire side or the Staffordshire, do you happen to know?
 
RuthRoperWylde said:
...Does this stretch of road fall on the Derbyshire side or the Staffordshire, do you happen to know?
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The end section of the B5053 (or is it the beginning - I've never known how that works) is in Derbyshire, but for most of its length it traverses the Staffordshire moorlands region. It's mostly within the bounds of the Peak District, just over the Staffordshire side of the River Dove.
 
RuthRoperWylde said:
I didn't have this road in my database, no - but I do now!!! I'll do my usual research on it and see if anything comes up.....
But I've only just published Roadmap of British Ghosts Volume 2, so I think it will be a little while before I get around to a volume 3 as I've already started book #7, which isn't road ghosts......
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Halfway through Volume 1 of Roadmap of British Ghosts on my kindle,got volume 2 ready to read after. Really enjoying it.
 
A veery recent road ghost motorcyclist from Devon:

"Location: A377 (Devon) - Between Copplestone and Morchard Bishop
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 22 September 2022, 17:30h
Further Comments: Two people travelling along this road could hear a motorbike approaching their car from behind. The bike could not be seen, but clearly heard as it overtook the car and accelerated away. Both witnesses were left shaken by their encounter."

https://www.paranormaldatabase.com/recent/index.php

I used to live in this area and am very familiar with this road, and even rode it on a motorbike myself many years ago. It is popular with bikers due to its shallow bends and long straights and there have been signs erected by the police to warn bikers to slow down and take care following a number of fatal accidents, for example:

https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/biker-killed-devon-crash-early-4117092
 
Thinking about the Stocksbridge bypass case concerning the young girls that were seen dancing around the pylon singing 'ring a ring o' roses' before vanishing;

Is it just coincidence that there (maybe) used to be a tree where the pylon now is, or does the modern pylon 'attract' the girls somehow?
 
Floyd1 said:
Thinking about the Stocksbridge bypass case concerning the young girls that were seen dancing around the pylon singing 'ring a ring o' roses' before vanishing;

Is it just coincidence that there (maybe) used to be a tree where the pylon now is, or does the modern pylon 'attract' the girls somehow?
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Good point, maybe electrical power has something to do with it or perhaps the pylon was completely unrelated and there by chance. It was Dr David Clarke who established it was the pylon and not a tree as had been reported by some. Clarke is very much a skeptic but he remains puzzled and quite open-minded about the principle Stockbridge events

source:
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Good point, maybe electrical power has something to do with it or perhaps the pylon was completely unrelated and there by chance. It was Dr David Clarke who established it was the pylon and not a tree as had been reported by some. Clarke is very much a skeptic but he remains puzzled and quite open-minded about the principle Stockbridge events

source:
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Right. Cheers Paul I'll have a listen to that.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
One of my favourites, you get to hear Clarke's original tape recorded interview with those two police officers who experienced the 'manifestation' at the windows of their patrol car
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Just listened to that Paul. Cheers again.

Would be good if we could get the quality of the interview cleaned up.

Regarding the pylon, the officer mentions static (not sure if he was suggesting that said static could have been a possible reason for the sightings though).
 
Has this video been posted on this forum before? Dramatised retelling of what seem to be genuine phantom hitchhikers in the Cotswolds:

 
BS3 said:
This is a really interesting local history article on the historical context to the Stocksbridge bypass stories; apparently there was a 'phantom stagecoach' tale in the area long before the bypass was built.
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I've always been fascinated by the Stocksbridge events - the number of multiple witnesses, the relatively broad geographical footprint of the sightings, the way the thing appeared to be deliberately interacting with witnesses etc.

For those interested in the case there is a dedicated thread: Stocksbridge Bypass Ghost. It's a subject that definitely deserves its own place.
 
I wonder if all the construction over the years that this place has seen has anything to do with it?
Looking at old maps at all the railways/mines/reservoirs and roads that have scarred the landscape over the years.

I suppose that could be said for many other places too though.
 
Spookdaddy said:
I spent a fruitless ten minutes looking for a story I was absolutely positive was on this thread, or possibly the Celebrity Ghosts & Hauntings one (because it involves a couple of well-known names from the music world), only to find it has one of its own: Lost Book On Time Slips Or Road Ghosts.

This was the story I was thinking about (accessible via a link in post #4 of that latter thread - from the book Science and the Spook, by George Owen and Victor Sims:



The book - which I found a copy of after getting involved in the 'Lost book...' thread - was published in 1971, with the preface dated 1968. This, and the fact that it's authored by whatever the post-war version of nerds was, might explain some of the writing (I'm sure we all know now what a 'pop group' is.) That said, it's actually very readable - and the two 'nerds' involved, although they clearly believe in the application of science to such incidents, seem pretty open minded on the subject.
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By chance I came across the story as told by Peter Bardens's father (a notable psychical investigator):

s-l1600-85.jpgs-l1600-83.jpgs-l1600-86.jpg
 
RaM said:
Due to their work they may be more likely to be out late
at night.
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Which is interesting because there's nothing really about road ghosts that SHOULD be more prevalent late at night, is there? Except for the fact that tired human eyes are more likely to 'see things' moving at speed under artificial light?
 
catseye said:
Which is interesting because there's nothing really about road ghosts that SHOULD be more prevalent late at night, is there? Except for the fact that tired human eyes are more likely to 'see things' moving at speed under artificial light?
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Not sure if road ghosts re predominantly seen at night, I can think of some compelling daytime accounts. In fact, scrolling up these threads reveals a good number
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Not sure if road ghosts re predominantly seen at night, I can think of some compelling daytime accounts. In fact, scrolling up these threads reveals a good number
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Yes, I know. I was replying to RAM's statement about actors and performers being out late at night.
 
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