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Strangeness On The Road

Driving through Cambridgeshire one evening I saw a figure on horseback appear out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly, it gave me chills.
I did a u-turn and slowly drove back along the same route, the figure appeared again so I stopped the car to understand what I was seeing. It was a trick of the eye, a combination of car lights, shadows, a telegraph pole, foliage, a post box and the dimming light. If I hadn't have gone back I would have sworn I'd seen an apparition.
 
Thanks for sharing your experience and that of your relatives, road ghosts are a favourite of mine. Some interesting possible explanations being put forward but there have been numerous such reports from across the UK, so who knows?
 
[...]as we rounded a bend when the headlights of the car in front picked out a shape in the lane - definitely 'man shaped', but with a kind of shimmering haze around it (I'd later describe it as looking 'solid but not filled in', if that makes any sense at all).

[...]

it wasn't until we got home that my mum brought it up and we both remembered it in exactly the same fashion. The same sequence of events, the same man-shaped (but not quite) figure, the same hazy / waviness that surrounded it.

Bit late to the party here, but a quick flick through Ruth Roper Wylde's 'Roadmap of British Ghosts' has an entry for the A5 at Nuneaton reporting the supposed ghost of a 'phantom highwayman' (ascribed by some as the ubiquitous Dick Turpin) - reportedly sighted several times in the 1920s both on horseback and on foot, and described as solid-looking and wearing a jacket with crimson-coloured sleeves.

However by the late 1970s eyewitness accounts spoke of the figure on the road as "more of a shimmering outline".

I appreciate that the OP's experience occurred on the nearby A444 rather than the main A5, but the use of the word 'shimmering' in both accounts drew my attention.

Maybe relevant, maybe not!
 
No, indeed not - I just checked your Google Maps link a bit further back, and right enough: the site of your experience really is only a stone's throw from the A444's junction with the A5.

Interestingly, although the road junction alignment where the A444 traverses the A5 look like it's been recently re-engineered to allow for HGV movements, it appears that this junction was formerly a crossroads - which, of course, folklore holds to be a prime paranormal hotspot.

Most interesting!

Road ghosts interest me a great deal also; it was my own odd nocturnal encounter with a strange figure on a hill in Sussex that prompted me to post here for the first time too.

A steer from a forum member to a specific book indicated that the same figure I'd encountered had been reported before on the same stretch of road, 13 years previously. Which was both a relief (that I wasn't necessarily bonkers) and troubling (that there really might be an entity walking the road that ain't fully human) in equal measure.
 
Driving through Cambridgeshire one evening I saw a figure on horseback appear out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly, it gave me chills.
I did a u-turn and slowly drove back along the same route, the figure appeared again so I stopped the car to understand what I was seeing. It was a trick of the eye, a combination of car lights, shadows, a telegraph pole, foliage, a post box and the dimming light. If I hadn't have gone back I would have sworn I'd seen an apparition.
I have had a similar experience, seeing a small group of giraffes cross the road in front of me. It was always at dawn, and the giraffes were actually 3 road signs of different heights, grouped in the median of the separated highway. The headlights of the oncoming cars would give the signs the appearance of moving giraffes. It was uncanny how lifelike the forms and the movement were.
 
No, indeed not - I just checked your Google Maps link a bit further back, and right enough: the site of your experience really is only a stone's throw from the A444's junction with the A5.

Interestingly, although the road junction alignment where the A444 traverses the A5 look like it's been recently re-engineered to allow for HGV movements, it appears that this junction was formerly a crossroads - which, of course, folklore holds to be a prime paranormal hotspot.

Most interesting!

Road ghosts interest me a great deal also; it was my own odd nocturnal encounter with a strange figure on a hill in Sussex that prompted me to post here for the first time too.

A steer from a forum member to a specific book indicated that the same figure I'd encountered had been reported before on the same stretch of road, 13 years previously. Which was both a relief (that I wasn't necessarily bonkers) and troubling (that there really might be an entity walking the road that ain't fully human) in equal measure.
It was an off set cross road. To continue on the A444 from Nuneaton to Tycross you had to pull on to the A5 and turn right. It was a nightmare. Lots of accidents Its now some weird double mini roundabout situation. But at least now you have half a chance of making it alive!!
 
Returning as promised with the screenshot of where we had the sighting - it was in the centre of the road (where I've placed the arrow).

From your description, here are some historic maps of the locus:

Caldecote-ghost-Fortean-04-1760.jpg


1760

Caldecote-ghost-1886-Fortean-01.jpg


1886

Caldecote-ghost-Fortean-03.jpg


1:50,000 OS

Caldecote-ghost-Fortean-02.jpg


Google Earth

"Crazy-pit Spinney", and the fact that the A5 used to be the Roman Watling Street, might merit extra research.

maximus otter
 
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