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Phantom Hitchhikers & Road Ghosts

He appears to write about a haunting however tenuous the source. (Why does the word 'tenuous' not look right? I doubt myself now).
 
Re: Phantom carriageways?

genex17 said:
While there are phantom hitchhikers,I have also read about "phantom carriageways" in The Haunted City (Liverpool) where motorists would see an exit to a highway on the M62 somewhere around Junctions 5 and 6 that did not show up on any map. Passing the same area again it was gone. Anyone ever hear of such a thing?

In other words, a 'ghost road' rather than a 'road ghost' - right?

Yes, I know of an example. This occurred on Holston Mountain - a national forest area - in east Tennessee. Circa 1970 or 1971 five friends set out on a nighttime 'run' (basically just getting away from civilization and cruising). I was not with them that night. The next day all five told the same story. They'd left US highway 421 (east-west over the mountain) west of the mountain's crest (in Sullivan County) and proceeded southward on a gravel road (Flatwoods Road, as it was known at the time). Flatwoods Road was the only vehicle-navigable track running north-south from highway 421 to an intersection with another highway in Carter County miles to the south. To the west of Flatwoods Road was South Holston Lake, and to the east was the steep western face of Holston Mountain.

In between 421 and the Carter County terminus there were multiple smaller jeep tracks (forest service fire roads) branching off eastward to the foot of Holston Mountain. Our circle of friends was quite familiar with these tracks, because we often used them for camping, hiking, and / or just communing with nature.

On the night in question, all five claimed they'd driven up one of these fire roads, only to find it didn't terminate at the foot of the mountain's western face. Instead, they said the track turned into a relatively well-maintained gravel road that wound its way upward onto the mountain. Somewhere along the way there were open clearings or meadows with grasses and ferns. They had come to a gate, upon which there was a sign notifying them they were entering the national forest, a protected wildlife area, federal jurisidction, etc. The gate wasn't locked. They proceeded through the gate and continued all the way to the crest of Holston Mountain, then descended on a somewhat less developed dirt and gravel road into the valley on the eastern side (the Shady Valley community), where they claimed to have come out on a paved north-south state highway (I forget the number / name) south of highway 421 and north of the Carter County line.

The problem was - that road over Holston Mountain didn't exist. It wasn't on any maps. None of us had ever encountered it - even in hiking all along the mountain crest. Multiple attempts at re-locating the mystery road failed. We even went to the extent of exploring every fire road between highway 421 and the Carter County terminus (on the western side of the mountain) over the course of a summer, eliminating the possibilities one by one. We even explored the eastern side (where they'd ostensibly come down off the mountain), but never found the road from which they said they'd intersected the state highway on that side. We never even found a gate or sign anywhere in the search area that even approximated the group's description.

There was in fact a gravel road leading up to a firetower atop the mountain a few miles _north_ of 421 and then (quite perilously) leading down the eastern side via a track that was more of a dry creek bed than a discernible pathway. However, two of the original five (including the driver) claimed that wasn't the mystery route after examining and traversing it. Among other reasons - no gate, no meadows / clearings, the miserable eastern track was 'way more rough than the road they'd descended upon that night - too rough, in fact, for the family car used that night to have traversed at all. This candidate was the only up-and-over pathway we ever found on the mountain (other than mere hiking trails) anywhere near the search area.

The subject of this ghost road has come up repeatedly in the 40 years since that night, and we were searching for the road as late as the early 1990's.

We still don't know where they were that night. The five ghost road travelers were consistent in their descriptions of the route and its location, and adamant that the ghost road lay in the area we searched for years.
 
Thanks for that, Enola. I see that stories of Phantom highways exist, but
I guess not as much as Highway Phantoms.

Spudrick68 said:
He appears to write about a haunting however tenuous the source. (Why does the word 'tenuous' not look right? I doubt myself now).

Sorry - it didn't appear to send my post first time round!

Yes, I got it from one of his Kindle books "The Haunted City"

So not knowing much else, he isn't considered a trustworthy source as far as this community goes.

Tenuous: "having little substance or strength : flimsy, weak" Ok.



I did listen to the Telly Savalas story. I googled the story as well and there were some wildly varying accounts. The baseball player was more likely Harry (The Golden Greek) Aganis who died at the age of 26 in 1955, giving us the year and 1953 the year of Mr. Cullen's death. Telly's acting career did not get started until 1959, and his Twilight Zone episode was in 1963. White Castle is a famous hamburger chain that got going in 1921 before McDonalds. They have a lot of them in the New York City area.

Wasn't able to track down James Cullen, but quite a celeb story.
 
