Phantom Hitchhikers & Road Ghosts

catseye said:
But if it was something imitating a train, it surely wouldn't be limited only to places where trains had previously run? An imitation train ought to be able to appear on a road or a boating lake or in a living room.
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I was thinking more along the lines of a genius loci witnessing something and then manifesting as a recreation of what it had witnessed, but your post has me thinking, has anyone witnessed a train or a ship in the air? If people have seen the Wild Hunt, phantom battles (which assuredly took place on land originally), Marian apparitions, even Father Christmas's sleigh in the air, why not trains too?
 
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SimonBurchell said:
I was thinking more along the lines of a genius loci witnessing something and then manifesting as a recreation of what it had witnessed, but your post has me thinking, haa anyone witnessed a train or a ship in the air? If people have seen the Wild Hunt, phantom battles (which assuredly took place on land originally), Marian apparitions, even Father Christmas's sleigh in the air, why not trains too?
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Know of one train in the air with brightly lit carriages witnessed by a couple in a car but it was close to an actual railway and so I am going for a mirage caused by atmospheric conditions at the time. (Source: UK paranormal Database)
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
I've heard cases of ghosts disappearing through a wall where a door used to exist, but cannot recall any reports of a ghost door per se.
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But isn't any timeslip that involves a building or road etc a 'ghost' in itself, or do you mean particularly just a door that appears then disappears because we do have a whole house in Bury, don't forget?
 
Just started watching this when it popped up on my YouTube watch list.

Yorkshire's Haunted Roads, but with video from the actual sites as they are now, which helped me to envisage the areas. Stocksbridge, the B1249, Coverdale and Hellfire Corner. Interesting to see the places.
 

Over Three Million UK Motorists Have Seen a Ghost While Driving, New Survey Says​

Overall, 9% of the more than 1,000 survey respondents said they had seen a “ghost” while traversing Britain’s haunted highways and byways. That’s the equivalent of 3.79 million motorists, with around 42 million driving licence holders in the UK.

https://www.singularfortean.com/sin...ve-seen-a-ghost-while-driving-new-survey-says
 
Tempest63 said:

Over Three Million UK Motorists Have Seen a Ghost While Driving, New Survey Says​

Overall, 9% of the more than 1,000 survey respondents said they had seen a “ghost” while traversing Britain’s haunted highways and byways. That’s the equivalent of 3.79 million motorists, with around 42 million driving licence holders in the UK.

https://www.singularfortean.com/sin...ve-seen-a-ghost-while-driving-new-survey-says
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I look forward to seeing them as more people get dashcams.
 
Tempest63 said:

Over Three Million UK Motorists Have Seen a Ghost While Driving, New Survey Says​

Overall, 9% of the more than 1,000 survey respondents said they had seen a “ghost” while traversing Britain’s haunted highways and byways. That’s the equivalent of 3.79 million motorists, with around 42 million driving licence holders in the UK.

https://www.singularfortean.com/sin...ve-seen-a-ghost-while-driving-new-survey-says
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Great find, but also:

Overall, 9% of the more than 1,000 survey respondents said they had seen a “ghost” while traversing Britain’s haunted highways and byways. That’s the equivalent of 3.79 million motorists, with around 42 million driving licence holders in the UK.

A startling 8% said they had sighted a UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) from the window of their vehicle.

A further 8% also reported glimpsing one of the UK’s infamous out-of-place big cats - such as the black jaguar-like "Beast of Bodmin" - while on the road.

And while Bigfoot reports are unusual in the UK, they’re clearly not beyond the realms of possibility, with 3% of respondents to the Select Car Leasing survey suspecting they had seen one—the equivalent of around 1.26 million motorists.
https://www.singularfortean.com/sin...ve-seen-a-ghost-while-driving-new-survey-says

Says the had a 9% response to 1,000 surveys which probably isn't bad in any context:

Exactly what constitutes a 'good' response rate can vary. But generally speaking, an acceptable survey response rate is between 5% and 30%. Anything above 30% is considered excellent. Again, it is important to stress that there is no universally defined threshold for a 'good' response rate.

https://www.kantar.com/inspiration/research-services/what-is-a-good-survey-response-rate-pf#:~:text=Exactly%20what%20constitutes%20a%20'good,a%20'good'%20response%20rate.

Not the first such press release from Select Car Leasing:

These are six of the most chilling GHOST encounters on UK roads, hand-picked by an expert in tales of the supernatural, just in time for Halloween.

Take a hair-raising road trip with these spooky paranormal podcasts​

Spookiest places in the UK to go for a drive​


All the work of Editor Neil Goodwin who I suspect may be familiar with the Fortean Times...
 
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Tempest63 said:

Over Three Million UK Motorists Have Seen a Ghost While Driving, New Survey Says​

Overall, 9% of the more than 1,000 survey respondents said they had seen a “ghost” while traversing Britain’s haunted highways and byways. That’s the equivalent of 3.79 million motorists, with around 42 million driving licence holders in the UK.

https://www.singularfortean.com/sin...ve-seen-a-ghost-while-driving-new-survey-says
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I'd be suspicious of this on two counts - one being that if you've never seen anything anomalous, nor even suspected that you might have done, would you even answer the survey, and two...I've written on here about putting my foot on the brake every single time I went past a particular point because I would 'see' a person waiting to step out into the road - it was a tree. And anyone doing that journey once in one direction in poor light and then again in the opposite direction (where the 'figure' had vanished because of the angle) might report a 'ghost waiting to cross the road'.

