Places Of Extreme Strangeness

[maximus otter]

It's actually on more recent OS maps too:

View attachment 74194



The area has been the subject of at least one article in FT, by Rob Gandy.

There's a link to a transcript of one such article here.

My best guess as to the locus of the phantom hitchhiker reported by Gandy:

maximus otter

 

[SimonBurchell]

For places of extreme strangeness, I must mention Blue Bell Hill. I don't know how active it has been the last few years, but the whole area is pretty eerie, in spite of being criss-crossed by busy roads.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

I have never seen anything out of the ordinary

Neither have I, though I drive through the area several times a year. Mr. Gandy actively sought out people who had experienced the Phantom Hitchhiker on the route; he found quite a few.

Its strangeness is best experienced in frosty weather, when low mists cling to the ground. It is very pretty to view from the warmth of a car! Such days might go some way to account for its eerie reputation.

 

[dr wu]

Just browsing and I saw this thread ; also was reading about @RonnieJersey being missing from the forum and this popped into my mind.
One of the weirdest places in the US are the New Jersey Pine barrens famous for the Jersey Devil but also for ghosts , orb lights, and even bigfoot sightings.
https://thedigestonline.com/nj/jersey-devil-pine-barrens/
https://weirdnj.com/tag/pine-barrens/

 

[dr wu]

Also just watched an episode of Expedition X on Discovery and Mackinac Island in upper Michigan was featured.

I have been meaning to go there for years but never drove there yet...its about 6 hours from where I live in northwest Indiana.
Ghosts aside its a beautiful summer get away from what people tell me.
https://www.mackinacisland.org/blog/is-mackinac-island-haunted/
https://www.audacy.com/wwjnewsradio...experts-believe-mackinac-island-is-so-haunted

 

[Spookdaddy]

...Its strangeness is best experienced in frosty weather, when low mists cling to the ground. It is very pretty to view from the warmth of a car! Such days might go some way to account for its eerie reputation.

The word 'Moss' in a placename usually indicates marshy, boggy ground. Many such areas will have long since been drained, but it's interesting to note that they would once have been those liminal places where the land was not quite land, and not quite water - so possibly an attractive habitat for those things that were not quite living, and not quite entirely dead. At least in our imaginations.

Drained wetland seems to be prone to a very specific kind of mistiness, as well as the potential for bone numbing coldness. (I think I've mentioned elsewhere that Hackney Marshes at 06.00 on a winter's morning is about the coldest I've ever felt in my life - despite the fact that I've been to, and in fact lived in, places where the mean temperature is - technically - much lower than East London.)

 

[Robbrent]

The word 'Moss' in a placename usually indicates marshy, boggy ground. Many such areas will have long since been drained, but it's interesting to note that they would once have been those liminal places where the land was not quite land, and not quite water - so possibly an attractive habitat for those things that were not quite living, and not quite entirely dead. At least in our imaginations.

Drained wetland seems to be prone to a very specific kind of mistiness, as well as the potential for bone numbing coldness. (I think I've mentioned elsewhere that Hackney Marshes at 06.00 on a winter's morning is about the coldest I've ever felt in my life - despite the fact that I've been to, and in fact lived in, places where the mean temperature is - technically - much lower than East London.)

Parts of Hallsal Moss will have been part of Martin Mere which used to be the biggest lake in the UK prior to being partially drained in the 17th Century, which has left the whole area with very fertile soil the Mere used to stretch into what is now known as Southport

By the way it seems colder in the UK mainly because of the humid air