Thanks for the background. Telly was of Greek descent, which would be why he mentioned that baseball player if he was Greek too. Of course, you have to bear in mind Telly was an actor and would have loved to tell stories to a rapt audience, so there may have been some embellishment in the telling for performance reasons.
 
Re: Phantom carriageways?

genex17 said:
While there are phantom hitchhikers,I have also read about "phantom carriageways" ...

Anyone ever hear of such a thing?

Yes there's supposedly one about a mile from my house across a place called Garngoch common. I've only heard about if from one source a book on local ghosts which I read years ago. As I recall though the road apparently appears to directly connect the B4560 to the village of Penllergaer. It doesn't happen to me though apparently I have to go round.

The area itself has a bit of history and has a few ghost stories attached to it. The place seems to have attracted bad luck and violence dating right back, it was a Roman army camp, then the site of a few Dark Age battles, finally in the Medieval period it was the site of a particularly bloody massacre/smashing day out, depending on your side, from which it gets its name which translates into English as the red or bloody place.

EnolaGia that's a very interesting story. I had a similar, although not as spectacular, experience last year, although that got resolved.

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... c&start=30

I'd be interested to see the area you're talking about on the satellite view.
 
Re: Phantom carriageways?

oldrover said:
EnolaGia that's a very interesting story. I had a similar, although not as spectacular, experience last year, although that got resolved. ...

I'd be interested to see the area you're talking about on the satellite view.

Thanks ...

If you enter "Holston Mountain" (quoted string) on Google Maps it will take you directly to the area in question. US Highway 421 is the northern boundary of the search area. Tennessee state highway 91 (to the east of the mountain) is where they claimed to have come out after going over the mountain.

Multiple additional roads have been added on both sides of Holston Mountain over the last 40 years. What was essentially a single route called Flatwoods Road back then now appears as a sort of chain of roads labeled Camp Tom Howard Road, Flat Woods Road, and Big Creek Road on the current map.
 
Thanks for that, it looks like a very nice place.

I'll read the post again and compare it to the map.
 
While there seems to be a thread of ghost taxi passengers, it's in IHTM. These reports seem similar to ghost hitchhikers, so I am putting it here.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/japan-taxi-drivers-pick-ghost-passengers-tsunami-hit-towns-1539387

"Several taxi drivers from towns in northeast Japan have reportedly had encounters with "ghost passengers" who disappear upon reaching their destination. The episodes have occurred in towns, like Ishinomaki, which were badly affected by the 2011 tsunami.

The news surfaced after a research conducted by sociology student, Yuka Kudo, 22, from the Tohoku Gakuin University who reportedly interviewed over 100 drivers as part of her study. Kudo noted interviewing a taxi driver in his 50s who recalled having a ghost encounter with a woman near the Ishinomaki Station.

The female passenger allegedly asked the driver to be taken to the Minamihama district to which the driver responded: "The area is almost empty. Is it OK?" The woman next said: "Have I died?" Upon turning back to answer the woman, the taxi driver says the car's rear seat was empty.

Several similar incidents have been reported by
taxi drivers leading to unpaid fares since the drivers reportedly started their meters in all cases believing the passengers were living people. None of the drivers, however, reported being scared of the ghosts.

According to the interviews, Kudo said most of the ghosts were identified to be young. "Young people feel strongly chagrined [at their deaths] when they cannot meet people they love. As they want to convey their bitterness, they may have chosen taxis, which are like private rooms, as a medium to do so," said Kudo, reported The Asahi Shimbun. "[Through the interviews], I learned that the death of each victim carries importance ... I want to convey that."

The magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami that hit northeastern Japan in March 2011 claimed over 16,000 lives, according to Japan's National Police Agency. "The places where people say they see ghosts are largely those areas completely swept away by the tsunami,' said Keizo Hara, a psychiatrist in Ishinomaki, reported The Daily Mail.

"We think phenomena like ghost sightings are perhaps a mental projection of the terror and worries associated with those places. It will take time for the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to emerge for many people in temporary housing for whom nothing has changed since the quake.""
 
Sort of connected to road ghosts :)oops:) - I was wondering if anyone knows any tales about haunted fields? I know about Dorothy Durant at Botathen and "David Lang"/The Difficulty of Crossing a Field by Ambrose Bierce and I'm trying to track down as many as I can on-line, but many haunted fields are probably rather localised stories that may be harder to find just sat at my laptop. So before I start trying to break into the Bod to read old story collections, I thought I'd take the easy option of canvassing you, dear readers!

So, if you have any family or local tales, or have ideas for interesting websites, I'll be thrilled and hugely grateful!!
 