Problem with being in a car, by its very nature, you are moving and therefore not really in a position to be analytical. People who see a ghost whilst in a car that is stationary might be worth reading about.
 
catseye said:
I'd be suspicious of this on two counts - one being that if you've never seen anything anomalous, nor even suspected that you might have done, would you even answer the survey, and two...I've written on here about putting my foot on the brake every single time I went past a particular point because I would 'see' a person waiting to step out into the road - it was a tree. And anyone doing that journey once in one direction in poor light and then again in the opposite direction (where the 'figure' had vanished because of the angle) might report a 'ghost waiting to cross the road'.

Problem with being in a car, by its very nature, you are moving and therefore not really in a position to be analytical. People who see a ghost whilst in a car that is stationary might be worth reading about.
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True, but would be a great shame if virtually nobody reported seeing anything!
 
This has shades of the survey years ago where they asked how many Americans thought they had been abducted by aliens and extrapolated it to the whole population to produce a figure of millions. False reasoning.
 
SimonBurchell said:
This has shades of the survey years ago where they asked how many Americans thought they had been abducted by aliens and extrapolated it to the whole population to produce a figure of millions. False reasoning.
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True. Ask two people if they've ever been in a haunted house - one says yes, one says no. Extrapolates out to headlines like "Fifty per cent of the population say they've been in a Haunted Huose!" (It's in the Guardian, obviously).
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Great find, but also:

Overall, 9% of the more than 1,000 survey respondents said they had seen a “ghost” while traversing Britain’s haunted highways and byways. That’s the equivalent of 3.79 million motorists, with around 42 million driving licence holders in the UK.

A startling 8% said they had sighted a UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) from the window of their vehicle.

A further 8% also reported glimpsing one of the UK’s infamous out-of-place big cats - such as the black jaguar-like "Beast of Bodmin" - while on the road.

And while Bigfoot reports are unusual in the UK, they’re clearly not beyond the realms of possibility, with 3% of respondents to the Select Car Leasing survey suspecting they had seen one—the equivalent of around 1.26 million motorists.
https://www.singularfortean.com/sin...ve-seen-a-ghost-while-driving-new-survey-says

Says the had a 9% response to 1,000 surveys which probably isn't bad in any context:

Exactly what constitutes a 'good' response rate can vary. But generally speaking, an acceptable survey response rate is between 5% and 30%. Anything above 30% is considered excellent. Again, it is important to stress that there is no universally defined threshold for a 'good' response rate.

https://www.kantar.com/inspiration/research-services/what-is-a-good-survey-response-rate-pf#:~:text=Exactly%20what%20constitutes%20a%20'good,a%20'good'%20response%20rate.

Not the first such press release from Select Car Leasing:

These are six of the most chilling GHOST encounters on UK roads, hand-picked by an expert in tales of the supernatural, just in time for Halloween.

Take a hair-raising road trip with these spooky paranormal podcasts​

Spookiest places in the UK to go for a drive​


All the work of Editor Neil Goodwin who I suspect may be familiar with the Fortean Times...
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That Bigfoot 3% is really close to the infamous "Lizardman constant" that may plague every survey:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/...nd-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/

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The lesson from all three of the cases in this post seems clear. When we’re talking about very unpopular beliefs, polls can only give a weak signal. Any possible source of noise – jokesters, cognitive biases, or deliberate misbehavior – can easily overwhelm the signal. Therefore, polls that rely on detecting very weak signals should be taken with a grain of salt.
 
MorningAngel said:
I look forward to seeing them as more people get dashcams.
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My own thoughts exactly. There hasn’t been a great boom in the recording of roadside ghosts since the advent of dashcams. (To my knowledge).
But do people go looking for them?
If you believe you may have seen something anomalous you may track through the footage, but other than having an accident in the car, who reviews their dashcam footage?
 
Tempest63 said:
My own thoughts exactly. There hasn’t been a great boom in the recording of roadside ghosts since the advent of dashcams. (To my knowledge).
But do people go looking for them?
If you believe you may have seen something anomalous you may track through the footage, but other than having an accident in the car, who reviews their dashcam footage?
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I saw something that was a bit odd a couple of times. The first one I couldn’t really look at without crashing into other people. I looked back at my footage and it looked like a bin bag flying high in the sky. Also I caught a flash in the sky when there wasn't thunder and lightning. But is that because I’m interested in such things and other people would go ‘that was a bit odd’ and move on?
 
Paul_Exeter said:

Illuminated Woman​


Location: Castlefin (County Donegal) - Road leading to Ballybofey
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: Circa 1992/1993
Further Comments: A driver spotted an older woman bathed in a bright white light on the left side of the road.

https://www.paranormaldatabase.com/recent/index.php
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These are the sort of apparitions that again make me think that time slippage might be to blame. Perhaps it's sunny in her universe?
 
catseye said:
These are the sort of apparitions that again make me think that time slippage might be to blame. Perhaps it's sunny in her universe?
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Which also reminds me of the phantom car story reported here in Reading. Although seen in the middle of the night, the apparition of an old style car, driven by a red-headed woman, is described as being illuminated as if in broad daylight, until it suddenly disappears.
 
Maybe... maybe some of those 'weird lights' that people report seeing (like when someone sees a bright patch appear on a wall and then vanish) could be time slippage that doesn't actually involve a person or item? That it could be almost like a 'window' onto an alternate universe opening and letting the light of a different time zone in?
 
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