Thank you for having a look. I should have said that I'm only interested in haunted fields (or fields with a "reputation") in England and Wales. Maybe they are near (or have) standing stones, or have since been built over but previously had had some mystery (like Charles Walton's death), ghost, or legend attached (ruined crops, animals falling sick, general bad luck.) Perhaps the field might be associated with witches, the Devil, or fairies?

I will be checking out fields where battles took place but my main interest is in much smaller scale incidents; someone getting mangled in a combine harvester or chopped by a plough followed by stories of their spirit hanging around thereafter.

I should add: no more scary ghost videos!!! I still need to sleep!! ;)
 
You are in ghosts - general and you don't want scary ghost stories? I predict a poor outcome...
 
You are in ghosts - general and you don't want scary ghost stories? I predict a poor outcome...
I was referring to the first video that JamesWhitehead posted. Truly the stuff of nightmares...
 
Try also Blackmore Night's 'I guess it doesn't matter any more'.
 
Thank you for having a look. I should have said that I'm only interested in haunted fields (or fields with a "reputation") in England and Wales. Maybe they are near (or have) standing stones, or have since been built over but previously had had some mystery (like Charles Walton's death), ghost, or legend attached (ruined crops, animals falling sick, general bad luck.) Perhaps the field might be associated with witches, the Devil, or fairies?

I will be checking out fields where battles took place but my main interest is in much smaller scale incidents; someone getting mangled in a combine harvester or chopped by a plough followed by stories of their spirit hanging around thereafter.

Surely this might get interesting.http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/20...ameras-create-stir-over-privacy/#.V7kAv5Lr2xQ I notice in the article one prefecture has a 50% security cam. rate in their Taxis. If the trend continues it will be interesting to get one on the camera if it hasn't been done already.
 
Thank you for having a look. I should have said that I'm only interested in haunted fields (or fields with a "reputation") in England and Wales. Maybe they are near (or have) standing stones, or have since been built over but previously had had some mystery (like Charles Walton's death), ghost, or legend attached (ruined crops, animals falling sick, general bad luck.) Perhaps the field might be associated with witches, the Devil, or fairies?

I will be checking out fields where battles took place but my main interest is in much smaller scale incidents; someone getting mangled in a combine harvester or chopped by a plough followed by stories of their spirit hanging around thereafter.

I should add: no more scary ghost videos!!! I still need to sleep!! ;)

Garngoch, here;

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Garngoch Hospital/@51.6549421,-4.0063414,958m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xb35d7346f404ae7f!8m2!3d51.6583965!4d-4.0112767

I'm talking about the sort of trapezoid area between Hospital Road, the A484 and the B4560, which was once the Roman road to Carmarthen and their gold mines at Pumsaint.

The area has given up Beaker artifacts, and there was once a Roman military camp there. It's got a brutal history. Most notably it was also the site of a very brutal massacre in the battle of Llwchwr on New Years Day 1136. When the Welsh slaughtered a Norman army from South Gower.

I've amended this post as I write it because while Googling for a few facts I came across my own post, earlier on this thread. I've posted it here again, slightly edited;

I once came across an account, think it was in an American book rather than one on local ghost stories, regarding a phantom road across one of our ancient battlefields, Garngoch common, translated as red or bloody place, or as the place with no soul or place with no heritage*, depending on who you listen to. The area in question has got a very bloody history, with a Dark age battle and early medieval battle/ethnic cleansing episode.

All of which has nothing to do with the story which involves someone being lost presumably along the A483 then taking a turning to find himself at his destination the village of Penllergaer on the other side of the common. When describing his route as for some reason he decided to do, to one of the residents he was supposedly told that the road he'd taken had gone years previously but occasionally reappeared (though there is another full time road across the common), presumably to vex the odd unwary traveller by delivering them to their destination by a slightly more convenient route.


In addition to the ghost road, there's also the story of a young girl's ghost who's seen crying at the grave of her other half who killed in one of the battles there.

I should add, that it's a lovely place in fact. With no unpleasant atmosphere. But it has got the stories attached to it.

*Although Red Mound or Red Cairn is the better translation, the other incorrect versions may reflect opinion or tradition about the area.
 
Thanks for that! Sounds more like they were being haunted by IMAX 3D, though! Wasn't Peter Underwood known for embellishing his tales, or was that Peter Haining? Or was it both?


Haining definitely did and I think even though I don't want to think so Underwood did too.

Have some 70's supernatural boobs

anatomy.jpg
 
I don't know what road it was on but I think it was a part of the motorway between the M25 and Bath. I know it's the M4 along that way but I'm not sure if it was on that bit.

So getting to the point. My dad saw a group of Victorians by the motorway. There was no film crew and they were walking as if on flat ground even thought it was rocky. It has stayed with him ever since and it's even inspired a painting of his.
 
We clearly need to see this painting.
 
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